I love the artwork of the game. I especially like the artwork for the cultures on the green cards: the fat naked lady, the sundial, the abacus, the pottery, etc. Plus, the game comes with a dice cup, which is very important considering the amount of dice rolling in the game.
RULES
Stone Age uses a villager-placement mechanism similar to that of Caylus's. On each round, players take turns placing villager/s into one region on the board. There are two restrictions to villager-placement. One, a player may not place in a region that is already full. Two, a player may not place in a region in which he already placed in that round. After all the villagers have been placed, starting with that round’s starting player, everyone gets to resolve his villagers in any order he wishes. The regions on the board, their villager limit in parenthesis, and what they do are:
Village
Everything you get here is permanent and can be used once per round.
Hut (2): place two villagers to get an extra one.
Farm (1): get one more farm. Each farm can be used to feed one villager at the end of every round.
Tool (1): get one more tool. A tool may be used as one pip once and anytime during the round.
Wilderness
In each of the following region, roll one die per villager placed.
Food (unlimited): For every two pips rolled, collect one food.
Lumber (7): For every 3 pips rolled, collect one lumber.
Brick (7): For every 4 pips rolled, collect one brick.
Stone (7): For every 5 pips rolled, collect one stone.
Gold (7): For every 6 pips rolled, collect one gold.
Huts: may pay the required resources for the hut. Huts score points equal to its cost. For example a hut that costs 4 stones scores 4 * 5 = 20 points.
Cards: may pay the required resources for the card. Cards grant various benefits. The more important ones are the multipliers that come with the brown cards, and the cultures that come with the green cards. Multipliers score points for each farm, tool, villager, or hut that a player has. Having n unique cultures scores n^2 points.
At the end of the round, players must feed their villagers by spending one food per villager minus the number of farms. If a player does not have enough food, he can use other resources to substitute instead, or suffer a penalty of 10 points.
Starting player rotates each round. The game ends when the civilization cards, or one pile of huts, are exhausted. At this point add up the victory points (from huts, multipliers and cultures) to determine the winner. Additionally, each unused resource (except for food) is worth one point.
THE BEST DICE GAME
Stone Age is a dicefest. It belongs to that genre of games which I call “gambling games.” By “gambling games,” I don’t mean all and only games that involve money being lost and won (usually lost). I also don’t mean all games that involve luck. What it does involve, however, is a particular type of adrenaline-rushing fun derived from the anticipation of a luck-based result. Bridge and Push the Pig can be played for money, but I don’t consider them to be gambling games. Tigris & Euphrates and Ra have luck, but I don’t consider them to be gambling games either. Luck notwithstanding, these are games of skill, and the luck is of a type that is reactive: luck happens first in the form of a hand or tile draw, and the players react to it. A skillful player will make the best of what luck has given him; a lesser player will not. While it’s perfectly plausible to have players piss and moan about his tile draw in Tigris & Euphrates or hand in Bridge, they better shut the hell up and start thinking about ways to deal with it. What a player gets out of a tile/card draw in these games aren’t final at the moment of the draw—so much more is to be determined by what he does with it afterwards. On the other hand, the luck in gambling games is often preemptive. Players place bets (hence the term gambling games) on particular outcome/s, and the luck will determine whether they are rewarded for their bets. Skillful players will place his bets on likely outcomes; lesser players will not. But once they’ve placed their bets, that is it. The outcomes of the luck are final. Consequently the anticipation of the luck-based resolution in gambling games is that much more intense and high-pitched. The preeminent gambling game is the slot machine. There is no decision to be made at all in this game, so one may question where the fun lies. As is typical of gambling games, the fun comes from the thrill of waiting for the luck rather than the satisfaction of solving a problem.
Obviously, classifications and genres in arts—yes I consider board game design to be an art—are always a fuzzy and arbitrary matter. Take for example other games I consider to be gambling games, or have gambling elements in them: Blackjack, Settlers of Catan, Lost Cities, Monopoly, Thebes, Diamant, Bingo, etc. It isn’t always clear cut whether the players’ action/decision is preemptive or reactive to luck, and they are often both. A rule of thumb I use is where the fun and angst derives from: the anticipation of the luck, or the problem solving? In Blackjack, one certainly reacts to a card draw: if I drew up to 14 I would hit, and if I drew up to 18 I would stay. But that type of decision-making is trivial and hardly central to the fun in Blackjack. What makes Blackjack fun is drawing your next card not knowing if you are going to better your hand or bust. Likewise, in Settlers of Catan the single most important strategic decision is the initial placements, which I liken to betting a la craps. When I place that settlement in that location, I am basically betting on 6 of ore, 9 of sheep, etc. Once the game has gone underway, most of the angst I get is from hoping for a particular dice roll or another. What to do with the resources I gather from the dice rolls is hardly taxing at all.
Now consider Ra, a game which for the most part I don’t consider to have this gambling element. A huge part of the game is reaction to the tile draws, which is not gambling-like. But there is also the part of the game that essentially boils down to betting on how fast the Ra tiles will show up and end the epoch. Those who like gambling games will probably find this part exciting, and savor the opportunity to chant, “RA RA RA!” Gambling games isn’t my favorite genre, so this aspect of the game is mildly disturbing in that it “throws off” the game somewhat. Again, like most gambling games, the fun from chanting Ra lies in the thrill of waiting for the tile draw instead of solving a problem.
In addition to being a gambling game, Stone Age is also what I call a cash-whoring game—games like Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Twilight Imperium and Antike in which one, like a fat merchant’s wife, gets greedy glee from hording resources and watching their income empire grow.
So where am I going with all this? Well, to compare Stone Age with other games in its genre, and thereby show how special it is. Particularly, I am going to compare Stone Age to Settlers of Catan, the preeminent cash-whoring gambling dicefest.
Because most of the dice/gambling games focus their fun on the thrill of luck resolution, they are also light on the strategic side. To combine the joy of tackling heavy strategies and the thrill of dice-rolling/gambling is more often than not a design conflict. We don’t need to introduce anything analytical to slot machines—it’s simply not the reason why people play that game. On the other hand, we cannot add any gambling thrills to Go and Chess without detracting from what these games are all about: angst and brain burn from solving perfect information problems. I don’t know how accurate the assessment is because I’ve never played Pillars of the Earth, but I can definitely relate with the following statement, “Yes and that is why I like Stone Age better than Pillars. The game feels lighter and so I don't care as much if I roll poorly. In Pillars, the game feels heavier and it bugs the heck out of me to get drawn next to last out of the bag.” (Lorna Wong)
What makes Stone Age special is how it combines dice-rolling and strategy in a way that they not only do not conflict with each other, but in fact complement each other to make for a game that is more than the sum of its parts. Stone Age accomplishes this in large part by taking the worker-placement mechanism from Caylus (also found in Age of Empires 3 and Cuba), and tailoring it specifically to dice-rolling.
The flowchart in Stone Age and Settlers of Catan can be boiled down to this: roll dice to collect resources, spend resources for victory points or more resources. However, by introducing Caylus’s worker-placement mechanism, Stone Age adds an element of choice and competition to dice-rolling and resource-spending that is absent in Settlers of Catan. In Catan, the same two dice are rolled indiscriminately every turn to determine who gets what resources. In Stone Age, players compete with each other for the right to roll dice for resources. The players have a choice on the resource type to gather (the dice merely dictates the amount), and consequently have more control over their own fate. In Catan, players can spend as much resources as they want on their turn, and if they spend it on development cards, they draw these randomly. In Stone Age, players compete with each other to place workers on stuff that they want to buy, and if they buy civilization cards, they have a choice on which of the four face-up cards to place their villager on.
This element of choice and competition not only adds strategic depth to a dicefest, it also incorporates the dynamics of dice-rolling into its strategy in such a natural, seamless, non-intrusive and humble manner that one is likely to participate in it without being overly conscious of it—like a simple architecture that blends in harmoniously with its surroundings rather than impress with grandeur and dazzle with ornaments—more like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater than an imperial palace.
So how do the dynamics of dice-rolling humbly make its way into the strategy? Firstly, the stranding of pips during resource gathering presents a very interesting problem in Stone Age. The most rolled pips that can be stranded for a resource is its cost minus one. Namely, the biggest waste one may suffer from gathering gold is 5 pips, wood 2 and food 1. Also, the larger the group, the smaller is the waste per villager. In other words, to minimize waste and maximize pips converted to resources per pip rolled, send smaller number of groups in larger sizes. This means that in addition to the round-to-round short term fighting with your opponents for placements, you must also have a long term plan that avoids sending small, separate groups. It is wise, especially in the early game, to gather a single resource type one can use in the next couple of rounds instead of multiple resource types one needs in the current round.
Second, the uncertainty of dice-rolls actually rewards long term planning. You don't want to be caught in a situation where an extremely poor result will hurt you extra. For example, you placed 3 villagers on lumber gathering, 1 on a card, and are short of 3 wood for the purchase. If you don't collect 3 wood with 3 villagers, you miss that card--devastating. Now if the villagers gave a fixed 3.5 pips, you would be safe. But since their return is uncertain, you need to plan ahead to not get caught in these type of situations. Likewise, you don't want to be caught in situations where you cannot take advantage of an extremely good roll. In short, it takes long term planning to profit maximally from abnormally high rolls, and suffer minimally for abnormally low rolls. That's the beauty of this game: the luck from dice-rolling actually adds a layer of strategy.
Third, every purchase in Stone Age may be evaluated in terms of pips. All the resources can be considered in terms of its cost in pips: a lumber is worth 3 pips, a stone 5 pips, etc. It follows that every hut or card purchase may be evaluated in terms of pips, because these cost resources, and resources are pips. The huts allow players to change gathered pips (in the form of resources) for victory points at a 1:1 ratio, plus the cost of 3.5 expected roll pips (in the form of a villager). The cost of the civilization cards is the number of resources needed * 3 (assuming buying with lumber) + 3.5 (in the form of a villager). What you get varies depending on the card. If the card gives you 4 food, 2 shamans and you have 8 villagers at game’s end, then you get 2 * 4 + 2 * 8 = 24 pips for that card. What I like to do is imagine that I am placing a worker to gather the immediate benefit of the card, and paying lumbers for the end game scoring on the same. So for example a card gives 1 gold and 1 point per tool and costs 1 resource, I value it thusly: worth it to use one villager to gather 1 gold? Check. 3 gathered pips in the form of 1 lumber for roughly 3 points (suppose I expect to end the game with around 3 tools)? Check. Note that if you are exchanging lumber points (number of lumbers * 3) for victory points at the rate of 1:1, it is worth it because you don’t have to pay an extra villager for the right of that exchange like you would with huts. Or if you consider that the one villager that you place to be the cost for exchanging lumber to victory points, then you effectively get the immediate benefit for free.
Lastly, Stone Age has a unique income engine that centers on dice-rolling. An extra villager grants a player one extra die roll per round, and also the ability to send gathering groups in larger, hence less wasteful, numbers. A tool is worth one “smart pip” (the player may choose when to use it). A farm is worth one food, or effectively two pips, each round. In fact, one’s income engine may be evaluated in terms of pips:
expected income = expected pips rolled – food needed * 2 = number of farm-fed villagers * 3.5 + number of hunting-fed villagers * 1.5 + number of tools
In other words, each villager increases expected income by 1.5, each farm 2, and each tool 1. However, note that one tool-pip is better than one villager-pip because the tool-pips are “smart.” An increase in income is permanent—they are good for each round for the rest of the game—so the importance of visiting the village for tool/farm/love-shack is paramount in the early game and diminishes as the game progresses.
Indeed, there is a Puerto Rico, or St. Petersburg-like “turning point” in Stone Age, where the focus shifts from building up income to cashing income for points. The average game of Stone Age lasts around 11 rounds. So a farm obtained on the first round is worth 2 * 11 = 22 pips, whereas a farm obtained on the last round is worth 2 pips, or zero if you already have more than enough food. A lumber early game is worth 3 pips, but in the endgame, if you have more than enough for the remaining purchases, each lumber is only worth 1 pip (for the 1 victory point it scores after the game). I would put this turning point somewhere between the 20 and 10 civilization-cards-remaining-in-the-draw-deck mark (probably closer to 10 than 20).
I find Stone Age’s income engine to be more interesting to manage, and less frustrating to build up than Catan’s. The reason I find building income in Catan to be much more frustrating is that to pay for a settlement or city, one needs the corresponding resources, which puts one at the mercy of the dice rolls. Conversely in Stone Age, one has villagers available every turn, and to build one’s economic engine requires simply timely placements.
Moreover, there is definitely more of an “arch” to Stone Age’s economic engine than Catan’s—a plus in my opinion. In the early game when the people are poor--income is limited and opportunity to convert resources to points abounds (demand exceeds supply)--cheaper resources such as brick are more worthwile to gather. In the late game when the people are richer--income is higher and opportunity to convert resources to points is scarce(supply exceeds demand)--gold is better. (Of course this is only in general.)
MORE STRATEGICAL ADVICE
In the late game, you may want to buy whatever you can to convert all your resources to points regardless of the conversion rate. Early game however, if you are converting pips to points at close to 1:1 ratio cards aren't that worth it--they are still worth it if you have nothing better to do, but they are rarely worth it to be picked over a visit to the village and sometimes even collecting lumber. Even though you are not getting a bad deal with the card purchase, by spending those lumber you are paying the opportunity cost to steal a good deal. Lumber is the most contested resource, and you don't want to be caught without it when an opportunity to steal a great card comes up.
A word on civilization cards: it is good to focus on just one or two types of end game scoring. In particular, I think the three things most worth focusing on are culture found on the green cards, huts multiplier, and tools multiplier. Collecting cultures require a game-long focus, huts an after-the-economic-turning-point focus, and tools sort of a game-long focus, but with a slight emphasis on the earlier game. Whatever scoring you go after, it is more efficient to score big in one area, than a little bit in many areas.
If you collect x cultures, each culture is worth an average x points. However, the marginal worth of the nth culture is 2n – 1. In other words, the 8th culture is worth 15 points. When evaluating a purchase for the short term, consider the culture’s marginal worth. When evaluating a long term strategy, consider the cultures’ average worth. Note that there are only two complete sets of cultures, so do not go after cultures if two other players are already doing so. However, it may be worth it to buy one or two cultures for cheap just to deny others the chance of scoring big points.
The great thing about having huts or tools multipliers is that, you score points for placing villagers where you’d have placed anyways. If your tools multiplier reaches 5, you effectively earn 5 victory points plus a tool for placing a villager in the tools shack. First of all, rolling 5 pips per die is pretty good, plus you don’t have to pay for the right to convert resources to points as you would with huts, which brings us to the huts multiplier. By having 4 or more huts multiplier, one effectively gains points instead of lose pips for each hut purchase.
Why not focus on villager multiplier? Well, it is not that we don’t want to, but that because it is so good (villagers are the only multiplier players start with five of instead of zero), it will be hotly contested and harder to grab the shamans. Besides, they are more of a one time “freebie” than something you need to focus on developing because they are that much easier to score with.
The farm multiplier is also not worth focusing on, because it is hard to increase one’s farm count beyond 5. Plus, if you do reach say, 8 farms, you can only make best use of them by also having at least 8 villagers. I am not sure if one has enough “time” to develop his economy to that extent before the economic turning point of the game.
My single favorite end game bonus is probably the hut multiplier. The culture cards you really have to work to get all 7 or 8. The tools multiplier is good, but near the end game I'd rather be converting resources to points via huts than grabbing tools. True grabbing tools (3.5 pips converted to 5 point with 5 tools multipliers) gives a higher rate than buying huts (1 pip to 1.something point with 5 or more huts multipliers), but the total amount of conversion is more important at this point.
The 1-7 wild hut (convert any resources, up to 7, to victory points), in addition to granting flexibility for resource types, can also be taken advantage of by manipulating the resource number. By spending as much resources as possible, it is a way for those who don't have good huts multipliers to convert the same number of resources to points using less villagers. By spending less resources, it is a way for those who do have good huts multipliers to make use of the multiplier for cheap. Namely, it provides a way for players to manipulate their hut count from spending the same batch of resources.
A common mistake when players have the huts multiplier, is to buy as many huts as possible using the same batch of resources. I would argue that this isn’t really a winning plan unless your huts multiplier reaches 4 or more, for the simple reason that each extra hut one buys costs him 3.5 pips (in the form of a villager).
It is important to note that many of these principles based on conversion rates go out the window in the end game, when one is scrambling to get as many points as possible and conversion rate is of little to no concern.
Similar to Puerto Rico, a player can benefit from sitting downtable to a weak player. Weak players often leave prime regions open, and the player sitting immediately after him has the best chance of benefiting from those extra open spots to place his villagers.
One controversial issue with Stone Age is the starvation strategy. I will not go into details on this topic other than to say that I do not find it to be overpowering. It is certainly a viable strategy, but by no means an absolutely superior one. Also, sitting downtable of a player using the starvation strategy is beneficial because it allows you to grab more farms.
STONE AGE AND GATEWAY GAMES
I find it ironic how gamers hail Settlers of Catan as the gateway game, but cringe at being associated with Monopoly. To me, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, and Stone Age are similar games—economic dice games. It’s just that Settlers of Catan is a touch more sophisticated than Monopoly, and Stone Age is another touch more sophisticated than Settlers of Catan. I never thought I would ever like a dicefest so much, until I played Stone Age. It is by far my favorite dice game. And if a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres qualifies it as a gateway game, then it is also my favorite gateway game (with Ticket to Ride a close second).
A side note on “gateway” games. I think the term is a bit misleading, because it implies that the games are stepping stones to something else, something more involved. The way I see it, you are either a gamer, or you are not. If you are, you don’t need any “gateways” to pull you into gaming. And if you aren’t, then the gateways are probably as far as you will get, so they don’t really lead you to something else. Of course your experience may differ. And not that I care much about this distinction—just a curious note.
Last edited on 2008-05-29 23:40:24 CST (Total Number of Edits: 9)
Posted Wed May 28, 2008 3:09 am
