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The Design and Development of Age of Steam Expansion: Montréal Métro
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I know there are a lot of people interested in Age of Steam, and there are a growing number of people who are working on designing their own expansions. Now that Age of Steam Expansion - Montréal Métro is complete, I thought I would share some information about the expansion's evolution, and show how much this one board has changed from its initial design concept to its current, finished status. This is a historical documentation of the expansion's changes. I've interspersed many early prototype graphics into the list, if you want to check them out they're stored in my gallery as well: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/images/user/11694
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Posted On: 2007-02-14 10:56:44
Edited On: 2007-07-19 07:47:23
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Revision 1, initial prototype.
So I knew that I wanted to do a board based on Montreal's subway system, the Metro. The reason for this is multifold, the two most prominent ones being that I love the city and the subway system. Beyond this, there was a certain "thank you" aspect to the choice, because doing a map based on Quebec's most prominent city also allows me to give a minor nod to the Steam Brothers, who have done some fantastic expansions for AoS.
With the idea in mind, I started doing initial research, and came up with some basic thematic aspects that I wanted to incorporate in the game. |
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Posted On: 2003-11-11 12:57:38
Edited on: 2007-07-18 08:07:21
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#1: It's a subway, it has to be contiguous. This is just common sense. I liked Viard's Moon map which forces players to stay in each other's faces due to the contiguous track rule, and it seemed like common sense to include it here.
#2: It's expensive to build a subway. This was simple, track costs were going to be high. Building under streets is very expensive. Building under the rivers would be allowed, because the real Metro system crosses under the St. Lawrence and Riviere des Prairies, but again, high cost. Similarly, urbanization was present as a special action, but it cost 5$ when you used it, because building new stations is expensive.
#3: Station colour integrity, theme through colour choice. Again, fairly easy to use because the lines in the Metro are AoS colours. Stations on the Blue, Red, and Yellow Lines could all simply match the real world colours. Green was going to have to be changed, but Purple was a logical choice. |
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Posted On: 2003-11-11 12:57:38
Edited on: 2007-07-18 08:07:46
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#4: Rounds based on years, and major events occurring at set points. The Metro's history is tightly tied into Expo 67 (World's Fair) and the 1976 Olympics. The island where the Expo was held (Ile St. Helene) was largely built with dirt excavated during the building of the Metro, and the subway system is credited with being a large reason for the Expo's success. I enacted this idea by having rounds coincide with years, and on round 3/6/9 special urbanizations occur which are based on real-world events. Hence, Jean-Drapeau becomes urbanized in round 3 (1967) for the Expo. Pie IX urbanizes in round 6 (1976) for the Oympiad, and in round 9 (the present), Montmorency opens (a new extension of the Metro that is opening this year, 2006). I decided the cleanest way to handle these urbanizations was to make them be the source of black delivery points.
#5: The Metro's trains are fast, and they are reliable. This was the basis of a myriad of ideas, all of which were included in the initial rules draft including engines that go to 8, and no expenses associated with the train. To actually make reaching 8 a possible good choice, the Ireland option (skip both ships to upgrade your engine twice) was always available. |
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Posted On: 2003-11-11 12:57:38
Edited on: 2007-07-18 08:08:03
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A few other things also were sewn into the rules during development because I wanted to try them out, and I liked seeing what they would do to the game.
#6: Subsidy. A special ability that reduced your shares by 1.
#7: An Early Railways inspired links deck ("the government links deck") which would have a card drawn from it prior to each round. The link drawn would be built on the board and marked with a neutral colour. Anyone could use those links, though no one would gain income from them. The main reason for adding this rule was to tighten the board play up, one of the main things that I think the 3 player AoS game needs to overcome is a loose feeling while building track. This can be accomplished by restricting the board (i.e.: Switzerland, Ireland), but I wanted to try something different.
A special ability was also added to take advantage of the government links called "Lease". As I anticipated this could be extremely powerful given the right circumstances, I decided to:
#8: Change the auction structure to 1/2/3 pay Full/Half/None.
#9: Locomotive was changed to cost money. When you took it, you paid the amount of money equal to your new engine level.
#10: And, finally, partially due to concern about high costs, partially in theme (we work for the government) I allowed for unlimited shares. |
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Posted On: 2003-11-11 12:57:38
Edited on: 2007-07-18 08:15:04
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The map was a very rough draw, and my first experience with graphic design. Major geographical features included the open board centre, and the inclusion of Atwater station, the location of the Montreal Forum, as a combination red/blue delivery point as a minor thematic nod.
My initial draw had several stations that were close to each other, and an obvious "corridor" to the west of Berri-UQAM which would be hotly contested. To reign this in, I added another rule:
#11: You can only build 2 pieces of track each track building round, Engineer allows for 3.
The initial playtests revealed some serious limitations. To begin with, the auction was incredibly flaccid...there was just a glut of special abilities. The Subsidy was an obvious problem, and because it was far from integral to the design, it was nerfed early. The map also had some minor issues, and it was redrawn. The no expenses for your engine thing was a complete wreck, as it made the economic system, which was already cushy because of the Subsidy action, extremely fluffy. Like Subsidy, it was dropped in very short order, though the engine allowance up to 8 still remained for the time being.
Overall, things were being whittled away. I was actually surprised with the effectiveness of the government deck though, and how much it caused problems in the game for players...often forcing them to build stubs defensively even when other players were not in the immediate vicinity. Urbanization was not being taken enough, but I still didn't want it to be free, so I left it the same. |
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Posted On: 2007-01-25 11:42:59
Edited on: 2007-07-19 06:46:16
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Revision 2, tightening up a bit more
The second map changed some of the power corridors up...Atwater was now further away from Berri, and Lionel Groulx was downgraded to a stop, even though it is an important hub in the actual system. The net result of this, was it allowed the 2 pieces of track / 3 with engineer rule to be put on the bench.
The map now played quite differently, and track building was becoming tighter, though the west side of the island was still very open and clearly the best area of the board to play in. Without Subsidy present, the auction also tightened up into a fight over Lease (in the mid to late game) and the pricy Locomotive (primarily early, though late game people with money (i.e.: those in the lead) would still be able to afford it, and occasionally take it).
Urbanization was still not being taken enough though, but I was liking how the auction had tightened up, and I didn't want to put a power role back in. Clearly, a new solution was needed here. |
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Posted On: 2007-01-25 11:42:59
Edited on: 2007-07-17 10:54:10
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Revision 3, Mount Royal, new urbanization.
Revision 3 was fairly major from a play standpoint. To begin with, the map was now altered as Mount Royal Parc, a large park just outside of downtown, was added to the map, and building through it was forbidden (thematic, there is a real line underneath it, but the Metro does not go through there). This isolated one section of the board that was otherwise a tad too powerful as an aside, which was good for the way the map played. The St. Lawrence River was also quite wide in this version, and Boucherville, a fictitious stop that I added for play reasons to the SE coast, was nixed. |
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Posted On: 2007-01-25 11:42:59
Edited on: 2007-07-18 08:09:05
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Inspiration also struck at this point, and urbanization was removed as a special role, and instead it became a function of track building. This was, again, an idea based on the real world. Why would a new station be built in the real world? Simply put, it's a heavily populated area, with a lot of track running through. Hence, when someone built a stop tile that included 4 or more exits (The Austrian and Italian tiles were still legal at this point in the design) then they could choose to urbanize that stop if they wanted to. This also had a potentially interesting impact on the auto-urbanization locations, because one of them had the requisite 4 available open sides (the others did not, due to their placement on the edge of the map) and could potentially be urbanized prior to its appointed time. Fine by me, let the black cubes languish if the players want them to!
The track building-based urbanization added tension back into the game, and people were now more prone to offensively urbanize, and the tiles would run out. One thing I didn't like was the extreme ease with which people could opt to urbanize someone else's stop though, and I started to realize that the Italy/Austria tiles had to go to tighten the map up again and to allow players to make effective defensive builds. |
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Posted On: 2007-01-25 11:42:59
Edited on: 2007-07-20 21:41:19
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Revision 4
From a map design standpoint, Revision 4 was a combination of Revisions 3 and 1. The St. Lawrence River was shrunken again, and Boucherville reinstated. Mount Royal remained though, and other minor stop changes were integrated. This was where the non-standard AoS tiles from Italy and Austria left for good. It also saw the end of the Ireland style double upgrades, and the potential engine level of 8. I liked the idea of the aggressively high engine level, but because of the game length it was just not a good choice for a player to actually take their engine that high in all but the strangest of circumstances. Similarly, I started to doubt the necessity of the unlimited shares. Players were reliably getting into the high teens, but I had the sense that they didn't HAVE TO, they were simply going that high because it was an option. At this point, I was starting to be concerned that too many ultimately unimportant changes like the Engine level and share thing could make the map completely unwieldy, and hard for people to play with, and so I was seeking to simplify to some degree.
This was also the point where the track-building initiated urbanization was opened up to some degree...players could now cause urbanization to occur if they built the previous requisite 4 exits, OR, if the stop they were building into had less, they were allowed to urbanize as long as all of the exits were filled. This allowed some of the previously not as useful corners of the board, like Boucherville, to become worthwhile in certain cases.
At this point, I was somewhat concerned that the government links deck, one of the non-thematic, gameplay only based touches that I'd added to the map, was now the centrepiece, and the real focus of play. I liked what the links deck did, but I was conflicted at some level. |
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Posted On: 2007-01-25 11:42:59
Edited on: 2007-07-27 11:19:48
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