Al Johnson (#43970),

There are two questions?

Can you ignore development cards entirely? My guess is that a ships and spices development strategy is viable, but dubious, and that as people get better at the game, the value of development cards increases: once you get to drawing two development cards, you are just gaining "actions" all over the place: two actions + two development cards beats three actions most of the time, and moving down to the bottom row makes it even more pronounced an advantage.

This leads into your other question, which is about the value of symbol matching: I think it's pretty clear to me that a monster symbol matching hand strategy (in which you stop drawing cards early, and then just auction for expedition tiles again and again), has a possibility of winning, but a very remote one.

That said, if you start having progress on the development track, when you're near the end of the game, you start drawing three development cards, which if kept in hand, give you at minimum, 3 points, which is a superb deal. With progress all the way down, you can be working in yoru last few turns not just to burn through development cards, but to take advantage of any runs and attempt to get a big set, which could be worth more. Development cards give you a big chance to score an advantage over other players, which as you become more efficient at the main game of advancing the development track, will become a more necessary part.

It'll usually be around 6-9 points. Its almost mandatory for everyone to upgrade this track all the way, and get these points, if they want to have a shot at it.

There is plenty of time to upgrade two tracks all the way and a couple others partially. Just make sure expeditions are one of the two you go all the way on. I tend to end up with expedition and either boats or spices all the way, the other of those two upgraded 2-3 times, colonists 1-2, and money once or so for the free action. Even with this plan, there is a wide variety of ways to go about doing it, so its very interesting.

Al Johnson (#43970),

I dont have a lot of experince with the game yet, but I also tend to think the expedition cards are too powerfull when scored.
Maybe it is a good idea that each player only is allowed to score "1 symbol"
Eg. A hand with "3 tigers", "1 statue" and "1 palm": only the 3 tigers are scored!

Any thoughts??

Martin Juhl
Denmark
- Spilleklubben "Snaden"

mjuhl (#44062),

The result of this is that it makes getting one big set, as a result of luck, even more beneficial than before.

Say we both have a 5 card capacity. If I get double, double, single for 7. You get four of a kind, single for 11. Thats a 4 point swing, due primarily to luck.

Now if we only score the biggest, I get 3, you get 10, a 7 point swing. You arent neutralizing the benefit of the expedition track, you are penalizing getting unlucky, and rewarding luck!!


There is nothing stopping everyone from upgrading their expediion track if they want to. there is no reason that only one or only a couple players can do it. Those that dont upgrade it therefore cant complain when they got outscored by 6 points in the expedition scoring. It is important to the scoring, so make sure you are in on it!

Again, if there was only time to fully upgrade one track, then it might be too strong, as it would force you to always upgrade this one to the expense of others. But there is time to get 2 or maybe even 3 tracks fully upgraded if you play well, so you can always upgrade this and something else. And the others get upgraded to a lesser extent as well.

I think that expedition cards are a necessary but not sufficient part of a winning strategy. You need to go for them, but you cant only go for them, you have to balance it with other things too.

Alexfrog wrote:
It'll usually be around 6-9 points. Its almost mandatory for everyone to upgrade this track all the way, and get these points, if they want to have a shot at it.


Did you ever consider that you might just be at the "first level" of Goa skill?

I won my first and only match of Goa with 44 points (4 of those from expedition cards), with no points in the expedition track. I did use focus some of my auctions towards being able to draw expedition cards (so that I didn't have to worry about hand size), and focusing on the other tracks meant there were plenty of expedition card bonuses to be had by being to the first on the "6" and "10" spaces. Looking forward to more play...

- d

Dave (#44070),

It's possible that we're only at a certain level of play, and new strategies will be developed, but I'm pretty sure that ignoring development cards is largely something you try out when learning the game.

Two development cards + two actions is stronger than three actions: at the point you reach level 3 in development cards, it becomes an easy source of power for the rest of the game, that only accelerates when you increase further.

In addition, while a group of players all trying to advance development cards early may clash a bit here or there over early colonies/plantantions (although not really, since advancing colonists early dovetails well), making a person who starts spices/ships gain a small advantage, even with three other players all playing for development cards, development card auctions shouldn't get cheaper: two development cards on a tile are worth exactly one action to development card players: that's maybe a little less than the person without development card advancement, but not by a whole lot.

anonystu (#44124),
> Two development cards + two actions is stronger than three actions

This is clearly not generally true. So hopefully your argument is not based on it.

There is substantial variance in the strenth of the development cards; if you get two of the "advance without boats" and you've got lots of spices, that's a huge win. But you're much more likley to pick up 5 bucks and a couple colonists, or somthing along those lines, which you may or may not be able to use, and you would have been much better off activating one of your advanced tracks to get what you actually need.

I do think the development cards are fairly powerful, but I suspect this largely based on the fact that a couple of the cards seem a bit overstrong so if you get lucky and draw them you're ahead, not that the card deck as a whole is overpowered. But I think it's a long ways from being totally obvious that development cardss are always the way to go, and I am suspicious of anyone claiming extreme game imbalance at this point.

cfarrell (#44199),

I think you're misunderstanding me. If the game ends after the next three actions, then you'll often want the control of picking all three, the short-term variance is no good.

I'm merely saying that the result of 2 cards + 2 actions is on average greater than 3 actions. This takes into account that sometimes you'll pick up the monster cards (and if you draw 10 or more expedition cards over the course of the game, you're bound to pick up some of those cards), and some of the less useful ones. Even most of the less useful ones are simply just not the thing you need now, and not something you'll never use.

The trick is that as the game progresses, and bad expedition draws are unlikely to be useful at all (who needs the three cards for a colony card after you have all four colonies) is exactly the time when holding onto expedition cards for the end scoring run becomes valuable.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to win without early action in the expedition category, or that it's the one true way, just that it appears to be very strong, and that ignoring the path seems a dubious strategy in a way that ignoring the taxation path doesn't.

Did you ever consider that you might just be at the "first level" of Goa skill?

I won my first and only match of Goa with 44 points (4 of those from expedition cards), with no points in the expedition track. I did use focus some of my auctions towards being able to draw expedition cards (so that I didn't have to worry about hand size), and focusing on the other tracks meant there were plenty of expedition card bonuses to be had by being to the first on the "6" and "10" spaces. Looking forward to more play...


And if I had been in that game, I wouldve beaten you, by not ignoring the most powerful track in the game.

My low score, in 6 games, is 49, my high 56. (None with the advanced version). Every game I have gotten to the 3rd level of the expedition track relatively quickly, and then to the 5th level later. I've generally won about 3-4 bonus expedition cards a game by being first to the bottom of various tracks, often expedition cards, and usually one of spices or ships.

The times that one of my opponents has threatened me, was when they also focused heavily on the expedition track early on. I believe that advancing it is a necessary but NOT sufficient part of Goa strategy.

It is possible that with more experience, I might find this to not be the case, but at present its my working theory.

The only other strategy that seems reasonable is to focus heavily on the ships and spice track (probably upgrading colonist once early as well), and then using them to generate the capacity for upgrades. Still, this seems weaker, as I have to upgrade expedition at some point, to get card capacity.

You mentioned that you can win auctions for cards, having previously been at your max, and thus score more points without upgrading it. Yes you can, but you can score WAY more if you upgrade it, get to 5, and THEN buy that expedition card tile!

cfarrell wrote:
anonystu (#44124),
>> Two development cards + two actions is stronger than
>> three actions

> This is clearly not generally true. So hopefully your
> argument is not based on it.

Actually, I think it is definitely true, for most of the game.

For most of the game, something like 75% of the deck will be excellent for you if you are drawing 2 cards per action.

For example, if one is of average level in ships, spices or colonists, the card is worth about an action for that purpose.

2 colonist card and the found a colony with 3 cards card are worth about 2 colonists. And they are HARD to get. Getting a few of these over the course of the game lets you get all the colonies without upgrading the colonist track more than once. Thats GOOD.

The 2 ship card is worth 1 action or close to 1 action, and the upgrade without ships card is worth 2-4 ships, generally at least as good as one action.

The 2 spices card and upgrade without spices are similarly excellent, especially the upgrade.

The 5 gold card is ok, and generally worth at least half an action in the early to midgame.

Thats 7 of 10 cards that I generally like to draw in almost all circumstances.

PLUS, if you upgrade expeditions first, and draw some cards, you KNOW WHAT CARDS YOU DREW. Then if you drew ships, you upgrade the spice track. If spice givers, the ship track. If you draw colonist stuff, you found colonies to get the spice you need, while upgrading ships.

The other three are more situational, and are the ones I generally dont want to draw early. One of them, the one that lets you take a combination of spices, ships and colonists for the spice action, clearly tells you what track you are going to focus on upgrading! Get it to 6 and that card is golden!

Essentially, upgrade expeditions first, and draw cards, and the game TELLS YOU what to upgrade next. THe card fill some needs, you upgrade to fill the others. If you upgrade other tracks first, and then go for cards, you might draw stuff that duplicates your strengths.

But I think it's a long ways from being totally obvious that development cardss are always the way to go, and I am suspicious of anyone claiming extreme game imbalance at this point.

I definitely think that they are the way to go, and that it is not unbalanced. there are loads of questions about how much to upgrade it, what else to upgrade in addition to it, and how much, and in what order. While I know that upgrading expeditions will be a part of my strategy, I dont know what else will be, or when it will all happen. Generally, its very hard to get by without upgrading ships, spices, or colonist tracks. But its almost impossible to get by without upgrading expeditions. ANd once you upgrade them all (cause you kindof need to), the money track is giving you actions to upgrade, so you do it too...of course, you have to balance to what extend you do them all, and thats where the strategy comes in.

I haven't played enough Goa to have a view on the viability of the strategy, but if it's the case that a winning strategy MUST include significant development of the expedition track, then that's (IMO) a weakness in the game. I would prefer a game where all tracks are equally useful (under the right circumstances), and this discussion seems to be indicating that this is not the case in Goa.

I agree with the point above, and that has made me hesitant to buy this came. Has anyone won by not going up the expedition track at all, or maybe just 1 or 2 spaces? The only game I played, I concentrated on the money track and reached the max in no time. Even so, it wasn't enough. For the life of me, I couldn't get ships - and that killed me. (Granted, this was just one game). The 2 people who did the best definitely concentrated on the expedition track. I guess if I were ever to teach this to new people, I would point out that if they intended to win, they should definitely spend some of their resources on that track. Like the previous poster, I do wish the tracks were a little more equal. However, again this is only after 1 play and that's why I started this post.

Al Johnson (#44416),

Played again last night, and everybody agreed that information on this should be passed along to new players; some players may like figuring this stuff out, most won't appreciate throwing a game away because expedition cards looked dicey.

I agree that I think taxes are too weak, but the imbalance creates some interesting blow back in the auction phase.

I'm pretty certain that the strongest initial turn plantation is black, closely followed by red: picking up the colonist improvement on the first action is strong, and will facilitate quickly founding the colonies which will get you the reds needed to get to row 3 on the expedition track. (Getting a red plantation alone doesn't help you nearly as much, since the first advance on expeditions doesn't help.)

Yet, once everybody realizes that, then the prices of other colors (especially green), will go down while the black plantations go up: what happens when your group won't let you get a black plantation for less than 10? Is it still worth it?

anonystu (#44435),

Just to add my two cents:

I have only played two games, both with four players, and I won them both and was the only one that advanced far on the expedition track. I did not score that many points in the first game, but I did score a little over 10 in the second.

I do not think that the points themselves are the most powerful since I have found the actions on the cards to be the real reason that I am attracted to them.

MartyMcMartin (#44444),

Yes, their strength is in their usefulness during the game. The bonus point at the end is just the icing on the cake.



The money track IS weak in non-2 player games, when players know enough to not buy their own auctions, except maybe late, or if the bids were way too low (which generally shouldnt happen).

There is severe diminishing returns for the money track, given the inflation inherent in the game. The money track is one to upgrade for the bonus actions.

Note that there are two other cases (aside from 2 player), to upgrade the money track. One is that you got a cinnamon plantation very early, when not much inflation has occurred. Then it would be good to upgrade it and take some money (especially if you were broke).

Secondly, later on if that track is uncontested (usually is), but you cant get cards off the others, it could be good to take it all the way down, if you think the value of the bonus cards will be greater than the utility of having some more useful track advanced far. Essentially, it has less competition.

Alexfrog (#44466),

hello everybody!

indeed you can´t ignore the expedition cards if you want to win the game. BUT:
the expedition cards are not the key to win automatically, because the value depends on the price you must pay for developing this "area". so everybody must have a very, very close look at the auction!
if somebody gets the red harvest tile and the red spices for "free", that player will win!!!!
the money track is weak! If you want, you can use an old tricky house rule, that is not in the actual HansImGlück-rule, because it is similar to the flag-auction (buy an action card).

"whenever you do an action you can pay immediately 8 gold to get a bonus-action-card!"

best regards
rüdiger dorn

Rüdiger Dorn (#44692),

correct wording of the house rule must be

"whenever you do an action other than taxes, you can pay 8 gold to get a bonus-action-card!"

best regards
Rüdiger Dorn

Rüdiger Dorn wrote:
indeed you can´t ignore the expedition cards if you want to win the game. BUT:
the expedition cards are not the key to win automatically, because the value depends on the price you must pay for developing this "area". so everybody must have a very, very close look at the auction!
if somebody gets the red harvest tile and the red spices for "free", that player will win!!!!


Yes, exactly! In my opinion, if a double nutmeg (red) plantation comes up very early, which will basically let its owner get to level 3 on expeditions very efficiently, you had sure as heck bid all your money on it (or the most that your opponents have, if you have more than them). If a turn 1 double nutmeg didnt go for 10+, its being underbid. It really should go for 11, with someone bidding 10 (all their money), and then whoever had more than 10 at the time since they just auctioned bidding 11.


the money track is weak! If you want, you can use an old tricky house rule, that is not in the actual HansImGlück-rule, because it is similar to the flag-auction (buy an action card).

"whenever you do an action you can pay immediately 8 gold to get a bonus-action-card!"

best regards
rüdiger dorn

Interesting, but I think that could be very unbalancing, which I owuld guess is the reason you didnt include it in the game.

For example, I get my money track to 12.

I take an action, and spend 8 to buy an extra action. I spend the extra action to get 12. Repeat, over and over, for every action you have. That means you gain +4 ducats per action you get...
Having saved up a whole bunch of money (with a gain of 12 a turn for free, plus 4 more every time I get the flag), I go into the last turn with, say, 48. Thats 9 actions, since I can buy 6 more.

Or various other things....

I'll bet I could find some ways to thoroughly break that rule.



Anyway, my thoughts on the expedition tracks is what Mr Dorn suggests. It is the strognest track, BUT since you need the right spice to upgrade it, everyone should be valuing that spice much higher in the auctions. THus, the player who does it doesnt win as many tiles, making up for the advantage. An auction is inherently a balancing mechanic, among skilled players.

Ok, this variant is broken.

Here is how:


I set up a situation where I am fully advanced on the spices and expedition cards tracks.

All three 'sell spices for 3 each' cards are in the deck or my hand. I go into the turn with 16 ducats.


I use an action to generate 8 spice, I buy 1 action for 8.
I use another action to generate 3 spice (you have enough or almost enough capacity for this at game end). I buy 1 action for 8.

I play a sell spices for 3 each card to generate 48, or close to it, I use my action to generate 8 spice, I buy an action for 8. I use my next action to generate 8 spice, I buy an action for 8.

At this point, I have used up no actions (since I bought them all back), only a sell for 3 card, to generate 32 bucks, which buys 4 actions. Any time I get a sell for 3 card, I can use it to generate 4 free actions.


At this point, I use the four free actions I gained out of the cycle to draw 3 expedition cards per action. I discard two of each three drawn, and play one. The ones I play can provide colonists, ships, spice or 5 ducats. At some point I will draw the other sell spice for 3 cards, BECAUSE there are only 25 or less cards left in the deck, since I hold 5, and others might hold them. Remember, this works if there arent sell for 3 cards in my opponents hands.

I drew 12 cards, and got essentially half the remaining deck. I got a sell for 3 card. I repeat the process, gaining 32 bucks for 4 actions. I draw the other half of the deck. At this point, I have gained 15 bucks off the 5 ducat cards, and some ships or colonists or spice or whatever.

Since I have a self replicating cycle already, this 15 bucks gained provides extra actions that dont have to be used for cards.

The 15 bucks gained is worth 2 actions, that can be two upgrades, bought using the free ships and spice generated from card plays.

This cycle repeats forever, as long as I had sufficient 'fuel' when I started it, to keep it going if I draw very badly and the three sell for 3 cards got stacked at the bottom of the deck at a reshuffle.


Even if one of the sell for 3 cards is in an opponents hand, I should have enough to sustain the cycle with only two in the deck, since one of them allows me to draw half the deck, and that provides additional 5 ducats cards to help fuel it!


Thus, the process is broken and provides infinite money, ships, colonists, spices, and due to infinte money in this rule, actions, and all it takes is to be at the bottom of the expedition cards and spice track (I think it works with 6 on the spices track too, due to the extra free spices and money in the deck, that I get to play).

With this infinite resources, I upgrade all tracks to their max, found any remaining colonies, and generate infinite money for the auction. Since I can repeat the cycle forever, I really can get infinite money.

I then could win every auction for the rest of the game with a series of pregressively higher bids. However, this provides others with money idont want them to have. So really, I would only buy the point tiles, and the 3 expedition card bonus (to end with 8 cards, for more points than my opponenets get).

Since I have all tracks upgrade, all colonies, all the bonus point tiles from the second half, and the most money, and 8 expedition cards for 12-15, my score is over 80, and basically untouchable. Also, whoever executes the infinite action loop first can make sure to finish it with all the sell spice for 3 cards in their hand, to prevent any opponent from using the loop and thus threatening them.


So, if one was goign to use the house rule, there would need to be a max # of times to use it per turn, or some other qualifier.


I would prefer to not have the rule, I think the game works as it is, and I think that Mr. Dorn's playtest group probably figured out htis house rule was broken, and thus did not include it in the game.

Alexfrog (#44762),

Did you s3e Rudiger's follow-up? He said that the extra action card can be purchased when doing any action EXCEPT taxation. This way money will definitely be depleted.

RandallPeek (#44849),

Alex's proof-of-breakage doesn't rely on taxation at all. It just requires you to have some cash on hand and some maxed out tracks.

HOWEVER, per the rules, extra actions are only performed after each player has performed their 3 "base" actions. Also, no more than one extra action can be performed each turn. And finally, a player may not keep more than one extra action card for the next turn.

So it isn't broken, at least not in the way Alex describes. It may introduce some other weirdness, but I'm sure Alex will deconstruct all that after he's digested this "new" information....

Also, no more than one extra action can be performed each turn.

What! Where is that! I have two people who own this game teach it, and neither mentioned anything about that. If I had managed to find a copy to buy, and be able to read the rules myself, I mightve seen that.

I remmeber reading an early report where someone took 9 actions on the final turn.

Going to go read the translation here on BGG, and see if I can find that in there. That would certainly change things a lot. It seems that there are many times one get 3 or more extra action cards in a turn, due to carryover, the flag, the 2 extra action tiles, advancing all tracks, etc.
If you can use only one a turn, then it would seem that this rule doesnt do much at all, since you cant really use much more extra actions effectively.

Dangit, it does say that. We've been playing that wrong. It wouldnt effect things much, except probably for the final turn, where people tend to use several extra actions (by advancing the least advanced tracks to get them, and using them to advance other stuff). I guess I'll have to put an asterisk next to that score of 62 on saturday, I used 4 extra actions on the last turn...it shouldve only been mid to upper 50s.

I hate it when people teach me the rules to a game wrong. Especially when two completely independant people teach the same rule in the same, wrong way, so I assume its correct!

It actually seems kindof lame that you can only use 1 extra action a turn. The '2 extra action' tiles will make it very likely that one of them is wasted, it would seem...

I believe you ARE allowed to play more than one extra action in a round. The confusion is a result of the difference between "round" and "turn". A "round" is a complete cycle of playing three actions and then extra actions. A "turn" is simply the opportunity to take a single action. Thus, you may not play more than one extra action in a "turn". That is, you cannot play a second extra action until all players have had the chance to play a first one.

Note where it uses "turn" and "round" in the rules on extra actions. It is more clear in the Rio Grande rules than on the translation on this site.