One you, and you alone, were responsible for creating. I see.

You proved yourself to be a person of no credibility when you did this (assumed as fact that of which you can have no evidence) in the thread you started. Same here.

Oh, for goodness' sake.

When it comes to criticising this game, Clearclaw I think is wrong but interesting.

On the other hand, your attempt to introduce a snide but otherwise content-free reference to LW in every thread is monontonous. I've read your comparison review, I get that you think Automobile is the inferior game, and indeed some kind of weak knock-off. That's fine. You don't have to keep saying it.

And it is content free in exactly the same way that I've replied to every thread about this game. In other words, for people who weren't following along, not at all.

Automobile and LW are different in that A is full of euroish mechanics such as the multiple currencies (resources if you will). Since one of the usual crowd leapt in and claimed these sort of splits wonderful, it was a sensible time to point out that here we have two games with many base similarities, one of which had the full euro treatment, one which did not.

I personally find this a fascinating opportunity for comparison of the end results in play of these approaches and don't feel that a holy war over which game is inferior does anything but distract from this. I have a personal preference but mostly it is annoying when any mention of LW brings this sort of attack.

B>

True. My assumptions there are twofold: First that an ideal script can be derived and second that the only value in deviating from that script comes from variances in the demand resulting in changed player decisions. While it isn't the point of this thread, I've seen no reason to doubt either assumption, just that enough effort has been spent on forming such a script.



A fair point that I tried to encompass in the arm-wave of standard starting positions. One starting position could be for an early luxury production, for instance. Perhaps the starting positions could even be draughted by the players to accord with their preferences.



Blink. Blink. What people do and don't want is rather irrelevant, no? The question isn't personal preferences or designer's intent, but abstract/logical game content. The basic question is, What decisions does the game offer and what are the imports of those decisions? This thread's intent, before it got distracted, was to look specifically at the effect the partly hidden demand had in forming that decision matrix and how the decision matrix would change if demand was either more or less open. While only a few posts have touched on this area, it seems (to me) that the primary change to the decision matrix from making demand more or less certain is to the degree the game then focuses on positioning elements (turn order, higher factories etc). I'm not convinced, but that's the current apparency. Do you agree?



Like any ordered-turn game with exclusive actions, the game is by definition asymmetric. I've no problem with that and consider it a strength of the game. Automobile's starting setup is grossly asymmetric in that players later in turn order not only don't have access to the roles already selected, but also (typically) have access to higher factories more cheaply than earlier players. Whether those two things are equivalent is a separate question (and I think an uninteresting one).



I rather like discarding themes from games. It makes thinking about them so much easier! It also allows me to put the theme back on afterward if that's useful in some way (eg Pirates of the Spanish Main).



Thanks! That's rather flattering.

FWIW, in the two games I've played, I used the Demand Tiles I pulled to figure out the minimum or maximum amount of demand this turn. Averages are nice, but I've been more focused on the extremes. In a 4p game, knowing that the 4 I pulled means that the demand will be no less than 10 and no more than 19 is helpful.

Dude, that was a parenthetical aside, not a major thread point or part of my interest in this particular thread.

It's a holy war entirely of your (and John's) making, by suggesting - without evidence or foundation - that Automobile is some sort of knock-off of LW. Don't blame me if my God proves to be both more vengeful and better supported than your God.

Bait and switch again. If that's what you'd done, fine. Comparison of how two different games tackle the same subject, and use similar but different ideas, is the subject of many threads on the Geek and elsewhere. They vary from the uninspired to the highly interesting, but so do threads on just about everything.

But what you've done is not that, it's to state as fact that Automobile was designed as an adaptation of LW, deliberately so done by Martin. The point is you can't know that to be true. If it were true only Martin would know that, and to verify any such statement would need a trail back to Martin. Absent such a trail, you're just speculating (and your speculation is in apparent contradiction to what Martin has said) but stating your speculation as fact.

As for whether there are any similarities, my best evidence of that the differences are major is, oddly enough, your summary of LW.

Different players like different things in games. Sometimes we should accept that some games were not designed to be different. Automobile was designed to be played this way. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why the demand tiles should or shouldn't be revealed and I'm also sure that everyone has a strong conviction to like or dislike the game as it is.

Like someone said before, Martin's Brass was designed with cards simply because the game worked very well like that - his own words. I think that he could say the same about Automobile but he also added that demand was the kind of information that automobile entrepeneurs didn't have at the time.

When things don't work for me in Automobile because of demanding I usualy blame luck and randomness. I know I'm right when I think to myself that if a 5 was drawn instead of a 2, I could have sold all of my cars. But I also think that maybe next time I shouldn't risk that much.

In Imperial for example there are lots of players who don't like to play with the Investor card. I like to play with the Investor Card because it adds a reasonable amount of tactics and timing that the "without card version" doesn't have. But the truth is that the game works perfectly both ways.

The main discussion here should be focused on if random demand tiles (or not knowing demand) work better or not. It works both ways I think. It's simply a matter of taste.

That said, "open demand tiles - good or bad?"

Both! Good and bad!

PS

After an evening's pondering my annihilation at yesterday's game of Automobile, (and, for the record, I only have a single play to my name; one in which I played quite poorly: I am clearly not a credible voter amid you experts) it appears naively to me that the game would be weaker with significantly more information available to players about upcoming demand.

I might argue (nearly without justification; see previous parenthesis) that the point of the game is to produce cars so that _whatever the demand_ one performs better in the market than one's opponents. And not, explicitly not, to perform optimally in the market that one cannot entirely predict: that would indeed be a game of too much luck.

I believe that games where optimal play is the goal - and suboptimal play results in a loss - are attractive to some. It is possible that _Automobile_ (with modifications) could be reimagined in that vein. But I do not think I would want to play the result.

Cough.

Cough.

My god doesn't play dice with the universe.

Cough.

Except in the production phase.

And deliberately so and in full knowledge of what is being discarded. If the problem is too large, segment the problem and then analyse the bits: divide and conquer. There's the risk of synergies between fragments being lost of course, though they can usually be caught when assembling the bits afterward. They can also often be caught by doing the segmentation and analysis a second time, but along different lines



Well, there goes that attempt to get the thread back on topic.



I think I do? I'm also quite sure that popularity is a poor basis for an argument.



You know, there was a time when theme was pretty much everything to me as a gamer. I've some sympathy with the view. I think I've a reasonable idea of what the values are and thus what I'm throwing away when I discard theme and narrative etc when thinking about a game. I spent quite a while considering the area before I made the decision to adopt the tack I have and rather than stay with my (previous) more humanist view.

Except in the production phase.

I understand that, in theory, a script could be developed for the first turn in a perfect information game. In fact, checkers has largely been scripted, no? And chess continues to be scripted to the first 45 moves of some openings. But that assumes that one has invested the incredible amount of time to derive all of the permutations that follow AFTER the first (x) turn(s).

The same could be true of all perfect info games, including the ones that you rank very highly, JC -- thats why I'm a bit confused by your problem. But none of us are likely to develop that level of ply analysis without considerable serious exposure and constant play. And even then . . .

In Automobile this may actually present a theoretical problem, because the game has only 12 actions per player in 4 turns, so the first turn may be programmable with less experience than a game that offers more ply. Still -- something tells me that there are enough post-first-turn permutations for quite a number of reasonable first turn orientations in this game, that it will never be "scripted" for EACH demand distribution.

Much better as it is, but I agree that perhaps passing a tile so that each player has a bit more info may even be more interesting, as better knowledge would impact decisions more, making your opponents' behaviors (with regard to factory building and car production) potentially meaningful to your own strategy. Right now it DOES seem a little meaningless (at least in a 4- or 5-player game) that each player only sees one tile -- might as well be just drawing all face-down tiles.

FWIW I do not have a problem with Automobile. I find it an interesting game. I doubt I'll play it (often) as it is fairly clearly not my sort of game for rather different reasons than the semi-random demand, but I I do find it an interesting game and possibly the most interesting game I've seen from Martin Wallace since Age of Steam.

At this point my interest in Automobile is almost exclusively limited to the import of its construction. Which are the fake decisions and which the real decisions? Demand is partly random -- what effect does that have on the game? What if loss cubes were simply generalised back down to cash penalties (as seemingly makes more sense)? Are those R&D cubes really justified -- what if they too were reduced to a cash penalty...but wouldn't that obviate most of the need for the roles? Are the roles actually justified? Or are perhaps the loss cubes, the R&D cubes, the roles etc, each accommodations for the problems and shortfalls raised by the other mechanisms but which together actually create something more rather than less?

Those are the sorts of things I'm interested in for Automobile, and that's why I started this thread: What would really change if demand were more or less known? What is the effect of turning that dial? What is the actual function of the demand uncertainty in the game, and how does changing it change the game?

Ooof. That's an excellent point Dave, and well said. Thanks. I hadn't phrased it nearly so well, but I've been dancing around that line with my comments that the game semi-randomly bestows small windfalls and penalties on players. Thanks. That couches the game very nicely into one where the demand and the production/sales machinery are really just supporting infrastructure for the actually interesting dance around actions and factories and so forth, and the whole demand/selling/etc business is just a (laborious) scoring round to report how well you did there.

Cool. Thanks. There's good stuff to think about there.

What he said. Seeing one fifth of the demand is not enough, but it must be short of complete information. Seeing three/fifths of the tiles would make me happy.

That is not what you have been doing. For a start it's not the theme of this thread, which started about open demand tiles. Changing demand tiles to open is not part of a reductionist program as described above it fundamentally changes the nature of the game. Whether that's good or bad is a fair discussion, but it's quite different to a process of analysis.



Back on your topic, but not the topic the thread started on, nor a topic I think is one I'm going to invest in. Once you've started a thread, you don't own it and we can take it where we want. (Well, actually due to an insanity of how the BGG database is structured, maybe you do in that you may be able to delete it all, but that's the nuclear weapon of debate.)



Popularity is a very good basis for an argument if in business to create games that people want to play. Of course that's a targetted popularity - roughly speaking to the sort of people interested in Warfrog games. But any attempt to create a "better" game by some sort of abstract process that leaves no one (or not enough people) wanting to play the game is pointless. Games need to be improved within an appropriate space, and that space is partly defined by popularity. (Of course it's also defined by designer's preferences - especially when also the publisher - and manufacturing costs, and other things.)

Unless they give you a free hand in the Executive Decisions, or underproduce to help you, that's not going to happen.

But playing to get as close as you can to that, maybe. I say maybe rather than yes because which is better (this isn't an Automobile example directly) 20% chance of -100 and 80% chance of +500, or 100% chance of +100? (There is no simple answer to that question, most answers start "It depends".)

It's not quite as simple as that, as those decisions aren't simple. First I decide to produce cars, then I decide how many in each factory space. Other decisions also have options (except R&D cubes). So that tree is quite broad.

(Also 12 isn't right - I assume you mean person and three actions. Don't forget Executive Decisions.)

But, and here I'm asking a question because I don't have an answer, I'm not sure anyone does, but it's fundamental to that process being even theoretically possible, in a two player game the theoretical basis of analysis is straightforward. What is the equivalent for a multi-player game? It needs to be robust against alliances, kingmaking, blackmail (do X and I'll throw the game) and so on. Although I've not seen any of those in an actual Automobile game.

Except that's not how the actual game of Automobile plays. Take a simple case, we've all spent our first two actions without producing cars. Now we're all going to produce cars in turn. That's just working out what we've programmed up to at this point? Not in the least - because I have a range I can produce in, and choice in that range. And even if I knew the demand (not knowing adds more uncertainty of course) I would have uncertainties in what the following people will produce, and even the last player has uncertainties in distributors (how people play those can matter quite a bit) and, especially, executive decisions. In my experience the slowest decisions people make are how many cars to produce.

It is rather exactly the theme and intent of the thread: take one aspect of the game in isolation, wiggle it, and see what changes.



How so? Determining what changes, how and why is the analytical question I've been asking. The fact that the game will change as well is explicit as I've been asking about that change.



Certainly. However I'm not in business and don't care about the business or the game's popularity. My interest in this thread (and in general) is not in games that sell well, games that large numbers of people like or want to play, etc. My interest is in the games being (more) interesting, both to me and in some larger and more abstract sense (ie poses an interesting question). The only popularity I (personally) need is the ability to scrape or bully enough players together to get it onto the table, and even that I'll compromise pretty heavily on. Popularity is really not part of my question. Being interested is almost the entire question.

I will consider this thread a roaring success if it produces a game that nobody wants to play, but the process of reaching that determination was interestingly educational. If the product turns out to be a wildly popular game, so be it: there's no loss or gain there except to the degree those outcomes pose more interesting questions.

For this thread I'm interested in Automobile's demand tiles. What does making them more or less open do to the game? Not to the players, not to the game's popularity, not to some indefinite "fun", but to the game. I find that an interesting question!