Stone Age | BoardGameGeek

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

UnknownParkerBrother — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:43:26 +0000

Definitely only 7 shamen. Two 2's, and three 1's are available.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

chadmart — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:13:15 +0000

I'm going to have to check that... because I know I got 30 points for that, and I'm pretty sure Jan got 50... but if there's only 7 shamens, then someone is a cheater! (or just mis-counted ;))

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

hycanth — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:41:46 +0000

by hycanth

I think 3 or 4 players is a better game. As with many games, with 2 players it becomes more cutthroat since denying the opponent points is just as effective as earning them. In any case, the rule you neglected is quite important for the 2 player game.

BTW, I think there are 7 shamans, not 8.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

chadmart — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:34:05 +0000

by chadmart

Yeah, now that I know we were playing wrong, I definately want to try it out again with the right rules.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

UnknownParkerBrother — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:54:44 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

chadmart wrote:
I just figured out though, that we neglected the rule stating that in a 2 player game, only 1 player can collect each resource type, and that only 2 of the 3 hut areas can be taken each turn. That would definately slow down the game a bit and tighten up the scores.

It does more than that, it massively changes the two player experience. See your opponent needs stone to get that hut they played on? boink, no stone for you my dear... :devil:

Or place on the tool hut so that they can't choose the love shack because the farm has already been taken...

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

jugma — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:19:27 +0000

by jugma

Stone age is a great 2 player game. It's a bit like playing vikings (2player). Try this out if you like Stone Age :)

The thing in the two player game ist that you really have to think about blocking the other player. Don't let him go to often into the woods :D
It makes quite a difference with the 2 player rule that only one player is allowed to get ressources.

...sometimes you just have to do things that are not really beneficial for you ... but that happens often in a two player game...

And if you like try also out the 3 player game. That's Imo the perfect number of players.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: First time impressions - 2P game

sliponflange — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:32:10 +0000

by sliponflange

My wife and I prefer Stone Age as a two player game, four players drags on to long for me. With two blocking seems a little more viable since resources are limited to one person and and the hut areas are limited to 2 of the 3.

The first time we played I was not that impressed with SA but more more I play it the more I enjoy it. Mostly because of new strategies I want to try next time I play. Its not our favorite two player but it fun to break out on occasion. As of late all my wife really want to play is Agricola, I did just pick up [thing=33160][/thing] and I am looking forward to trying the 2 player variant for this.

Session: Stone Age:: First time impressions - 2P game

chadmart — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:45:52 +0000

by chadmart

My wife and I finally got in a game of Stone Age last night.

I started by explaining the rules to her/refreshing them for myself, and then we got into it.

Our first mistake was that I forgot that we each were supposed to start with some food. But that was remedied before the first turn was even finished.

Before playing the game my wife had a stigma about there being a "mating" hut, though she had no problems with slaves in [thing=33160][/thing]! It took me a while to get her to agree to play Stone Age because of this.

I thought the game was fun, but I feel that it would be better with more players. An item of note, we both maxed out the food production track about 3 or 4 turns before the end of the game, making the gathering section obsolete for the rest of the game... not necessarily a bad thing, but with only 1 player able to increase their food production each turn, in a 3 or 4 player game it would be nearly impossible for all the players to max it out in a game.

Jan focused more on tools throughout the game than I did, and we both had 7 buildings and several cards by the end of the game.

When all that was left to count was cards, we were only 2 points off of each other. When Jan calculated all of her cards, she ended up nearly 100 points ahead of me! I think what won it for her were the tools, and her shamens. (She had 5 with full 10 pop. and I had 3 with fill 10 pop.)

I just figured out though, that we neglected the rule stating that in a 2 player game, only 1 player can collect each resource type, and that only 2 of the 3 hut areas can be taken each turn. That would definately slow down the game a bit and tighten up the scores.

I do like the game as 2 player, but definately look forward to future games with more players.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Flashcubes — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:48:34 +0000

by Flashcubes

I own both! I love both! they are different yet similar. Each bring something different. Yes one is lighter than the other but both are very much enjoyable!

Happy Gaming FOLKS!

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

megasycophant — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:06:20 +0000

by megasycophant

UnknownParkerBrother wrote:
Being equally pedantic :cool: I can point out that the rules already cover bartering, by trading resources as food when you're short.

But even if you then stretch it to say that they're bartering their work, the flaw with your story is if your guys are off building huts for food at some mythical village miles away off the game board, then why are they still at home being able to be placed in your gold mines, your love shack, etc?

They should either be fed and working for you, or off working elsewhere for food. Not both.

That would also be thematically pleasing, if your guys aren't fed, they can't be working for you, because they're off working/hunting/gathering elsewhere.

Jumping in on an old thread here because I played my first games on BSW (wow, excruciatingly slow play) yesterday. In two four-player games, the ONLY strategy I saw ANYONE use was 'starvation'. Not having ever encountered it before in my casual play with family, I didn't recognize or defend against it and got creamed, although I did come in third each time above a player trying to do starvation. Seems to be some groupthink going on there. (Yes, I realize my experience was very limited.)
I already had issues with Stone Age's theme, and this just totally breaks the game and the the theme for me. I already had an issue with 'eating' resources. The Czech rules, players taking a -4 VP hit for each tribe member without food, seems to me it would fix it. Might not be a bad idea to eliminate resource-eating altogether and just make it a straight -4VP/food hit. Seems it would add some tension to the game, as well as simplifying the rules. The starvation strategy turns it into a spreadsheet.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

HavocIsHere — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:39:38 +0000

by HavocIsHere

johnclark wrote:
I agree that Agricola is, by most objective standards of boardgame design, a better game than Stone Age.

Well I do agree with most of what you wrote, except for this. What are these objective standards? I do not think the cards are balanced in Agricola; you pointed out a severe lack of theme integration regarding the time frame, and once again the cards make often no sense at all theme wise.
I think theme integration is an important objective standard of game design, especially in a game where the theme is supposed to be strong.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ryudoowaru — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:29:23 +0000

by ryudoowaru

megasycophant wrote:
johnclark wrote:
My youngest son always finds the love shack a bit icky, so he rationalises it by saying that its a mother and the midwife who go into the hut to have the baby! :D

My youngest son (11 years at the time) immediately dubbed it the "honeymoon hut". :p

I christened the one in my copy the "snuu-snuu hut." (Futurama fans in the audience will get that one.) Alas, my best friends, with whom I play the game on a regular basis, have a 6-year-old daughter who is entirely too precocious, intelligent, and observant for my own good. :blush: Add that to her mother's seeming inability to remember the name of the game and refer to it as "the 'snuu-snuu hut' game," and, well, those of you who have experience with 6-year-olds know where this story is headed... :whistle:

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

UnknownParkerBrother — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:02:51 +0000

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

megasycophant — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:35:30 +0000

by megasycophant

johnclark wrote:
My youngest son always finds the love shack a bit icky, so he rationalises it by saying that its a mother and the midwife who go into the hut to have the baby! :D

My youngest son (11 years at the time) immediately dubbed it the "honeymoon hut". :p

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

UnknownParkerBrother — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:17:57 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

Yuglooc wrote:
johnclark wrote:
In Stone Age everyone can get brick on a turn.

Not quite. Even in a best case scenario, all but one player will getr a chance at any given good. For instance, in the four player game, only three players can get brick (even if there are spots remaining after the third player places his/her workers).

That's not right either, actually. First of all, there is no player restriction in the four player game, it's simply the seven spots maximum. The first person could fill the seven spots all by himself gaining a monopoly, or all four players could be present by placing only 1 or 2 workers.

Only in the 2 or 3 player game are the four resource spots limited to "player count - 1".

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

johnclark — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:20:53 +0000

by johnclark

ndru wrote:
In Agricola, however, the need to continually revise your planned action sequences everytime someone takes a resource just felt like hard work. Its especially annoying if you get to midgame and realise that you've got almost no chance of winning.

Hi Andrew - good to hear from you! I forgot to mention your point here and I agree very strongly with it: in Agricola you can know that you are out of the running pretty early on, which is a killer for newbies.

Stone Age and Power Grid are two examples of very clever games which seem to conceal to newbies how bad they are going until the very end. In Power Grid this is because of the late game surge which catches the newbie by surprise and in Stone Age the concealed cards can result in a lot of points which completely change the leader. However, in Agricola you know, even during the very first game, that you are way behind after just a few rounds and the rest of the game is simply going through the motions - it IS really annoying.

What this means is that Agricola needs to played by a group of similar experience with the game. In Stone Age and Power Grid, the newbie will lose but will have more fun because it won't be so obvious - a kind of wilful ignorance to the fact that you know you will lose. In Agricola you know you will lose after the first half hour and the game rubs your nose in it for the next hour. That stinks.

(I've added this stuff in the original post now ...)

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Mr_Nuts — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:40:04 +0000

by Mr_Nuts

Nice review. For what it's worth, I like Stone Age but love Agricola.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ndru — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:24:32 +0000

by ndru

ryudoowaru wrote:
First of all, great summarization! You hit a lot of the major points of both comparison and contention between the two games.

In my opinion, the main difference between the two of them is intensity. As you said, Agricola is a "brain-burner," Stone Age not so much. Not that it's fluffy, but Agricola requires a lot more of both long-term planning and quick-thinking reorg when a player earlier in the order takes the one spot you really needed this turn. (I have often heard my roommate mutter under his breath "OK, then, on to Plan Q...")

I think you and John have pretty much summed up the core of Agricola.

I like Stone Age but can't help but feel its is a little bit too light because its more tactical. In Agricola, however, the need to continually revise your planned action sequences everytime someone takes a resource just felt like hard work. Its especially annoying if you get to midgame and realise that you've got almost no chance of winning.

I felt a bit the same about Caylus but it didn't seem as acute. Maybe because the dependency of strategies on resource availability wasn't as tight, and if someone grabbed a resource you could also benefit if you owned the relevant building. Or maybe because Caylus was more deterministic, I'm not sure.

Aside from the tedious plan churn, I think everything else about Agricola was very good. In fact, I was disappointed that I didn't like it because its popular and has many game mechanics that I otherwise enjoy.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ackmondual — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:48:22 +0000

by ackmondual

With SA vs Agricola, I'm also sure more newbies appreciate SA more since it has dice. Some groups just go "ga-ga" over them. It can give some games the impression that they're more casual than they appear.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Barticus88 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:30:41 +0000

by Barticus88

ronglass wrote:
I do not get this sort of "enjoyment" from Stone Age so do no longer play it, though the few games we did had lots of Barbara Bach/Ringo Starr humor.

Zugzug.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

johnclark — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:49:16 +0000

by johnclark

megasycophant wrote:
Being short a few food is no biggie, since I can feed them wood/stone/clay/gold?

I've never had a big problem with this - I think of it as simply trading your wood etc for food with another tribe. It should rarely happen because its always to your disadvantage to do it.

megasycophant wrote:

On the pregnancy/honeymoon hut/time scale issue, I would say Stone Age falls short here as well -- I can make a baby (in I assume nine months), and this requires two people for the duration; meanwhile, the rest of my tribe spent the entire time panning for gold?

Yes, this is a problem. Agricola probably gets it closer to reality with only one person 'occupied' with having the baby, although I am sure that medieval farming women would have been working in the farm within a short time after giving birth! My youngest son always finds the love shack a bit icky, so he rationalises it by saying that its a mother and the midwife who go into the hut to have the baby! :D

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

cferejohn — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:47:08 +0000

by cferejohn

Interesting analysis. This is my favorite kind of review: describing what works/doesn't work about a game for you and why. I've actually been trying to articulate what it is about Stone Age that makes it fall a little flat for me. It seems like it should be a great fit with probability manipulation, worker placement, set collection, and multiple paths to victory, but it feels arbitrary to me in a way that Agricola doesn't.

It's interesting that you basically declared a draw in terms of theme, because that's the bit that doesn't really work for me in Stone Age, at least as it relates to VPs. In terms of the worker placement and subsequent actions it works great - the more people you send to the forest, the more wood you get back (on average), but the arbitrariness of the huts and cards just makes the application of those resources seem a bit meaningless.

Agricola may have the opposite problem. Thematically, the accumulation of resources makes less sense - how come I can't get stone at the beginning of the game? Why does more wood/clay/stone appear every turn? However, the application of those resources to your VP engine (farm) works very well thematically - grain and vegetables grow in the field, animals breed as long as you have space to keep them, etc.

As a result, in Agricola you can really feel like you are building something, whereas in Stone Age, it feels more like you are just accumulating points, which are meaningless outside of themselves (it is not unique in that of course).

Your mileage may of course vary.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

megasycophant — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:25:14 +0000

by megasycophant

I like both games. I end up playing Stone Age a bit more often because some of the gameplay reasons you give. I'd almost always prefer Agricola to Stone Age, but it fills my girlfriend and many of my regular gaming folk with excruciating anxiety.

Regarding theme, I can appreciate some of the points you're making, but would argue that Stone Age's theme (especially with scoring, something you mentioned) is much thinner. Larger groups being on the average more productive and the use of tools are very thematic elements. On the other hand, huts made of gold? Being short a few food is no biggie, since I can feed them wood/stone/clay/gold? (Feeding them wood invariably leads to Beavis & Butthead impressions.) I can discover music/pottery/writing at the cost of a stone and a gold? I can't even find a thematic tie at all in the other cards -- they're just mechanisms to buy a short term resource benefit and long term points.

On the pregnancy/honeymoon hut/time scale issue, I would say Stone Age falls short here as well -- I can make a baby (in I assume nine months), and this requires two people for the duration; meanwhile, the rest of my tribe spent the entire time panning for gold?

I think Agricola's cards give the game a lot of thematic depth and its intensity/urgency express the difficulty of subsistence farming. My point is that I think you can argue theme in either direction without needing to dig deeply. Personally, I don't feel immersed in Stone Age's theme -- I think it could be pretty easily rethemed.

Well, I was with ya until this bit:

johnclark wrote:
my personal preference is for the Stone Age style, which I think is broadly in line with the mix of strategy and tactics in Settlers Of Catan.

I don't think "ya better hope the rolls go in your favor" is 'the Stone Age style'. :ninja: (Sorry, couldn't resist this dig, though I will resist comparing my enjoyment of playing Settlers to back-alley emergency dentistry.)

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Yuglooc — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:28:42 +0000

by Yuglooc

johnclark wrote:
In Stone Age everyone can get brick on a turn.

Not quite. Even in a best case scenario, all but one player will getr a chance at any given good. For instance, in the four player game, only three players can get brick (even if there are spots remaining after the third player places his/her workers). It's certainly more available than it is in Agricola though.

Good review!

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

madmanw — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:44:40 +0000

by madmanw

I was trying to pick between which one of the two to put on my wish-list for christmas and I ended up choosing Stone Age, for most of the reasons you mentioned plus game length.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

sabaki — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:29:53 +0000

by sabaki

More food with turn order isn't a bad idea, but I cannot help but think that you are overvaluing farms somewhat. In a 4-player game, I am more than happy to see the other 3 people pick farms right away because then I can just go with a starvation strategy and know that they will keep fighting over farms for a little while. You can't really go starvation if you have a farm, because then it becomes a wasted action.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ronglass — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:56:51 +0000

by ronglass

I am an old time wargamer form the 60s and 70s, but my friends are amazed I like and play Agricola. Why? Its all about perspective.

I do not see Agricola as a medieval farming game as some simply call it. I see its as post-apocolyptic, with the 2 starting "family" members being Vic and Blood who have gone over the mountain and found a place with no Screamers to finally settle down. And "Family Growth" is NOT about having babies... its about finding females willing to work and "play" to add to the family as opposed to those you simply eat (puts a new twist to the food collection actions when you choose "fish", doesn't it??? ;-) ).

I do not get this sort of "enjoyment" from Stone Age so do no longer play it, though the few games we did had lots of Barbara Bach/Ringo Starr humor. So, most have their version of Agricola, I have mine, and apologies to any who do not get the references to "A Boy and His Dog".

Ron, friend of Blood and Vic

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

pdoherty — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:52:35 +0000

by pdoherty

I much prefer Stone Age to Agricola, as well...

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Question about building vs. cards

DoveBar — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:47:29 +0000

by DoveBar

Each game is so different that something that works really well once, may not work well at all the next time. I like to focus on the cards, but early on it may become clear which multiplier I will get the most of, tools, agriculture, people, huts and then I will work to get that up and get more of those cards. Sometimes, I just fall into the culture cards. I will almost always buy the triple hut multiplier card or the double people card if I can. If I get hut cards, I will then buy as many huts as I can. Sometimes though the card strategy will not work if someone else does nothing but buy huts from the same stack and tries to end the game quickly. The beauty of this game is that you usually have to do something different to win each time.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ackmondual — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:34:00 +0000

by ackmondual

Philgamer wrote:
Both game scratch the same itch for me. Stone Age takes half the time to play, costs half as much, and it is much more newby friendly.

Also, half the # of components, half the game weight(-ish), half the physical weight.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Neo42 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:17:53 +0000

by Neo42

I think the variance (round cards being randomized and not available until certain rounds) in Agricola sort of makes sense actually. Just like in real life sometimes certain actions either aren't available to people or not logical. For instance, the stone might not be available because your area hasn't discovered a quarry for it. Maybe childbearing wasn't an option because of health issues or other things.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

ryudoowaru — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:01:03 +0000

by ryudoowaru

First of all, great summarization! You hit a lot of the major points of both comparison and contention between the two games.

In my opinion, the main difference between the two of them is intensity. As you said, Agricola is a "brain-burner," Stone Age not so much. Not that it's fluffy, but Agricola requires a lot more of both long-term planning and quick-thinking reorg when a player earlier in the order takes the one spot you really needed this turn. (I have often heard my roommate mutter under his breath "OK, then, on to Plan Q...")

I have described Stone Age as "the gateway game for worker placement." It is relatively light (compared to others in the genre, like Agricola or Caylus), the randomness of the dice give it a friendlier feel (if you do badly, you can blame it on a string of bad die rolls), and it is quick to play. That being said, I will look at someone after they've played their first few games of Stone Age and say "OK, now that you're familiar with the mechanic, I have this other game that's pretty much Stone Age on steroids. It's called Agricola, and it's a farming game. Want to try it?"

Worker Placement is a game mechanic with which most Ameri-gamers are unfamiliar, because we just don't make a lot of games like that here. So people who aren't hard-core gamers will need something (comparatively) light to get them comfortable with how it works; Stone Age, at least to my friends, fills that need.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

K26dp — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:27:50 +0000

by K26dp

I love 'em both.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Philgamer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:59:41 +0000

by Philgamer

Both game scratch the same itch for me. Stone Age takes half the time to play, costs half as much, and it is much more newby friendly.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

Jaxhil — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:52:24 +0000

by Jaxhil

Thanks for posting your thoughts! I have been trying to chose between Agricola and Stone Age (leaning toward SA) and your post has been extremely helpful. I am going to go for Stone Age, which I think from your description will play much better in my family.

Thanks a lot!

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

didaskalos — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:17:26 +0000

by didaskalos

This is really substantive, John, imo. Thanks for sharing. I love Stone Age for the reasons you mentioned and have shied away from Agricola. I still might look in Agricola, but your emphases touch on some things I may not like.

Thanks for reminding me why I like Stone Age so much!

Review: Stone Age:: Why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola

johnclark — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:35:06 +0000

by johnclark

First, note that this review is not called "Why Agricola is better than Stone Age". I agree that Agricola is, but most objective standards of boardgame design, a better game than Stone Age. I would just prefer to play Stone Age, and I will tell you why. Broadly there are two reasons: theme and gameplay.

Theme:

Both Stone Age and Agricola are games about gathering resources, building or buying stuff (which result in additional benefits and/or victory points), increasing your workforce and feeding your workforce. In many ways the theme strength is higher in Agricola, in the sense that your farm can have all sorts of things whereas Stone Age is limited to tools and farms. However, some things really irk me about the theme-ing in Agricola.

1. I can easily understand where the resources come from in Stone Age: the people go out into the forest, mountains etc and work there are return with a number of the relevant resources, which is determined by the number of workers, tools and luck (the dice). This is very thematically solid and the way these three things combine to produce resources is really very clever. Now compare Agricola. Resources simply arrive at the start of each round and people go out to get them. But where do they arrive from? Why do they arrive? I suppose you could come up with some ad-hoc rationalisation to answer these questions, but it does not come naturally out of the game like it does in Stone Age.

2. Why can’t you collect stone from the start of the game in Agricola? Why can’t you have a baby from the start of the game? Agricola, unlike Stone Age, restricts your possible actions until certain points in the game. Now, I am not saying this is a bad thing - it is actually the key mechanism which allows each game to be a bit different since the time when you are allowed to have a baby varies from game to game. But it just irks me that it makes no sense thematically.

3. Thematically, the number of people required to do the different actions broadly makes sense in Stone Age but not in Agricola. I have already mentioned the number of people required to collect resources. But how about the number of people required to have a baby? That’s only one in Agricola! Ah, I hear you say, the one to have a baby in Agricola is the mother who is out of action while having the baby while the father can still collect resources etc. And here is the point: the time-frame of Agricola is hard to understand. How long in ‘game time’ is a turn in Agricola? The key point is that the baby born in one turn is available to work on the very next turn! So the turn must be at least around 5 years. But this does not make much sense in the context of the rest of the game which revolves around the harvest cycle, which presumably occurs once a year which mean game turns are only 4, 6 or 12 months depending on if there 3,2 or 1 rounds in between harvests. Consider Stone Age now. There is no problem with thinking of each turn as 5-ish years. A game starts with five people who are presumably each between 10 and 30 years old. The game typically lasts for around 10 turns, or 50 years. This makes the original people very old by the end and requires some suspension of logic when they want to have their first baby at the end of the game, but otherwise it is ok. Obviously neither game wants you to think that people eat only once a year or once every 5 years - the food aspect is summarising the overall need for food on a regular basis.

So these points summarise my issues with the theme-ing of Agricola. I should add a few words about the huts and civilization cards in Stone Age, which are the weakest part of the theme. The civ cards are actually not too bad - these represent different developments (like the developments in Agricola) which provide both short-term and long-term benefits. In Agricola the developments provide on-going benefits plus a straight VP value at the end. In Stone Age the developments provide an immediate benefit plus a VP value which varies according to your end-game stuff. So, I have no problem with the development cards in either game.

The huts are more tricky to provide a thematic context for and I am not going to try. While I would like the huts to work better with the theme it has never bothered me too much since they don’t play a role in the core mechanic of the game, which is the whole worker-placement thing. The conversion of resources into VPs is a problem in almost all games since this is not how life actually works but games need some way to decide the winner. The Stone Age huts could be fairly easily made more thematic. For example, the picture of the hut could better match the types of resources needed but for some reason the designer chose not to do that. Anyway, my point is that the thematic strength is never going to work too well in the VP part of the game.

OK, perhaps you have read all this and your reaction is something like, "get over it, they are only games and the theme will break down at some point". Well, that’s true. Everyone has a preference for how much theme integration a game should have. In short, Agricola tries to be a game which simulates the construction of a farm in quite a lot of detail - this is serious micromanagement - but key aspects of it are non-thematic in order to make the gameplay work. Now that is ok - all games with a theme must make sacrifices for gameplay - but the fact that Agricola has SO much micro-theme-ing means that the inconsistencies really stand out and irritate me. Stone Age does not attempt to be a high-detail theme immersion game and so (ironically) the theme hangs together better than it does in Agricola, which inevitably trips up in its thematic detail.

Gameplay:

OK, I’ll briefly add why I prefer Stone Age to Agricola from a game-play perspective. Again, this is only to describe my preferences and not to say that Stone Age is actually objectively better than Agricola (it probably isn’t).

1. Agricola is brain-burning, mainly because the string of actions you need to get correct is long and prone to making error. This is a logistics game. In a way, Stone Age is as well, but the string of actions required to do something is not as long. Some people love this kind of thing. The funny thing is, Agricola is probably neither a strategic or a tactical game (although there are elements of both). I think its primarily a logistics game. In a purely tactical game you simply make the best move you can on your turn, without any regard for future turns. In a strategic game you have a pretty solid idea of your full game plan and work towards it. In Agricola, you can’t really have a full game plan - the actions of other players can mess things up too easily and cards may not come out in the right order - but neither can you take each move at a time, since you must ‘chain’ your actions. Instead, you need to have a series of mini-strategies (each of which is a set of logistics) and kind of use them to muddle through to the end. Stone Age is more of a strategic game rather than a tactical game. At some point reasonably early you are going to decide on how you are going to proceed - through starvation, big tools, rapid hut depletion etc - and work along those lines, realizing that there will be tactical decisions as well, especially in terms of the card order. Neither of these ‘styles’ of game is inherently any worse than the other but my personal preference is for the Stone Age style, which I think is broadly in line with the mix of strategy and tactics in Settlers Of Catan.

2. Like Stone Age, Agricola is a worker-placement game. As such the main vehicle for player interaction is in the fact that there are limited spaces for workers and players must jockey for those spaces. The big difference is that in Stone Age you each have 5+ workers jockeying for seven spaces on each resource plus the three special areas (farm, tool, babies), whereas in Agricola you each have 2+ workers jockeying for ONE space on each thing. Therefore, Agricola is much more cutthroat in terms of getting the good stuff. In Stone Age everyone can get brick on a turn. In Agricola only one person can get the brick (I know there is an additional space you can go to get one brick but having to use this is less efficient). This makes things very tight. It also means that the aim of each player is in balancing up what there best turn is in terms of both getting their own best result and preventing other players doing what they want. That is, player interaction is almost entirely through blocking other players from doing what they want to do. Of course, Stone Age (being a worker-placement game) is similar, but its much less cutthroat. Blocking plays a much smaller part of a player’s thinking (except in 2-player where placement restrictions are more like Agricola). My preference is for less ‘negative’ player interaction. Agricola is a ‘nasty’ game, a bit like Carcassonne - it is often better to block others than to improve your own position. Stone Age still manages to be a ‘nice’ game (mostly - there is scope for ‘nasty’ play!), which I like better - its simply a preference of mine (I would prefer not to use the words ‘nasty’ and ‘nice’, but you know what I mean).

As I said earlier, I actually think that Agricola is a better game than Stone Age, and the BGG ratings reflect that. Agricola has agonising decisions, a ton of variability and replay-ability (thanks to the decks), nice theme which is well used (up to a point), lots of options etc. However, I would still prefer to play Stone Age.

Review: Stone Age:: A Stone Age Video Review by Games Overboard

gordon1018 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:47:55 +0000

by gordon1018

This is a supplemental written review to accompany a video review done by:
www.gamesoverboard.com

Youtube Video

Let's just get it out in the open. Stone Age isn't anything special. If you break it down it's really just a worker placement game. Don't get me wrong. It's a GOOD worker placement game. It's well-balanced, and has a couple different viable strategies, but it really doesn't bring anything revolutionary to the gaming spectrum, does it?

You may think I'm writing a negative review. Quite to the contrary, I love the game. you might think I'm going to do a turn-around and say something like, "I FOOLED YOU!!!". Not really

The truth is, I truly feel that the game itself is nothing ridiculously innovative, new, or superb.

It is however an example of a game where that doesn't matter, because of how spectacularly the game was themed, produced, and presented.

Essentially, you place your "workers" each turn and then collect the items you placed them on. The person at the end who most effectively gathered, spent, and used those resources wins.

That's the game in a nutshell, and it's a good idea for a game. There are a lot of games that do that.

Here's where Stone age Truly stands head-and-tails above the crowd in my book though.

EVERYTHING.....yes, EVERYTHING is gorgeous in the box and simply makes sense. Starting with the board. There are very few game boards that look this great, yet aren't cluttered or confusing to look at. The art is immaculate, Each person on the board is individually drawn. If there were more downtime when playing this game, I'd take the time to name them all and look at their expressions.

The back of the board even has art on it. How many have that? Not too many, i'll tell you. And I'm not talking about Power grid style functional pictures. I'm talking about pretty stuff simply for the sake of being pretty.

The "meeples" are little cavemen.....awesome
The resources are all different shapes, not just merely different colors of basic cubes. The wood is shaped long like a log, the brick is a rectangle, the gold brick is actually shaped like a gold brick.

The dice cup, although some have had "experiences" with smelly ones, is made of what looks like hand-stitched leather

the markers for food look like varying sizes of food sources from grizzly bear hide, to mushrooms, to fish, and down to berries.

I know I'm babbling but merely opening the box and looking at all the color and personality always makes me smile.

Now, I know that I said there was nothing special about the game, but it does combine a few of my favorite aspects of design in them

1. I like games that are simple in nature but allow a lot different avenues for success. This is for sure an example of that. There are a number of different routes you can take and still be competitive and successful

2. It uses dice, but the dice don't determine your entire fate in the game. Kingsburg is another example of this in a game. Sure, a bad dice roll will hurt you, but unless you are William H. Macy from "the Cooler" you won't be totally stymied by dice rolls alone.

Well, that's all I got. I hope you enjoy our review, and I hope we helped to make a decision as to whether it's a game for you. We love it and I'll rarely ever turn down a game of it.

Hope to hear from you with comments and such. Stop by our website and see some other videos or check my profile for more BGG written reviews.

Brian

www.gamesoverboard.com
www.youtube.com/gamesoverboard
we're also on facebook, flickr, and twitter

New Image for Stone Age

CoffinDancr — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:11:25 +0000

by CoffinDancr

]]>

Wrestlemania Stone Age

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

elfrododumbo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:14:34 +0000

by elfrododumbo

pelein wrote:
Supongo que me habré perdido algo pero, ¿tanto le molesta a la peña el olor a cuero? En fin, "Están locos estos romanos" :shake:

Pardon ? :laugh:

Pelein, as long as you are happy, I am happy :D

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age video review - all in under 7 minutes!

The Iced One — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:02:16 +0000

by The Iced One

Thanks for the review! Very nicely done! Great viewpoints, great close-ups, nice overview of the components and gameplay.

*Enter teacher mode*
Although I would like to add that - as constructive critisism - I like Tom Vasels' presentation better, he sounds more enthousiastic and uses a lot more intonation. Since that's not really difficult, you might make your reviews even better by paying attention to this.
*exit teacher mode*

Despite that you just pushed me over the edge about buying the game! ;)

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

alafter — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:38:07 +0000

by alafter

elfrododumbo wrote:

Here is a solution that I promise will work: put one of those shoe Odour preventers in the cup and leave it for a couple of days !

This was my suggestion to a friend who had that "smelly" problem with his cup and he is now delighted because does not "stink" anymore :D

DEfinitely worth a try! May even work better than newspaper! LET US KEEP FIGHTING THE SMELLY CUP.

PS gotta go buy one now...

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

elgin_j — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:31:45 +0000

by elgin_j

NateStraight wrote:
It's a good thing this is a board game site or this thread would really be quite gross.

Clearly our peverse minds were working in unison when we saw this thread's title...

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

pelein — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:12:05 +0000

by pelein

Supongo que me habré perdido algo pero, ¿tanto le molesta a la peña el olor a cuero? En fin, "Están locos estos romanos" :shake:

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

commandwolf — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:37:59 +0000

by commandwolf

Yes, our game group has also noticed the "turn order problem" whereby the 4th player usually starts at a disadvantage versus Players 1 & 2.

What we have done is to alter the starting food but in the following proportions:

Player 1: Starts with 10 Food
Player 2: Starts with 11 Food
Player 3: Starts with 12 Food
Player 4: Starts with 13 Food

We have tried this many times now and can say it works fairly well to even out the food advantage of placing early farms.

Try it out and see what you think!

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

elfrododumbo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:52:04 +0000

by elfrododumbo

No harm trying if the smell is really getting to some players of the game :)

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

NateStraight — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:43:03 +0000

by NateStraight

It's a good thing this is a board game site or this thread would really be quite gross.

Thread: Stone Age:: General:: Solution for Smelly Cup: This will Work

elfrododumbo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:38:55 +0000

by elfrododumbo

Although my cup does not smell, I came up with a solution for a friend whose cup did smell. It is this:-

Put an Odour-Eater shoe sole in the cup and leave it in for a couple of days....voila, no more smelly cup

It works.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

elfrododumbo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:31:28 +0000

by elfrododumbo

Here is a solution that I promise will work: put one of those shoe Odour preventers in the cup and leave it for a couple of days !

This was my suggestion to a friend who had that "smelly" problem with his cup and he is now delighted because does not "stink" anymore :D

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

alafter — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:49:20 +0000

by alafter

Sphere wrote:
alafter wrote:
I can honestly say that the cup coming right out of the wrappings is FAR LESS REEKING STINKING....to the point where you'd have to stuff the cup in your nose.

You were right. Now, does anybody have a suggestion for how to get the blasted cup OUT OF MY NOSE???

It are bad english me write in fast fast. Now you poor have cup in nose and I feel bad.

You no put cup in nose anymore ok?

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

alafter — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:44:55 +0000

by alafter

elfrododumbo wrote:

Although my cup does not smell, I cannot help but wonder what kind of "leather" was used" to make the cup ! :gulp:

Rio Grande Groin Leather

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

richtoosoon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:54:10 +0000

by richtoosoon

Take your newspaper (Herald Tribute, WSJ)

Since the Wall Street Journal was taken over by the rotting corpse that is Rupert Murdoch, all I can smell is dead fish and parakeet droppings. :gulp:

I'd rather smell cowhide...

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

Sphere — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:13:52 +0000

by Sphere

alafter wrote:
I can honestly say that the cup coming right out of the wrappings is FAR LESS REEKING STINKING....to the point where you'd have to stuff the cup in your nose.

You were right. Now, does anybody have a suggestion for how to get the blasted cup OUT OF MY NOSE???

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

Barticus88 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:41:28 +0000

by Barticus88

timstellmach wrote:
But, what is this "newspaper" of which you speak?

It was something they had back in the 20th century. I think it was like YouTube.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

timstellmach — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:23:48 +0000

by timstellmach

But, what is this "newspaper" of which you speak?

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

elfrododumbo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:03:09 +0000

by elfrododumbo

Although my cup does not smell, I cannot help but wonder what kind of "leather" was used" to make the cup ! :gulp:

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

pelein — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:00:58 +0000

by pelein

Están locos estos romanos... :shake:

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

ElCid91 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:03:24 +0000

by ElCid91

Thanks for the idea. I had to put that thing in another room, the smell was making my wife sick.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

falluper — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:56:03 +0000

by falluper

Crap. Where the hell did I chuck it?

Thread: Stone Age:: General:: EVERYONE!!! The simple solution to getting rid of the STINKY CUP SMELL!

alafter — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:52:20 +0000

by alafter

Take your newspaper (Herald Tribute, WSJ) and crumple it up real good after reading about the real economy.

Stuff your cup full of crumpled newspapers and wrap it with yet even more crumpled news paper in such a way that it is spongelike, yet tightly against the cup.

Leave it for half a day. Unwrap, take a whiff, repeat.

I read on the internet that newspaper have fibers with amazing ability to absorb that leather smell.

I live in thailand. And after only 24 hours, I can honestly say that the cup coming right out of the wrappings is FAR LESS REEKING STINKING....to the point where you'd have to stuff the cup in your nose.

I hope to place the cup back in my box after a few more treatments.

Try it out guys! I hope it works for everyone too!!!!!

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: First try at "starvation"

JasonC — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:13:04 +0000

by JasonC

The idea that it is bad to be starving at 7 is based on a fallacy.

The thought is, "they've got 5 people income, I've got 7, each brings in 3.5, I'm only 7 ahead. If I lose 10 points a turn they will gain 3 per turn in me, despite my higher pop income. I need 8 people to have 10.5 more income and break even vs. the 10 point a turn headwind".

This is a fallacy because it pretends the opponents have all of the income from their 5 people available, along with avoiding the 10 point a turn hit. They do not. They have to feed. They need to generate 10 pips a turn from hunting or cover the equivalent through farming. Farming it somewhat more efficient. But even if they put one on the farm space every other turn until they have 5 farm income, they will still spend ~28 points of effort each on feeding, even if they stay at 5 people forever. 9 down to 1 non-farm food needed across 2 players, is 45 food, minus 24 starting is 21 hunted, takes 6 actions plus 10 farm actions is 16 actions, is worth 54 points.

You could be stuck not feeding at 7 people for 9 turns and you'd break even with the effort they spend feeding their smaller family. That can't happen - you'll have the button 3 times in that span of time, in a 3 player. In a 4 player and if they block you by taking the hut, their own feeding needs are going up and they have fewer field actions per person and more hunting.

The break-even point for starvation is considerably lower than the 7 vs 8 notion thinks.

The real difficulty in starvation is getting a second hut per turn worth of points, one way or another. And I am explaining the solution - take people and hut cards instead. That is the other way to fairly or more than fairly trade people-pips of income into VPs, without needing to snag 2 huts a turn.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: First try at "starvation"

JasonC — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:33:15 +0000

by JasonC

Yes I started starving at 7. It was 3 player. Doing nothing but using the love shack yourself to block someone at 7 people is a poor move in a 3 player game. You just benefit the 3rd. The return for a "feeder" from agriculture is much, much higher than the return from the love shack. And the return from tools is higher. In addition, there are often key cards (or later game, 1-7 huts) out that attract a first round move.

They can't *both* block the shack and take the people or hut bonus cards.

When I'm in first position I get the shack automatically. When I am in second position they can only block it if they take it themselves, lowering their own return and leaving the tools for me if I want them, or my first choice of cards. When I am in third position they can take 2 village options of their own preference, but only at the cost of leaving me first choice of cards.

None of it is enough to block the starvation strategy. The people still ramp, along with first choice in strategy cards repeatedly, if they slow that ramp at all.

In 4 player it is somewhat easier to block it, but someone ahead in turn position has to want the love shack. They will rarely pass up agriculture for people when they are feeding. The result is in first or second position you can get people, and nearly always get first crack at cards if "stalled". Twice around the table and the people are maxed.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: First try at "starvation"

kusinohki — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:47:30 +0000

by kusinohki

point-eating strategy

It's also harder to pull off if the other players are aware they need to take the shaman and hut builder cards before you do. I'm guessing you weren't the start player each time you grabbed a double shaman or the triple builder.

You started eating points with 7 people? If I were one of your opponents, I would have looked for a way to keep you at 7 people for as long as possible. I find it a dangerous position to be in since acquiring 7 food requires a lot of effort for the return and going the other route, ignoring food, you can't generate enough points to make up for the -10 at the end of turn.

My rule of thumb is 8 people and 0 points, eat points. 5-6 people get food and farms. 7 people and 0 farms - get an 8th person ASAP or get lots of farms ASAP. Lately, I've been hesitant to get a 7th person unless I'm confident I can get an 8th on the next turn or foresee being able to get farms a couple of turns in a row.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: First try at "starvation"

garry_rice — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:49:36 +0000

by garry_rice

If your opponents figure out what you're doing early on, this is alot harder (at least if they take the love shack to prevent you from growing your tribe).

Thread: Stone Age:: Strategy:: First try at "starvation"

JasonC — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:31:23 +0000

by JasonC

I won the game in my first attempt at the "starvation" strategy. Meaning, I fed my people only for the first 2 turns, and after that ignored the food requirement and just took the -10 per turn hit. I used the love shack repeatedly and was at 7 people the first turn I had the -10, and had 10 people well before the end.

What made it work, though, was not the efforts of the people themselves gathering resources and making huts, but the synergy effects of cards.

When you run starvation, you are making huts significantly faster than other players. You also have significantly more people than other players. This raises the value of the x2 people and x3 hut cards. In my game, I ended with 2 2x people, 2 1x people, 1 3x huts, and 1 2x huts cards in my stack. I ignored "technology" (green grass cards) completely. I ended with 7 huts and 10 people, with 95 points from those 6 cards.

The points from the huts themselves stayed ahead of the starvation penalty, but not by enough to win the game for me on its own. But I had many huts built and many people at the end. If I also snagged all the big bonus cards for those things, I was cruisin'...

For what it is worth...

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: final scoring - food worthless?

ElCid91 — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:05:40 +0000

by ElCid91

me too!

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

krainer — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:51:28 +0000

by krainer

Culture points are somewhat overrated: if an opponent begins to collect them seriously, just make sure to double up one of yours, and the opp's efficiency of collection diminishes enormously. In addition, you can block one of the ones the opp needs on the last turn planning the whole while to not collect it unless you have significant leftover resources.

The only time culture points really work is when you can get a complete set of 8, and that is so easy to block that it is really not worth pusuing early.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

russ — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:55:02 +0000

by russ

Heh, I just won a game with 11 tools and a x7 multiplier. Powerful stuff, since unlike culture cards or huts, tools are also quite helpful during the game instead of just being points at the end.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

bnordeng — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:11:18 +0000

by bnordeng

garry_rice wrote:
You didn't mention it, but I suppose you added 1 point to your score for each remaining resource (not food) you had left?:)

Great_Mazinga wrote:
Did either of you have left over resources? Don't forget those are worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

WAIT... we actually did NOT add 1 point per resource at the end. In fact, the last 3 times we've played we didn't do that. I can't recall for certain at this point, but I think that we each had three non-food resources left so I think that the ultimate result is the same...

Final score...
Her: 293 (22)
Me: 293 (22)

Thanks for catching that!

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

Great_Mazinga — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:40:52 +0000

by Great_Mazinga

Playing 2 player, you both do better if you're not competing for the same civ cards, farms/tools, etc. It's more difficult to avoid in larger numbers games. It still works great as a 2 player, though.

Did either of you have left over resources? Don't forget those are worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

garry_rice — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:16:04 +0000

by garry_rice

You didn't mention it, but I suppose you added 1 point to your score for each remaining resource (not food) you had left?:)

I played one game where we forgot to add them in initially and I thought I'd finally lost a game of this in my game group (I've lost it elsewhere, just not in my group)...but then we realized we hadn't added those points and I wound up winning by a few points:D...

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

Larry Welborn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:28:02 +0000

by Larry Welborn

I'm really glad for you that your wife eventually won.

Session: Stone Age:: Tools versus Civilization Leads to an Exciting Finish

bnordeng — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:53:53 +0000

by bnordeng

I first played Stone Age in March, 2009 and thought it was a lot of fun. I could immediately see that my wife would like almost everything about this game. I wasn't sure about the dice though... unlucky rolls lead to unhappiness. So, I didn't get the game though it stayed on my mind. Finally, in October I ordered it and she and I played our 3rd game of it last night.

Right from the get-go, I decided I was going to try to collect all eight symbols on the civilization cards. Everyting was off to a good start for me as I built up my farming, chopped down trees and bought many cards. My wife was collecting tools, farming and getting a variety of resources. Eventually, it became clear that we had two very distinct approaches to our game... I was getting meeples, farms and cards at every chance; she was taking every opportunity to get tools, resources and huts. Of course, we both sprinkled in a bit of everything where appropriate. At the very end, I had all eight symbols and she has had a complete set of tools (4, 4, 4).

I was first on the last turn and picked up a civ card and a hut. After placing her meeples, she was in a pickle. She could take the safe road and mine for ore first, using the ore with some wood to get the civ card (4 resources) that had a hut bonus; this path would mean she pays 5 wood for her hut for 15 points but was guaranteed to work. Or, she could take the risk and use her wood for the civ card (also had a 3 tool on it); going this route might allow her to use 5 ore for her hut and 25 points but she would need to roll at least 8 with two dice and, if she didn't, she'd lose the hut altogether. Both of us thought I was ahead by a bit, but neither of us were certain (which is one of the aspects of this game that I really like - it's virtually impossible to keep track of everyone else's score).

She decided to take the risk and she rolled the dice for ore. She rolled an eight, needing an eight. She thought she'd lost, but the joy she showed for this roll was priceless. We both started adding up our totals, moving our scoring markers along as we scored huts and civ cards. I finished my scoring at 288... not bad I thought. She was at 205 with one more item to score. She had 12 tools with a x7 bonus for several civ cards. WOW! That made 84 points, taking her to 289.

Final score...
Her: 289
Me: 288

She was so excited. WAIT... turns out that she had one civ card with a symbol that she thought was worthless. I let her know that one of those cards is, in fact, worth one point. So...

Final score...
Her: 290
Me: 288

She was still thinking this was great. WAIT... turns out I had purchased my last two huts and scored them, but did not add them to my bonus for "times huts" on my civ cards. I had just x1 so that added 2 points for me...

Final score...
Her: 290
Me: 290

She wasn't beaming anymore, but was still satisfied that the game was tied and that I hadn't won. I retrieved the rulebook from the box and said, "perhaps there is a tie-breaker." She said, "stop, just stop. You don't want to take me from winning by one to tied to losing like this." She was right, but I couldn't resist taking this to fruition so I read on. The tie-breaker is the highest total of food track (farming), tools and people. I had 8 farming, 10 people and just 2 tools - pretty good. She had 4 farming, 6 people and 12 tools - also, not bad.

Final score...
Her: 290 (22)
Me: 290 (21)

At this point, we were both getting quite a kick out of ourselves. WAIT... just kidding. That was the end. She won in a game that was as close as possible without finishing as a tie and we took completely divergent paths.

Between the luck of rolling dice (which is almost guaranteed to even out over the course of a game), the different strategic options and the fairly well implemented theme, this game is a total winner. After her first play, my wife said it was her new favorite game... she still thinks this way!

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age Review: From a "teachability" perspective

aimoned — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:01:41 +0000

by aimoned

Edit: Added link.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Question about building vs. cards

liken@xtra.co.nz — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:26:54 +0000

by liken@xtra.co.nz

I tend to focus in maybe a couple of areas (with one perhaps predominant) - the mixed bag approach doesn't seem to work all that well in my experience.

Re Cards vs Huts - I tend to target the cards fairly heavily, but will also pretty much try and build huts when I can. It is handy to try to keep 3 or 4 resource (units) around to cover card purchases and so you only need to usually gather one or two types to build most any huts.

Obviously if you are getting plenty of hut-builder cards then you want to build most any hut (especially the cheap ones) that you can. Also in this situation (and generally) don't be afraid to grab the 1-7 hut and only score say 9-12 points with it (this really annoys the stone and gold hoarders!)

My comments are based on maybe 8-10 face-to-face games against a wide variety of players (some newbies). Some people writing strategy notes will have played this online (BSW) so have many more games experience than this.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

ColtsFan76 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:53:19 +0000

by ColtsFan76

Not the official word but convincing group think in this thread:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/344008

Thread: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Question about building vs. cards

djklaus — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:32:54 +0000

by djklaus

I've read a few different strategies that seem to be unanimous on building later in the game and getting cards earlier. Could someone explain this thinking to me? I only have one game under my belt now and am trying to figure out why this would be. It seems at game's end that all points count toward the grand total, so that this shouldn't matter. The only real benefit that I could see would be that you get resources/food sometimes from cards which would be more beneficial early on. But by delaying building, it seems like you're giving other players a better choice of buildings (ie. the 1-7 huts) without a fight.

I really enjoy this game so far and have a feeling I'm going to wear it out pretty quickly. But I seem to have problems with games like this and El Grande where there are multiple 'good' ways to get points but for some reason everyone else seems to find the 'great' ways that benefit them just a little bit more. Do those of you who find yourselves winning more often tend to try and dominate in all areas (people, huts, tools, etc) or are there a few that you tend to focus on?

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

Barticus88 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:41:51 +0000

by Barticus88

Stone Age is about advanced neolithic peoples. There are no caves, cavemen, or cavemeeples. These people live in straw huts (made from stone and gold).

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

joedy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:22:24 +0000

by joedy

manymoodys wrote:
I believe the rules indicate that Mommy Cave Meeple will only reproduce "x" number of times before becoming tired and getting a headache.

You'll observe, also, that there are absolutely no Aspirin resource units within the game.

Didn't this spur the invention of the Caveman Club and the resurgence of the popular slogan, "It's so easy, even a caveman can do it!"?

-joedy

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

manymoodys — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:10:38 +0000

by manymoodys

I believe the rules indicate that Mommy Cave Meeple will only reproduce "x" number of times before becoming tired and getting a headache.

Limit may be more by implication that it specicifally indicates resources are unlimited (M&M's work great and are consumable when no longer needed) vs indicating that meeples, tools and farming are not.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

ColtsFan76 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:35:46 +0000

by ColtsFan76

rabidbob wrote:
ColtsFan76 wrote:
You are limited to the 10 meeples that come with the game.

Thanks for the quick reply! Any reference for this?

I'll have to look later. I tried to find it in the rules quickly this morning but didn't see it. I think it was confirmed in one of the forum threads.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

rabidbob — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:39:45 +0000

by rabidbob

ColtsFan76 wrote:
You are limited to the 10 meeples that come with the game.

Thanks for the quick reply! Any reference for this?

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

ColtsFan76 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:50:14 +0000

by ColtsFan76

You are limited to the 10 meeples that come with the game.

Thread: Stone Age:: Rules:: Maximum meeples / farm increases?

rabidbob — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:45:33 +0000

by rabidbob

Given that the rules explicitly say that there are more resources than there are tokens for resources we've been playing that you can have more than 10 meeples and more than 10 farms (although my girlfriend disagrees, she feels there should be limits). Is there and FAQ or info from the designer about this? I can't seem to find it in the rules, but the English rules are a bit poorly translated (IMO anyway), so I could well have missed it.

Thanks!!

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Stone Age - Session – So how do cards help my people survive and thrive?

Carmilla — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:42:20 +0000

by Carmilla

Yes, I'd say that's the way to sell it. Sell the TOP part of the card as an immediate benefit to her tribe; the stuff at the bottom is just a bonus. (Kinda like the huts, in a way. All those get her is "points". Try telling a bunch of hungry cavemen they're getting "points" for dinner and see what it gets you.)

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

Base the Bass — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:19:15 +0000

by Base the Bass

Thanks for your answer and sorry for calling buildings as hats. :)

Thank you for your answers.What you answered is pretty much what I thought.If someone is not planning on getting many buildings,the sole advantage of gold is that you have to use less workers to sell it.Ok then

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

Barticus88 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:02:15 +0000

by Barticus88

Gold lets you cash in big on some of the variable buildings, which saves on the building action. If I get the 42 point building (7 gold) I have used 13 worker actions (12 to get the gold, and 1 on the hut). If I bought three buildings for 42 points, I still put 12 workers into the resources, but 3 into the buildings themselves. This is balanced by the multipliers. It takes a hut multiplier of 4 to negate this.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

generalpf — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:36:18 +0000

by generalpf

Pros of going gold: you get more points for the worker that you put on the building.
Cons of going gold: you pretty much need a bunch of tools so as to not waste the pips you roll when acquiring gold.

If I'm playing Stone Age and end up with a tool strategy -- rarely because I want to, usually because that's what's left -- I find myself going for gold more often than I normally would.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

Tall_Walt — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:19:51 +0000

by Tall_Walt

Especially if you're using a tool strategy, gold can be quite advantageous, as a heavy tool strategy is optimized when going for as many different resources as practical.

If you have the meeples to go for the special spots, card, and tiles you need, then you will accumulate excess resources. The most efficient thing is to push gold through a 1-7 tile, as this takes only one meeple to generate up to 42 points. The other wild tiles are also optimized by using gold as one of the commodities.

I suggest you read some of the strategy and analysis articles, unless doing so would make you overly advantaged over your usual opponents.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

chaddyboy_2000 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:02:47 +0000

by chaddyboy_2000

I pretty much agree... going for gold often means more wasted pips than going for the cheaper resources. However, it's sometimes necessary to build certain buildings, which means it's usually good to have a gold or two on hand.

However, if I have a gold or two on hand, I'd probably never go for more gold unless there's nothing else to do with my guys.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

feydjm — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:55:23 +0000

by feydjm

To me, gold is how you get the most points out of the buildings. You can't be as efficient as possible without having some gold I don't think.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: is gold actually any good ???

generalpf — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:30:36 +0000

by generalpf

Base the Bass wrote:
the only advantage of more expensive resources that I have noticed is that you can sell them more efficiently using fewer hats.

WTFLOL

I hereby rename The Love Hut to the Hattery.

Thread: Stone Age:: Strategy:: is gold actually any good ???

Base the Bass — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:17:17 +0000

by Base the Bass

After only once I have played the game,I have the following question:is gold (or expensive resources for that matter),any good,or is it the "left-overs" that you only should take when you're obliged?
the only advantage of more expensive resources that I have noticed is that you can sell them more efficiently using fewer hats.
Is that right?is that the only advantage?is the gold meant to be unbalanced like that?or is perfectly balanced due to that advantage?it seems that gold should be like the most valuable resource.I think it's a scam.Or not?

File: Stone Age:: Labels for Storage Chests

firstfletch — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:08:02 +0000

by firstfletch

Labels for Storage Chests for Board Game: Stone Age ]]>

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

poisonivy — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:29:19 +0000

by poisonivy

Ours also reeked.... so badly that the every bit in the box was infused with the scent. I left the whole game out on our porch for a day or two and the smell went away. I tossed the dice cup in the trash because the on the porch airing didn't help it at all.

We also have the big box edition.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

thobster — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:10:51 +0000

by thobster

Mine smelled terribly, so badly we never use it. I have placed it high enough in a room that the smell can't reach us below. I think there may be two editions of Stone Age: one with the bigger box and one with the more compact one. Mine came from the larger box version. The cup is only good for one thing -- sneaking up on my 10 year old daughter from behind and placing it over her nose when she's least expecting it.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age Review: From a "teachability" perspective

aimoned — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:37:16 +0000

by aimoned

bboppr wrote:
Hope you continue with this type of review for other games. There is a need for this and would be useful to a variety of players.

Thanks Brian! I've already gotten some positive responses, so I definitely think I will keep it up (look for Age of Empires, Dungeon Twister, Dungeon Twister 2 and others next). Very happy you found it useful.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age Review: From a "teachability" perspective

bboppr — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:49:21 +0000

by bboppr

Hope you continue with this type of review for other games. There is a need for this and would be useful to a variety of players.

Barticus88 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:22:24 +0000

by Barticus88

During scoring you only look at the bottom half of the card.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Scoring sets of tools - Temporary tools?

adamb2k9 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:15:57 +0000

by adamb2k9

Does anyone have clarification of this rule? I can't find anything specifically in the rulebook that says you shouldn't use the temporary tools during scoring. The rules plainly state to multiply tool makers by the value of the players tools. If you still have that tool on your player card, it is technically a "players tool". Is it not? :goo:

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

Vaughn — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:16:11 +0000

by Vaughn

My cup was fine which is good because without a dice boot handy the cup must be used (house rule). :)

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

Mr_Nuts — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:41:43 +0000

by Mr_Nuts

Perhaps rubbing it with some sort of oil and placing it in the oven, like people do to break in a new baseball glove?

My cup smelled an autumn sunrise straight out of the box.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

cadamec — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:26:44 +0000

by cadamec

alafter wrote:
Mostly by reeking.

It stinks to the high heaven. I wonder if the smell turned cave people on.

Perhaps the humidity in Thailand has something to do with this, but at any rate, anyone solved the stink?

Spray it with Lysol and bathe regularly. ;)

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

d_hallowell — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:18:36 +0000

by d_hallowell

My copy has got the stinky cup. I can't quite place what the smell is, but it is unbearable. The only solution we found was to not use the cup. Would love to hear if someone actually removed the smell from this.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

elfrododumbo — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:10:21 +0000

by elfrododumbo

That subject came up several times when the game first came out.

My cup did not smell then and still does not, thank goodness.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

trippercook — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:19:05 +0000

by trippercook

My cup doesn't stink.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

sigtaulefty — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:11:16 +0000

by sigtaulefty

I just don't smell it. :)

Thread: Stone Age:: General:: That leather cup adds to the atmosphere

alafter — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:26:53 +0000

by alafter

Mostly by reeking.

It stinks to the high heaven. I wonder if the smell turned cave people on.

Perhaps the humidity in Thailand has something to do with this, but at any rate, anyone solved the stink?

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Stone Age - Session – So how do cards help my people survive and thrive?

ryudoowaru — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:09:24 +0000

by ryudoowaru

chadmart wrote:
I think the point is that this is how the OP and his GF think as well, but that the cards don't actually do anything to help other than add points at the end of the game. The sand colored cards add resources and stuff, but the green ones don't.

Sure they do. The green-bottomed cards also have resources, or stores, or resource rolls, or whatever, at the top of the cards just like the sand-bottomed ones do. And you get those resources, stores, rolls, or whatever from the green-bottomed cards just like the sand-bottomed ones.

The stuff on the bottoms of all the civilization cards give you bonuses at the end of the game, it's just that the green-bottomed ones build on each other while the sand-bottomed ones build on other stuff that you've gotten through the game (huts, people, tools, farms).

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age - a great game for both gamers and casual gamers

UnknownParkerBrother — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:31:24 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

I think it has great casual appeal.

It looks fantastic, so it really draws them in right off the bat. And it's very simple to play, put your guys down, roll the dice, collect the stuff. Buy bits with the stuff.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age - a great game for both gamers and casual gamers

asgelb — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:53:01 +0000

by asgelb

I have some friends who aren't gamers...casual gamers at best. They do like Settlers very much, however. What do you think my chances of selling them on this game are?

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Stone Age - Session – So how do cards help my people survive and thrive?

chadmart — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:55:36 +0000

by chadmart

jgilmour wrote:

I like to think of the civilization cards (the ones with the big pictures on them) as various inventions or innovations that help my guys. I also enjoy thinking up fun names or descriptions for them. For example, the fertility idol is usually "The Invention of Porn" the cart is "The Invention of getting suckered into helping your friend move out of his hut".

I think the point is that this is how the OP and his GF think as well, but that the cards don't actually do anything to help other than add points at the end of the game. The sand colored cards add resources and stuff, but the green ones don't.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Make them earn their food.

Great_Mazinga — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:23:28 +0000

by Great_Mazinga

I like the "Point Eating" or "Starvation" strategy as an option. I look at it as a similar option as trying to take all the Hearts and the Queen in Hearts. It is difficult to do, especially if experienced players see you taking that route early. I also see the point eating as a decent option for the last two players in the start round. They're already shut out of fields for several rounds, and as such are at a food disadvantage to begin with.

Having said that, I don't see point eating as unbalancing or even as a superior path to VP's. It is simply an alternate path, and I like many alternate paths to VPs in my games. It is difficult to win with. In fact, I've only won with it once, and that was with inexperienced players. I've never pulled it off when I've tried with people experienced with Stone Age.

The only house rule I might consider would be extra food for the non-starting players. This in itself would displace first farm advantage some, while also discourage the point eating strategy. I haven't played with this extra food idea yet.

Reply: Stone Age:: Reviews:: Re: Stone Age: A Smiley Review

Great_Mazinga — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:55:32 +0000

by Great_Mazinga

Nice concise review. Can't say I agree with everything. However, I agree, that this is an easy one to pull out and get people to play. There are enough decisions to keep me interested. The bits and art are nice enough to gain "buy in" from some of my non-gamer family and friends. The board is intuitive enough, as you say, that I don't have to constantly re-explain what everything is. The evocative bits, are easily differentiated, so anyone can see where to play based on what they want.

I've also found that the dice are a bonus to the fun. They add a gambling or push your luck feel for me. Do I stretch myself thin, and hope my 3 meeples can pull in enough stone to finish that hut? Do I instead stack my odds and pad the rolls with more people, and risk someone else building my hut first, etc.? It's something I don't get with the other worker placements. Also the non-gamers I"ve played with have enjoyed the dice and anyone can understand more people usually equals more bits!

While I enjoy Agricola from time to time, I can't help but feel like I'm doing my taxes when I'm playing. Stone Age is just going to get pulled out much more often in my circles for the quicker play time, gorgeous production, and ease to teach. It really feels like a value priced item, which only helps.

I don't mind the dice randomness or the chaos the cards throw at you. My only gripe on the game is the disadvantage 3rd and 4th players have in the turn order. I've toyed with ideas about food, like giving 1,2,3 or even 2,4,6 extra food to players in order beyond 1st player. Anyone tried something like this? Did it help balance your games? I really want everyone to have a similar chance of winning. As such, when I'm playing with the un-initiated, I just let them go first.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

chris1nd — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:21:15 +0000

by chris1nd

Trust me, with -4pts there are still lots of turns where a card or hut is better than a farm.

Also, after the first turn when one HAS cards, the cards one has might make tools or meeple more valueable.

Because no one ever intentionally does the -4, food is NOT worth more than wood. The valueing is the same based on pips.

Finally, I do not believe that "more options" or "more strategies" automatically means better games. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In Stone Age, there are already at least an equal number of strategies as players without eating points.

Reply: Stone Age:: Sessions:: Re: Stone Age - Session – So how do cards help my people survive and thrive?

jgilmour — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:30:38 +0000

by jgilmour

I like to think of the civilization cards (the ones with the big pictures on them) as various inventions or innovations that help my guys. I also enjoy thinking up fun names or descriptions for them. For example, the fertility idol is usually "The Invention of Porn" the cart is "The Invention of getting suckered into helping your friend move out of his hut".

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: My leather cup stinks to high heaven. Does yours?

xjohncandyx — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:41:05 +0000

by xjohncandyx

Oh good, I'm not alone. My cup STUNK so bad, it tainted the board and chits with its stink. It's a sour/smokey awfulness. I'm just happy to know I'm not crazy.

Reply: Stone Age:: General:: Re: My leather cup stinks to high heaven. Does yours?

Kaikus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:23:14 +0000

by Kaikus

Just buyed my spanish version of Stone Age. And the cup STINKS!!! It's HORRIBLE!, INDESCRIBABLE! I think it is a very low quality, bad tanned leather... as it should have been in stone age! :D Someone knows how to remove the stench?

Thanks!

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

JimF — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:51 +0000

by JimF

The analysis whilst interesting is as noted over-simplistic.

If I note someone take a couple of early love shacks then i will usually start valuing the love shack above tools to stall a possible starvation strategy. Once I have a reasonable farm value and maybe earlier if I have got food off of cards I might even start taking the shack above the Farm. Delaying the Starvation player from getting to 8,9,10 meeple is a big drag on the strategy.

Also in games with more than 2 players, all players should value the love shack as a good place to go (even if they value the farm as the best place to go) and so anyone trying the starvation strategy should not be able to get to the love shack every single turn.

Stone Age is a very mathematical game, but there are just enough subtelties to keep it interesting.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

Jambo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:03:45 +0000

by Jambo

Having played quite a bit on BSW I'd definitely say the starvation strategy is a solid strategy, but with one caveat - it's much stronger when there are more players. The reason for this is that with 4 players the other three will be competing more with each other for the farm space than they will with the starvation player for the love shack.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

kusinohki — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:07:25 +0000

by kusinohki

UnknownParkerBrother wrote:
kusinohki wrote:
In all those games of -4, how often did the start player NOT take farm as their first move?

How often does the start player NOT take farm as their first move with the published rules of -10?

The answer is already zero, for any player who's experienced.

I still don't see why this one question keeps getting asked. At worst, the farm gets taken the same amount first move as it already does.

I guess I should have asked the additional question of:
How often does the start player each turn NOT take farm as their first move.

With the -4 rule, there has to be 3 or less turns left in the game for something else to be worthwile.

With -10, a farm is not automatic points. Also, food inherently becomes worth less points as your tribe grows.

A big part of the game is figuring out when a card or hut placement is better than a village spot. Having a '4 pts per turn for the rest of the game' spot rather eliminates that aspect.

I wish I could write my thoughts down more coherently...

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

Gilby — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:42:33 +0000

by Gilby

Wrong.

A good card is better if you aren't going to be clobbered by being behind in a farm race.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

Gilby — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:40:41 +0000

by Gilby

chris1nd wrote:
If I recall correctly, the designers favored a -4pt per unfed meeple rule and it has been changed based on suggestions from publishers, not whim of designers.

It is how we ALWAYS play and I would never play -10. Period.

So you play an inferior game with a major first player advantage, got it.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

UnknownParkerBrother — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:26:11 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

kusinohki wrote:
In all those games of -4, how often did the start player NOT take farm as their first move?

How often does the start player NOT take farm as their first move with the published rules of -10?

The answer is already zero, for any player who's experienced.

I still don't see why this one question keeps getting asked. At worst, the farm gets taken the same amount first move as it already does.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

kusinohki — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:40:24 +0000

by kusinohki

chris1nd wrote:
Okay, but I still think it doesn't improve the game and resonate to the Czech publisher. I think it is just plain silly to penalize not providing resources for 1 worker the same as 7.

Trading 10 pts for 1 food = stupid, you goofed (actually happened to me in my last game :blush:)
Trading 10 pts for 7 food = kind of smart
Trading 10 pts for 8,9,10 food = rather smart

chris1nd wrote:
And the only people who argue about the name are those who like to have the strategy available.

But as I said, we have played 30+ times with -4. I have also played 10+ times with -10. I prefer the -4 per by a wide margin.

Play however you want.

Of course I want to have the strategy available. More strategies = good. Taking away point eating would be equivalent to taking away queen pawn openings in chess. You can still play, and it might be fun, but a lot of choices got removed.

In all those games of -4, how often did the start player NOT take farm as their first move?

Any -pts per food rule just rubs me the wrong way. I like the "all or nothing" aspect of the -10 rule. It causes me to play a little risky on the food front, sometimes sacrificing resources to preserve the 10 points if I roll badly. Getting a farm doesn't guarantee points. You have to collect enough remaining food still.

My biggest problems with the -4 rule:
1) A farm is worth 4 points per turn for the rest of the game. No ifs ands or buts. That first farm is 28 pts minimum (someone drills a hut stack in 7 turns). Is there any other move that even comes close?
2) Food, 2 pips to collect, but worth 4 points and you don't even have to place another guy on a hut. Or to put it another way, "Food - worth as much as a brick for less than half the effort" and food can't even be blocked!

I'm undecided how the -4 rule would affect the breeding hut. At first I thought, 'why would anyone want to increase their potential loss of points'. Then I thought, 'wait, it increases your ability to use food'.

Session: Stone Age:: Stone Age - Session – So how do cards help my people survive and thrive?

krechevskoy — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:50:41 +0000

by krechevskoy

I now have about 15 games of Stone Age under my belt, all of them being 2 player (non-BSW) games. I bought the game solely on the pieces and on the game's simplicity as a worker placement game, trying to get my GF interested in it. So far Stone Age has paid off in spades, and is a regular favorite of both of us.

Most of our 2 player games take about an hour an a half. This is mainly because we play with a movie running in the background. We needed a quick game to only take an hour, so we decided to only use 2 piles of 5 huts, rather than 2 piles of 7 huts. You would not figure 2 less huts would make a difference but it does.

In this game the cards all seem to stack (Huts X points) and grass , green background, civilization cards. There were occasional other “sand” civilization points, but not many. Which means it was either astronomical odds, or we did not shuffle the cards well. In this game I quietly picked up most of the (huts X points) card except for the one (huts X 3) card my girlfriend picked up. She also picked up one more green backed civilization card than I did.

As a side track, in the games leading up to this one, it is was very hard for her to fathom that cards were the main source of points as she had more fun rolling for resources and enabling her people rather than going for cards. This was one of the first games she outnumbered me in cards, but I had bought cards that enabled my greatest strength.

The hut piles, at only 5 deep, contained all 3 of the 1 through 7 resource huts. During the game she had been hoarding gold to buy one of these huts. I saw this and bought the 1-7 hut with 7 wood that I had been saving up for buying cards. Unluckily 2 huts underneath that 1-7 hut was another 1-7 resource hut. She eventually bought that one but at the cost of my buying 5 more huts to get to that point that were “non gold” huts. Still she was creaming me on expanding her tools, and people. Food was about the same, since she had got cards that increased her food production.

Anyway end of game goes she had been banking on some of the cards being people or tools, but only one of each of those came up. Even with her amassed wealth and my crappy rolls, I ended up beating her by 6 points. I do like the 5 hut piles speeding up the game since depleting a hut pile usually decides when the game ends for 2 player games.

After thought:

I pose this scenario as a question to the BGG peeps. I love stone age, and so does my GF. It is one of her favorite games that she was surprised she would like so much. But she keeps losing since she wants to “build out the empire”. She is catching on to buying cards, but has only won one game so far, and I had to “coach” her through it. Am I supposed to explain the cards as some sort of maligned tech tree? I can see her point when she says I would rather buy and build the fun stuff that she can see actually expanding her village's prowess. Where as the cards are more of an after effect since it is at the end of a game rather than during. She mentioned she would understand it more if the civilization cards had a lasting effect. For example of pottery, the bottom part of the card only adds a point multiplier based on green civilization cards and not a theoretical +2 to gathering or able to produce more brick by carrying water.

The above is one of the things that frustrates me about the cards deciding so many of the points, but the cards are also the allure of the game making it a very simple and light worker placement game.

Feel free to scope out my first ever BGG review, as awkward as it was for me.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/436505

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

chris1nd — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:18:51 +0000

by chris1nd

Varying food that would is a very sound idea.

I would prefer to give 1st player 9, 2nd 10, 3rd 11, and 4th 12.

In 3 player 10, 11, 12.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

chris1nd — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:16:10 +0000

by chris1nd

Okay, but I still think it doesn't improve the game and resonate to the Czech publisher. I think it is just plain silly to penalize not providing resources for 1 worker the same as 7.

And the only people who argue about the name are those who like to have the strategy available.

But as I said, we have played 30+ times with -4. I have also played 10+ times with -10. I prefer the -4 per by a wide margin.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Poll: How are you scoring your Civilization cards?

Kaikus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:44:27 +0000

by Kaikus

I have just buyed the recently edited spanish version of the game. It says, in the example:

"Ejemplo: si un jugador tiene cartas verdes de 5 tipos distintos, conseguirá al final 5x5=25 puntos de victoria. Si además tuviera una segunda carta de Cerámica adicional, añadirá a la puntuación 1x1=1 Punto de Victoria"

It translates:

"Example: if a player has green cards of 5 different types, he will earn at the end 5x5=25 Victory Points. If also has a second Pottery card, he will add to the score 1x1=1 Victory Point"

Note they say "he will add 1x1=1 Victory Points", no "he will add 1 Victory Pont"

So second set IS SQUARED.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

kusinohki — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:34:57 +0000

by kusinohki

Lou-Dawg wrote:
After Round 7 the farmer has no need to farm, and will generate 17.5 pips per round while the starver will generate 35 pips - 10 VP or 22.5 pips per round. The delta is 5 pips per round so it wouldn't be until round 10 when the starver catches up to the farmer.

Say what you will. The analysis is overly simplistic, but even after seven rounds the pure farming strategy has squeezed out more pips than the starvation strategy.

:thumbsup: for the analysis. Was this assuming a two player game or does it really matter?

Just a comment about the "overly simplistic" part. The apparent BGG consensus is farm>tool>baby so farms are fought over much more than the other 2. I think that's what makes the point eating strategy viable sometimes. The pure farmer can't increase his fields every turn since he's fighting other players for them. Meanwhile, the breeder is able to get the love shack multiple turns in a row coming closer to your analysis.

Just for giggles, let's assume the pure farmer is the start player, but can only get farms when he is going first every 4th round. I cheated a little and converted pips directly into food needed once this player reached 0 food stored.

Farming:
1: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14.0 pips, -4 food down to 8
2: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -4 food down to 4
3: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -4 food down to 0
4: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -4 food 8 pips spent on food
5: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14.0 pips, -3 food 6 pips spent on food
6: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -3 food 6 pips spent on food
7: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -3 food 6 pips spent on food
8: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -3 food 6 pips spent on food
9: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14.0 pips, -2 food 4 pips spent on food

Total pips = 147 - 36 = 111.
To better compare, at the end of 7 rounds:
Total pips = 115.5 - 26 = 89.5 pips

Compared to the 91.5 pips after 7 rounds for the "ideal" breeder, things come out pretty close, but as you stated, the breeder has a better delta vp.

I doubt I could come up with a "non-ideal" point eating strategy to compare, especially since I would never attempt to eat points if I could only get the love shack every 4th turn. Usually, I only attempt this if I see an opportunity to get people 3 turns in a row which happens more often than expected.

PS I think you meant 1 pip = .8 VP. It looks like that's how you used it, but I was confused for a moment since it was written the other way.

Reply: Stone Age:: Rules:: Re: Civ card set-up

Kaikus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:19:59 +0000

by Kaikus

I have just buyed the spanish version of the game. It says "Se descubren las 4 cartas superiores (con independencia del numero de jugadores)". So it's ALLWAYS four cards no matter how many players.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

Barticus88 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:15:25 +0000

by Barticus88

Lou-Dawg wrote:
Say what you will. The analysis is overly simplistic, but even after seven rounds the pure farming strategy has squeezed out more pips than the starvation strategy.

Your analysis makes me think the designer balanced this.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Solved by Starvation Strategy?

Lou-Dawg — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:28:39 +0000

by Lou-Dawg

Mating / starvation strategy for five rounds vs. pure farm strategy based purely on pips. The (X * 3.5) section indicates how many meeples are gathering pips. Starting food is 12. Thanks to the two commenters on my original table I have fixed my previous two errors.

Mating:
1: 2 mate, 3 * 3.5 = 10.5 pips, -6 food down to 6
2: 2 mate, 3 * 3.5 = 10.5 pips, 1 on food for 1 food, -7 food down to 0
3: 2 mate, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, starve -10 VP
4: 2 mate, 6 * 3.5 = 21 pips, starve -10 VP
5: 2 mate, 7 * 3.5 = 24.5 pips, starve -10 VP

TOTAL PIPS GENERATED: 84 pips (and -30 VP)
TOTAL PIPS AT .8 PIP/VP RATIO: 46.5 pips

Farming:
1: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -4 food down to 8
2: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -3 food down to 5
3: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -2 food down to 3
4: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -1 food down to 2
5: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -1 food down to 1

TOTAL PIPS: 73.5 pips

The cost of mating is certainly steep, as is the -10 VP for starvation. However after five rounds the mating player will have the maximum of 10 meeples and just be generating income:

Mating:
Round 1-5: as above
6: 10 * 3.5 = 35 pips, starve -10 VP
7: 10 * 3.5 = 35 pips, starve -10 VP

TOTAL PIPS GENERATED: 154 pips (and -50 VP)
TOTAL PIPS AT .8 PIP/VP RATIO: 91.5 pips

Farming:
1-5: As above
6: 0 farmer, 5 * 3.5 = 17.5 pips, -1 food down to 0
7: 1 farmer, 4 * 3.5 = 14 pips, -0 food down to 0

TOTAL PIPS: 105

After Round 7 the farmer has no need to farm, and will generate 17.5 pips per round while the starver will generate 35 pips - 10 VP or 22.5 pips per round. The delta is 5 pips per round so it wouldn't be until round 10 when the starver catches up to the farmer.

Say what you will. The analysis is overly simplistic, but even after seven rounds the pure farming strategy has squeezed out more pips than the starvation strategy.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

oudknoei — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:19:51 +0000

by oudknoei

An alternative to a fixed amount of extra food based on start position would be to allow players to bid food for the start position or even auction the full seating order in some way (again, using the start food). Basically start the bidding with 0 food and let it keep going around the table until everyone has passed. Turn order would be based on the order in which everyone passed (first one out is the last player). Everyone pays the highest amount they bid before they passed.

Or something like that; just a quick thought off the top of my head as it were.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

sigtaulefty — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:47:13 +0000

by sigtaulefty

The last 4P game I was in, I was also in the 4 hole. It is frustrating and difficult to play out of the 4 spot. The best spots to be in (imo) in order, 2,3,1,4.

I rarely play this with 4 on the table (lack of gamers) so I don't think I'll be able to test this variant anytime soon, but I would be interested in hearing about anyone who tries it.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Changing dice values

ToddMoon — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:05:15 +0000

by ToddMoon

How about you allow players to use either kind of dice? It'd become a tactical choice every time they roll. Do you want to increase the risk for higher potential rewards? (use 1-6 dice). Or do you want a safe bet?

For even more fun, give each player a couple of tokens at the start of the game. They can use one token instead of rolling any dice for a resource, and instead get a flat 3.5 pips per meeple. (Rounded up?) Oh, to make it even better, they can use the tokens after they roll a really poor roll. No one likes to see someone roll 7 dice in a critical moment and get something like 10 pips. It's not fun at all. No one laughs. We just try to console the unlucky player who probably just got eliminated from the game. Having this sort of "insurance" would ease the pain of those moments.

It could be even simpler. The tokens could let you simply re-roll all of the dice. There could be additional insurance if you roll even lower. The Kingsburg expansion has this idea in one of it's "role" cards. (The Philosopher?) If you roll less than 10 you can re-roll once. If you roll even lower, you get one VP. So the token could give you a re-roll and a small bonus if you roll even lower. Maybe 2 VPs.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Make them earn their food.

kusinohki — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:01:57 +0000

by kusinohki

UnknownParkerBrother wrote:
kusinohki wrote:
If all else fails, I'll restate my challenge: "Could someone show me where in the rules the words 'starve', 'starving', or 'starved' is used?" No one responded the last time.

No one responded because the point is silly.

The words "meeple", "love shack" and "farm" aren't in the rulebook either, yet I don't see anyone protesting about their use. It's a book of rules, not a book of strategies. Why would you expect the name of a strategy be in a rule book?

But, to wit: The rules say "does not have sufficient food to feed his people".

Guess what the definition of starvation is? Insufficient food for prolonged periods, or intentional deprivation of food. "Starvation strategy" is a precise, accurate description of that particular strategy.

I could have sworn 'farm' was used or at least some variation of 'farming technology'. Possibly it was fields... *shrug*

I admit, the point is silly. The entire discussion about variant "starving" rules is silly imo. The difference between "meeple", "love shack", and "starvation strategy" is the first two are an affectionate nickname for something in the game. You have an excellent point about "starvation strategy" being an accurate description, but it causes people to think "unthematic", "I don't want my tribe to suffer, so I won't do that", "people die when they starve, this penalty should be stricter" and so forth messing with the balance of the game.

I sometimes refer to trading a wood or brick for a food at the end of the turn as "eating a stick/brick". It's a joke, but it's easier than saying "trading blah for food, eating food". Along the same lines, when I lose 10 points at the end of turn, I refer to eat as "eating points" (hence my name for the same strat). I still think of it as trading/spending 10 points worth of stuff for the necessary food. My tribe is just as well fed as yours, we just get our food differently. For some reason, people refuse to look at it that way and would rather nerf the game by removing interesting decisions and tension by changing the rules in such a way that "first player takes farm, always" the only logical move.

Thread: Stone Age:: Variants:: Changing amount of starting food per player to account for turn order issues.

ToddMoon — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:38:20 +0000

by ToddMoon

I just played my ~20th game of Stone Age the other day. I was the first player to play, so the guy to my right played fourth in the first round. He remarked that his position sucked. I took the field as my first play, and he wouldn't be able to take the field for three more turns. It's basically everyone's first play because having a farm is an amazing investment. It's effectively 2 points per turn. They are also hard to get in a four player game, so you take them whenever you can over other choices. (At least early on.)

So for the first 3 turns of the game, I'm only spending 4 food per turn, and player four has to spend 5 food per turn for those same 3 turns. That's a 6 point difference. This pattern usually continues for at least the second round. (After that, you will occasionally see first-players skipping the field for other things. And dice bars and +1 Farm cards also change peoples' minds.)

I had never really thought about it before, but after he complained I suggested that we could vary the amount of starting food. The first player gets the normal 12 food, but players 2, 3, and 4 get +1, +2, +3 additional food at the start of the game.

Has anyone tried this idea before? If the effect truly lasts at least 2 rounds, then maybe even more food than that. Perhaps +2, +4, +6.

If this sort of balancing effect is not used, then I think the fourth player has a strong encouragement to go the point-for-food route ("starvation" strategy). I don't like the idea of pigeon-holing someone in a strategy just because of their board position.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Make them earn their food.

UnknownParkerBrother — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:27:17 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

kusinohki wrote:
If all else fails, I'll restate my challenge: "Could someone show me where in the rules the words 'starve', 'starving', or 'starved' is used?" No one responded the last time.

No one responded because the point is silly.

The words "meeple", "love shack" and "farm" aren't in the rulebook either, yet I don't see anyone protesting about their use. It's a book of rules, not a book of strategies. Why would you expect the name of a strategy be in a rule book?

But, to wit: The rules say "does not have sufficient food to feed his people".

Guess what the definition of starvation is? Insufficient food for prolonged periods, or intentional deprivation of food. "Starvation strategy" is a precise, accurate description of that particular strategy.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: A Recommendation Against the Starvation Strategy

Barticus88 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:58:14 +0000

by Barticus88

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2265754#2265754

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

kusinohki — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:08:11 +0000

by kusinohki

I've been checking the way back machine, and still working through this thread:
Solved by Starvation Strategy

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2249584#2249584
According to this post, it was the Czech publisher who changed the -10 rule to -4 because he didn't like the ill-named "starvation strategy".

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2265754#2265754
This post had a response from Jay:

galfridus wrote:
From a geekmail to Jay:

I spoke with the designer and he tested the game several hundred times
including with the use of starvation as a strategy. He feels it is a useful,
but not broken strategy. He would not want to change this under any circumstance
as he feels it is important to leave it as a strategy for those who want to use
it. In his playtesting, he found that when a player used the strategy and others
were aware of it, it did not guarantee victory.

Thanks

Jay M Tummelson
Rio Grande Games

So far, that's my best evidence about the "designer's intent". I was tempted to bold the section "Useful, but not broken strategy", since I agree with it completely.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Make them earn their food.

kusinohki — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:41:43 +0000

by kusinohki

chris1nd wrote:
No one intentionally choose to not feed their people. It is that easy, and just as fun.

Of course not when food is worth twice as much as anything else on the board.

My first encounter with something bad about subscriptions... the same post, by the same person, in 3 different threads...

Currently searching through the forums to find the designer's take. I'm pretty sure they stuck with the -10 rule. It was a different countries publisher that changed it (for some crazy reason).

If all else fails, I'll restate my challenge: "Could someone show me where in the rules the words 'starve', 'starving', or 'starved' is used?" No one responded the last time.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: Make them earn their food.

chris1nd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:58:20 +0000

by chris1nd

There are enough paths to victory already in this game that the "death tax" "patriot act"...I mean "point eating" rule is not necessary.

There is no disaster to using the -4 pt per meeple.

I have played that rule more than 30 times without disaster.

No one intentionally choose to not feed their people. It is that easy, and just as fun.

Reply: Stone Age:: Variants:: Re: A Recommendation Against the Starvation Strategy

chris1nd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:52:35 +0000

by chris1nd

We have always played -4 pts per meeple unfed. I think it was the designers original rule, or in the Dutch rules, or something like that.

Can anyone clarify where we got this from and the sordid history of the starvation strategy.

Reply: Stone Age:: Strategy:: Re: Hunting hypothesis, the value of food, and the point eating strat revisited

chris1nd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:46:25 +0000

by chris1nd

If I recall correctly, the designers favored a -4pt per unfed meeple rule and it has been changed based on suggestions from publishers, not whim of designers.

It is how we ALWAYS play and I would never play -10. Period.