Age of Steam: Central America was designed specifically for 5 players, a player count I felt was under-served. I also wanted a map that offered a little (not a lot!) more breadth of choice and complexity than other Age of Steam maps. Per the recent playtesting reports, I think I've succeeded. The map has changed a bit from the one pictured, but not a lot, and not fundamentally. A few mountains and hills shuffled here and there, some tweaked prices, a large host of fixes to the art work, that sort of thing.

In case it isn't obvious, AoS: Central America is a large map at 139cmx56cm/55"x22". Yeah, that's big. To help conserve table space all the charts and tables have been moved to the map. The Goods Production Chart, Links, Turn Order, Shares Issued, Income, and even all the setup instructions and rules changes are all on the map. The only additional components needed to play are the goods cubes, track tiles, money, player pieces and the turn marker. Age of Steam: Central America also contains significantly more hexes than normal Age of Steam maps. You will be building a lot of track, and building is expensive. Those swirly things are hills at $3/ea, and the stars are mountains at $4/ea. There's a reason player companies are allowed to issue up to 25 shares: you're likely to need them, all of them. It is not unusual to see players in turn three with 12 or even 15 shares already issued! You may also notice a few other changes such 8 actions rather than the normal 7. In fact there is one entirely new action, and three actions that have been significantly changed. For example the new Corruption action allows New Cities to be moved from their current location on the board and even stacked atop other cities. (No this isn't over-powered, really.)

Yeah, Age of Steam: Central America is a fairly complex map. There's a lot going on. As a result playing time is longer than other Age of Steam maps. Figure an extra 30 - 60 minutes depending on your players. I think it is a good extra 30 - 60 minutes, but I may be biased.

We're playing it once or twice a week now and there are a few copies spread out to other play testers around the world. In fact those attending the Gathering of Friends may find a relatively early printing of the map (with the latest rules) available there for play. I am hopeful that the map will be finished soon.

This looks fantastic!

Who do you think will publish this, and when do you think it will be out?

Thanks.



My current guess is that I'll declare the map finished in a week or two. At that point I'll entertain various production ideas including just making a file available for download and printing at your local print shop with a large format plotter.

I hope you find a publisher . I'm never too confident about my own abilities with the whole "download and print on your own" method, especially if it involves unusual paper sizes. Maybe the guy who's publishing Age of Steam: Pennsylvania and San Fransico could be approached. His maps came out real nice. His maps are not mounted but the paper is thick enough to be good for playing.

While possible, I'd be floored if in fact happened for Central America (London is a little more likely, being of a reasonable physical size, but not much).



The really short version is one of:

-- Install ghostview and print from there.
-- `netcat` the file to port 9000 on the plotter
-- FTP the postscript file to the PORT1 directory on the plotter (assuming an HP plotter).
-- Help debug the pstools tool suite so that ps2pdf will generate PDFs with larger paper sizes.
-- Beg.



Yeah, I know Ted. He lives not far from me and we play AoS regularly. In fact he playtested Central America this last Monday and I did a final playtest on Northern California the week before that. I very much doubt that I'll take his approach. I am not interested in maps segmented across multiple pieces of paper or in the higher front costs of quality offset printing. My preference (for all maps) is single sheets of laminated paper carried rolled in a tube. I'm slowly reproducing all the Warfrog maps in this form and don't exect to use or present any other format.

I'm happy to go for the print-your-own option, and am willing to pay for the privilege if I believe that the map is good. I've considered creating a postscript program to generate maps from a textual representation with the page size (and scale) of your choice.

Anything that can be easily handled by Kinko's or my university print shops would be ideal.

Playtesters are free to comment here on the map. There are a fair few of them now and about to be rather a lot more.



That wouldn't actually be that hard. A little macro-wrapping around a postscript generator and Bob would be your uncle.



I've not tried Kinkos, so I can't comment there. It should work just fine.

It turns out that print shops charge about $10 per square foot before lamination. (One place had a cheaper option using paper that wasn't suitable for lamination.) Printing your map would run over $80 (add 50% if they require a width of 3') and 2' x 3' maps would still be $60. It's obvious to me why Steam Brothers maps are two 11"x17" sheets that have been laminated with a sheet of laminate folded at the inside edge. At that point, most of the cost is in the lamination.

About the only cost-effective way for people without access to advanced printing technology to print this map is to create 8 11" x 17" pieces, trim them, attach them, and optionally laminate them. I can handle the segmentation from postscript (if necessary).

I priced 2' x 3' professionally printed maps online and found that they would cost $10-$15 each, double-sided (after shipping from the printer). I couldn't get answers for laminated sheets. It does seem like there is room for an enterprising individual to do the leg-work producing and selling maps while paying map creators royalties.

Kinko's is horribly expensive for printing large formats. If your local store has a cold laminator however that's pretty cheap at a couple $$/foot.

I've talked to a couple local print shops. No definite quotes yet but it seems like I should be able to get something for less than a third of that price, coated.



I don't think there's enough of a business model for a tempting VC presentation, but yeah, I've been thinking of doing something like this in my copious spare time.

Well, there's been a rash of changes made in the last months. Quite a few new sea routes along with new sea route pricing, a few more moved hills and mountains and other such tweaks, a lot of rules rewording and a full rewrite of the Last Move action. It is still basically the same map, it just hangs together better now. I'm pretty close to calling this one good. Local playtests and my simulations are all good. The copy sent with Ted to BGG Con was understandably overlooked in all the excitement, so there are no reports on the changes from there. I hope to send copies out to my external playtesters fairly soon and am aiming for public release at about the same time as the Nurnberg fair.

Now the map that will go on the back of AoS:Central America? Well, that one is something else. There's a lot of development work left to go there and I'll report more on that later.

There is a potential balance issue that I'm not actually concerned with, a possibly winning canned strategy for 4 player games:

Turn #1: Issue probably 4-5 shares, maybe 6. Loco if you feel safe, otherwise Corruption. Build the southern sea route, the Panama link, and then any other tile you want. If you have Corruption remove the black city from Tampico.

Turn #2: Issue ~10 more shares. Get engineer. Build from Punta Gordo, bypass Villa Hermosa without touching it, through Minatitian, to Tampico. If you got Corruption last turn, keep building through Tampico on up to either Monterrey or Matamoros. This is a $20 - $30 build, more if you have to run through some mountains.

Turn #3: Issue 4-6 more shares. Get engineer. Build from tampico to Monterrey or Matamoros if you stopped at Tampico last turn. Else build forward to Houston ot San Antonio.

Turn #4: Get engineer if you haven't reached San Antonio and/or Houston and build to them. If you're already there, get Corruption and start moving the black cities out of your route.

Future turns: Get corruption every turn. Sell enough shares to guarantee it. Build your train. Use corruption to clear your route and give yourself incrementing deliveries as your train grows. Run blacks for the $3 bonus from Panama to America as soon as your train is big enough. Till then do what you can for income but otherwise suffer and bear it. Once your train is big enough run the blacks from Panama to America for $18/turn, every turn. You'll get profitable /fast/,

Finally: Win with ~25 shares out and a massive income of $90+.

It is a tough roe to hoe and can be killed by other players corrupting blacks in your path, but if they don't, and there is little positive income reason for them to given that there are no blacks on the initial board layout, then you'll have just bought the victory with up front cash. Each lost corruption or corruption played against you will cost you around ~$12 income per turn, more if the location is mid one of your big builds. It isn't an easy or low risk route, it can be blocked...

Having made two failed attempts to execute this so far, admittedly against a fore-warned audience of players, a couple points come to light:

1) Even with a max of 25 shares available it is easy to run out of shares and money if you meet opposition. In my last game I would have loved just another 5 measily shares and would have rewarded that with 48 income over three turns...but it was not to be.

2) It doesn't take much opposition to make for real trouble and severe income impacts. The player that takes Corruption on the first turn can make big problems for whoever is going for the Panama-US routes. So can First Build, although to a lesser degree (and depending on whether East or West Panama have two black cubes).

I suspect that the only way to manage this against a clued audience is to build the link first and fast, perhaps as short as a 3 hop, and then work on building track to add links to the route over subsequent turns.

There has been some minor commentary and discussion of this map in the below thread:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/887567#887567