Phoenicia is now available for play online. To play, go to http://www.jklminteractive.co.uk and download the JKLM Interactive Windows Client. Then create an account on the server, and you're ready to play.

Setting up an account is free. Playing Phoenicia is free at present, and will continue to be so until the boardgame version is released.

David.

I've downloaded the client and registered, since I'm very interested in the game. My problem now is leaning to play. Are the rules available online?

http://ellought.demon.co.uk/jklm/phoenicia.php
is an overview of the rules; it was enough to get me going, but I've played Outpost.

The information there is meant to be sufficient to play the game online. There are a lot less rules there than in the boardgame rulebook, but of course, you've got the computer to enforce a lot of the rules, so they don't need to be written down as well.

If there is anything missing, let me know and I can add it - although I am aware that the more I write, the less chance that people will read and remember it!

David.

"Here's some of the rules. Learn the rest by figuring out what the game will and will not allow to do."

What??? Why not just post the damn rules? Otheriwse, no thanks.

I can't speak for JKLM directly, but I can say that I am working with them to finalize the rules for publication, given minor rules tweaks that resulted from their playtesting and co-publisher input. I suspect in a couple of weeks, things will become a lot more stable on the rules front.

Thanks, Tom!

Will future versions feature playing against bots?

Server is down for the second day

The web page claims that it will be down until Thursday.

Jim, the damn rules have been posted here at the Phoenicia entry on the Geek (thanks, Markus!). Hope that helps.

Hopefully it's not the final rules, as there's is one error in an example (min bid for Glassmaking is 5, but in example it's bought for 4) plus that there is no explanation when and how the "City center" is used to buy VP's.

In any case I've played it 5 times online now, although only one 3-player and the rest were 2-player. This is really a great game, which I've now pre-ordered.

My first fear is the catch-the-leader problem, but according to David it's mainly a problem in 2-player games. In any case the last 3 games were very tight and if you have a lot of VP, then you probably don't have enough income. It's also quite short (max 30 minutes 2-player online when you start to get a hang of it) and I'm sure it will be less than 90 minutes with 5 players.

The main problem might be that you have an initial threshold to know and understand the interaction of all the cards, which might frighten some occasional gamers. On the other hand it's very rewarding when you start to understand them. Initially I will rate it 9, but need to play it in real life and with more players before make a decision.
/Carl

That link didn't work for me but there is a summary at http://www.diplom.org/~davidn/jklm/phoenicia.php

And, for anyone interested, it looks like the client works fine under wine-0.9.33; I just played a couple of turns with DavidNorman99 with no problem.

Yes, they're certainly sketchier than I'd like. I picked up the omission of the City Center, but didn't catch the Glassmaking error. I'm also not thrilled with the organization of the rules, either. You can probably learn the game from them (except for the City Center gaffe), but it would probably make it tougher than it should be. So like you, I'm hoping this is just an early draft.


Well, I don't think this is really a design for occasional gamers, Carl. It has a definite learning curve and I hope the people who pick it up recognize that and don't go the instant gratification route. But anyone who's heard of Outpost knows that that game takes a while to master, so I'm hoping they'll devote some time to figuring out Phoenicia. I'm literally counting the days until I can get my hands on this one!

Well, I got the client, but whenever I try to connect (to turn on my account) the server doesn't respond.

Yes, same here. Presumably still teething troubles after the re-configuration. Hopefully it'll be back up soon ...

Sunday evening and still the same thing. Has anyone gotten this to work in the last 4 days?

Brian,

did you send them an email mentioning the issue ? I did it and they activated the account for me!

Lots to reply to... I'll start by explaining the technical issues over the last few days.

Unfortunately, I've had to move house at short notice. Unfortunately, it's not possible to set up a new broadband connection in the UK in less than about 2 weeks, and you can't start the process until you've got the phoneline active! Hence the server being completely down for a couple of days, during the transition.

I've also had to change my hostname to a temporary one, and missed one of the places where this appeared in the code, which is why account activations were not working. I've now fixed that. If you have an old activation message, then just reply to it and ask me to activate your account manually (replying to an activation message goes to me, not to the software).

The server should now be stable again. However, I do at some point have to switch back from my temporary hostname to my proper one, and at the same time, change it back in the code, and in the DNS registration! I'll try and do that at a time when people tend not to be playing, but that will depend on how accurately I can synchronise it with my ISP.

Apart from that, all should now be stable. Any problems, drop me an e-mail at david (at) ellought (dot) demon (dot) co (dot) uk.

David.

Unfortunately not. The time taken to implement a Bot worth playing against is more than the budget allows. However, more JKLM games will be added to the system in time (especially future new releases, before they are released), so hopefully the server will become busier, so that it becomes easier to find human opponents when you want to play.

David.

Jim,

There were a number of reasons for not posting the full rules.

- Firstly, the server went live before the rules were available in a presentable form. So there wasn't anything I could post.

- Secondly, if you post too many rules, then some people get put off, or just try and play without reading them.

- Thirdly, when I say I've left a lot out, there is enough in the summary to fully understand what is going on. The stuff I've left out is a mixture of the mechanical stuff (e.g. the summary just says that the cards appear in order of phase, the full rules explain how to shuffle a deck to achieve this. The full rules say to reshuffle the money deck when it's exhausted, the computer just does it), and the limits that only have to be put in there for the rules lawyers (e.g. you can't bid more than you've got, once you drop out of the auction phase you can't bid, etc).

As I said, if you do play it and find I've missed anything that I should have said, then please do say so.

David.

Several people have expressed an interest in playing a 4 or 5 player game. I therefore propose to try and have such a game on the JKLM Interactive Server.

Time: 17:00 UK, 18:00 Western Europe, 12:00 US East Coast, 09:00 US West Coast
Date: Wednesday 16th May

Try and be there a few minutes before, especially if you need to download the app and/or register first.

David.

Thanks for the updates, David. I'm in!

I tried to make an account, but get all the time "Error processing account creation". I double-checked all fields, but could not find, if there is something wrong. Any idea?