Have you met my brothers, Pete and Repeat?

(I’m tired, it is late and if I don’t write this now, two days later, I never will. I’ll try to get back to this and update/extend but don’t be surprised if I don’t).

Two games were played on Saturday at the Los Altos Gamesday. Both were using the new reduced map (all single-edge leaf nodes removed) and a variety of small teaks to kahunas and kula and the end game condition simplified to one market exhausted. Both were four player games. I played in both – I find that I can’t really evaluate a game if I don’t immerse myself in the decision making process for that game.

First game:

• I gaffed the route claiming in the initial round. Rather than a free claim in player order, then a paid claim in payer order with turn order going to the last in turn order, I did a forward and reverse order with ties going to the higher turn order. Ooops. That really screws the player in last in the initial turn order and gives the first player total certainty on his gains on the first turn.

• The new delivery model (delivery over route and that player’s routes produce on the next island. Worked well and explained easily. Resource production increased less than I’d expected. Cause appeared to be that players simply far more frequently delivered over other’s routes for a close to net zero gain in total resource production.

• The kahuna changes worked badly (payouts only if other player delivers through kahuna).

• Prestige did not work well. My earlier analysis that prestige accumulation was too monotonic seemed verified. The changes to increase variance and range of prestige allocations worked but did not provide the tension or arc I was expecting. The only focus was to not be last. Being first in prestige or having high prestige had no interest other than not being last.

• Late in the game one player admitted that this was not his sort of game, complaining that it was too combinatorial and that he preferred simpler high tactical games. The other two players married couple) only really warmed to the game as the end-game approached and the prestige race really hunkered down. They appeared to greatly like the positive sum aspects of the game and ended the game with saying they wanted to play again.

• Playtime was 3 hours.

Lessons:

0) New map is good. 1) Get initial turn order assignments right. 2) Make kahuna reward their owners and other players 3) Add a reward for high prestige, something to draw players up the prestige scale in addition to the fear of being at the bottom 4) New endgame definition worked well but was slightly slow.

Second game:

• Fixed initial turn order worked much better.

• As an experiment I tried another variation on kahuna only rewarding on other player actions. This worked moderately well for me as I occupied the centre of the map and my kahuna were hit on east/west traversals. The other players never bothered to invest in kahuna (and I can’t blame them).

• Added a scoring multiplier to prestige of (int (prestige/10)+1) with a max multiplier of x3. This worked well. All players focussed on prestige early and engaged ion kula exchange ASAP. Considerable plotting went on to ensure that the only profitable deliveries available either had no players attached to give kula to or only specific players. The turn order auction tightened. Final highest prestige was 35 with two other players in the mid/high 20s. All previous games ended with most players with prestige in the teens and the high point in the low 20s.

• One player was overly tired and had a hard time grokking the currency conversions. The other two adored the game and asked for repeat plays. Points they brought out as particularly liked were the delivery model, the prestige multiplier, and the challenges of maintaining income while competing for prestige.

• Removed 5 markets of one type before seeding board so that orange markets were less common than all others (26 vs 31). Endgame worked much better though it wasn’t orange that ran out.

• Play time was 3.5 hours (one very slow player who never really figured out what they were trying to do (it was after midnight so there’s some excuse)).

Lessons:

1) Multiplier for prestige. Probably need a bonus for >30 but moving to x4 is too large a leap. 2) Free claim in turn order, paid claim in turn order, ties won by player later in turn order works. 3) Revert kahuna to paying the owner for their deliveries and paying all other players for making kahuna pay. 4) Lose all the negative sum aspects of the game for resource management. Distracting, confusing and not necessary. 5) Reconsider limiting kula to two tokens. 6) See if endgame can be pulled in by ~2 turns. This is difficult.