Game: Age of Steam Expansion - Sun / London

Thread: Re: London - First time, many lessons

clearclaw — 2008-10-30T05:48:53+00:00

jarratt wrote:
The other great thing about this board is that it is probably best with 4 players. Most boards are weak with 4 players, either because there is too much room or too many turns. While London has a lot of space it directs play toward the middle and you expand from there, which should alter the satellite cities from game to game depending on goods.

I also recommend the 3 player game, with the rules changed as indicated. It is not less challenging or difficult than the 4 player game on the same map, and in some ways is even less friendly than the 4 player game.

...and Nigel (in what was a sign of things to come) got Urbanization from last place.

Urbanisation is a powerful and valuable action to get so cheaply.

Nigel (and I hope we played this right) built from Waterloo to Deptford with a single link town and then Urbanized it to black.

That was fine and correct within the rules.

Player Note: I think one of the important abilities in Age of Steam is to see the whole board and web of of goods and runs at the beginning of the game before anything is actually done. This includes the production chart. Most players can only see what is in front of them, so I think while London has some tough rules for new players (Union Fees) the fact that it forces you to pay attention to the production chart right from the beginning is a great way of getting new players seeing more than what is just in front of them.

Thank you. That was one of my hopes for the mechanism.

Thread: London - First time, many lessons

jarratt — 2008-10-29T22:14:38+00:00

Date: 22 Oct 2008
Time: 2.25hrs

Intro
Lance had been keen to try London for a while so when we sat down to a 4 player game of Age of Steam it was quickly decided that London was what we would tr. None of us had played the board before so that made things very interesting. Our reletive experience levels in the game are quite different with me playing well over 100 games of Age of Steam and Nigel having played about 4. Both John R and Lance are in the middle somewhere.

It was nice to a board so wildly different, not to mention very challenging, and those two facts really helped level out the previous experience. The other great thing about this board is that it is probably best with 4 players. Most boards are weak with 4 players, either because there is too much room or too many turns. While London has a lot of space it directs play toward the middle and you expand from there, which should alter the satellite cities from game to game depending on goods.

We played with the basic rules and no additional track, so no Italy tiles and no additional sharp curves or complex track. Personally I think this board needs some extra sharp curves, and I prefer no track limitation anyway, but we played with the basics for this game. It actually made a difference at the end as well, but wouldn't have changed the scores.

Opening Round
Everyone went for 2 shares in the opening round and I won the initial auction with $5 I think taking Locomotive. There were a couple of places where I could easily move 2 goods 2 links. Jon took Engineer, Lance First Build and Nigel (in what was a sign of things to come) got Urbanization from last place.

Lance did a simple link up through the middle cities, only 3 track, the typical 2 sharps curves and a straight. I the built the track between Wembley and North Kensington joining them up through the town. John built from Westminster to North Kensington through Fulham. Nigel (and I hope we played this right) built from Waterloo to Deptford with a single link town and then Urbanized it to black. He also built the sharp curve across the river between Waterloo and Westminster.

Everyone had a 2 link except me who had 2. The instant production started and was interesting. Certainly near the end of the game.

Player Note: I think one of the important abilities in Age of Steam is to see the whole board and web of of goods and runs at the beginning of the game before anything is actually done. This includes the production chart. Most players can only see what is in front of them, so I think while London has some tough rules for new players (Union Fees) the fact that it forces you to pay attention to the production chart right from the beginning is a great way of getting new players seeing more than what is just in front of them.

The Locomotive
I had high hopes that I could win the Locomotive with $7 and therefore move 2 three link deliveries on the second turn. How wrong I was. Most players too 4 shares except Nigel who only took 3. Lance and John went mad bidding for Locomotive, so much so that neither of them could do much with track on their opening build. Lance won with something ridiculous like $15 or $16 and because John and he had bid each other up $1 at a time John was not in a great spot. He took First Move, I took Engineer and once again Urbanization fell to Nigel.

I linked up Ruislip and Wembley as well as Shorditch and Bloomsbury (I wanted to shore up the cheaper link while I had the chance because I knew I wanted to go there later). More importantly Nigel went from Westminster to Deptford (his black New city) through Brixton and Urbanized it to Yellow. Again he only played a 1 track town and then Urbanized.

Lance was able to move a 2 and a 3 and the rest of us linked up to 3 except John, who unfortunately only had a 2 and a 1 as well, but needed them to stay afloat.

The bidding for Locomotive was reasonably fierce on the next turn as well, though not as bad as John learned from his lesson in the last turn and bid high early giving me a chance to back out with some reasonable finances which I did. I again took Engineer though we all decided that bidding up to get it was money you could have just used to build the track in the first place. This time I did need it however as Lance took First Build and built the track I wanted from Bloomsbury to North Kensington through St John's Wood. I had to drop 4 bits to track to build the same link, converting his town.

Once again Nigel got Urbanization from last, having not bid once in the whole game. This time he went directly down to Forest Hill from Brixton and Deptford and urbanized a blue city. That mean he had all 5 colours in a nicely connected area where he could do some nice bypasses to increase his route. He had also fallen down on shares compared to the rest of us.

The next turn saw me miss out again on the Locomotive as Lance got it and quickly increase his income to 19. I had to waste and action linking up to 4, having not done it the turn before and only got to 15 Income before reduction. Nigel extended his network from his blue city out to Greenwich, linked up to 5 and basically had enough 5's for the rest of the game. Meanwhile John was struggling to just stay afloat with rapidly diminishing goods and a less than stellar network.

The Turn I took too many Shares
It was the fifth turn with 2 to go after this and to ensure I got Locomotive I had to tap out my shares, which left me a dire position over the next few turns as my expenses were 26 and I had no way of getting more money. That was okay because I had the right network and plenty of goods, but my funds were pretty limited and building track is huge in London because of the altered ratio of Income to Track points.

Not only did I take Locomotive but I also linked up to 6, I was only 13, a 6 would get me to 19 while two 5's would get me to 23. Income reduction would reduce me to 19 or 17 and I would still need to link up the next turn. I was able to build a small bit of track in the hop that at some point over the next two turns I would have a chance to get Urbanization (an action that wasn't that popular anyway). Meanwhile Lance had stagnated at 4 links and Nigel was doing great with his 5 train.

Lance was able to get Locomotive for $2 on the penultimate turn. Nigel was sticking with his low shares and small expenditure and was well over the curve now for his Income and Expenses. He also didn't need any extra track so he was building for points. John was still struggling but had urbanized Chiswick on the last turn and was working on what he could. This turn I did get Urbanization and so I made Tottenham (which I built to on the last turn) Black and had plenty of 6's to ship. This is where I made a mistake though. I had a bunch of Red Goods in Ruislip and a couple of Blacks in Wembley. I chose to ship both Blacks which meant that on the last turn when Lance Urbanized Park Royal with Red my Red 6's were gone. I had a Yellow in Tottenham so I should have done 1 Red and 1 Black this turn to prevent the block that Lance did.

The Final Turn – Nigel Final bids (and wins)
Nigel took a share to make sure he had the money to outbid anyone and took Locomotive. Most of the rest of us had little to no money anyway and were looking to build track. Unfortunately for me Lance took Urbanization and blocked my city as previously mentioned. This also lost me 2 points of track. I could have circumnavigated the block but because there weren't any sharp curves left John had to build from Chiswick to Hatwell (for points) instead of somewhere out of Shoreditch, which may have had a good move as well.

I stole one of Lance's 5's and used it as a 5 of my own, as well as my 6, but he convinced John that giving him 2 points on a final move was better than giving each of us 1. I should have fought harder for that, because I had so little track on the board having built about 4-5 pieces over the last 3 rounds and having some of my network Urbanized. It had been pretty close between Lance, Nigel and I most of the game but in the end Nigel's great tracks which could turn any colour into a 5 or 6 was the game winner, and despite all the early Urbanization he had the most track on the board at the end too.

Final Scores
Nigel 59
Lance 53
Jarratt 51
John 30ish

I was definitely impressed with the different options on the board, the struggle at every point and the fact that any of 3 players could have won going into the last turn, which is something you rarely see in a 4 player game. More often than not one player has already won.

I think we placed too much reliance on Locomotive for this board. Sure it would be nice to get it to leap from 3-4 links one turn and 4-5 links the next, but the sheer cost of everything else really prevents this. Nigel could have happily never taken it in the game and he still would have won, and as it was he only got it on the last turn for 4 extra points anyway. So while it seems from this session report that Locomotive is just as important and powerful on this board as any other I'm not entirely convinced, which IMO is a good thing, as too many games of Age of Steam are won by Locomotive in the midgame.

Thread: Re: Early track on AoS:London

clearclaw — 2008-10-13T14:38:41+00:00

jarratt wrote:
I noticed that all track in limited in London.

Track tiles are limited in all Age of Steam maps. London and Sun are not special in this regard.

I was wondering what the intention was behind this.

There is a minor sub-game in Age of Steam in using the track tiles, especially complex track tiles, that others need/want before they can. It usually isn't much of a factor for London but is for Sun. On Sun it is common to run out of either or straights or broad curves as well as complex track.

Often we play with limits because that is the track that we have, but personally for most maps I would rather there were no limits. Italy is a find example of a map where to get the most out of it you need as may copies of every track as possible.

I don't find the track-tile counting game in Age of Steam particularly interesting, whereas I find it quite interesting for the 18XX. However I also don't find it a problem. If the tiles aren't there, well, you screwed up.

Is the limitation in London to force interesting choices from the players or is it unlikely that the pieces will get used anyway?

I don't have the rules in front of me but I don't recall commenting on the tile distribution for London, just for Sun. By design Sun chews through town-track and complex-track quickly and the tile-counting aspect of the game is a significant part of playing well.

Thread: Re: Early track on AoS:London

jarratt — 2008-10-13T08:41:00+00:00

Complex track are important to good play on most maps.

I couldn't agree more. I guess most people that I play the game with don't visualize direct play of the complex track in that way. In the original rules it wasn't mentioned so perhaps they are used to not using it. They can be difficult to play correctly as well and figuring out the cost probably puts some less hardcore gamers off. I'm not entirely sure of the reason, but mostly I find they only look to play complex tiles as a replacement so they can get where they need to go. It's possible they just don't visualize entire track builds before the game has even started.

I noticed that all track in limited in London. I was wondering what the intention was behind this. Often we play with limits because that is the track that we have, but personally for most maps I would rather there were no limits. Italy is a find example of a map where to get the most out of it you need as may copies of every track as possible.

Is the limitation in London to force interesting choices from the players or is it unlikely that the pieces will get used anyway?

Thread: Re: Early track on AoS:London

clearclaw — 2008-10-13T05:32:05+00:00

jarratt wrote:
This is exactly the type of track building I love in AoS, but I must be missing something because I can't figure out how the track build costs so little. I can't find anywhere in the rules that states how much it costs to build in the light green, dark green or rivers.

The only terrain in AoS: London is the Thames river. As noted in the rules there is no game significance to the different greens. As with the base Age of Steam, track costs $2 normally and $3 for rivers, plus of course the Union Overtime fees.

It's highly possible that most people don't see potential builds by building complex track directly to the board rather than replacing it.

This is a normal part of the Age of Steam track rules. It wasn't spelled out in the first edition but is clearly stated in the second edition. There are several posts in the Age of Steam fora from John Bohrer and others clarifying and detailing this.

I know most of the people I play with never even attempt to place complex crossings and complex co-exists directly.

That is unusual. Complex track are important to good play on most maps.

Thread: Re: Early track on AoS:London

jarratt — 2008-10-13T01:33:43+00:00

This is exactly the type of track building I love in AoS, but I must be missing something because I can't figure out how the track build costs so little. I can't find anywhere in the rules that states how much it costs to build in the light green, dark green or rivers.

Various bits of feedback suggests that new players are not seeing the early track possibilities with this map. Consider the following first build for AoS:London:

It's highly possible that most people don't see potential builds by building complex track directly to the board rather than replacing it. I know most of the people I play with never even attempt to place complex crossings and complex co-exists directly.

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

medievalbanquet — 2008-01-13T02:08:12+00:00

Interesting thoughts. I just got this map. Hoping to play it soon!

Which number is it best with? (Our club likes tighter battles)

Andy

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

dedefortin — 2008-01-11T13:44:14+00:00

This is usual but not automatic. For instance, what about an initial distribution in which there are no 2-train deliveries among the centre four cities?

Even if there are no 2 train delveries available, it seems for us that it,s the best investment for the rest of the game. Straight from Bloomsbury to Waterloo, acute curve from Bloomsbury to Shoreditch, acute curve from Waterlooto Westminster, cost: 2$+2$+2$+6$(additional cost for engineer): total: 12$ and you deny other players from connecting easily these cities.

In any given game some of the peripheral cities won't be used. This is normal. The map appears large but isn't. Which peripheral cities will and won't be used in each particular session is rarely clear. The game will necessarily start in the centre as you note, often with at least two players fighting for presence. The other players will variously spread themselves around the north west leg, the south west leg and the south east leg (usually one of the four is missed until the late game). From that point the track knot fight begins. Sometimes three players raid the centre, bleeding it dry of cubes sometime in turn 3.

I suppose we don't use the same strategy but on any maps, specially this one it's usually better to give 1 or 2 income to other players instead of building very expensive links to peripheral cities.

How are you doing the insta-production? Multiple players competing in the central cities should exhaust the supply of goods there quickly. There are usually nearly no goods cubes left in the central 5 cities (6-7 if St John's Wood or Fulham has been urbanised) by the start of turn 5 of the game. The only value of the central cities then is as destinations as it takes two deliveries to bring out a single new goods cube: One to add it to the Goods Production Chart, another delivery to bring it out on the map, then a third to put the cube on the Goods Production Chart, a fourth delivery to move it to the map etc.

Yes we used all your rules except the variant that makes the game easier. You're right when saying that some of the central cities will have no goods left in the end but you're almost at the end of the game and with some of the urbanization that will occur it will add goods, In all of our games there was sufficient goods in the central area for everyone even if we had to give 1 or 2 income to other players. For us it seems the best solution for us to give some income to the player who was kind enough to build in the peripheral cities.

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

clearclaw — 2008-01-11T05:06:07+00:00

dedefortin wrote:
Pierre choose the first build action and as in previous games he was able to connect the 4 cities in the middle with 3 tracks only at low cost. This seem obvious that it will be the start for every game. On any map, specially this one it's always powerful to link so many cities in one turn.

This is usual but not automatic. For instance, what about an initial distribution in which there are no 2-train deliveries among the centre four cities?

As I wrote earlier we have some doubts about the replayability of the London map.

I'm interested in your concerns. I've played London well over 50 times and have had no problem in this regard.

In the 3 games we have played the peripheral cities were almost not used.

In any given game some of the peripheral cities won't be used. This is normal. The map appears large but isn't. Which peripheral cities will and won't be used in each particular session is rarely clear. The game will necessarily start in the centre as you note, often with at least two players fighting for presence. The other players will variously spread themselves around the north west leg, the south west leg and the south east leg (usually one of the four is missed until the late game). From that point the track knot fight begins. Sometimes three players raid the centre, bleeding it dry of cubes sometime in turn 3.

In some rare case, those who linked these expensive areas were last in the final scoring.

Strange, that's what Engineer is for. Actually you don't mention use of Engineer in your reports. Engineer is commonly a hotly contested action on London, far more valuable than Urbanisation.

They had to take too many shares if you compare to the players who stayed in the middle area. Even of they had some exclusive goods for themselves it was no match for those who stole goods from other to make big deliveries with a small efficient network.

How are you doing the insta-production? Multiple players competing in the central cities should exhaust the supply of goods there quickly. There are usually nearly no goods cubes left in the central 5 cities (6-7 if St John's Wood or Fulham has been urbanised) by the start of turn 5 of the game. The only value of the central cities then is as destinations as it takes two deliveries to bring out a single new goods cube: One to add it to the Goods Production Chart, another delivery to bring it out on the map, then a third to put the cube on the Goods Production Chart, a fourth delivery to move it to the map etc.

Thread: Age of Steam London session report

dedefortin — 2008-01-11T04:02:13+00:00

With 4 players we wanted to have another try on the London map. We had 2 games on this map and the comments were not unanimous. This time we tried again with 4 players as in our last game the builds were really concentrated in the middle of the map and the unfolding of the game was almost the same both time.

Mario began the betting round of first turn at 2$ and Pierre followed at 4$ and the Mario won with 5$. He choose the loco action since there was some intersting 2 income deliveries available. Pierre choose the first build action and as in previous games he was able to connect the 4 cities in the middle with 3 tracks only at low cost. This seem obvious that it will be the start for every game. On any map, specially this one it's always powerful to link so many cities in one turn. The 3 other players also started in the middle area of the map as it is the cheapeast place to build and connnect some cities. Why would someone would take additional shares to build in other areas that cost more and connect less cities ? On turn 2 everybody took at least 3 shares and Pierre won the loco action and made 2 deliveries of 3 income with his nice network. Martin was happy to have the first build action to connect Bloomsbury and have access to the east and deny Pierre an easy way to the west. Since the middle area was already jammed, Nathalie began an extensive build toward Deptford. Game was soon critical for many players and even if Pierre started the bets of round 3 at 4$, every other players betted higher and Pierre became last. Mario had a tough start and had to back up two times but when he won the loco action and made 2 deliveries of 5 income , he was back in the game. As a revenge for the stolen loco Martin urbanize a yellow new city on Mario's network. Mario again won the loco on next turn over Martin and he then took the lead with his big loco of 6. Again the main action was in the middle area as no one wanted to take 3 or 4 additional shares to connect peripheral cities that were very far. Martin wanted to be sure to won the loco on next turn so he took 1 additional shares as he had the same amount of Pierre and he knew Pierre would have put all his money to deny Martin having the precious loco. Pierre did the same thing on next turn to win the loco. Nathalie was building toward the east but it was very expensive. The other players gave some income to their neighbours instead of building very expensive tracks. It's really important to calculate well the cost of link versus giving some income to a player already link to this city. Martin had a nice pool of goods in the northwest and with the loco he won in the last turns, it was enough for the win.

As I wrote earlier we have some doubts about the replayability of the London map. In the 3 games we have played the peripheral cities were almost not used. In some rare case, those who linked these expensive areas were last in the final scoring. They had to take too many shares if you compare to the players who stayed in the middle area. Even of they had some exclusive goods for themselves it was no match for those who stole goods from other to make big deliveries with a small efficient network.

Final scoring:
Martin: 52
Mario: 40
Pierre: 40
Nathalie: 29

Thread: Re: Goods columns

clearclaw — 2007-11-17T01:54:24+00:00

rockusultimus wrote:
clearclaw wrote:
How many players did you have?

We played with 4. Even though there are a lot of goods, you really have to watch how much track you lay. I almost went bankrupt.

Yeah, be careful and splurge on track drives only when you really need to. I've seen more than one 5 tile track build that left me head-shaking in admiration.

clearclaw wrote:
When delivering to New City D (say from one of the towns that starts with a cube), then take the top cube from the chart for New City D, not the top cube for White City #6. Yeah, that's the small chart with only two rows (if that's what you mean by 2x).

That is what I meant. But we played the whole column for both # city and new city taking the top-most cube. Ooops.

Yeah, that will make Urbanisation more valuable than i intended; New Cities will produce more goods and generally have a longer viable life. One of the reasons for requiring track on the towns that are urbanised is to devalue Urbanisation.

I've had this set for a long time (6 months + ??) and we finally got it to the table. All four of us really enjoyed. Great job. Thanks a lot!!

You're very welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

Thread: Re: Goods columns

rockusultimus — 2007-11-17T01:18:28+00:00

clearclaw wrote:
How many players did you have?

We played with 4. Even though there are a lot of goods, you really have to watch how much track you lay. I almost went bankrupt.

clearclaw wrote:
When delivering to New City D (say from one of the towns that starts with a cube), then take the top cube from the chart for New City D, not the top cube for White City #6. Yeah, that's the small chart with only two rows (if that's what you mean by 2x).

That is what I meant. But we played the whole column for both # city and new city taking the top-most cube. Ooops.

clearclaw wrote:
It doesn't matter. Once there is a cube in the column it must be produced if that city is chosen for production after a delivery.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

I've had this set for a long time (6 months + ??) and we finally got it to the table. All four of us really enjoyed. Great job. Thanks a lot!!

-Costas

Thread: Re: Goods columns

clearclaw — 2007-11-16T06:57:34+00:00

rockusultimus wrote:
We had our first AoS London experience tonight - wow! What a challenging map!

Cool! I'm glad you enjoyed it. How many players did you have? It is a very different experience with 3 vs 4 players.

1) Suppose I deliver to New City D. Do I take the top cube from the 6/D column or the top cube from the 2x 'D' spots?

When delivering to New City D (say from one of the towns that starts with a cube), then take the top cube from the chart for New City D, not the top cube for White City #6. Yeah, that's the small chart with only two rows (if that's what you mean by 2x).

2) When replenishing the goods supply (if none left), does the random cube go on the top of the column automatically, or anywhere in that column of the player's choosing?

It doesn't matter. Once there is a cube in the column it must be produced if that city is chosen for production after a delivery. Once there's a cube in the column there's no ability to randomly draw a new cube for that column until it has been produced to the map by a delivery.

Thread: Goods columns

rockusultimus — 2007-11-16T05:51:36+00:00

We had our first AoS London experience tonight - wow! What a challenging map!

I have a couple of questions about goods replenishment:

1) Suppose I deliver to New City D. Do I take the top cube from the 6/D column or the top cube from the 2x 'D' spots?

2) When replenishing the goods supply (if none left), does the random cube go on the top of the column automatically, or anywhere in that column of the player's choosing?

Thanks!

Thread: Re: Sun, Capacity 2 or 3

sgraber — 2007-10-09T19:31:15+00:00

That clarifies it for me. Thank you.

Thread: Re: Sun, Capacity 2 or 3

clearclaw — 2007-10-09T19:15:56+00:00

sgraber wrote:
How do capacity 2 or 3 deliveries work?

...As an income multiplier to encourage rapid gross inflation of bidding values and to drive the value of the action values so that building last allows the most control but the least flexibility, and going early in turn order gives the most flexibility but the least control.

It is clear that all delivered goods must start at the same location.

Correct.

The rules read "but may be delivered to different orbital stations along the same route". Does this mean that the goods cannot split up...

I'm not clear on what you mean by split up.

...but must move through the same set of orbital stations, with some of the goods being delivered at an orbital station while others continue on?

A possible example:

I start at location X with a 4/2 train. I pick up a red and a blue cube, move across three links to the Blue City and deliver the blue cube and then continue moving one more link to the Red City to deliver that cube.

Make sense?

For a capacity 2 or 3 delivery, when does instant production occur, when each good is delivered or after all of the goods have been delivered?

There is no production phase. Instant production happens at the end of the player's turn. The moving player can't use the cubes he just produced, so it doesn't matter when during his delivery they are produced. The next player may however take advantage of the cubes produced by the immediately preceding player.

For a capacity 2 or 3 delivery, if the source is uncolored and the goods are delivered to different locations, the instant production goods must be placed on the first orbital station delivered to.

Correct.

Does the instant production from the 2nd good come from the production chart of the orbital station that the 2nd good was delivered to or the production chart of the orbital station that the 1st good was delivered to?

It also comes from the first city delivered to.

Thread: Re: Sun, Capacity 2 or 3

Verkisto — 2007-10-09T17:56:51+00:00

sgraber wrote:
How do capacity 2 or 3 deliveries work? It is clear that all delivered goods must start at the same location. The rules read "but may be delivered to different orbital stations along the same route". Does this mean that the goods cannot split up, but must move through the same set of orbital stations, with some of the goods being delivered at an orbital station while others continue on?

That's how I understand the rule. So, if you have a route that connects through a red, blue, and yellow city, you could pick up a red, blue, and yellow good from your starting point and deliver all three of them if you have a 3-capacity engine.

For a capacity 2 or 3 delivery, when does instant production occur, when each good is delivered or after all of the goods have been delivered?

I'm not sure if it makes a difference, since you can't pick up a cube midway through your delivery. I would think that you could insta-produce at the end of the turn for all cities delivered to.

Thread: Sun, Capacity 2 or 3

sgraber — 2007-10-09T17:44:02+00:00

How do capacity 2 or 3 deliveries work? It is clear that all delivered goods must start at the same location. The rules read "but may be delivered to different orbital stations along the same route". Does this mean that the goods cannot split up, but must move through the same set of orbital stations, with some of the goods being delivered at an orbital station while others continue on?

For a capacity 2 or 3 delivery, when does instant production occur, when each good is delivered or after all of the goods have been delivered?

For a capacity 2 or 3 delivery, if the source is uncolored and the goods are delivered to different locations, the instant production goods must be placed on the first orbital station delivered to. Does the instant production from the 2nd good come from the production chart of the orbital station that the 2nd good was delivered to or the production chart of the orbital station that the 1st good was delivered to? (It is clear that the instant production from the 1st good is taken from the production chart of the first orbital station).

Thread: Re: Designer rule clarifications for Age of Steam:London & S

clearclaw — 2007-08-30T01:25:52+00:00

#4 wording clarified above.

Image

Verkisto — 2007-08-18T00:41:46+00:00

A crowded start to a tight, tight map.

Image

toulouse — 2007-07-23T05:46:43+00:00

Age of Steam: Sun & London logos

Image

sajimenez — 2007-05-29T04:56:51+00:00

Image

Malachi — 2007-05-28T17:03:57+00:00

End of a 3 player game.

Thread: Re: Urbanisation in London

clearclaw — 2007-05-23T16:54:55+00:00

SkiBoy wrote:
Quickly checking the rules - I think we (well actually me) misread the rules - basically I missed that you could take and place a cube on the destination city - we were playing that it could only happen on the originating city - hence our concern as to how to get cubes onto newly urbanised cities!

Yeah, that's pretty important. A mistake that's commonly made here is that when a goods cube is delivered from, say white 3 to black 6, the goods cube taken off the white 3 spot on the Goods Production Chart may only be placed on the white 3 city. It can't be placed on the black 6 city -- only the goods cube from the Goods Production Chart for black 6 can be placed there.

We did also spot one other minor quibble in that there is a rule on the gameboard stating that the Locomotive can only be used when there are 4+ players - but this is not stated in the actual written rules.

Oops.

After some discussion we decided, as we were three, to play according to what was written on the game board - The Locomotive was therefore not used.

You played correctly.

Thread: Re: Urbanisation in London

SkiBoy — 2007-05-23T09:49:24+00:00

Quickly checking the rules - I think we (well actually me) misread the rules - basically I missed that you could take and place a cube on the destination city - we were playing that it could only happen on the originating city - hence our concern as to how to get cubes onto newly urbanised cities!

When a goods cube is delivered, the player who delivered that cube
immediately takes a goods cube from the top of the production chart
column of the originating or destination city, placing the cube directly
on that city. The newly-placed cube is immediately available for delivery.

I guess I should be more careful when reading rules - Doh!

We did also spot one other minor quibble in that there is a rule on the gameboard stating that the Locomotive can only be used when there are 4+ players - but this is not stated in the actual written rules.

After some discussion we decided, as we were three, to play according to what was written on the game board - The Locomotive was therefore not used.

Thread: Re: Urbanisation in London

clearclaw — 2007-05-23T05:32:32+00:00

Verkisto wrote:
The urbanized cities don't enter the game with any goods on them, unless you urbanized a town that already had a good on it; if it DID, then it starts with that good, but otherwise it's an empty city.

Later in the game, you replenish the city the same way you do the others: If you deliver from one city to another, you replenish either city with the good from the top of its respective column.

Correct on all counts. The only way to get a goods cube onto an Urbanisation city is to deliver to it and then use insta-production to produce a goods cube on it.

Playing the way you (Garry) did will make Urbanisation considerably more powerful than I intended, most especially in the early game when it is more important that Urbanisation be scaled back.

Thread: Re: Urbanisation in London

Verkisto — 2007-05-23T00:43:06+00:00

The urbanized cities don't enter the game with any goods on them, unless you urbanized a town that already had a good on it; if it DID, then it starts with that good, but otherwise it's an empty city.

Later in the game, you replenish the city the same way you do the others: If you deliver from one city to another, you replenish either city with the good from the top of its respective column.

I hope this answers your question.

Thread: Urbanisation in London

Garry — 2007-05-22T23:07:01+00:00

Hi,

We've just played a 3 player London game and enjoyed it enormously.

However there was one point we were not too sure about.

When you urbanise a town how many cubes do you put on it? Once we'd set up the game there were no cubes left over. The first town was urbanised very early in the game so we just took the cubes off the relevant part of goods supply. We couldn't see any alternative, is this correct?

Garry

Image

Nodens77 — 2007-05-03T00:59:23+00:00

Support Board

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-20T04:21:30+00:00

Excalabur wrote:
clearclaw wrote:
The benefit of this approach is that even if my deliveries were screwed this turn, my track would multiply split the center of the emerging track knot with excellent placement for future builds.

Ja.

Hehn. There's a degree of out of phase planning in AoS:Sun that I particularly enjoy.

Bill and I both took shares for 5 track, but Bill decided not to use his in an attempt to ensure he had a delivery the first turn.

Right. The interesting thing is that if he'd built across Holly's track as I suggested, then your incentive would have been changed to something cheaper for you and more beneficial for him: start at the black, cross Holly's track, then cross Bill's track and optionally continue to cross Bill's track once more but not bother to continue to the yellow (which you still restation) The result would have been the same 2 income for you and zero for them, but Bill would have been much better placed for the next turn's track building.

Another slightly cheaper variant is from the black straight to Bill's track, and then outward (away from the yellow) again to Bill's track, not bothering to cross Holly's, followed by the restation. It gets you the same 2 income and zero for them, but is a little cheaper and helps their track less.

clearclaw wrote:
Aside: The same logic is also why by default all track builds should curve in toward the center and then back out to the edge again. This makes track more attractive and useful for town insertion by you or other players, thus gives you better track and route control. This also explains why broad curves tend to run out so often in AoS:Sun
Ayup.

Ted Alspach slaughtered me until I noticed that one..

Clearclaw then wrote:

Start at the black that Holly build to and go from there across Holly's track (X- or K- tile), and then across Bill's track (X- or K- tile), and then back across Bill's track (X- or K-tile) to the yellow. Restation the yellow to the first town you just put in Bill's track ...

Oh, and Holly and Bill will hate you, which is always a Good Thing.

True. and True. Unfortunately, I had five track tiles (maybe six if I ensured a $2 delivery), so this plain fails, I believe.

Yeah, the basic deal is usually that players late in the turn order issue the most shares, and players expecting to be early in the turn issue the fewest.

However, you can be sure that the future will be more insane.

Excellent!

I think playing London had Bill and I a bit worried about hitting the end of the share chart in a big hurry.

Yeah, I can believe that. The two maps are so very different.

clearclaw wrote:
I'm surprised at how few 3-exit towns you built. Most games here start running out of 3-exit town tiles around turn 6 or 7, and having no 3-exit towns left at all by the end of the game. A common building pattern is to start in the middle of one of a track segment (your's or someone else's) and build out from there, linking back into the middle of yet another another track segment (sometimes even one of the segments you just built that turn).

We were actually out of the lambda and reverse-lambda tiles for much of the game, which often got upgraded into four-exit towns to free up the tile for placement elsewhere immediately, or else caused players to just lay four-exit towns: my network has a couple of places where I did this rather obviously. One example is on the extreme lower left of my network, where Bill has his spur to C. I built into that town since there were E tiles left, but no lambdas.

That's also curious! There's usually so little incentive to upgrade 3-exit towns that it simply doesn't happen. Players need/want more towns in their routes, both for the normal branching network reasons and to simply lock down how long a given route can possibly be.

clearclaw wrote:
A particularly common form of this is to start on one side of a city and just loop around to a new town on the other side of that same city, possibly stopping off to drop a town in someone else's track along the way.

Note: 3-exit towns are peculiarly defensive on AoS:Sun as it is rarely worth the expense to upgrade them to 4-exit towns.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by either of these propositions, but I was the guy with the network of 6 hexes = 6 links for most of the end of the game--the 'sparser' sections of my network were rarely used, except occasionally to produce more useful cubes in the centre.

Your track setup sounds pretty usual then. As I mention in my other articles, the basic pattern often comes down to using the outer uninteresting cities as sympathetic cube sources for destinations in or just across the knot. Use the knot as a cube pump to create cubes outside the knot that other player's can't effectively get to, and then run them in, either creating more cubes they can't yet reach, or creating more inner cubes for you to then deliver out. Run cubes out, run cubes back in, repeat.

We also had a lot of 3 towns upgraded to fours to avoid turning sixes into sevens for the person doing the upgrading.

Ahh! Yeah, that's another trick: building multiple routes via towns to the same forest of locations so that you can selectively make deliveries as long or short as you want. This is the core to controlling and using the track knot. This is why getting your towns and track in the right places early enough is so important. Yeah, I can run this blue cube like this to the B for 2, or like that for 3, or like that for 4, or like this other way for 5, and by this really twisty route for 6!

clearclaw wrote:

First turn bidding is usually close to nothing. From there on until profitability each turn's bids usually run between $5 and $8 for first place. After profitability things change and late game bids of $20+ or $30+ are not uncommon.
This surprises me. Once locomotive has been maxed, I don't see the benefit in going nuts on the turn order...

It basically comes down to First Build to get the right town tiles, First Move for protection, and Restation to build your routes.

..restation is nice, but I don't see it as being $20 better than passing, espeically as you have to do it first, so that everyone can fix their networks afterwards with the $20 they didn't spend.

If you need Restation to set your future deliveries, or you need to get fast vanishing town tiles before someone else then it is worth it. After all money is worth nothing for VPs: use it!

This is where we were playing defensively. While everyone tried to ensure that they had a backup plan or six, there was very little active screwing over of the other players: the amount of thinking goes up at least quadratically.

Yup!

clearclaw wrote:
It's kinda nice having all of the towns in your network: then people can't add more.

Yup. This is one of the core values of the track knot: every tile has a town on it, so there's no possibility of adding more towns to your routes there. If you've engaged lightly enough that you can get through there you then have absolutely wonderful delivery length control for most of the game.

Heh. I had very little track not in the track knot for the mid-early late game. Fortunately, I controlled restation a lot, which ensured that I had some cities to play with, and mostly had a six route between any of about four cities.

Sounds like you got it right then!

I had to move B a couple of times to get the blue cubes off of it: It had at least 10 blue cubes placed on it over the course of the game. (Starting with one and with the first four on the production chart..)

Yeah, that happens a lot. It is worthwhile trying to create incentives for other players to do the Restations you want during their builds. It is hard, but can be very effective. They move the city, you take advantage of it and kill their routes.

Another question for the designer: since when is the Sun a rhombus?

Since I didn't want to borrow Alban Viard's edge-mapping ala AoS:Moon for a map that felt already on the borders of being too complex is when!

This is admittedly better than the moon map, which is topologically equivalent to a Moebius strip, but why not, say, a hexagon?

Simple truth? I initially copied from AoS:Moon, big round blobs of hexes don't fit on tables or sheets of paper well, and they don't draw well with hexes either, and I wanted a shape that permitted both long very short connections and and the diamond suggested that.

Sorry about the delay. I'm theoretically studying right now (which is why I'm up at 4:34AM), but I needed a break.

No worries! I hope I've shaken up your group's thinking around the map enough to make your next game a bit different.

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

Excalabur — 2007-04-19T08:35:58+00:00

clearclaw wrote:
The benefit of this approach is that even if my deliveries were screwed this turn, my track would multiply split the center of the emerging track knot with excellent placement for future builds.

Ja. Bill and I both took shares for 5 track, but Bill decided not to use his in an attempt to ensure he had a delivery the first turn.

clearclaw wrote:
Aside: The same logic is also why by default all track builds should curve in toward the center and then back out to the edge again. This makes track more attractive and useful for town insertion by you or other players, thus gives you better track and route control. This also explains why broad curves tend to run out so often in AoS:Sun
Ayup. Note, however, that in this case the black town in question was in the centre-spot of the map. Looking at the final pictures, it's city 'D', which never got restationed.

Clearclaw then wrote:

Start at the black that Holly build to and go from there across Holly's track (X- or K- tile), and then across Bill's track (X- or K- tile), and then back across Bill's track (X- or K-tile) to the yellow. Restation the yellow to the first town you just put in Bill's track ...

Oh, and Holly and Bill will hate you, which is always a Good Thing.

True. and True. Unfortunately, I had five track tiles (maybe six if I ensured a $2 delivery), so this plain fails, I believe. However, you can be sure that the future will be more insane. I think playing London had Bill and I a bit worried about hitting the end of the share chart in a big hurry.

clearclaw wrote:
The second turn was one largely of consolidation. Bill built out to the Blue city (which had four blue cubes as it's first four productions), which was promptly restationed (by me?) to the intersection of my and Holly's tracks. Holly and I both built out to new cities as well, myself to a Black city and holly to Red.

I'm surprised at how few 3-exit towns you built. Most games here start running out of 3-exit town tiles around turn 6 or 7, and having no 3-exit towns left at all by the end of the game. A common building pattern is to start in the middle of one of a track segment (your's or someone else's) and build out from there, linking back into the middle of yet another another track segment (sometimes even one of the segments you just built that turn).

We were actually out of the lambda and reverse-lambda tiles for much of the game, which often got upgraded into four-exit towns to free up the tile for placement elsewhere immediately, or else caused players to just lay four-exit towns: my network has a couple of places where I did this rather obviously. One example is on the extreme lower left of my network, where Bill has his spur to C. I built into that town since there were E tiles left, but no lambdas.

clearclaw wrote:

A particularly common form of this is to start on one side of a city and just loop around to a new town on the other side of that same city, possibly stopping off to drop a town in someone else's track along the way.

Note: 3-exit towns are peculiarly defensive on AoS:Sun as it is rarely worth the expense to upgrade them to 4-exit towns.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by either of these propositions, but I was the guy with the network of 6 hexes = 6 links for most of the end of the game--the 'sparser' sections of my network were rarely used, except occasionally to produce more useful cubes in the centre. We also had a lot of 3 towns upgraded to fours to avoid turning sixes into sevens for the person doing the upgrading.

clearclaw wrote:

City C was built to in the 7th turn, and G was still not in use. As these were black, and farthest out, until cube pressures were very high there was no point building out that far: and since there is an infinity of cubes, it took some doing for it to be worth it: Bill was the one to finally do so (Yellow)

Initial city distributions which cluster the black cities can make for weird and interesting games!
They were not so much clustered as put in the corners of the sun, while there was also one in the centre. Ergo, the far-off ones were mostly useless.

clearclaw wrote:
You can see the extensive restationing that took place...

I see 8 Restationings in a 10 turn game. That's slightly low but still about right.

...The action was taken every turn by someone, though it was not used once by Bill, who took it for defensive reasons.

Yup. That's not too uncommon either, tho usually they manage to find something offensive to do with it on the same turn.

There's actually nine. None of the black cities ever got moved, I think B moved thrice and the others twice each. Bill's no-move somewhat surprised me at the time, especially considering that if nothing else it reduced the options for us to steal his cities later.

clearclaw wrote:

It is unusual to be that profitable that early.
I hit the 12 train at the earliest possible time (turn 6), taking the locomotive only once(ish). I then delivered 12s on every delivery until the end of the game....

clearclaw wrote:

First turn bidding is usually close to nothing. From there on until profitability each turn's bids usually run between $5 and $8 for first place. After profitability things change and late game bids of $20+ or $30+ are not uncommon.
This surprises me. Once locomotive has been maxed, I don't see the benefit in going nuts on the turn order: restation is nice, but I don't see it as being $20 better than passing, espeically as you have to do it first, so that everyone can fix their networks afterwards with the $20 they didn't spend.

Even pre-profitability $8 seems like a lot. This is exacerbated by the dollar auction, in which I do not want to be participating unless I win: even moreso on the Sun. While in the early game 2nd gets you restation, 3rd then gets first move and last build, a very nice combo.

A lot of the game comes down to not only predicting other's track moves, but also in keeping your own backup delivery contingencies open. It is a great thing to have three or four roughly equivalent delivery sets awaiting you at the start of a turn: it is unlikely that the other players will be able to kill ALL of them.

This is where we were playing defensively. While everyone tried to ensure that they had a backup plan or six, there was very little active screwing over of the other players: the amount of thinking goes up at least quadratically.

clearclaw wrote:

It's kinda nice having all of the towns in your network: then people can't add more.

Yup. This is one of the core values of the track knot: every tile has a town on it, so there's no possibility of adding more towns to your routes there. If you've engaged lightly enough that you can get through there you then have absolutely wonderful delivery length control for most of the game.

Heh. I had very little track not in the track knot for the mid-early late game. Fortunately, I controlled restation a lot, which ensured that I had some cities to play with, and mostly had a six route between any of about four cities. I had to move B a couple of times to get the blue cubes off of it: It had at least 10 blue cubes placed on it over the course of the game. (Starting with one and with the first four on the production chart..)

clearclaw wrote:

Clearclaw: you complain about chaos in Korea?

Yeah, I'm not fond of that map. I find the track patterns in AoS:Sun to be fairly predictable and understandable. I don't understand dice.
Makes some sense, I suppose. What do you think of AoSisco?

clearclaw wrote:

City H was a huge source of cubes for me in the mid-game, until other people started delivering cubes away and producing at the destination. However, these are easy to screw up: we had three too few cubes on the board for at least the last three turns. (I counted the leftovers.)

Looking at your images I see only 35 goods cubes on the map. There should be 40 at all times.

There were nineteen in the cup when we broke, so unless Bill is missing some there should be 37 on the map + the full production chart. The final map may be shy the production for the last delivery of the game. It's just so easy to forget to put out cubes, and then who knows where the missing cubes should go...

clearclaw wrote:
Here's one more picture of the final track (and score), with the track ownership tokens removed so you can actually see the track, unlike in the previous picture.

]]>

Your track knot is shocking clean and orderly. I know that may seem scary, but I'm used to much more nasty and contorted track knots, full of 3 exit towns and very Gordian patterns.

This word Gordian, I'm not sure it means what you think it means. Also, knot. .

Note that most of the towns on my network are me, me, and me again. I put a bunch of those four-exit towns down because they were next to a city they were not yet connected to, and then carried on the opposite direction. Some of the regularity may have come from the initial setup---there were a lot of cities places three straight-line spaces away from each other, so a bunch of straight track was placed the first little while.

Another question for the designer: since when is the Sun a rhombus?
This is admittedly better than the moon map, which is topologically equivalent to a Moebius strip, but why not, say, a hexagon?

Sorry about the delay. I'm theoretically studying right now (which is why I'm up at 4:34AM), but I needed a break.

--
Devin Smith
Excalabur

Edit: formatting

Thread: Re: Designer rule clarifications for Age of Steam:London & S

clearclaw — 2007-04-16T07:07:43+00:00

After further thought and review I've moved what is now correction #4 above from being specific to AoS:Sun to being general for both maps.

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-14T18:04:02+00:00

clearclaw wrote:
Start at the black that Holly build to and go from there across Holly's track (X- or K- tile), and then across Bill's track (X- or K- tile), and then back across Bill's track (X- or K-tile) to the yellow. Restation the yellow to the first town you just put in Bill's track

A friend reading over my shoulder said he couldn't visualise that. So using my not-so-good ASCII art skills the the current track looks something like:

[c] (black)

(holly)

(Purple)---------(yellow)
(bill)[/c]

I'm suggesting the following track:

[c] (black)
|
/
X
/
/
/
(Purple)--(1)--+---(yellow)
/ /
. +-+[/c]

And then Restation the Yellow to (1).

Yeah, ASCII art sucks, but hopefully that makes it a bit more clear. That should be a 7 tile build, costing $21, so you'll need 7 shares issued:

Total Shares issued: 8 (2+6)
Cash: $32
Build cost: $21
Income: $2
Links: 2
Expenses: $10
Cash remaining: $1

On the next turn you should be able to compete successfully for Locomotive and have a very good chance to guarantee yourself either a pair of 2/2 runs, or a 3/2 run with a very small track build. Figure something like:

Shares issued: 6 (total 15)
Cash: $25
Bid: $8
Build: $9
Income: $8 ($2 + $6)
Links: 3
Expenses: $7
Cash remaining: $1

Of course that means it is only the second turn and you're already issued almost half your shares! This would be scary if you weren't playing this map. But as it is AoS:Sun your basic goal at this point having made such a big cash commitment so early is to burn your way up as fast and furiously as you can and then see if you can coast over the top first for victory. Your primary target at this point is to get up to around $18-$20 income by the end of turn 4, and then use Engineer and Restation to best advantage to try and coast over the top into profitability and then a 6/2 train before the others. You'll have the track to do it and if you've built well you're almost guaranteed that the other players will be helping you by adding in towns to your links in order to help their own routes, each time setting you up for the turn after next...

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-12T21:00:11+00:00

Excalabur wrote:
Since when can you not have parallel links between two locations?

That is legal in the base game, but was something that as a group down here we misunderstood and played as illegal. As a result AoS:London and AoS:Sun were designed with that more restrictive rule in mind and I think are improved by that. Thus the second entry in the following thread:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/161232

Clarification: It is legal if they're owned by different players. I only disallow it if both track segments are owned by the same player. This prevents a number of rather degenerate track patterns and makes for more difficult and interesting decisions.

(Further response coming later.. Electromag homework to do now)

I look forward to it.

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

Excalabur — 2007-04-12T20:31:23+00:00

Since when can you not have parallel links between two locations?
(Further response coming later.. Electromag homework to do now)

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-12T20:05:08+00:00

Excalabur wrote:
The first turn's turn-auction, like many in the game, was short and sweet. Holly 'won' the auction for a buck and took the locomotive, Bill in second took first move, and I took restation with last.

That's a fairly common first turn auction. Almost as common is no bids at all on the first turn with the choice between the two really depending on the richness of the cube distribution and how many shares each player issues.

I hope you issued enough shares!

Holly connected the yellow city to the black city with three straight bits of track, with four cubes to potentially move between them, and Bill connected the yellow city to the purple one (with three straight bits of track at 60 degree's to Holly's), with three cubes to move, all from Yellow to Purple.

That's an unusually rich cube setup. My temptation as Bill would have been to join the same two cities but by building from yellow and then across Holly's track to purple. The subtlety would have been whether I used a sharp curve and placed the town against the city, or used broad curves and put the town in the middle of Holly's track as an attractive Restationing target for you as well as direct influence on the coming knot formation. The benefit of this approach is that even if my deliveries were screwed this turn, my track would multiply split the center of the emerging track knot with excellent placement for future builds.

Aside: The same logic is also why by default all track builds should curve in toward the center and then back out to the edge again. This makes track more attractive and useful for town insertion by you or other players, thus gives you better track and route control. This also explains why broad curves tend to run out so often in AoS:Sun

Such a build would give Bill a large supply of 2/1 deliveries that he could extend to 3/1 or even 4/2 as needed with additional future towns. Of course Holly's 3/1 current delivery would be upgraded to a 2/2 in the process, but that can be left for the third player to handle.

But, given the track that Bill actually built, your build is simple and clear:

Start at the black that Holly build to and go from there across Holly's track (X- or K- tile), and then across Bill's track (X- or K- tile), and then back across Bill's track (X- or K-tile) to the yellow. Restation the yellow to the first town you just put in Bill's track

There is some subtlely in terms of where you put the towns on Holly's and Bill's track -- against the cities or in the middle -- and how this will influence your future flexibility and the resultant track knot. However the end result of this is that you should be able to get 2 income running the yellows from the black, and Holly and Bill should have no possible deliveries on the first turn. Additionally your track is beautifully setup for controlling the track knot as well as future delivery opportunities.

Oh, and Holly and Bill will hate you, which is always a Good Thing.

I was left with a bunch of lousy choices...

Given the above, do you still think you were left with poor choices? At a rough guess I'd bet that you didn't issue enough shares. People usually don't on their first game. Second bidder in a three player game of AoS:Sun should usually start out issuing at least 4 to 6 shares. maybe more, for just this sort of contingency. The first bidder is almost guaranteed to bid at least 1, especially with a rich goods cube distribution. You can then safely pass, and wreak the sort of damage described above.

The second turn was one largely of consolidation. Bill built out to the Blue city (which had four blue cubes as it's first four productions), which was promptly restationed (by me?) to the intersection of my and Holly's tracks. Holly and I both built out to new cities as well, myself to a Black city and holly to Red.

I'm surprised at how few 3-exit towns you built. Most games here start running out of 3-exit town tiles around turn 6 or 7, and having no 3-exit towns left at all by the end of the game. A common building pattern is to start in the middle of one of a track segment (your's or someone else's) and build out from there, linking back into the middle of yet another another track segment (sometimes even one of the segments you just built that turn). A particularly common form of this is to start on one side of a city and just loop around to a new town on the other side of that same city, possibly stopping off to drop a town in someone else's track along the way.

Note: 3-exit towns are peculiarly defensive on AoS:Sun as it is rarely worth the expense to upgrade them to 4-exit towns.

Towns proliferated, and Bill's network was rapidly depleted of cities: he often only had once city in his network, as Holly and I repeatedly took his towns. I think he may have more respect for the restation action next game.

Heh.

Generally, everyone took more train every trun...

Yes. This is required behaviour to play effectively on AoS:Sun. Most maps require a double run somewhere around 3 or 4 Links. AoS:Sun does too, but careful use of Locomotive can often put that off until 5 or 6 Links, at which point it is deadly.

City C was built to in the 7th turn, and G was still not in use. As these were black, and farthest out, until cube pressures were very high there was no point building out that far: and since there is an infinity of cubes, it took some doing for it to be worth it: Bill was the one to finally do so (Yellow)

Initial city distributions which cluster the black cities can make for weird and interesting games!

You can see the extensive restationing that took place...

I see 8 Restationings in a 10 turn game. That's slightly low but still about right.

...The action was taken every turn by someone, though it was not used once by Bill, who took it for defensive reasons.

Yup. That's not too uncommon either, tho usually they manage to find something offensive to do with it on the same turn.

The last two turns got a bit silly.

It is unusual to be that profitable that early. High profits are common in the late game, with most games ending with incomes in the 50-70 range, but most of that value is made in the last two turns when players can run for a max of $24 income per turn. It is at this point (usually) that the come-from-behind winners try to emerge. I've seen more than one game where the clear last-place player gets to 6/2 first and then manages to slam home ~$48 in income on the last two turns to take the win.

At this point we all more-or-less had to switch to a second colour. I was blue and black, Holly was red and green, and Bill was Yellow and Purple. I had $35 in hand at the start of the 8th turn, Bill had ~$21, and Holly a touch less. Bidding was the highest seen yet, with first place going for $5 (and the restation action), and first move being the obvious choice in second. I believe Holly took Turn Order Pass with her coveted Last Build position.

First turn bidding is usually close to nothing. From there on until profitability each turn's bids usually run between $5 and $8 for first place. After profitability things change and late game bids of $20+ or $30+ are not uncommon.

I had two 12 deliveries, and became the most profitable I ever have been in Age of Steam: my cash on hand at the start of the last turn was $54.

Heh.

With the first move in the auction, I took the cautious way out: I passed. With the bucks I had, I reckoned I could fix anything too terrible that happened to my network (though they managed to use up almost all of the town tiles, so this wasn't that true)...

Yep, that's the big risk. It isn't uncommon to be entirely out of both complex track tiles and 3-exit towns and broad curves by the last turn.

I had a couple of options on my network for 12s to foil their options to mess me up.

A lot of the game comes down to not only predicting other's track moves, but also in keeping your own backup delivery contingencies open. It is a great thing to have three or four roughly equivalent delivery sets awaiting you at the start of a turn: it is unlikely that the other players will be able to kill ALL of them.

It's kinda nice having all of the towns in your network: then people can't add more.

Yup. This is one of the core values of the track knot: every tile has a town on it, so there's no possibility of adding more towns to your routes there. If you've engaged lightly enough that you can get through there you then have absolutely wonderful delivery length control for most of the game.

On further plays, there may (likely will) be more track laid strictly to mess the other guy up, especially the leader.

Awww, say it isn't so!

Clearclaw: you complain about chaos in Korea?

Yeah, I'm not fond of that map. I find the track patterns in AoS:Sun to be fairly predictable and understandable. I don't understand dice.

The instant production rules make for interesting choices of what to deliver where.

Yup. That was one of the goals of that action both in AoS:London and AoS:Sun: more interesting decisions.

City H was a huge source of cubes for me in the mid-game, until other people started delivering cubes away and producing at the destination. However, these are easy to screw up: we had three too few cubes on the board for at least the last three turns. (I counted the leftovers.)

Looking at your images I see only 35 goods cubes on the map. There should be 40 at all times.

Restation is mean.

Like a dull knife in expert hands.

Does anyone ever take more links capacity by giving up a delivery, except for the 12 train?

It is occasionally worthwhile for a 3/2 or 4/2, but not often. It invariably critical to get to 6/2 before the other players.

Conversely, it makes the locomotive action almost as good as in the normal game, as the player can bump their links and then deliver two goods at the new level, so long as they start in the same place.

Yep, which makes it almost necessarily the action chosen by the turn order winner, and in turn makes it equally necessarily entirely subject to predation by the other players.

The temptation is there, the temptation is huge, but can you actually manage to get away with it and make decent money off Locomotive? You get to build first and thus clearly reveal all your plans and possibilities to the other players. Can they stop you?

Cube and route planning is a huge part of properly evaluating and using the Locomotive action well.

Here's one more picture of the final track (and score), with the track ownership tokens removed so you can actually see the track, unlike in the previous picture.

]]>

Your track knot is shocking clean and orderly. I know that may seem scary, but I'm used to much more nasty and contorted track knots, full of 3 exit towns and very Gordian patterns.

Question for the designer: Is it possible to build and upgrade a piece of track in the same built, or alternately to lay a complex tile without it being a town?

Yes, it is possible to build and upgrade the same track tile on the same turn. The classic case is of course for Urbanisation, but it can also happen if your new track goes through an then later loops back to build across one of the track segments you just built. Note that players may not build multiple direct connections between the same two locations (towns or cities), thus preventing building a segment to a town, and then building out of that town and across the previous segment as that would create two direct connections between the same two locations.

Also note that AoS:Sun, unlike the base game, does not require that all track builds trace back through the same player's track to a city. Town-->town in the middle of other player's track is just fine and a useful offensive weapon.

No, it is not possible to build a complex track tile without it being a town. All complex tiles are towns without exception.

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-12T06:42:46+00:00

texasjdl wrote:
Excalabur wrote:
Clearclaw: you complain about chaos in Korea?

Heh, that's exactly what I said to JC after my first play...

I'm working on a longer reply to the main post above, but yes, I do consider AoS:Korea to be far more chaotic than AoS:Sun. I find the track patterns on AoS:Sun to be moderately predictable. In AoS:Sun I feel I've a good handle on predicting and controlling where track will be built. With AoS:Korea up to 12 cities can change colour per turn, and in fact on most turns at least 7 will in fact change colour. I have absolutely no control over what goods cubes are produced when in AoS:Korea and thus what cities change colour when, and for me that's much more chaotic.

(Edited mainty to fix wrong nouns and negatives)

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

texasjdl — 2007-04-12T02:47:36+00:00

Excalabur wrote:
Clearclaw: you complain about chaos in Korea?

Heh, that's exactly what I said to JC after my first play...

Thread: Designer rule clarifications for Age of Steam:London & Sun

clearclaw — 2007-04-11T23:57:24+00:00

AoS:London and AoS:Sun:

1) If players run out of track ownership markers they may continue building track by using the track markers from another unused colour or an other convenient marker (pennies, M&Ms, whatever).

2) The same player may not build multiple direct connections between the same two locations (towns or cities)

3) There is no limit on the number of town markers in the game. If more are needed use small coins or any other convenient marker. Track tiles of all types are however limited.

4) Track builds may be started and/or ended by upgrading track in another player's track. It is not required that a track build be traceable through that SAME PLAYER'S track to a city. It is legal if the track traces back to a city via another player's track.

Thread: Re: Traaains on the Sun

Asdnart — 2007-04-11T19:23:08+00:00

Towns proliferated, and Bill's network was rapidly depleted of cities: he often only had once city in his network, as Holly and I repeatedly took his towns. I think he may have more respect for the restation action next game.
This was in large part due to the fact that I was more or less trying to be left alone up on the top part of the board. I think I ended up taking the restationing action about my 'share', but the thing that killed me was that when cities would restation away from me, they would go to the center of the board, where I couldn't easily reconnect them. If I was more centrally located, having things restationed away wouldn't have been such a disaster, as I could just reconnect to the new city (as you cannot both restation and fill all the exits from the city in one turn). As it turned out, not only did I not have cities to deliver to, but my late-game cube reserve (the initial reason for playing off in the corner) didn't materialize, as I was always running cubes from non-cities on the outside into the middle, where the new cubes didn't help me as much as they helped the other players. I feel that this, and not failing to take restationing often enough, was my basic strategic error.

This is an example of why I like this particular expansion (and London) so much: the game is changed enough that the usual strategies do not necessarily apply.

Thread: Traaains on the Sun

Excalabur — 2007-04-11T05:50:25+00:00

A first playing of JC Lawrence's Age of Steam: Sun was had this weekend.

The players were myself, Bill (asdnart), and Holly (my girlfriend).

Due to the unique features of the map, there will be little description of 'and then so-and-so connected to such-and-such' in this session, as the locations of the cities vary both between, and within, give games. In future, there may be many of pictures taken in order to adequately describe the game: this one will only have three. Click on them to see them in all their glory, as they're nigh unusuable as-is. Not sure how to embiggen them in-line.

The first turn's turn-auction, like many in the game, was short and sweet. Holly 'won' the auction for a buck and took the locomotive, Bill in second took first move, and I took restation with last.

Holly connected the yellow city to the black city with three straight bits of track, with four cubes to potentially move between them, and Bill connected the yellow city to the purple one (with three straight bits of track at 60 degree's to Holly's), with three cubes to move, all from Yellow to Purple.

I was left with a bunch of lousy choices, and wound up building five bits of track, and moving the Yellow city to the middle of Bill's track. This caused Holly to give Bill income, which is unfortunate, but was, I belive, the best I could do in the circumstances. Total towns so far: 2. Income was 3-2-2 for Bill.

The second turn was one largely of consolidation. Bill built out to the Blue city (which had four blue cubes as it's first four productions), which was promptly restationed (by me?) to the intersection of my and Holly's tracks. Holly and I both built out to new cities as well, myself to a Black city and holly to Red.

The next few turns are a bit of a blur: I forgot to take notes, and we wound up suspending the game after turn 8 for two days, so I can't give details here. Towns proliferated, and Bill's network was rapidly depleted of cities: he often only had once city in his network, as Holly and I repeatedly took his towns. I think he may have more respect for the restation action next game. Until turn 7, I believe I had locomotive once, and the others split it fairly evenly, while Bill was low on restations.

Generally, everyone took more train every trun, with Holly skipping one turn to become profitable, and Bill skipping the transition to the 6x2 train because he had locomotive: a move he later thought to be a mistake. I broke even that turn (turn 6), with 22 shares, while everyone else was slightly more profitable due to not having the expensive train, with the shares finalling out at 22-22-18, with Holly lowest on the lose track.

Here is the game as of the start of the penultimate turn:
]]>
Some things to note:
I was the black player, and had 60 (!) income and was out of track ownership tokens. You mostly can't see my network for the ownership disks.

City C was built to in the 7th turn, and G was still not in use. As these were black, and farthest out, until cube pressures were very high there was no point building out that far: and since there is an infinity of cubes, it took some doing for it to be worth it: Bill was the one to finally do so (Yellow)

You can see the extensive restationing that took place: the action was taken every turn by someone, though it was not used once by Bill, who took it for defensive reasons.

At this point we posted a rules question to Clearclaw regarding running out of track tokens: the rules are silent on the matter, and AoS is generally token limited, but the ruling he made (just use another colour) makes this map play better: otherwise, my network would be untouchable by the other players. Due to the lateness of the hour (about 1:30AM), we decided to call the game for the night, and resumed Sunday after Holly and I got back from Easter dinner with my family.

The last two turns got a bit silly. At this point we all more-or-less had to switch to a second colour. I was blue and black, Holly was red and green, and Bill was Yellow and Purple. I had $35 in hand at the start of the 8th turn, Bill had ~$21, and Holly a touch less. Bidding was the highest seen yet, with first place going for $5 (and the restation action), and first move being the obvious choice in second. I believe Holly took Turn Order Pass with her coveted Last Build position.

I built from between D and E via the town to the right of B to G: 10 bits of track. Bill built from the southernmost city with some shenanigans to E via two towns: he carefully built his track to be mostly untouchable with the remaining complex tiles. Holly built from a new town out to G, crossing my track for an extra link, and using all shallow curves to disrupt further towns (at this point we were out of 'bow-and-arrow' tiles). Bill, unfortunately for him, was only able to deliver a 12 and a 6, while Holly used this turn to finally get the 6x2 train which she had passed on the previous turn. I had two 12 deliveries, and became the most profitable I ever have been in Age of Steam: my cash on hand at the start of the last turn was $54.

I'll put the game-end picture here, and then explain the nonsense that went on in the last turn:

]]>

With the first move in the auction, I took the cautious way out: I passed. With the bucks I had, I reckoned I could fix anything too terrible that happened to my network (though they managed to use up almost all of the town tiles, so this wasn't that true), and the ability to have a bombproof plan seemed nice. Bill grabbed first for a buck or two, and took the restation action.

He then woefully failed at counting. On this turn, he restationed F out on the right, and built the link connecting to it from the North, after carefully counting out a bunch of cubes as sevens via the further right coin-city on his northern section, assuming that someone stuck a town on his network somewhere. By a brilliant piece of deduction, the city he built to must be one closer, yes?

Well, no. Oops. He wound up delivering a 10 and an 8 this turn.

Holly built second, and went out to city C in the south, adding that town Bill thought he wanted.

Then I was up last, and has 18 tiles of track to lay, and one complex track tile left in the game. So I built from one end of the map to the other. Via a town. Turns out the town was a dumb idea: The link may have been useful if I hadn't. This was mostly a point grab, plus it looked absolutely rediculous, which is worth points all on its own.

Holly had two twelves this turn to almost catch up to Bill, and I had a couple of options on my network for 12s to foil their options to mess me up.

Final scores:[c]
Devin 242=3*(84 income - 22 shares) +56 track
Bill 168=3*(61 income - 22 shares) +51 track
Holly 138=3*(52 income - 18 shares) +36 track
[/c]
Comments:
It's kinda nice having all of the towns in your network: then people can't add more.
On further plays, there may (likely will) be more track laid strictly to mess the other guy up, especially the leader.
Clearclaw: you complain about chaos in Korea?
The instant production rules make for interesting choices of what to deliver where. City H was a huge source of cubes for me in the mid-game, until other people started delivering cubes away and producing at the destination. However, these are easy to screw up: we had three too few cubes on the board for at least the last three turns. (I counted the leftovers.)
Restation is mean.
Does anyone ever take more links capacity by giving up a delivery, except for the 12 train? This seems mostly useless. Conversely, it makes the locomotive action almost as good as in the normal game, as the player can bump their links and then deliver two goods at the new level, so long as they start in the same place.

Here's one more picture of the final track (and score), with the track ownership tokens removed so you can actually see the track, unlike in the previous picture.

]]>

Question for the designer: Is it possible to build and upgrade a piece of track in the same built, or alternately to lay a complex tile without it being a town?

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

clearclaw — 2007-04-10T16:45:49+00:00

dedefortin wrote:
The players had between 15 to 20 tracks in the end. Pierre had the lowest amount of shares (10) and Laurence had the most at 14.

Thanks.

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

dedefortin — 2007-04-10T12:41:35+00:00

The players had between 15 to 20 tracks in the end. Pierre had the lowest amount of shares (10) and Laurence had the most at 14.

Pierre

Thread: Re: Age of Steam London session report

clearclaw — 2007-04-10T08:14:44+00:00

dedefortin wrote:
This play was better than our last on this map. We still had a tough time but we had more fun.

I'm glad.

We were able to keep our number of shares very low and nobody took more than 14 shares.

Interesting. I rarely see winning players here with much less than 18 shares issued astrack is 33% more valuable than in the base game.

Final scoring:

Pierre: 56
Mario: 48
Laurence: 47
Marc-Andre: 45

What were the final score breakdowns? We usually see 30+ track VPs for the winning players (I think the highest I've seen in 38), plus incomes in the mid 30's for four player games.

Thread: Age of Steam London session report

dedefortin — 2007-04-10T03:03:11+00:00

We tried this map some week ago with 6 players and we really had a tough time so tonight we decided to give it another try but this time woth 4 players. Laurence, Mario and Pierre already knew the rules and Marc-Andre was fast to understand.

This scenario is very different from the others and to show this, Marc-Andre won the loco action on turn 1 with a 4th place ! Pierre was first in the betting round and choose the engineer action to build in the middle of the map along with the 3 other players who choose this location. Marc-Andre was on for a big start but Mario put an agressive urbanization right on turn 2 and Marc-Andre was confused by this action and had to make small deliveries and he also had to back on the income track. As in our first game money was a problem for everyone and Laurence won the initiative with 2$ on round 2 and she choose the important black urbanization on her network. Mario went south, Marc-Andre was trying to make a loop and Pierre was building toward the northwest. On the next round Marc-Andre used the blue urbanization on Pierre's network to deny him 2 nice shippings but he wasn't able to finish his loop. I don't really understand why he made this move since it was Mario who earlier made an agressive urbanization on his network, I suppose he forgot since he would never have done a move like this Pierre won the loco action and decided not to build in this turn and prepare himself for the next turn. This was a good move by Pierre and in the next turn he won the urbanization action and made 2 shippings of 5 income each. Mario was finally able to complete his expensive loop in the south and he made nice shiipings. Laurence connected the southeast cities and made a nice comeback.

This play was better than our last on this map. We still had a tough time but we had more fun. We were able to keep our number of shares very low and nobody took more than 14 shares.

Final scoring:

Pierre: 56
Mario: 48
Laurence: 47
Marc-Andre: 45

Image

Asdnart — 2007-04-09T17:49:26+00:00

Track after a three player game.

Image

Asdnart — 2007-04-09T17:48:36+00:00

Final board in a three player game of Sun. The players are Black/Blue, Red/Green, and Yellow/Purple.

Image

Asdnart — 2007-04-09T17:47:13+00:00

Two turns remaining in a three player game.

Thread: Re: Do the track ownership tokens constitute a limit on play

clearclaw — 2007-04-07T18:10:03+00:00

Excalabur wrote:
Hm. I'm not convinced that the town markers don't constitute a limit on play in standard AoS, given that the tiles are limited and the town tokens are approximately equivalent.

I'm told by Ted Alspach that John has clarified that town tokens are not a limit. I've not seen that clarification personally. Certainly many of my maps tend to run out of town markers (AoS:Sun, AoS:Launch!, AoS:Wales, AoS:South East Australia, etc) and I do not consider town tokens to be limited for my maps.

Town tiles, like complex tiles, seem a rather different thing as they have a specific track arrangement. They are much more specific and particular than generic town tokens. That said I think the track limits in AoS are rather silly and unnecessary but I don't change those rules for my maps.

We put the game on the hold pending an answer, so the conclusion will be played out tomorrow.

Hehn. I tried to answer as fast as I could -- I think my first reply (before editing) was no more than 15 minutes after the original post!

At the moment, start of the 2nd last turn, two players are ludicrously profitable--I think I made $33 last turn, with a 6x2 train and 22 issued shares.

Yeah, that sounds like a fairly typical first game. I expect your next game will be very different and will have much lower incomes. It usually takes a game or two before players fully realise how track will develop, how to predict it and how to properly fight against each other. eg You should know before the start of the first turn where the track knot will develop and have something of a plan as to how to engage it.

This is all kinds of track, so knowing if I could build was a touch important: the shenanigans this turn may be a bit silly.

Oh, I believe. Manipulating what town tiles are available when and more particularly what tiles aren't available to other players when they want them can be critical to the game.

Note that the base game's rulebook is silent on the matter, but in a 'mostly irrelevant' fashion. It may be worth adding in this detail in a clarification on here or in the downloadable rules, given that the 'counter mix limit' is usually enforced by default if nothing else.

Yeah, good point. I'll have a chat with Ted on that.

Thread: Re: Do the track ownership tokens constitute a limit on play

Excalabur — 2007-04-07T06:41:32+00:00

Hm. I'm not convinced that the town markers don't constitute a limit on play in standard AoS, given that the tiles are limited and the town tokens are approximately equivalent.

We put the game on the hold pending an answer, so the conclusion will be played out tomorrow. At the moment, start of the 2nd last turn, two players are ludicrously profitable--I think I made $33 last turn, with a 6x2 train and 22 issued shares.

This is all kinds of track, so knowing if I could build was a touch important: the shenanigans this turn may be a bit silly.

Note that the base game's rulebook is silent on the matter, but in a 'mostly irrelevant' fashion. It may be worth adding in this detail in a clarification on here or in the downloadable rules, given that the 'counter mix limit' is usually enforced by default if nothing else.

Thread: Re: Do the track ownership tokens constitute a limit on play

clearclaw — 2007-04-07T05:38:58+00:00

Asdnart wrote:
If it is the case that one is out of track ownership tokens, what happens?

Nothing particular happens. Use another colour that's not already being used and keep playing. Likewise there's an infinite supply of town markers. The game only supplies 10, but if you run out use small coins or anything else you want.

Furthermore, if one runs out of same before getting 51+ points, what happens?

Just use another colour. Typically I'll keep two matching tokens for the income track and use the mixed colours on the map.

A session report and photos will be coming to explain this post.

Yep. I expect you played AoS:Sun. It isn't too uncommon on that map to run out of both track tokens and town markers.

Thread: Do the track ownership tokens constitute a limit on play?

Asdnart — 2007-04-07T05:20:16+00:00

If it is the case that one is out of track ownership tokens, what happens?

Furthermore, if one runs out of same before getting 51+ points, what happens?

A session report and photos will be coming to explain this post.

-- Excalabur (on asdnart's computer)
(On turn 8, and out of tokens)

Thread: Re: First impressions

clearclaw — 2007-03-30T02:16:29+00:00

Verkisto wrote:
A week ago, we played Age of Steam: The Sun, one of the many professional expansions for one of my favorite games.

Bless you!

These cities may be picked up and placed elsewhere on the board, if you pick the right action on your turn (or, more specifically, you bid high enough to choose the right action on your turn).

One of the interesting facets to the game is that the earlier in the turn order that the restationing action is chosen, the less it is actually worth. It is most valuable (to the choosing player) when taken by the last player in the turn order.

The board also has no towns to start with; instead, any time a player creates a track that crosses someone else's track, he creates a town at that hex. It's very weird, and open to different styles of play.

Yes. It also requires that players compete and interfere with each other's track starting with the first turn of the game and never stop. More amusingly this interference is basically good for both sides, both the player whose track is being cut up by towns (if it is done in minor expected moderation), and the player who is building those towns. Unlike the base game in which the player who is left alone too often too easily wins, to play effectively in AoS:Sun you have to constantly mix it up with the other player's track. If you don't you will lose. You have to get involved and to manage that communal player involvement effectively to earn the highest profits.

I have to say outright: I won the game. We called the game two turns before the end because of time, but I'm fairly certain that I would have been the winner, regardless. I had enough of a lead to keep the other two players from being too much of a threat.

That's the common pattern with first plays on AoS:Sun. It breaks too many habits from the base game and players don't realise how confrontational and collusive they really have to be, with the result that one player runs away with a screaming score.

In this case, I felt like I knew what I was doing through the course of the game.

Excellent!

I bid high to go first one every round, and managed to win the bid each time.

This is simple bad play on the other player's parts. AoS:Sun will handsomely reward this pattern if they let you get away with it. They shouldn't. Simply, being later in the turn order they need to issue enough shares themselves that they know that they can dominate any bid you may make and thus they can have their selection of whatever action they might want. It is that simple, and the players have to communally enforce the game on each other in this way if they wish to have any chance of winning.

Since I was acting single-mindedly, I opted to take the locomotive any time that I could.

This is most critical in turn 3, at which point you should have 4/1 Links, and if you get Locomotive, be attempting to run a 4/2. Almost invariably the game hinges on the outcome of that turn and the later exploitation of the results of that turn. The game certainly isn't decided in turn 3, rather that's just the point at which the basic game struggle and the player positions in the struggle are first defined. With experienced and aggressive players the likely winner usually won't clearly be identified until around turn 7 -- at which point they have 3 more turns of them against all the other players together to try and secure their win.

...but really, even if I had made a mistake by choosing locomotive based on what I needed to do, it always seemed in my best interest that the other players not get to use it.

Absolutely. And it is thus in the interest of the other players to ensure that if you do get Locomotive, that you spend so much for it that you fail to cover expenses if you don't also get to use it sufficiently profitably. And, of course, they will aggressively try and help you fail to make your desired deliveries by adding towns, moving your destinations away and stealing your goods cubes.

It took us about five turns before we started messing with each other by creating towns where they hadn't been before, and moving cities around on the board.

Yeouch! This is way way too late. Far too late. Messing with the other player's track needs to start from the very first turn of the game, usually with the second or third player in the turn order, frequently with both of them. It is not and should not be unusual for the Locomotive player on the first turn of AoS:Sun to find that they have no goods cubes to deliver because not only were too many towns inserted into their link, but the intended destination for their delivery was also moved away.

Yes, this needs to happen on the first turn and every turn after that too. that's the way the game works: It needs to players to force each other to make it balance.

I would like to play it again with people who have played the map before. I think messing with each other from the start of the game would make it far more interesting, and much more challenging.

Yup! You'll have a blast.

Thread: First impressions

Verkisto — 2007-03-29T18:18:02+00:00

A week ago, we played Age of Steam: The Sun, one of the many professional expansions for one of my favorite games. This was our first play of the expansion, and it was ... interesting. The board has no permanent cities printed on it, and there will only ever be eight cities on the board. These cities may be picked up and placed elsewhere on the board, if you pick the right action on your turn (or, more specifically, you bid high enough to choose the right action on your turn). The board also has no towns to start with; instead, any time a player creates a track that crosses someone else's track, he creates a town at that hex. It's very weird, and open to different styles of play.

Furthermore, the locomotive on this map acts differently, since you can increase your link size, or you can increase your link capacity. So, you can decide to upgrade your capacity on your first turn to allow you to move three goods one space, or you can increase your link, which allows you to move one good two spaces. The cost for either upgrade is the same, but if you also have the locomotive action, you can, for that turn, act as if you are one step higher on your links or your capacity. Oh, and you can issue up to 25 shares on this map, which you'll need, since all track costs 4 to build, and you have no limit to the amount of track you can build on a turn. Yes, you read that correctly: You have no limit to the amount of track you can build on a turn!

I have to say outright: I won the game. We called the game two turns before the end because of time, but I'm fairly certain that I would have been the winner, regardless. I had enough of a lead to keep the other two players from being too much of a threat. This is a milestone for me, because the only other time I won a game of Age of Steam was more a result of errors made by other players, and less of any stellar play on my part. In this case, I felt like I knew what I was doing through the course of the game. I bid high to go first one every round, and managed to win the bid each time. Since I was acting single-mindedly, I opted to take the locomotive any time that I could. In this way, I could upgrade my locomotive as my first delivery action, and then deliver more than one good for that distance on my next action. In a couple of cases, I misunderstood some subtle point of one or more quirks of the map, and wound up not using the locomotive like I needed to on that turn. This created some frustration among the other players, but really, even if I had made a mistake by choosing locomotive based on what I needed to do, it always seemed in my best interest that the other players not get to use it.

It took us about five turns before we started messing with each other by creating towns where they hadn't been before, and moving cities around on the board. Malachi slowed me down for one turn by creating a town right in the middle of a sweet double five-link connection I could have made, making it a six-link connection, which I didn't have the locomotive to complete, and then he started dropping cities in the middle of my routes to limit what I could do with the longer connections. By that time, though, I had enough cash and income that I could continue to bid high on the first turn, locking both of them out of the turn order auction. It was weird, because it was the first time I had seen a runaway leader element in Age of Steam.

I really enjoy the base game, because it's so versatile, and open for new interpretations. I never get bored with the game, even when I'm losing, because it's such a fun challenge to figure out the best way to manipulate the maps. The Sun is one of the weirder challenges (Disco Inferno, I think, being the weirdest), and I would like to play it again with people who have played the map before. I think messing with each other from the start of the game would make it far more interesting, and much more challenging.

Thread: AoS:Sun -- Want to make it harder?

clearclaw — 2007-03-24T05:55:06+00:00

Want a tougher AoS:Sun experience? When setting up the board just make sure that all the new cities are placed around the edge of the map and none are placed in the centre section. While it varies slightly based on the goods cube distribution, this will generally will give the game a bit of a slower start, and a rougher and more aggressive mid-game.

Note: This is not a variant -- it entirely within the rules as written, published and intended. One of the design goals for the map was for the difficulty to be able to be dialed up and down based on the desires and experience of the players. Changing the way you setup the initial board as above allows that.

Thread: Re: Locomotive clarification

clearclaw — 2007-03-23T17:41:56+00:00

mortimersnerd wrote:
I'd like to confirm that we understand the Locomotive action as it interacts with the custom Links chart for AoS:Sun. It's straightforward for a player with a Links Capacity of 1, but somewhat counter-intuitive for a player with a Capacity of 2. After some very careful reading, we concluded that (for instance) a 4/2 + Locomotive can only be a 5/1, and NOT a 5/2 or 4/3: 4/3 is explicitly ruled out by the "within available values" phrase, and since Locomotive acts as a temporary Links increase we assume that "When increasing Links Size, Links Capacity is reset to 1" applies here too. Is this correct?

You are correct. The standard behaviour for a 4/2 player with Locomotive is to bump to a 5/1 and then try and run a 5/2 with his Locomotive action. It is this pattern which makes the middle section of the game so dangerous.

As an aside, 4/2 seems to be a really sweet spot on the links chart. This may be somewhat board & cube dependent, but with the few turn remaining once I'd got to that point it was impossible to justify forgoing one of those 6 - 8 income runs in order to "upgrade" further.

Yes, 4 Links forms the centre of the first sweet for almost all AoS maps. However if you are not regularly getting to 6/2 Links on AoS:Sun then you are not exploiting the full scoring potential of the map. 8 income is nice, yes, and that should first be attempted somewhere around turn 3 or 4. There's still 6-7 more turns left in a 3 player game to get to a 6/2 and it doesn't take many 12 income runs to balance the books.

Thread: Locomotive clarification

mortimersnerd — 2007-03-23T16:13:10+00:00

I'd like to confirm that we understand the Locomotive action as it interacts with the custom Links chart for AoS:Sun. It's straightforward for a player with a Links Capacity of 1, but somewhat counter-intuitive for a player with a Capacity of 2. After some very careful reading, we concluded that (for instance) a 4/2 + Locomotive can only be a 5/1, and NOT a 5/2 or 4/3: 4/3 is explicitly ruled out by the "within available values" phrase, and since Locomotive acts as a temporary Links increase we assume that "When increasing Links Size, Links Capacity is reset to 1" applies here too. Is this correct?

As an aside, 4/2 seems to be a really sweet spot on the links chart. This may be somewhat board & cube dependent, but with the few turn remaining once I'd got to that point it was impossible to justify forgoing one of those 6 - 8 income runs in order to "upgrade" further.