I played Amyitis for the first time last night. I had a fine time and enjoyed myself, but also had a nagging feeling that something was missing in the game. There is no unifying theme *in the mechanics* that pulls the game together.

Theme tends to be of secondary importance to me. My gripe is not at all that I don't really feel that I'm building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. My gripe is that I don't feel I'm doing anything except grabbing points wherever they lie. Amyitis is like a play ground with a bunch of toys and rides strewn around. Hmmm. Maybe I'll play with the "irrigation" this turn. I'll take 2 VP's and maybe also get a small majority bonus later. Oh, no, those cards have been taken - let's jump on the temple; if I get in line now, I should be able to score 2 points a couple of times. Oops! Those lines are too long. I think I'll take a camel token so that I can get on the camel ride later when something good comes up.

The entire irrigation board struck me as a bit of a red herring. The competitions for majorities were fairly low key and low stakes. The relatively involved rules governing placement, and how they irrigate given tiles had very little strategic to offer. Mostly it served as an overly-involved mechanism to gradually increase the values of the tiles as the game progressed.

I did find that the camel ride did have some interesting possibilities for planning - especially as I got more into the game. One might see some critical actions to take - in order to secure your position in taking limited court cards, or for planting. In these cases, I certainly enjoyed trying to insure that I could get the needed resources and camels in time to jump on the right space. Even here, when you're just grabbing a big point tile, it is not as interesting as taking a card which you know is scarce.

All this makes me think of a game as having not only a unifying theme, but also a unifying mechanism. Caylus has many different subsystems, but they are pulled together by the mechanism of placing workers on the road, which offers shrinking opportunities as the turn progresses. The entire game turn is driven by the need to determine what cubes are needed and what actions are desired, then determining how your actions must be prioritized in order to execute that plan, and finally adapting to create different plans as some of those choices get taken away from you. Amyitis seems to be more a game of sniping at targets of opportunity.

I don't know. That's exactly how I felt about Caylus at first too. Your specific example. I wrote about that as being a flaw in Caylus.

Now 154 plays later, that seems rather ridiculous. Even if true it surely supports a fine fine game.

I would want to better understood Amyitis before I flung this particular arrow at it.

In our last game a player just tried to grab as many VPs as possible during every turn. He was ahead about 10-15 points until the last turns of the game.

Just behind him was a player that decided to go for the palaces (and he managed to lock everyone out of them!)

I started the game with no plans and after turn two i was dead last in the scoring track - behind the 3rd player by 7-8 points. So i thought that without a plan i could not possibly hope to win and so i decided to go for the best banker, ignore irrigation until it reached higher levels and increase my caravan a little (+2 camel).

The steady increase of income + VPs in the later turns from the banker helped me cover the lost spaces in the scoring track, while the +2 caravan allowed me to grab some needed bonuses before the others. When the irrigation levels reached the higher floors i concentrated on winning the 10VP plant.

I finally managed to win the game by 2 points (with two level 1 plants and the 4th floor plant) while the player grabbing Vp's when possible came dead last...

So i think that although the mechanisms are recycled you still need a good plan. Just snipping around for VPs isn't going to win you the game.

I don't want to overstate my point. It is not that you don't benefit from some plan. However, everything you've described, frankly does seem as though it is just finding opportunities. Securing a card that pays 2 VP per turn does not unify the game just because it plays out over the course of several turns.

Ask yourself - in game mechanic terms - what is the game "about"? Power Grid is about growing a connected network of cities while securing the plants and fuel to power them - all at the most efficient cost. Puerto Rico, which is a pretty unruly system, is about growing a system of plantations and buildings which generate both income and commodities, each of which can be utilized to gain VP's.

I don't see what many of the mechanisms in Amyitis have to do with each other You can draw Engineers to get VP's; you can toss cubes into the Temples to get VP's; you can go on the camel ride to get certain cards or to plant - to get VP's. Yes, those cards you get do build to something - it is one of the more interesting aspects of the game. But each card path is kind of its own thing.

If you think of it the whole game evolves around planting (plants offer the most VPs).

farmers -> commodities -> plants (+ gardener)
engineers -> irrigation -> plants

All other mechanisms (Temples, Banker, Faster Caravan) help you optimize the above sequence.

I see that you don't like that all these secondary mechanisms offer too many different bonuses (Engineers giving VPs but also Temples giving VPs, e.t.c) but for me this *seems* (1) to add more variability to the game.

(1) My only concern is that since there are too many different ways to gain VPs the game may reward you no matter what path you choose making the game unexciting. But i haven't play it a lot to figure this out...

This is also my concern and is the reason why I have not bought the game yet.

I'm on played three, won three. Of course the second and third games were against new players, the first game was all new players. The second and third games I won by large margins.

The point of those comments isn't to suggest I'm a great Amyitis player, I doubt I am, but they do make the point I want to make credible. Which is that you need a plan/strategy. Yes, of course you grab some points opportunistically, but that alone isn't enough. In my first game two of us clearly had plans, and the other player was second. In my second game I don't think anyone else really did, and in my third game I emphasised to people they needed some sort of plan, but of course by my third game my plans were better than theirs.

Were they the same plan? Yes and no. In my second game I stuck with my first game plan, it had worked. In my third game I deliberately passed it up and tried something new. Fortunately (in part) I got it together quickly and was actually able to marry it with part of my original plan.

It's not an accident that I've been deliberately vague above about what I did (and, equally important, didn't do, you can't do everything - or rather if you do you miss out on the higher rewards at the end). That's not my point, and giving details might obscure it. I don't think there is just one way to win (although I may be wrong, and I think some ways to spend your effort are more productive than others). What I do think is that if you play turn by turn opportunistically you'll win if everyone else does that, and you do it better. But I think you'll lose to someone who knows what he's doing.

However it's not 2007's Caylus. That would seem to be Agricola (only played the basic game once - I'm waiting for the English language version).

I share your opinion Jonathan. Technically, the game works. It certainly rewards a definite strategy. Thematically all elements are relevant. But the sum of all theses parts doesn't make sense for me. It's just a collection of disjoined mechanisms for grabbing VP. I never feel that I'm building the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon. For some it doesn't matter. For me, it does. It's a raison to choose a game over another.

Pyjam

Hi Cyril,

Yes I saw this structure. Star network, connected mini games, or collection of disjoined mechanisms, all are different names for the same thing. In my opinion, it's not elegant nor convincing. I prefer entangled mechanisms. But that's my problem.

Take Java. It's an abstract majority game. The theme is a joke. But all mechanisms work together and they focus to a single point : to obtain majority and to score VP. That's the beauty of entangled mechanisms.

I'm sure your game is over-playtested and works as intended. I gave the example of Java in order to explain why I don't like the structure of Amyitis. Nevertheless, you tried something different and I hope you meet success.


You ask a lot. There are so many games we want to play 10 times !

Greetings,

Pyjam

Funny to discuss about this in English since we're both french

But for me it is NOT the same thing. Amyitis is not a collection of mini games simply because every star network has a core. In Amyitis, everything evolves around this core. You may (or may not) use one part of the "network" but it's impossible to win against good player if you just play it like a collection of "mini games". Of course, you've got to win small "battles", but you must only fight those which have a sense for your general strategy. This is why the game is not disjointed at all. If you play it without any coherence, you will be crushed, whatever you do to collect points, because other players will take benefit from your actions and you won't...



I'm a great fan of Mr Kramer's designs. But my point here was not to create another entangled mechanism, because i think there's too much of them. Why create another Caylus or Java or Torrès or Puerto Rico ? Theyre all great games, but they already exist. I think as an editor, my responsibility is to propose "different" games. I won't say "original", because it's something that is really difficult to achieve those days.

So yes, Amyitis is different. It does not have different mechanisms (though i think the passing mechanism is probably a novelty), but a different pace. Only time will tell if it was a good idea to propose this (well, we'll see if people still play the game in 5 years) but anyway i'm really happy because we succeeded in producing the kind of game i really wanted to produce (which is : a different kind of ressource management game).



Thank you !

Regards,
Cyril

I think this discussion really gives you an occasion to explain the concepts behind Amyitis. It is much clearer now and I believe it will help some players. Thank you Cyril.

Regards

Pyjam