Game: Saint Petersburg

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Fewer Workers?

thoreaubred — 2008-07-06T03:36:47+00:00

Before playing tonight we decided to read the rules again just to be sure. It turns out we had in fact missed a rule (or two). :blush:

The rule we missed is that we didn't know about the discounts for duplicate cards and for buying from the bottom row. So, instead of playing with the variant this time, we decided to play with the rule we had previously overlooked, to see if that fixed the problem. We still ran out of workers first at the end of the game, and had big building and trading card stacks left, but we also ran out of aristocrats while finishing the last turn. In general the cards did seem better balanced this time.

We might still try the variant next time, but it might be that the rule we had missed was the source of our problem.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

thoreaubred — 2008-07-06T01:10:35+00:00

I don't think we're missing any rules. We start with four workers at the beginning of the game, and no we don't discard after every phase, just after the trading card phase.

We've decided to try the variant next time we play, which might be tonight, so I'll report back with comments on how it works out. The suggestion of capping each non-worker card at one is good; we might do it that way.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

Aldaron — 2008-07-05T09:54:43+00:00

Dealing fewer workers.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

Werbaer — 2008-07-05T09:39:26+00:00

Do you by chance do that worker moving and discarding after each phase? It is supposed to only happen after the upgrade phase.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

puck71 — 2008-07-05T09:30:24+00:00

I still think you may be missing a rule somewhere. Are you only starting the game with four workers? Two-player games only start with four workers, then after that the board is always refreshed to a total of eight cards between both rows.

This pretty much guarantees you eight buildings first turn, since it would be foolish not to buy two workers each (the rulebook even says so!). Because of that, and the value of workers, we usually seem to end the game by exhausting the building stack, although workers get pretty low too.

You might also want to reevaluate the value of the trading cards. We usually snap them right up, as in many cases they provide the best value for the money. There are some clunkers in there, depending on when they show up (late game bank isn't good, etc.) but most of them are pretty good. Of course it can also depend on what aristocrats you just bought. If you burned all your money on a mistress or judge, you won't be able to afford many upgrades, though some of them should still probably be taken into hand.

As for the actual variant, I do think it sounds interesting. I might propose to temper it somewhat by maxing out at one of each non-worker card, filling the rest of the spaces with workers. I'm curious how it would play, but don't know if I'd want to try it myself, since workers are the key to getting money and I want as many of them as possible.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

thoreaubred — 2008-07-05T07:40:09+00:00

Thanks for the opinions.

As for discarding the trading cards, I guess I wasn't clear. We understand that only the bottom row is discarded, and the top row is moved to the bottom row. But when we play, it seems that we always have a lot of trading cards left in the bottom row at the end of the trading card phase, so that when they're discarded more slots are opened up on the board than we usually have open at the end of any other phase. Consequently, when each new green phase begins, we're usually adding at least four workers to the board, whereas in other phases we're often adding only one or two buildings or aristocrats. The result of this is that, every time we play, the worker cards run out long before any of the other stacks, so we don't get to as many of the interesting cards in the other stacks in the course of a game.

Also, our games tend to end up being merely a contest to see who can buy the most workers and rack up the most income. We never get to aspects of the game involving the upgrading of workers and buildings with trading cards and experiencing the benefits of those, because often times the worker stack runs out before we even get a chance to upgrade vary many cards.

Anyway, maybe we'll try playing with this variant once and report back.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

Driver 8 — 2008-07-05T04:26:02+00:00

The more workers you see, the more you'll benefit from the discounts you recieve from having multiple copies. Also, you need those workers to 'upgrade' into the trade cards. And of course, the more workers you see, the more money you can make, and the more likely you'll be buying those big buildings. I think it's fine the way it is.

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

puck71 — 2008-07-05T03:54:29+00:00

Also, you shouldn't be discarding the trading cards. If you don't buy or take them into hand, the trading cards leftover should be moved to the bottom row, and the cards that were previously in the bottom row are discarded. This means that you almost never "fill the board" with workers, in a two-player game it seems like we usually got around 4 new workers a turn.

Buildings, on the other hand, we filled the board with a couple times...

Thread: Re: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Less Workers?

Luke the Flaming — 2008-07-05T10:10:29+00:00

Workers may be "boring" (even if I don't see what makes buildings more "fun", for example...), but it's their income that allow you to get all the other cards.

Besides, the "green phase" should be the quickest, since (except in the last turn) you just grab the cheapest worker available (alternating with your opponent until all are gone).

Thread: Seeking Opinions: Dealing Fewer Workers?

thoreaubred — 2008-07-05T06:59:06+00:00

My wife and I have played this game about five times and we really like it, but the one point that always makes us groan is when it comes time, after discarding the trading cards, to load the board with workers, which we consider the most boring cards in the game.

A possible variant we've thought of to solve this problem is that instead of filling the empty slots on the board with only workers at the beginning of each round, we could deal out a card from each stack (workers, buildings, aristocrats, etc.) until the slots are full, thus putting some more interesting cards on the board.

However, we're not experienced enough gamers to feel confident playing with our own rules just yet. So I was wondering if anyone out there has opinions on whether this variant would work out well and what kinds of effects it would have on the game.

(subject line edited per grammar correction :blush: )

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

Morganza — 2008-07-05T02:40:19+00:00

Some people play that the Czar and Carpenter or Mistress of Ceremonies get buried if they come up on the first round; I suspect this may be the kind of circumstance which inspires that variant.

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

kevinb9n — 2008-07-05T01:09:39+00:00

puck71 wrote:
Sorry for being dense (and not knowing BSW very well yet) but are such stats available? My sarcasm meter chirped but didn't actually go off.

Oh. No, as far as I know they are not. If they were, I'd paste some in here to answer the OP's question.

Again... it would be so cool if they could make data like that available!

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

Baron Muenchhausen — 2008-07-04T10:34:40+00:00

If all players are playing the same strategy this combination is an advantage of about 10-20%, depending on the distribution of the other roles.
You can generate some kind of statistics with the StP PC program in simulation mode ...

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

puck71 — 2008-07-04T08:15:58+00:00

Sorry for being dense (and not knowing BSW very well yet) but are such stats available? My sarcasm meter chirped but didn't actually go off.

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

kevinb9n — 2008-07-04T07:58:24+00:00

It would be sooo awesome if BSW could just give us statistics like this.

Thread: Re: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

junesen — 2008-07-04T05:45:09+00:00

puck71 wrote:
In our last three 3-player games, one player has started with the worker and aristrocrat tokens (by luck) and that person has won each game handily. Obviously this is a small sample, but we're wondering if this combination is too powerful, because you get first shot at cheap workers as well as first shot at awesome aristocrat first turn.

I haven't found it to be too powerful. Starting with the aristocrat has an advantage, but not so much as in a 5 round 4 player game. Having a first round worker is actually weaker than being the second worker guy--on the second round, you get the worst choices of workers.

Thread: 3 players: worker + aristocrat tokens too powerful?

puck71 — 2008-07-04T03:55:11+00:00

In our last three 3-player games, one player has started with the worker and aristrocrat tokens (by luck) and that person has won each game handily. Obviously this is a small sample, but we're wondering if this combination is too powerful, because you get first shot at cheap workers as well as first shot at awesome aristocrat first turn.

Has anyone else found this to be true or are the other players just playing it wrong somehow? If true, is there an easy balance? We were thinking about dealing out the worker, building, and trader tokens randomly, and giving the aristocrat token to whoever got the building token, or something like that.