This aspect reminded me of Leonardo de Vinci, from the standpoint that the creation of new workers/children was a major point of interaction between players in what amounted to little more than a game of multi-player solitaire.

For example, taking the action to have a baby, results in anyone else wanting to have a baby to have to wait until the next turn. I saw the same happen for certain key resources like wood, necessary to expand your house prior to having a baby, and build fences prior to acquiring animals.

The major difference here w.r.t. Leonardo is in the way that multiple players can bid on actions, and they all get the action at an increasing cost. In Agricola, it's first come first served (with the exception of the effects of some of the occupations IIRC).

I don't know, what really defines the experience for me in Leonardo is multiple apprentices being able to be placed in the same spot. Agricola doesn't have this at all. Maybe a more apt comparison would be Age of Empires III, where you start with a certain number of workers, but can gain additional ones through good play.

Fair enough

It is worth mentioning imho, that the designer (Uwe Rosenberg) himself spoke of Caylus as a source of inspiration - so it's only natural that you mention it here first.

Source (in german): http://www.cliquenabend.de/index.php?page=artikel&artikel=uw...

..,more like Princes of Florence.

True, much more like Princes, given that the items you add to the board can not be moved in the remained of the game.

The fact that you never draw new cards from a deck makes this entirely different for CCGs. But you are right, the shear number of cards is unlike any other game I can think of outside of Card Drive Games (Like 1960) - which again are based on drawing cards again and again.



This is one of my great worries with the game. There are so many possible combinations that I don't believe it is possible that the game could be play tested to balance all the possible combinations of occupations alone for example. On the flip side, maybe the occupations don't make a lick of difference, and the game will prove to be all about something other than the cards. For example, it may prove that maximizing the birth of children (ie creation of additional workers) will render all other strategies mute. Each child gives you an additional action each turn. Period. I'm not sure someone with 3 family members can beat someone with 5, regardless of what cards they were dealt at the start of the game.

Only time and hundreds of us playing will tell.

I'm not too worried about this. There wasn't any way to test all the possible alien combos for Cosmic Encounter, and we're entering the 4th decade of our love-fest with CE and celebrating with another reprint.

On the back of the rules the more than 120 playtesters are mentioned by name, testing for a period of well over a year. This sort of helped alleviate my "worries" on this point.

As for the family strategy, I don't think it'll be a definite winner for you if you go for five, but I do think it'll be a definite loser if you stay at two...

Ahhh yes . . . we call this "sweetening" in our house

Twilight Imperium 3 took a page from this book.

Vinci was early to the scene with "sweetening".

My group is more blunt. We call it bribery.

True, but again, there are big differences:
(a) animals in Agricola do not have gender as in Zooloretto. i.e. two pigs make a third pig, period.
(b) two or more pigs make a pig, i.e. four pigs still only make one pig.
(c) no offspring are made if the enclosure (or stable, or home) can't accommodate it (I don't remember how Zoo. handles this).

Yes, but in Agricola you don't get to experience the joy of whipping the peasants repeatedly to "persuade them" to feed themselves.

I guess no game is perfect...

The big similarity here is the Agricola grain silo which functions exactly like the cube tower.

Its a core way to magnify your resources into higher levels of food. A core of the game.

One big difference to PG, when you upgrade "major improvements" you surrender them back onto the pool on the board for other players. This helps to eliviate the silliness that only two players could build fire places. The limitation imposed by a limited number of improvement cards, as in PG power plants, has never made realistic sense to me.

Again, score one for Argicola.

the one big difference makes perfect sense to me.

If you think of that each turn in Power grid takes a decade. There is a need to upgrade (buy new plants) plants. In the beginning plants do no produce much electricity for the cities. these become more efficient over time.

The government won't allow an unefficient powerplant and that is why powerplants need to be removed from the game.

the only illogical thing is that you are allowed to sell a perfectly good powerplant near the end of the game to buy another one. (You could do this to win the game , buy resources for the plant so that there are not enough resources left for the other player to power the cities.)

from a business point of view in real life this is possible. But not in this market where there are government regulations.


The fire place you mention is a whole different thing however and if you think of it. Why is it that only two players are allowed to build one? It's like having a home and you are not allowed to have a fire place because your neighbour has one.

Or you are not allowed to have a certain boardgame because someone of your group owns it. (this could be a wife rule)

One other thing if you make kids how soon can they help to be productive in the game and how much productivity the parent loose on having a kid.
It seems to me that when you have a kid you are allowed one extra action. But the logical thing would be that the kid takes so much from your time that you couldn't do as much as before. So instead of having an extra turn you loose one. So the first time you loose one.

What does the game do with couples that can't have any kids allthough they want one? Is there a card for that? Or is there a card that someone has an accident at work? these things happen.
If such cards exist in the game this game would probably be an eleven as a soloexperience. Ah but the game wouldn't be balanced if you play with two or more.
In order to have an enjoyable playing experience the game does have to be balanced and both rules, allthough completely different,are well thought out to do exactly that.

You've misunderstood. The aspect of PG's power plants that I do not understand is why *only one player* may build a coal plant that supplies 4 cities. i.e. why auction power plants at all. It makes on sense from an industrial standpoint. If the technology exists to make a 2-4 power plant, every utility company should be able to purchase it.

Of course the whole premise of PG is nonsensical in any country with a single power utility chartered to supply power. (ie a monopoly).

But it's a good game

Just as Agricola's "weak" point is that it doesn't make much sense that certain actions are only available once in a round...

This weakness seems indicative of the genre.

There's also the geomorphic, "can't move things once placed" aspect. This reminded me of the Princes of Florence to a degree as well. I joked that we'd better align the doors between rooms of our huts - but this isn't required

The farmers play Bohnanza, too!

...and of course they play Agricola!

Another similarity between Agricola and Bohnanza--you can have only one kind of animal in an enclosure, just as you can only have one kind of bean in a field. If you want something else in the same space, you have to clear it out first.

Funny, I found agricola had a much different feel than Sceptor, a game I hate for it's length. One big difference, in Sceptor, you draw cards each turn giving you different values in jewels (IIRC), you never draw resource cards in Agricola, no resources have variable values either.

Sorry, I just don't see any strong parallels between the games, but that's part of why I like Agricola

I've heard comparisons to the video game, Harvest Moon, but let's face it: What's better than playing a family exploitation board game with your family?

Let's ignore the fact that the field gives you goods for the next 2 or 3 *harvests* and not turns.

This particular, invest and get a payout is not uncommon in the empire building genre. For example, choosing sowing in Agricola is essentially the same as building a coffee roaster, taking a coffee plantation, and then playing the craftsman in Puerto Rico. The only difference here is that you do not get to harvest the goods immediately, but they stay on the field and only one can be used each harvest.


This leads me to comments I've made in my review of this game and elsewhere. Despite being a neat new take on the economic engine genre, Agricola is still a member of the Genre. I suspect that for many, it will scratch the same itch as Puerto Rico, Caylus, Scepter, and others. Whether they'll find it unique enough to purchase will have to be seen.