Game: Khronos

Thread: Re: 2 more questions!

DaveD — 2008-08-20T16:15:38+00:00

1. Yes

2. Yes

Thread: 2 more questions!

shadow9d9 — 2008-08-20T16:07:37+00:00

1. Can you upgrade the tiny blues on the map?

2. Size 2 buildings, if downsized, are destroyed in the ripples?

Seems most of the game is played in might and a bit of reason at the end...

Thanks!

Thread: Re: Move adventurer multiple times in a turn? Connecting domains...

GSReis — 2008-08-19T19:52:58+00:00

Also, when connecting domains, the manual makes it seem as though the military might is what is compared to determine downsizing.
I was fooled by the poor wording of the rules the first time I played, too. Where it reads "the procedure is identical" (during the Age of Faith), "analogous" would have been a much better word. So I compared military power to resolve religious conflicts, as well.

However, nowhere in the rules it's suggested that you check only one type of conflict. The previous poster is right, but just to make it clearer: regarding conflicts, the only difference between the two ages is the order they are resolved when both types happen in the same domain.

Thread: Re: Move adventurer multiple times in a turn? Connecting domains...

DaveD — 2008-08-19T18:59:22+00:00

CrankyPants wrote:

When joining domains, conflicts only arise if the preferred building type is in conflict. During the Age or Might, conflicts for the largest keep are all that need to be resolved. Largest church is irrelevant. In the Age of Faith, it's the opposite -- churches matter, keeps don't.

This is not correct, both types of conflict must be checked. In the Age of Might you first resolve any military conflict and then of there is a religious conflict following that, then that is resolved.

In the Age of Faith you check religous conflict first and then military.

The Rules wrote:

During the Age of Might :
The player provoking the junction calculates the Military power of the original domains (meaning the sum of the values of all Military buildings) no matter who the owner of those buildings is individually. If one domain is more powerful than the others, the buildings within the weaker domains are downsized. (See Downsizing a building).

In the event of equal power, the building(s) to be downsized would be in priority those of the player who caused the junction or if the player has no building affected by the violation of the Hierarchical rule, the building the player chooses.

The player proceeds in the same manner if the Hierarchical rule is not respected for Religious buildings.

During the Age of Faith :
The procedure is identical but the player who has provoked the junction verifies the Rule of Hierarchy for the Religious buildings first, then the Military buildings.

Thread: Re: Move adventurer multiple times in a turn? Connecting domains...

shadow9d9 — 2008-08-19T18:57:30+00:00

CrankyPants wrote:
shadow9d9 wrote:
Could I move an adventurer, build, and then move them again after(for scoring rounds 4 and 7)?
Yes, as long as you pay for each move.
shadow9d9 wrote:
For example, if a domain is linked in the age of might, and there are 2 of the same rank religious buildings, does the might determine the winner? In the age of religion, would the religion determine the winner? What if there is a military conflict in the age of religion?
When joining domains, conflicts only arise if the preferred building type is in conflict. During the Age or Might, conflicts for the largest keep are all that need to be resolved. Largest church is irrelevant. In the Age of Faith, it's the opposite -- churches matter, keeps don't.

Excellent, good to know.

Thread: Re: Move adventurer multiple times in a turn? Connecting domains...

CrankyPants — 2008-08-19T18:36:49+00:00

shadow9d9 wrote:
Could I move an adventurer, build, and then move them again after(for scoring rounds 4 and 7)?
Yes, as long as you pay for each move.
shadow9d9 wrote:
For example, if a domain is linked in the age of might, and there are 2 of the same rank religious buildings, does the might determine the winner? In the age of religion, would the religion determine the winner? What if there is a military conflict in the age of religion?
When joining domains, conflicts only arise if the preferred building type is in conflict. During the Age or Might, conflicts for the largest keep are all that need to be resolved. Largest church is irrelevant. In the Age of Faith, it's the opposite -- churches matter, keeps don't.

Thread: Move adventurer multiple times in a turn? Connecting domains...

shadow9d9 — 2008-08-19T18:12:58+00:00

Could I move an adventurer, build, and then move them again after(for scoring rounds 4 and 7)?

Also, when connecting domains, the manual makes it seem as though the military might is what is compared to determine downsizing. The only difference in the age of religion is that the religious buildings compete... however, on the forums here, people make it seem like you compare religious power in the age of religion.. which is correct?

For example, if a domain is linked in the age of might, and there are 2 of the same rank religious buildings, does the might determine the winner? In the age of religion, would the religion determine the winner? What if there is a military conflict in the age of religion?

Thread: Re: Rule changes between 1st and 2nd edition

Matthias_K — 2008-08-19T09:57:12+00:00

cymric wrote:
I think you misunderstand the rule, to be perfectly honest. (Or I'm really getting confused---I cannot find that discussion you alluded to, I'm afraid ...) If you want to play 3 or 4 cards combined, you must have both travellers present on the board, true. But there is nothing stopping you from spending 3 or 4 cards seperately on the same board, jumping through time at the appropriate moment---as long as, of course, you don't spend more than 2 cards per adventurer.

This is correct. Just reading the above comments made me realise again how difficult it was to word this rule in the translation. Did you perchange play with the second edition of the game containing the Dutch translation?

Thread: Re: Rule changes between 1st and 2nd edition

cymric — 2008-08-19T07:44:45+00:00

I think you misunderstand the rule, to be perfectly honest. (Or I'm really getting confused---I cannot find that discussion you alluded to, I'm afraid ...) If you want to play 3 or 4 cards combined, you must have both travellers present on the board, true. But there is nothing stopping you from spending 3 or 4 cards seperately on the same board, jumping through time at the appropriate moment---as long as, of course, you don't spend more than 2 cards per adventurer.

Thread: Re: Age of Faith - what's the point?

ASLChampion — 2008-08-19T01:40:25+00:00

fellonmyhead wrote:

Everybody was aware that more money is earned for building during the Age of Faith; the trouble is in order to earn that money you have to have an adventurer then. But if you continually build in the Age of Faith the likelihood is somebody will build something else in the Age of Might causing ripples to remove what you have just built.

As a result of this, it seems totally logical to build primarily during the Age of Might, moving adventurers only to the times in which you are scoring best at the appropriate point.

Does anybody else have an opinion? Is there something I am missing, is there room for improvement in the design or is it just a quirk of the game I should live with?

If you want to build in the Age of Faith(AoF), I'd advise you to place some "1" size buildings in the AoM to prevent Time Shadowing in the future. You have to block the other players. For them to eliminate your building in the AoF, they'd have to expend one VP to eliminate your small building, then get the 1VP back if they upgrade/build a larger building, thus breaking even on a build. They'd spend 1 VP to get 2VP (with 2 upgrades) while you'd immediately get 4VP with 2 upgrades. Net immediate effect. ENEMY gain 1VP
YOU gain 4VP

Yes you are vulnerable, but the reward may well be worth it.

Thread: Re: Rule changes between 1st and 2nd edition

ASLChampion — 2008-08-19T01:29:40+00:00

cymric wrote:
Well, there is a change, quite a significant one. The restriction that you could spend the two cards per adventurer on a single board has been dropped; you can now play a card on board A, move the adventurer to board B, and play another card there. The restriction is therefore now 'no more than 2 cards per adventurer'.

This is not the case. Follow the thread concerning card play.

To play 3 or 4 cards in an AGE BOTH of your travelers must be present. They may move before or after the card play, however, they may only play cards on one board together or 2 boards separately.

Image

Mortyr — 2008-08-17T13:52:32+00:00

My Painted Figures

Thread: Re: Time travel is hard!

phlipy — 2008-07-08T10:56:45+00:00

gmarius wrote:
Time travel is hard...but alas...not much fun, either.
I agree. In my mind Khronos is a good example of an abstract game with an interesting theme painted on it. Sadly - even with having in mind it is an abstract game - I find it arduous and boring.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

cymric — 2008-07-04T15:04:58+00:00

kilrah wrote:
Argh! Definitely get the 2nd edition rules. The first one is horrible to understand. Not that the second edition is easy, but the first is so much worse.
While various textual errors have been corrected, some formulations which really could have used a little polishing up were left in place---by coincidence, the topic the OP asked about is still not as clear as one would ideally want it. In other words, if you found it difficult to grasp how the various mechanics combined to form the game of Khronos, then getting the 2nd Ed. won't be a great help; it will still be a confusing mass of text. While not having to worry about odd grammar is a big plus, the tutorial is a much better alternative in getting to understand the game.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

fellonmyhead — 2008-07-04T14:47:17+00:00

http://www.riograndegames.com/uploads/Game/Game_222_gameRule...

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

dagibbs — 2008-07-04T14:16:11+00:00

kilrah wrote:
dagibbs wrote:

I have the edition in which the rules are written in English, French, and German in three parallel columns. The English rules aren't clear enough to come to this conclusion -- are you basing this on your interpretation of the same set of rules, or do you have another source?

Argh! Definitely get the 2nd edition rules. The first one is horrible to understand. Not that the second edition is easy, but the first is so much worse.

Can you suggest where I might find the 2nd edition of the rules? I didn't see any links on the BGG page for them, and the rules at http://www.matagot.com/docs/Khronos_rules.pdf seem to be the same as the ones I worked from.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

kilrah — 2008-07-04T08:56:09+00:00

dagibbs wrote:

I have the edition in which the rules are written in English, French, and German in three parallel columns. The English rules aren't clear enough to come to this conclusion -- are you basing this on your interpretation of the same set of rules, or do you have another source?

Argh! Definitely get the 2nd edition rules. The first one is horrible to understand. Not that the second edition is easy, but the first is so much worse.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

dagibbs — 2008-07-02T19:02:15+00:00

cymric wrote:
You can check this against the not-too-easy tutorial if you want, it shows how this goes in practice.

Thanks, that tutorial was very helpful for illustrating a few things.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

cymric — 2008-07-02T18:07:26+00:00

dagibbs wrote:
In the Age of Might, if a joining creates hierarchy conflicts for religious buildings (whether or not for military buildings), is the hierarchy conflict resolved by comparing the military strength of the two original domains, or by comparing the religious strength of the original two domains?
In Might: military is checked first, then religion (using military might and religious might respectively), in Faith: the other way around. But whatever is checked second is checked against the state of the board at that time, i.e., after the downsizing of the military buildings when in Might or religious buildings when in Faith. Khronos has no memory for past situations! Cf. page 12 of the rule book.

In any age, if a hierarchy conflict is created [...] by severing two domains (whether due to the down-sizing of a building due to losing a conflict triggered by merging, or due to the destruction of a connecting building by playing the card & ECU cost to do so), how do you resolve which building(s) lose?
See page 14 of the rule book: ... If the Hierarchical rule is not respected, the downsized building will be in priority that of the player who provoked the separation or [the choice of the player] if [he] is not [affected] by the violation of the Hierarchical rule. ...(Emphasis original, slightly modified obviously incorrect grammar and awkward word choice.) In other words, no priority of military over religion or the other way around, just: the provoking player downsizes own buildings first, and if he isn't involved directly, it's his choice who gets to suffer. You can check this against the not-too-easy tutorial if you want, it shows how this goes in practice.

Further, if you ripple a non-civic building forward in time, and this rippling triggers a merger of two domains, is this a legal play? (You can't merge two domains by building such a building directly, but can you do so by rippling?) If you do so, how is this resolved?
No, you can't. See p. 11 of the rule book:... If a Military or Religious building, constructed on the Age of Might board violates the Rule of Dominion on the Age of Faith board, the building does not cast a shadow and the building is not ripples. The Age of Faith in this instance defies Might. ...Naturally, if it doesn't show up on Faith, it doesn't show up on Reason either. Of course your response is now Well, can you build on Faith and not have it show up on Reason? and that would be a good question. The answer is, perhaps, startling: the structure of large buildings on Reason is a copy of that on Faith. If it's on Reason, it's on Faith, too. This result is a combination of the rules that:

- you cannot build nor destroy on Reason, everything appears there as an echo of earlier times;
- small size 1-buildings are never rippled; and
- printed hamlets are invulnerable to destruction.

Faith and Reason resemble each other to the point where there can never be a conflict on Reason which would not be on Faith as well, so there is no need for special rules to cover a situation where 'Reason defies Faith', and such.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

dagibbs — 2008-07-02T15:04:06+00:00

And, another oddity in the rules edition I was looking at:

Under the English rules, it states that your ECUs can be kept either face up or face down. Since the coins are double-sided printed the same on either side, this seemed like an utterly useless bit of information. Reading the French, though, it said they could be visible or hidden -- quite a bit different. Oops.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

dagibbs — 2008-07-02T15:02:16+00:00

kilrah wrote:

dagibbs wrote:

In the Age of Might, if a joining creates hierarchy conflicts for religious buildings (whether or not for military buildings), is the hierarchy conflict resolved by comparing the military strength of the two original domains, or by comparing the religious strength of the original two domains?

Its always the strength of the type of conflict. Only if two conflicts arise at the same time the age of the conflict is of relevance.

I have the edition in which the rules are written in English, French, and German in three parallel columns. The English rules aren't clear enough to come to this conclusion -- are you basing this on your interpretation of the same set of rules, or do you have another source?

kilrah wrote:

I am not sure what problem you have here, but your answer definitely seems to be the correct one. Triggering player has to downsize his own buildings first.

My problem is that I didn't find anywhere in the rules that specified what to do in such a situation, the rules only talked about a hierarchy conflict when domains are joined, not when they are sundered.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

DaveD — 2008-07-02T09:00:51+00:00

As kilrah says you always use the strength corresponding to the buildings involved, so if it is religous buildings you compare religous strength and if military buildings, you use military strength. the age only comes in to determine the order of the conflicts, so in the Age of Might military conflicts are resolved first, in the Age of Faith religous conflicts are resolved first.

Your second interpretation seems correct.

Referring to the original Matagot rules (I don't have access to the Rio Grande rule, which I gather contain a few changes), if a military or religous building rippling through time would cause a violation of the Rule of Dominion or the Rule of Hierachy, the building will not ripple, so the answer to your last question is it is a legal play but no rippling will take place so no mergers are caused.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

kilrah — 2008-07-02T08:35:39+00:00

In the Age of Might, if a joining creates hierarchy conflicts for religious buildings (whether or not for military buildings), is the hierarchy conflict resolved by comparing the military strength of the two original domains, or by comparing the religious strength of the original two domains?

Its always the strength of the type of conflict. Only if two conflicts arise at the same time the age of the conflict is of relevance.

dagibbs wrote:

In any age, if a hierarchy conflict is created not by merging two domains, but by severing two domains (whether due to the down-sizing of a building due to losing a conflict triggered by merging, or due to the destruction of a connecting building by playing the card & ECU cost to do so), how do you resolve which building(s) lose? There was no way to compare domain strengths, so we reverted to the "tied" rule, and said that if they player that triggered the event was involved, then their building(s) must lose, and if there were any remaining conflicts, then the player that triggered the event must choose. Was this correct?

I am not sure what problem you have here, but your answer definitely seems to be the correct one. Triggering player has to downsize his own buildings first.

dagibbs wrote:

Further, if you ripple a non-civic building forward in time, and this rippling triggers a merger of two domains, is this a legal play? (You can't merge two domains by building such a building directly, but can you do so by rippling?) If you do so, how is this resolved? How much "power" does this rippled building have, for such hierarchy conflicts? Or, is this a unitary conflict as I've mentioned in the paragraph above?

Not sure here as I don't have the rules handy, but I think that in this case the building won't be rippled in time.

Thread: Re: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

EvilTimmy — 2008-07-02T06:16:26+00:00

This question reaffirms why I put the rules back in the box, put the game up on a shelf, and have just decided to forget it

Thread: Rules - hierarchy conflicts, how to resolve? And rippling that causes merges?

dagibbs — 2008-07-02T01:38:58+00:00

In reading the rules for hierarchy conflicts when playing Khronos the other day we found the rules for resolving them ambiguous.

In the Age of Might, if a joining creates hierarchy conflicts for religious buildings (whether or not for military buildings), is the hierarchy conflict resolved by comparing the military strength of the two original domains, or by comparing the religious strength of the original two domains?

In any age, if a hierarchy conflict is created not by merging two domains, but by severing two domains (whether due to the down-sizing of a building due to losing a conflict triggered by merging, or due to the destruction of a connecting building by playing the card & ECU cost to do so), how do you resolve which building(s) lose? There was no way to compare domain strengths, so we reverted to the "tied" rule, and said that if they player that triggered the event was involved, then their building(s) must lose, and if there were any remaining conflicts, then the player that triggered the event must choose. Was this correct?

Further, if you ripple a non-civic building forward in time, and this rippling triggers a merger of two domains, is this a legal play? (You can't merge two domains by building such a building directly, but can you do so by rippling?) If you do so, how is this resolved? How much "power" does this rippled building have, for such hierarchy conflicts? Or, is this a unitary conflict as I've mentioned in the paragraph above?

Image

whoami — 2008-06-13T13:07:04+00:00

Thread: This "time" everyone enjoyed it

jsciv — 2008-04-12T01:25:59+00:00

I've played Khronos a few times now and enjoyed it, but there've always been one or two people in the group who don't get it or don't find the fun in its puzzle-like byzantine time manipulation. I dragged it along to a con with my old-school college crew a few weeks ago though, anticipating a good effort.

I think the way I talked up the game helped a lot. I billed it as a "brain-hurting time-travel" game and encouraged people who might like something like that to play, but if from play with them I knew that they wouldn't like it I just downplayed it. In the end, I got a great group for a full five-player game.

Teaching the game:

I've taught this game a couple of times now, so I feel like I'm getting a better handle on it. I started with the basics of turn order and money = VP. I showed them the colors on the side of the board, explaining that they should learn about the orange and purple boards first, and worry about the blue one later. I also showed them the card deck. I did a simple example of building an orange tile propagating through time. Building on that example, I expanded a blue building to show how that worked(pointing out the rivers), and added a purple building, and defined what a domain was. Then I reminded them to forget completely about the Age of Reason (the blue board), telling them that you can't build there and that I'd come back to it later.

I next explained how you could only join two domains with blue buildings. After that, I had built a decently-diverse domain so I built another one and explained the rule of heirarchy. Lots of questions ensued, but they were good questions that showed they were getting the gist of it. I had managed to have a domain with a good variety of colors and sizes out, so I was able to point at things and show them why THIS would happen or THIS wouldn't, and why this was a tie and that wasn't. In the end only one person didn't fully understand it going in (unfortunately that didn't become clear until turn 7).

Reminding them to forget the blue board for now, I went through scoring on the other two boards. Again we went with some examples until everyone understood it.

After all of that, I went to the Age of Reason. One of the great tricks about teaching this board is that you can tell people that everything is exactly opposite of the other boards, and they pick it up quickly (scoring is based on the other colors instead of blue, ties are friendly instead of fighting for it, you control the blue instead of the colors, etc.). In this case, I saw lots of lightbulbs go on, which made me happy. The last thing I showed them was the Hold'em, and we were ready!

Playing the game:

In the random draw, I got to go first (which in retrospect was probably good because it meant that I got to demonstrate a lot, and that I was also least in control on the first couple of turns). After me was R then T then S and finally A.

Demonstrating that even non-learners can make stupid mistakes I placed a small blue village near my orange one on turn 1, limiting my own growth (making it cost too many cards to do easily), allowing S to make a competing orange domain that I couldn't beat before it eventually merged. Realizing this, on turn 2 I shifted focus to purple (with slightly more success), and T decided to head up to the blue board since nobody else was there.

In the first scoring turn I got a few points off of a land-grab small domain on the orange board and a lot of points off of a rickety domain on the purple board (which was cannibalized by R on his turn and then A on his), while S totally dominated the orange board in scoring after R and T managed a few points each there. T and R were slightly behind in points, while S, A and I were fairly close at the end of turn 4.

By far turns 4 and 5 were the longest ones in the game. Because everyone actually understood the rules there was a lot of the great puzzle-solving "how do I get points" ruminating by the active player with some "how do I tell him he gets more points from hurting someone else than me" interaction by the other players. But by the end of turn 5 it was fairly obvious that S had the game locked up: A and I were still fighting over purple while T and R were fighting over blue, but S was unchallenged and so was staying in the hunt on blue where he was a "danger" but not a direct threat to the others.

Turn 7 started unfortunately: A was the guy who had misunderstood how the rule of hierarchy worked, and on turn 6 rather than set up something that would get him points on 7 did something that hurt him (and truthfully I didn't realize what he was trying until it was too late), and we all realized that he didn't get it when I took my turn 7 immediately after him, sniping the entire purple board away from him. He would not have done anything to stop me (because he thought he was safe), but having played my turn we couldn't go back and have him un-know that the knife in the back was coming, so we had to leave it alone.

In the end, S won as we expected, I came in second, T and R were very close to each other (though I forget who was in which place) and A came in last due to the unfortunate misunderstanding of the rules.

I've never managed to play a full game of this without someone misunderstanding something somewhere, but this was the closest we got: despite A's late disaster he says he enjoyed the game and would try again, and everyone really enjoyed it through turn 5 (basically until it was obvious who would win), without "not" enjoying it later.

It's a complex enough game that it needs to "rest" between plays so I don't burn myself out on it, but this game really helped me refine my teaching and ended up being a close, challenging game most of the way through.

Thread: Re: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

joewyka — 2008-03-16T23:41:48+00:00

adam.skinner wrote:
By joining the domains together for Alan's benefit without intelligent self interest at heart, Nate handed over a large scoring domain to Alan. While Alan certainly played a fine game, by no rights should he have had that massive domain lined together by a bunch of small blues.

Ah yes, that IS kingmaking. Thanks. Nice session report.

Thread: Re: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

Alan Stern — 2008-03-14T18:35:43+00:00

In his last turn (turn 7), Nate laid down at least 3 separate small blues (civil) joining together a number of additional domains. This benefited me greatly since I had the largest military building (probably net me at least 5-8 more points in turn 7, maybe 10-12 more points?).

Previously, he had joined other dominions in the Age of Might. While the joining helped me a little, it primarily hurt other players by forcing them to downgrade their buildings, often (at least 3 times) at the whim of Nate. I know Adam ended up completely losing a medium size building (religious I think?) due to it being downgraded twice.

So it wasn't just that last turn. It was more of a cumulative effect that included his overall strategy (which was just to mess with everyone else as much as he could - he professed this). It just so happened that his strategy greatly benefited my strategy and my buildings, leading to my runaway score.

Final Scores:

Alan 61
Adam 32
Nate 8
Rob 45
Chris 39

Thread: Re: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

adam.skinner — 2008-03-14T02:27:30+00:00

By joining the domains together for Alan's benefit without intelligent self interest at heart, Nate handed over a large scoring domain to Alan. While Alan certainly played a fine game, by no rights should he have had that massive domain lined together by a bunch of small blues.

Thread: Re: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

joewyka — 2008-03-13T22:28:32+00:00

I don't understand your use of the term "kingmaking". I associate kingmaking as a situation where a losing player can basically choose between two other players who will win based on his own play. Alan finished the game so far ahead of everyone else, I can't imagine how that would have happened.

Do you mean "Runaway Leader"?

Thread: Re: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

Alan Stern — 2008-03-13T13:41:32+00:00

One thing I did in that play that I rather liked was building a solid military base made of medium and large-sized military and civil buildings. The core of my empire was a 4-military, a 2-military, a 3-civil, and a 5-civil. No one could break that apart and, with other players' military abutting this core, it became a nice powerhouse in the Age of Might. If you're going to build in the AoM or AoF, it's not a bad idea to try and link together medium & large-sized civil buildings with your med & lg buildings of the corresponding type (mil for Aom, rel for AoF). If you own enough of the core buildings, and have enough of them, no one else can break it apart.

That being said, it really was because of Nate that it got absurd. I'd like to play this again without kingmaking. I think I might have won regardless, but it would have been a lot closer (or I might have lost to you or Rob).

Thread: An enjoyable game of Khronos - kingmaking aside...

adam.skinner — 2008-03-13T12:35:08+00:00

Khronos is a game I've played once before. At first, Alan was teaching it and I was just hearing "wa wa wa" and I didn't pay much attention to the directions. About half way through, we got the rules right and had the mechanics of the game figured out.

At the end of the first play, I was kind of "so-so" on the game. The following day I read up on it and did the online flash tutorial. It's got some exercises in it that are akin to Chess puzzles. "You have these assets, this is the board, now here is your objective. Have at it!". As I was doing those, the brilliance of the game began to shine.

Alan brought the game to our meeting last night. He's planning on teaching it a local gaming convention (ConnCon) and so did some practice teaching for the 3 players who hadn't played before. While Alan and I had some experience, Rob, Chris and Nate were engaging in their first game.

I'd gone after domination in the Age of Might the first time, but that wasn't "in the cards" this game. I'd started with 3 blue and a purple card, and so when my turn came around, I played the purple off of the central eastern set civic building, and moved my dude up to the Age of Reason. I chose a couple of the set civics to squat on with my remaining 2 cards, and held the 1 blue in my hand.

The rest of the Age of Reason began to fill up shortly thereafter.

Slightly to the west of center in the Age of Might things started to heat up. South of me and more to center Chris had started a 3 religious building, and I wanted to stifle that before it could damage me, so I went and played a single adjacent to it so it couldn't expand. He destroyed it and expanded anyway.

Over the rest of the course of the game, I was repeatedly kicked while I was down. I was the whipping boy this game - primarily Nate's whipping boy. He enjoyed seeing the conflicts resolved when domains joined, and it seemed like all my efforts went to naught before him. One three I had shrunk, and then got taken off the board!

The first round I scored in the Age of Might for 5 and the Age of Faith for 9(?). I'd used my blue cards to juice up a civic building in the Age of Might to 5, and then scored in the Age of Faith with the 3 religious I'd created.

It was all stolen away from me, eventually. Everything but the Age of Reason. I'd developed a fair stronghold up there, setting my cubes around the epicenter that had been created in the Age of Might, and upgrading buildings with my cards when it made sense.

In the last round of the game, I saw that I had nothing left but my majority in the Age of Reason, and I'd moved both of my guys up there to do what I could. I upgraded where I could, and plopped 2 more blues in the huge mass of buildings in the central western area. That made it so that Alan and Rob weren't going to share in the booty up there. It didn't matter though; with his last couple of turns, Nate was using civic buildings to join all of the domains in the Age of Might. He'd resolve the conflicts, and that was that. One big domain, with Alan in control. Nate wasn't able to score any points at all in the 7th round.

In the end, Alan was kingmade. He scored like 60+ points. I had 32. I think that Rob and Chris were near my score. Nate was in the teens.

Disappointing kingmaking aside, the game was very engaging. I think that building off to the side is safe in the early rounds, but later in the game when the kingdoms begin to merge, it is weak. I suspect that if you do build off to the side, away from the major conglomeration, you need to be aggressive to split that kingdom and move in for the kill on the smaller half near you, and then go after it in the latter half of the game.

The Age of Reason did fairly well for me. I'm not sure if it's a poor man's consolation prize or a place for contention.

It seems to me that a viable strategy is to actually build/upgrade in the Age of Faith. You get double the VP there, so it may be reasonable. Build a 3 down in the Age of Might (1vp), upgrade it to a 5 in the Age of Faith (2vp), have somebody maliciously destroy it in the Age of Might via paradox, then rebuild it to 5 (another 2 vp) in the Age of Faith! You might even be able to keep it up longer if you can engineer the downsizing of the contentious buildings in the Age of Might.

I'm looking forward to playing more Khronos. I like the conflict resolution in the game. And the ability to fairly easily cause "disaster tile" effects, though it's limited to single tile buildings. I think this game can lend itself to clever play.

Thread: Re: Resolution sequence for hierarchy/dominion checks in multiple ages?

Saco Gamer — 2008-03-11T11:38:51+00:00

Ok, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Mike

Thread: Re: Resolution sequence for hierarchy/dominion checks in multiple ages?

Nono — 2008-03-11T10:12:00+00:00

the_spy wrote:
As we interpreted, first you do everyting you have to do in the age of might and THEN start rippling into the future.

that's correct.

Thread: Re: Resolution sequence for hierarchy/dominion checks in multiple ages?

the_spy — 2008-03-11T00:13:26+00:00

Actually neither. As we interpreted, first you do everyting you have to do in the age of might and THEN start rippling into the future.

A major downsizing in the past causes the future bulings to never exixsted so they are not a problem in the future as they ware never biult!

In my opinion option B is better than option A but we played with option C
The rules are not clear about this point but they often state that the player who started the whole thing decides, so I'm guessing he can decide whether the time continuum changes all at the same time or one building at a time.

Thread: Resolution sequence for hierarchy/dominion checks in multiple ages?

Saco Gamer — 2008-03-10T23:41:23+00:00

Say I join two (or more) dominions in the Age of Might and this causes a chain of 2 or more downsize events in the Age of Might (through divisions and heirarchy conflicts).
The rules state that the downsize is immediately carried out in the future ages (Faith and Reason). However the rules aren't clear (unless I missed it) about whether or not the effect of the ripple-downsize on the rule of hierarchy is also resolved immediately in the age of Faith.

In otherwords, if I initiate a domain merge in the Age of Might that causes multiple buildings in that age to downsize, how do I handle this? Do I:

A.)
1. Downsize the first building in the Age of Might
2. Ripple the first downsize into the Age of Faith and Age of Reason.
3. Immediately resolve the hierachy conflict this may cause in the Age of Faith.
4. Downsize the second building in the Age of Might
5. Ripple the second downsize into the Age of Faith and Age of Reason.
6. Immediately resolve the hierachy conflict this may cause in the Age of Faith.

OR

B.)
1. Downsize the first building in the Age of Might
2. Ripple the downsize into the future.
3. Downsize the second building in the Age of Might
4. Ripple the downsize into the future.
...repeat
and THEN move on to the age of Faith to resolve any remaining heirarchy conflicts present there.

I'm assuming choice A, but I want to be sure since the resolution sequence really matters in some cases.

Thanks,
Mike

Thread: Re: Player order unbalanced...?

Alan Stern — 2008-03-10T20:59:38+00:00

I take back what I said before. If each player scores at the end of their respective actions on turns 4 and 7, then player order becomes much less of an issue.

Thread: Re: Player order unbalanced...?

Alan Stern — 2008-03-09T17:58:58+00:00

Currently, I'm actually of the opinion that going later is (slightly) more powerful since you have the opportunity to react to others' plays without them compensating in kind. This is primarily in relation to scoring on turns 4 and 7. In turn 7 of one game, a player demolished a small building in the Age of Faith after the owner had played. That's it - there's nothing that the original controller can do to compensate. Maybe this is a small nitpick, I'm not sure yet.

Thread: Re: Player order unbalanced...?

steveoliverc — 2008-03-07T19:05:55+00:00

I also haven't played this enough to decide one way or the other, but players have pointed it out. No matter where you are in the turn order, it's absolutely critical to plan ahead for scoring based on when you will score in relation to the other players. From that respect, going first is an advantage since you know more about how the board is setup. Players that go later run the chance of the board changing in ways that cause them to score less.

Thread: Re: Player order unbalanced...?

gavingva — 2008-03-07T15:10:32+00:00

In order for B to connect to A and win, he would have had to spend additional time and resources in preparation. Meanwhile, what was A doing...?

Your scenario also assumes that the players are concentrating on one Age each instead of moving between them as needed. If A blithely lets B have a free rein in the Age of Faith, he doesn't deserve the points!

Don't forget, too, that merging two domains can result in two or more new domains actually being created if the right pivotal buildings are removed. So B isn't guaranteed those extra points he's seeking.

Gavin

Thread: Re: Player order unbalanced...?

DaveD — 2008-03-07T13:29:04+00:00

I probably haven't played enough to properly comment, but it does occur to me that there is a downside to going later.

For example suppose that player B is on to score those 15 points in the Age of Might, but player A going first combines domains and takes control of the new larger one, meaning A scores 15 + whatever he had to start with, while B scores nothing, unless he can somehow take back all or part of the domain.

Thread: Player order unbalanced...?

bleached_lizard — 2008-03-07T13:13:42+00:00

Hi everyone,

After coming away from my latest game of Khronos, it occured to me that player order might make the game slightly unbalanced. Nothing major - just enough to niggle. My thinking was that, because on the whole the game board tends to *expand* rather than contract from turn to turn, and the number of points is linked to the size and number of structures on the board, players who go later in turn order would, on average, receive more points than those who go earlier. (Sorry for the long sentence)!

To illustrate, say for exaple that player A scores 15 points from a domain in the Age of Might. There is the possibility that player B may then be able to either:

1) Connect another domain to the one that player A scored from, making a larger domain to score more points, or
2) Score the same domain in the Age of Faith but upgrade a few civic buildings to score more points.

The same also goes for the Age of Reason; each turn that passes increases the chances that more ruins will be rennovated, increasing the potential points that will be scord each turn by successive players.

Does anyone else see this as a problem, or am I overlooking something? Is there any suggested "fix" for this, or is this problem so minimal (or non-existant) that I shouldn't worry about it?

Regards,

Chris.

Thread: 4 player time travelling

DaveD — 2008-02-22T18:27:24+00:00

This game played at Halesowen Boardgamers on 20 February 2008

On my table Dave C, Ben, Paul & I played Khronos. At the start of the game, going third, I drew a hand including 3 civic cards and decided to pay and discard them, picked up a couple more civic cards but at least I picked up a military card and built a keep in the age of might close to where Dave had started and a couple of couple of Hamlets adjacent leaving me the possibility of later upgrade to a Castle. Paul followed and also swapped cards, which I think he ended up doing on 4 of the turns during the game, which would be costly at the end. He setting up to the North of Dave and also placed another Hamlet next to my Keep, which prevented me from doing an easy upgrade.

As the game moved toward the first scoring, I continued building my little patch adding a monastery, which rippled into the age of faith, while Paul expanded his domain to the North upgrading his keep to a castle and linking to Dave's area using a couple of towns, he also built another keep and town in the east and sent one his adventurers to the age of faith, building a chapel to score the 3 points in that age, unfortunately I robbed him of that with a monastery next to his keep which rippled into the age of faith giving me the points. That left him, only scoring in one age, but he still managed to get a score of 14 to my 10, although I think we were still about level at that point due to Paul's extra expenditure on the likes of swapping cards and moving between ages. Dave had taken a big hit when Paul took over his main area in the age of might and I think he only scored about 6 point although he was still about level having spent less and scored some more for building in the age of faith. Ben lagged behind with a few small scores.

In the final 3 turns, there was not a lot of action in the age of might, with Dave, Ben & Paul moving down to work in the age of reason, although Ben did build a castle in the North west and I upgraded my first monastery to an abbey, unfortunately I hadn't planned ahead very well and the upgrade couldn't ripple forward because it would have linked to a lone hamlet printed on the board in the age of faith. I ended up doing the same upgrade in the age of faith, which didn't seem the most efficient use of my actions, but the upgrade had to happen there so I could link to the large domain which made Paul so many points in the age of might. Paul meanwhile got some extra points in the age of reason by playing 3 civic cards to seize control of a domain from Dave.

At the end of the game I was surprised to win by a point, having grabbed control of a couple of still unlinked pre-printed hamlets on my last turn, things would have been different if Paul hadn't spent so much money on swapping cards or if he'd had another blue card in the final turn to take over my domain in the age of might. I like this game but it does seem to suffer from the random card draw. You can spend a not insignificant 2 to exchange cards, but you have no way of knowing whether you'll draw something just as bad. I see from the new rules posted on the Rio Grande website that they include an optional rule allowing the exchange of cards with a set of face up cards at the beginning of a turn allowing more control of the cards you have. The rules say that this is at the expense of letting the others see your cards, but that does not seem much of a disadvantage as you're probably going to play them immediately so the cards will be seen before anyone else gets a turn anyway.

The scores Dave D 38, Paul 37, Dave C 29, Ben 27

Thread: Re: Rule changes between 1st and 2nd edition

Matthias_K — 2008-02-15T13:24:13+00:00

cymric wrote:
Well, there is a change, quite a significant one. The restriction that you could spend the two cards per adventurer on a single board has been dropped; you can now play a card on board A, move the adventurer to board B, and play another card there. The restriction is therefore now 'no more than 2 cards per adventurer'.

I realize I'm late for the party here, but being the translator for the Dutch second edition of the game I'd thought I chime in.

It was always meant to be this way, but the first edition rules were poorly worded. The second edition also received new English translation to make them more concise.

Thread: Re: Expansion and Earnings

byronczimmer — 2008-02-02T18:33:32+00:00

1 ecu for building/upgrading in the age of might, regardless of time ripples
2 ecu for building/upgrading in the age of faith, regardless of time ripples, because it's more risky.
no ecu for building/upgrading in the age of reason, because you can't.

Concerning the second question:

I had to wrestle with this, and don't like the following answer, but it seems to be 'okay' with respect to the rules:

Yes, you can build and then upgrade in the same turn with two different actions, and get x2 ECU instead of the normal ECU for directly building the larger version. Note that you must follow Rules of Hierarchy and Domain at all times, so it is sometimes advantageous to do the direct build/upgrade and not stop at the intervening size.

Thread: Re: A good friend or a passionate lover

dbmite — 2008-01-31T19:55:57+00:00

Um... not in the basic rules - you have to discard unused cards and draw a new 4 for next turn. This is why the "Hold'em" rule is better than the basic rules.

That rule was changed in the second edition. The new rule states:

"If the player does not wish to use all 4 of his cards, he may discard the unused cards or keep them for the next turn."

(2nd edition rules, page 3, under Using Construction Cards.)

Thread: Re: A good friend or a passionate lover

sedjtroll — 2008-01-31T19:20:10+00:00

dbmite wrote:
The Hold' em rule definitely makes the game easier by giving more options for card play and helps relieve some of the bad card draws. However, I find it takes away from some of the element of surprise and removes a lot of the function of the money, besides having the money count as victory points. I think the game is more fun and challenging without it. You simply have to make the best of your cards. Remember that you can hold onto cards into the next round.
Um... not in the basic rules - you have to discard unused cards and draw a new 4 for next turn. This is why the "Hold'em" rule is better than the basic rules.

Thread: Re: A good friend or a passionate lover

dbmite — 2008-01-31T17:20:17+00:00

Nice review. I enjoy the game a lot and would like to comment on a few points.

The complex problem solving makes me think most readily about Tigris and Euphrates in that the problems become simpler with time. And yet the mechanic and rules governing this aspect of the game are difficult to explain and take time to settle in your mind.

You are right. The rules are hard to teach. But once you've played a lot the rules seem easy. The game needs to be experienced in order to contemplate the tactics and figure out how to dismantle a player by the end of the 2 scoring rounds. Once a player has a strong domain it may be hard to get into that domain, especially if you draw bad cards. But the ability to remove a small building right before scoring could prove very profitable. Otherwise, it's best to shift your focus to another age and score there. I love Tigris and Euphrates as well and would say that T&E is a better game with more depth, but somehow Khronos has been more fun with my group.

It is worth noting the game plays better with the optional card replacement rule as well, otherwise you can be left feeling powerless to the cards when you really want to do something.
The Hold' em rule definitely makes the game easier by giving more options for card play and helps relieve some of the bad card draws. However, I find it takes away from some of the element of surprise and removes a lot of the function of the money, besides having the money count as victory points. I think the game is more fun and challenging without it. You simply have to make the best of your cards. Remember that you can hold onto cards into the next round.

My conclusion? Khronos is a good friend and not a passionate lover but heck beauty is in the eye of the beholder so this might just spin your wheels.
Well this game is definitely one that clicked for me. I love the game and find it interesting and fun. It's one of the few games that, while not perfect, has managed to be involving and addictive.

Thread: A good friend or a passionate lover

citylife — 2008-01-30T22:50:30+00:00

A space rocket is beautiful to look at in that industrial metallic kind of way. One can enjoy space rockets not just for their sleek style and raw power but for the promise of what they may achieve or discover on their journeys to come. And so with all this talk of time travel and three stellar looking boards I felt quite excited about the promise of Khronos.

Time travel is a difficult thing to implement in any shape or form. Does 'Doctor Who' really work, what about all those paradoxes in 'Back to the Future'. The question of time travel becomes, can you make a believable story out of what you’ve done. This question is particularly hard when it comes to board games because there is so little opportunity to explain yourself. You want to avoid the situationwith Bus where the time stop mechanism destroys the plausibility of the game.

Well Khronos does a great job of the time travel by keeping it simple. The basic effect is that buildings ripple through time. So by building in age 1 you will see effects in ages two and three. The concept is simple, it impacts greatly on game play and there are always ways around problems. The whole effect is a set of complex thoughts that take significant practice to readily understand and implement. The complex problem solving makes me think most readily about Tigris and Euphrates in that the problems become simpler with time. And yet the mechanic and rules governing this aspect of the game are difficult to explain and take time to settle in your mind.

Khronos is an attractive game with simple components and little fuss or trouble. The game makes use of cardboard tiles, wooden cubes and is solid and modern in its implementation if not remarkable.

The game is something akin to area control, in that domains are formed and scored by the person with control. In this case control equates to the biggest building of a particular type. The size of the scoring depends on the number of a different type of building and each of the three boards scores separately. The concept of playing over three domains is certainly interesting and forces some interesting tradeoffs. No player scores on more than two of the three boards either, encouraging diversity among players.

The game becomes easier over time. If at first you are a little overwhelmed by the rule instruction do not fear. Perhaps this is a game best learnt by playing because in the application comes the understanding. The process of understanding how an action on one board will affect the later boards in the time sequence takes time, but it is well worth it. It is worth noting the game plays better with the optional card replacement rule as well, otherwise you can be left feeling powerless to the cards when you really want to do something.

Khronos offers a new experience. No one can accuse it of lacking originality. What perhaps it lacks is a little umph. In a sense it seems to meander along and could suffer from a dose of AP. Everything seems good about it but it just didn’t make a strong impact on our group. Perhaps it is just an intangible ‘playability’ that it lacked I’m not quite sure. Still even if the them is simply tacked on I like the thinking behind this one and it offers more on subsequent plays. If you have ever been on date and come away thinking … “shes a nice girl but there was just no chemistry” you might now how I feel.

My conclusion? Khronos is a good friend and not a passionate lover but heck beauty is in the eye of the beholder so this might just spin your wheels.

Thread: Re: Expansion and Earnings

Nono — 2008-01-29T16:02:31+00:00

Hello,

In fact you earn money only in the board you are.
So if you build a keep for exemple in the age of might you only earn 1 Ecu.
You earn nothing more because your keep ripples in the age of faith and reason.

When you upgrade a tower into a castle with 3 cards you only earn 1 ecu (in the age of might).
If you spend 1 card, you upgrade your tower into a keep and you earn 1 ecu (I always speak in the age of might). If in next turn you spend 2 cards to upgrade your keep in castle you earn 1 other ecu.
If you spend one card in the age of might to upgrade a tower into a keep you earn 1 ecu and if in the same turn, you spend 2 cards in the age of faith to upgrade the new rippled keep into a castle, you earn 2 more ecus.

I hope i'm clear.
Sorry for my bad english.

Arnaud.

Thread: Re: Other "Time" Based Board Games?

Grudunza — 2008-01-21T04:47:47+00:00

Here's a GL: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/19828

I'm working on a time-travel game, but can't really divulge anything yet about that... mostly because it's still very much in the conception phase.

Time travel is an intriguing concept for a board game, but it can really make your head hurt to figure it out in a way that makes sense and is playable, which is probably why there are few examples of games with that theme. I have Timeline and Chrononauts and both of those games do a clever take on the subject, in different ways. I've read the rules of Khronos but haven't played it, so I won't comment much, only to say that it appears to be more about the domain control aspect than anything time related, though it does have the cool warping through time factor added in.

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:36:29+00:00

Box insert, one of the best ever

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:34:54+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:33:03+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:31:46+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:30:51+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:28:45+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:27:57+00:00

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noursy — 2007-12-30T17:27:15+00:00