Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
The first time I played Stone Age, I was very impressed with the clean design, the integration of the theme with the mechanics, and the enjoyable game play. I would have given Stone Age a solid 7, which is a good rating for me (top 20% of my rated games). But my esteem has increased with each play. Now my rating for Stone Age is an 8.5. This puts it among my top 3.5% of games along with Acquire, Ticket To Ride, and Puerto Rico.
It is currently my pick for the SdJ winner. It is the only game I played at the Gathering (besides the Rio Grande "Game X" prototype) that I think will still be widely played in 5 years time. This review is designed to help you decide if Stone Age is your type of game...
*** Note: It looks like I may have been playing with a wrong rule. The new rule would change some of my opinions on the strength of the theme and my analysis of some of the strategy. I will make some amendments at the end of this review.
Overall Impression  (5 / 5)
Stone Age comes with 7 wooden dice, but do not expect your typical GermanTrash game. You will not hunt for woolly mammoths, you will not fight against other tribes with your stone axes, and you will not travel to the future to fight robots with jet packs and lasers. In fact, you will not fight at all in this game. You will search for food, have babies, gather resources, and build huts. In short, Stone Age is an elegant EuroGame where your goal is to efficiently convert resources into Victory Points. It is very similar in feel to Pillars of the Earth (but streamlined and perhaps deeper).
DO NOT EXPECT a slew of innovative mechanics to blow you away in Stone Age because there is nothing exceptionally new here. There are some new ideas (at least for me) in regards to how the dice are used, but it is not the novelty of game mechanics that makes this game great. Instead, expect Stone Age to put everything together into one of the cleanest games on the market. The theme is well integrated, the mechanics are interesting, and there is significant strategic and tactical depth. Stone Age is one of those rare games where everything comes together in a seamless package. In short, this game rocks! Is it the rock of all ages? Probably not, but it is certainly one of the best designs I have come across in the last few years.
Components (5 / 5)
Stone Age has very beautiful components that are also highly functional.
The central playing board
1 of 4 personal boards for each player
The wooden bits are also gorgeous, and they are shaped to look like what they are supposed to represent. So the wood bits are long thin and brown (like the tracks from Trans America), the brick bits are red blocks that look like bricks, the stone bits are gray (not sure why they are octagonal), and the gold bits are yellow bricks that look like gold bars from Fort Knox. If you like wooden pieces, you'll love the detail that went into this game!
My only complaint is that the icon for the some of the bonuses on the cards are not as consistent as they should be. It leads to a little bit of confusion during the first game, but nothing more.
Some of the special cards
Learning the Rules (5 / 5) ***
The rules are explained well and are easy to understand. The mechanics in Stone Age follow the theme fairly closely, which makes this game very easy to learn. Using the BGG weight rating system, I figure it will fall somewhere around a "2.75". But Stone Age is easier to teach than other middle weight games of the same depth. Stone Age is definitely simple enough to be played as a family game and even with non-gamers (although they will have to be prepared for a "long and heavy game").
Theme (4 / 5) ***
The theme is subservient to the mechanics, but it is better integrated into the game play than with most EuroGames. For reference sake, I would give Cartagena a 1 out of 5 stars, Carcassonne a 2 / 5, St. Petersburg a 2 out of 5, and Settlers a 3.5 / 5. So by comparison, the theme in Stone Age is quite strong for a Euro game.
For instance, to increase your tribe by 1 meeple, you must place 2 meeples into the "private" hut for a turn (don't ask me what they do in there). Having a farm means you don't have to hunt for as much food to feed your tribe. Acquiring tools help you to gather food and other resources. Since many of these rules are intuitive, they are easy to remember. This means you won't have as many rule questions when people play their first game of Stone Age.
Game Play Overview (5 / 5)
Setup: Every player starts with 5 meeples in their tribe and 12 food. Shuffle the Victory Point huts and place them face up into 4 stacks. Shuffle the cards and place 4 of them face up in the 4 slots. The first card costs 1 resource, the second card costs 2 resources, the 3rd card costs 3 resources, and the 4th card costs 4 resources.
Each Turn: The starting player may place between 1 and all of their meeples in one of 10 locations. Each of these locations has a different benefit. A limited number of meeples can go to each location on each turn. Once you have placed a meeple(s) in a location, you may not place more meeples in that location during the same turn (a la Leonardo DaVinci).
1) Get a farm [max 1 meeple]
2) Make a tool [max 1 meeple]
3) Make babies! [max 1 player with 2 meeples]
4) Search for food [max 7 meeples]
5) Search for wood [max 7 meeple]
6) Search for brick [max 7 meeples]
7) Search for stone [max 7 meeples]
8) Search for gold [max 7 meeples]
9) Build 1 of 4 huts [max 1 meeple per hut]
10) Purchase 1 of 4 cards [max 1 meeple per card]
Once all of the meeples from each player has been placed, then players resolve the actions starting with the start player.
1) Get a farm: Decreases the number of meeples you need to feed each turn by 1.
2) Make a tool: Gives you 1 extra pip when you roll for resources each turn.
3) Make babies!: Gives you 1 extra meeple
4) Search for food: Roll 1 die per meeple. Receive roll / 2 food
5) Search for wood: Roll 1 die per meeple. Receive roll / 3 wood
6) Search for brick: Roll 1 die per meeple. Receive roll / 4 brick
7) Search for stone: Roll 1 die per meeple. Receive roll / 5 stone
8) Search for gold: Roll 1 die per meeple. Receive roll / 6 gold
9) Build 1 hut: Pay 3 specific resources. Score Victory Points.
10) Purchase 1 card: Get something now. Score VP at end of game.
Once all of the actions have been resolved, then everyone must feed their tribe: 1 food per meeple. If you do not have food, then you must feed them with any other resource. If you do not have a resource, then you lose 10 VP (don't ever let this happen).
The cards are what add variation to each turn. At the end of a turn, any unpurchased cards slide down to the lowest open slot, to be purchased next turn at a cheaper price. These cards all have 1 immediate benefit (get a resource or score a few VP) and a VP benefit at the end of the game. The VP benefits for the end of the game include VP for each meeple, each hut, each tool, and each farm. There is also a system of 8 different types of icons that score as the square of the number of different icons you receive (yes, this should remind you of St. Petersburg, which is another game by the same author. Only this element is more balanced in Stone Age than it was in St. Petersburg).
The start player for the round moves to the next player at the end of each round. The game is over at the end of any round when there are no huts left in 1 of the 4 stacks, or if you run out of cards and are unable to place 4 cards face up for the next round.
Strategy Overview ***
Stone Age is mostly a tactical game where you try to be as efficient as possible by placing your each meeple in the best location. But there are some strategic elements that will guide your placements based upon the cards you get that will score VP at the end of the game.
--- Wait! Before you read any further, think about whether you want to spoil your fun by learning the strategy from a boring review instead of by playing the game with friends. Still not deterred? Then read on! ---
Here is a framework which works pretty well in helping you make decisions throughout the game: 1 pip = 1 VP. This is not an exact science, but it will be helpful. For instance:
1 farm = 2 pips/turn = 2 VP/turn
1 meeple = 1.5 pips/turn (3.5 pips/turn for average roll - 2 pips/turn for food)
1 tool = 1 pip/turn = 1 VP/turn
Wasting 1 pip by missing a resource roll = -1 VP
Left over resources at the game end = - VP equal to the pips used to purchase the resource
The first thing this suggests is that you should end the game as quickly as possible if you are not getting as many farms, meeples, or tools as the other players. And conversely, if you should try to make the game last as long as possible (by blocking purchases of cards and huts) if you have the most of those "renewable" resources. You'll find that managing the length of the game is something that is very important in Stone Age.
Using this framework will help you decide how much you should spend on the cards. Figuring out the value of the cards is probably the single biggest key to doing well at Stone Age. Getting the 3 VP per hut card is sometimes worth 21+ VP. This is a great deal at just about any price.
Get lots of wood early so that you can purchase the cards as cheaply as possible. In fact, you should usually go for the cheapest resource possible, because you are less likely to waste pips (VP) by not being able to use them to collect a resource. For instance, if you searched for gold and rolled a 5 (or an 11, 17, 23, and etc), then you wasted the 5 pips (5 VP) with nothing to show for your meeple's efforts. The more you spread out your meeples when gethering resources, the more likely you are going to waste pips (VP).
When you build huts, the resources used will score VP equal to the pips used to purchase them. This means that using gold is not more efficient than using wood (exception below).
When you build a hut, build the biggest hut possible, since it costs the use of 1 of your meeples (3.5 pips). Most huts score between 12 and 17 points, so it normally takes 3 meeples (an opportunity cost of 10.5 pips) to score 45 VP. But it is also possible to score 48 VP with a hut (using 7 gold). In this scenario, you would be able to put an extra 7 pips (7 VP) into collecting resources instead of building huts.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The good: Stone Age is fun to play! There is enough dice rolling that people don't play it as if it is a test of their intelligence. This means that people enjoy themselves while playing.
There is considerable depth to Stone Age. Some of the strategy is very subtle and difficult to figure out, making the game interesting time and time again. This means you will be faced with many interesting decisions each time you play.
The bad: Sometimes Stone Age outstays its welcome by a short while. Since there is no positional element to the game, there is a certain "rinse and repeat" sensation which makes the beginning of the game feel very much like the end of the game.
The ugly:*** Getting a farm seems to be the obvious move for the first player on almost every turn of the game (at least until the final rounds). This means the 4th player always gets the short end of the "script". While I have won as the 4th player, I wonder how much this would happen with 4 experienced players.
Conclusion (5 / 5)
Stone Age is a spectacular game. I expect it to quickly climb the charts and settle somewhere between the top 30 and the top 50. If you don't mind a little bit of randomness in your search for efficiency, run out and get this game now! You will not be disappointed - it ROCKS!
Blue is building a farm and a hut with wood, brick, and gold. Yellow is making babies!
*** Note: You can read about the rule I probably had wrong on this thread. Basically, it looks like you can lose 10 VP instead of paying food for the round. I had previously thought that you would have to lose 10 VP per meeple that was not fed. Here is how that would probably change my review:
Learning the Rules: Learning the rules is slightly more difficult since the theme is harder to make sense of. I would change my rating from a 5/5 starts to a 4.5/5 stars.
Theme: The theme suffers from this new rule. My new rating would probably be 3/5 stars.
Gameplay: The game play is more interesting with the new rule, but I already gave it a 5/5, so that would not change.
Strategy Overview: The "new" rule makes it more difficult to value the farms and the making babies option. You can read the discussion below if you want to see how things change. In short, my new analysis would look something like:
If you are feeding your tribe:
1 farm = 2.1 VP/turn
1 person = 1.2 VP/turn
1 tool = 1.4 VP/turn
If you are not feeding your tribe:
1 farm = 0 VP!
1 person = 2.8 VP/turn
1 tool = 1.4 VP/turn
Before you figuring out the value of each option, you will have to assess how often you are likely to feed your tribe. The value of each choice will be the weighted average of these two frameworks based upon your expected feeding strategy (which is determined by how long you think the game will last). Wow, the strategy is now much deeper!
The Ugly: Now there is nothing "ugly" about the game. The game is as beautiful as you could ever want it to be.
Overall: It is too early for me to make a judgment about how this "new" rule will change my overall impression of the game (seeing as how I have not yet played with the new rule). It definitely makes the game deeper, which is a HUGE plus. But it will also make it harder for me to get casual gamers to like the game, which is VERY important to me.
-
Sheamus Parkes
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
-
So close, and yet it sounds so far off for me.
It really does have "St. Petersburg of Worker Placement" all over it. In particular, I really hated the income escalation of St Pete. The rules of a game should not have to tell you what to do for the first few turns. Yet in St Pete, it even says "Buy workers or you will lose". That's not a meaningful decisions, that's following a script.
It sounds like Stone Age becomes "Build a Farm or Lose". Please tell me this correlation isn't true?
-
Was George Orwell an Optimist?
Spain
Corvallis
Oregon
-
domcrap wrote: You will not hunt for woolly mammoths, you will not fight against other tribes with your stone axes, and you will not travel to the future to fight robots with jet packs and lasers.
Urgh. Sounds like they avoided the stuff that could have been fun...
domcrap wrote: In fact, you will not fight at all in this game. You will search for food, have babies, gather resources, and build huts. In short, Stone Age is an elegant EuroGame where your goal is to efficiently convert resources into Victory Points.
... and focused on the boring stuff.
-
Wade
United States
Pueblo
Colorado
-
Sphere wrote: domcrap wrote: You will not hunt for woolly mammoths, you will not fight against other tribes with your stone axes, and you will not travel to the future to fight robots with jet packs and lasers. Urgh. Sounds like they avoided the stuff that could have been fun... domcrap wrote: In fact, you will not fight at all in this game. You will search for food, have babies, gather resources, and build huts. In short, Stone Age is an elegant EuroGame where your goal is to efficiently convert resources into Victory Points. ... and focused on the boring stuff.
That's new. I won't stop designing games that get beyond this trend anytime soon. Woosh. So far it looks like I have good (great) versions of the games being produced or released. There are so many now, I'm probably wrong.
-
Jason F.
United States
Houston
Texas
-
I don't like the fact that the first and 2nd turn are pretty much canned for everyone. Farm and tool. The rest is fine.
I would suggest taking two hut cards off the four huts stack to shorten the game if I played again
-
Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
Crim wrote: I don't like the fact that the first and 2nd turn are pretty much canned for everyone. Farm and tool. The rest is fine.
I would suggest taking two hut cards off the four huts stack to shorten the game if I played again
I still need to play a few more times to see if getting the tool is scripted. I won a game once without getting any tools. If you focus on getting through 1 stack of huts as fast as possible, you can end the game pretty quickly. So part of the game is in figuring out when to stop taking the tools. I guess the same can be said of the farm, but since the farm is over twice as good as the tool, it is never that much of a mistake to take the farm, even in the last round or two.
-
Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
Isamoor wrote: So close, and yet it sounds so far off for me.
It is not far off! Play the game a few times before you write this game off. It is an impressive achievement and a very enjoyable game.
Isamoor wrote: It really does have "St. Petersburg of Worker Placement" all over it. In particular, I really hated the income escalation of St Pete. The rules of a game should not have to tell you what to do for the first few turns. Yet in St Pete, it even says "Buy workers or you will lose". That's not a meaningful decisions, that's following a script.
It sounds like Stone Age becomes "Build a Farm or Lose". Please tell me this correlation isn't true?
The correlation is not exactly true. Each decision is somewhat isolated from the last, so your early mistakes don't compound in the same way (at least not as much). But this is not a big problem, simply learn how to play better for the next game. The part of St Petersburg that I dislike more is how certain cards are so good that they throw off the balance of the game for the lucky person who gets them. Stone Age is much more balanced.
Wow, why is everyone all of a sudden down on this game?!! St Petersburg is an excellent game (ranked in the top 100 here on the BGG) and Stone Age is even better. It is certainly not "scripted" more than most games, even if the start player has 1 "scripted" move for 1 of their 5 - 9 meeples for a portion of the game. Knowing when to break from the "script" (if you must call it that) is one of the meaningful decisions of the game.
-
Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
-
domcrap wrote: Crim wrote: I don't like the fact that the first and 2nd turn are pretty much canned for everyone. Farm and tool. The rest is fine.
I would suggest taking two hut cards off the four huts stack to shorten the game if I played again I still need to play a few more times to see if getting the tool is scripted. I won a game once without getting any tools. If you focus on getting through 1 stack of huts as fast as possible, you can end the game pretty quickly. So part of the game is in figuring out when to stop taking the tools. I guess the same can be said of the farm, but since the farm is over twice as good as the tool, it is never that much of a mistake to take the farm, even in the last round or two.
I played this 1 time, and did not concentrate on tools. I got a few out of the "general store" card that gives everyone something, but I didn't place on the took spot.
Better is the Makin' Babies spot - I don't see how that's not the obvious first play!
Oh, and the game I played almost without tools... I won... something like 220-190-175-150 or something like that.
-
Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
-
Great, I posted in the wrong of the 2 copies of this thread, and it seems to have disappeared.
Isamoor wrote:
It sounds like Stone Age becomes "Build a Farm or Lose". Please tell me this correlation isn't true?
This is distinctly untrue.
The bad thing about Stone Age isn't to do with farms (you can always Hunt for food), or Tools (you can get resources without tools)... it's the 2 copies of the "1-7" building pictured above. When strategy involves "hoping you're player 1 when that tile comes up," there's something wrong.
domcrap wrote: The part of St Petersburg that I dislike more is how certain cards are so good that they throw off the balance of the game for the lucky person who gets them. Stone Age is much more balanced.
the 1-7 buildings are just as you describe, a big boon to whoever goes first when they come up. They can be worth upwards of 42 points.
On a mildly related note - maybe this game would benefit from a space that says "I go first next round" like Pillars of the Earth has.
-
Dan Poole
United States
Goldsboro
North Carolina
Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!
We're charging our battery. And now we're full of energy. We are the robots. We're functioning automatik. And we are dancing mechanik. We are the robots
-
All this bantering has sold me on the game. The game is obviously not scripted if folks are arguing over the best strategies.
As a side note, any big fan of St. Petersburg will tell you the game is no more scripted than any other game around here. Yes you buy 2 green cards at the beginning of the first turn. Think of it as your starting hand of 2 greens. The rules are just stating in a nice way that a player who doesn't buy their greens on turn 1 is an idiot.
Quote: The part of St Petersburg that I dislike more is how certain cards are so good that they throw off the balance of the game for the lucky person who gets them. Stone Age is much more balanced
Good St. Petersburg players can win regardless of what cards their opponent's get. You can easily win without the observatory.
Nice review by the way, thanks
-
Was George Orwell an Optimist?
Spain
Corvallis
Oregon
-
denverarch wrote: That's new. I won't stop designing games that get beyond this trend anytime soon. Woosh.
I don't understand what you're saying here. By trend, are you referring to games with that sort of theme, or that sort of scoring mechanism, or that generate that sort of comment?
I only meant that I'd find the theme more interesting if it were hunting and fighting instead of hut building. Doesn't mean I'd hate the game.
-
Dave Eisen
United States
Silicon Valley
California
-
voynix wrote:
Good St. Petersburg players can win regardless of what cards their opponent's get. You can easily win without the observatory.
The concern here was not the observatory, which is a fine card in a four player game and a less fine one in a two player game, but in neither event game breaking. The concern was with the Mistress of Ceremonies which is in fact very big if it is purchased specifically on turn 1. I have won games when my opponent got a turn 1 Mistress, but really, only because I am very experienced and the opponent was pretty much a beginner. Between two players of comparable ability this will not be possible.
-
Dan Poole
United States
Goldsboro
North Carolina
Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!
We're charging our battery. And now we're full of energy. We are the robots. We're functioning automatik. And we are dancing mechanik. We are the robots
-
Agreed, when the Mistress of Ceremonis gets snatched up on the first turn by your foe, the game becomes more of a challenge, albeit voctory is still possible.
-
Curt Carpenter
United States
Washington
-
1) Farm is by far the best opening move on turn 1. The only possible argument is if the 3x builder card is in the cheapest card position.
2) I much prefer this game to StP
3) The 1-7 tile is by far the best. It's really quite silly, in fact. Why would some tiles prescribe and EXACT number of resources and an EXACT number of types, and this tile gives completely flexibility to sell whatever you want, up to SEVEN resources? It's insane. I've been thinking that one of the 1-7 tiles should accept like exactly 7 resources in any number of types (being great because you can sell so many, but also REQUIRING that you sell that many, making a bit more difficult to use), and the other 1-7 tile should accept any number of resources (up to 7), but it must include all 4 types (again great potential, but a little more struict in usage). I also think that the tiles that give an exact set of three resources should give a +1, since the more flexible ones let you sell whatever you happen to have.
-
Toasted Jones
United Kingdom
Rugeley
Staffordshire
-
I've only played this once, and while the farm is an obvious first player choice, there are certainly other options that caught the first player eye in our game, such as the new tool, first pick of the cards, which can lead to a bargain, and prime huts.
I only selected farm twice in the game I played and while I didn't win, the scores were very close.
-
Curt Carpenter
United States
Washington
-
Other choices may have caught people's eye, but that doesn't make them as good or better. Play more and you will see. Or just look at the analysis. It's correct.
-
Toasted Jones
United Kingdom
Rugeley
Staffordshire
-
curtc wrote: Other choices may have caught people's eye, but that doesn't make them as good or better. Play more and you will see. Or just look at the analysis. It's correct.
I suspect you're right and I'd agree with you 100% if there weren't multiple ways of gaining food.
-
Paul King
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Unspecified
-
I think that you've underrated tools a little.
If you take into account the pips that would otherwise be wasted, the first tool is worth more than 1 pip a turn - provided you try to produce at least two different resources. (That's because it could be used on either - if it isn't useful on the first it might be useful on the second). I think there's an element of diminishing returns, so later tools might be worth only 1 point, but on turn 1 a tool looks better than breeding.
-
Bruno Valerio
Portugal
Aveiro
-
domcrap wrote:
The good: Stone Age is fun to play! There is enough dice rolling that people don't play it as if it is a test of their intelligence. This means that people enjoy themselves while playing.[/b]
Yeah we wouldn't like that to happen. Just think of what might happen if we all started thinking while playing these games.... no way... not for me... bring on the dice, they should do all the thinking.
heheeheh
I had Stone Age under my radar but after reading the rules imho the dice killed the game!
It may however be a fun gateway game!
-
Curt Carpenter
United States
Washington
-
Paul King wrote: If you take into account the pips that would otherwise be wasted, the first tool is worth more than 1 pip a turn - provided you try to produce at least two different resources. Paul makes a good point. You do in fact net over 1 pip per turn when gathering at multiple resources. Take a simple example: suppose you are going for gold with one tool. There is a 1 in 6 chance that your tool will be useful at all (regardless of how many dice you roll). So 1 in 6 rolls you gain 6 pips (1 pip per turn). But in the 5 out of 6 cases where you don't net anything, if you were also in wood, for example, then you'd have a 1 in 3 chance in your tool netting you an extra wood. So in the gold+wood case, your expected net gain from 1 tool is 1/6*6 (chance of getting the extra gold) + 5/6*1/3*3 (chance of not getting a gold but getting a wood instead) = 1 5/6. Not bad, but still not as good as a farm though. However, let's assume you're at all 4 resources + food. The expected return for 1 tool now is:
1/6*6 + 5/6*1/5*5 + 5/6*4/5*1/4*4 + 5/6*4/5*3/4*1/3*3 + 5/6*4/5*3/4*2/3*1/2*2 =
1 + 5/6 + 5/6*4/5 + 5/6*4/5*3/4 + 5/6*4/5*3/4*2/3 =
3 1/3. Wow!
Anyone wanna double check my math on that?
So that's pretty cool.
But.... it's not common to have guys on more than two resources every turn, which is required to make a tool worth more than a farmer. So it's hard for me to imagine the tool paying off as much as a farmer. Next time I play (might be quite a while now, unfortunately), I'll have to keep a mental note of how many turns on average people have meeples on more than 2 resources.
So I'm sticking with farm as best. The argument, which should be pretty straight-forward to see is that the return on tools diminish (as Paul mentioned, maybe someone wants to do the analysis there?), whereas farms stack linearly. Because of this, you want to get as many farms as possible, whereas there's not as much urgency to max out tools. Also, as Dominic originally pointed out, an extra guy is generally better than a tool anyway (tool adds 1 pip, meeple adds 1.5). But it costs 7 pips for a meeple, vs 3.5 for a tool, so a tool is better than a meeple unless there are at least 7 turns left (.5 better for meeple takes 7 turns to earn back the 3.5).
-
Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
dkeisen wrote: voynix wrote:
Good St. Petersburg players can win regardless of what cards their opponent's get. You can easily win without the observatory.
The concern was with the Mistress of Ceremonies which is in fact very big if it is purchased specifically on turn 1.
Yes, this is what I was talking about. I don't think there is a scenario like this one that can happen in Stone Age.
-
Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
curtc wrote: Paul King wrote: If you take into account the pips that would otherwise be wasted, the first tool is worth more than 1 pip a turn - provided you try to produce at least two different resources. Paul makes a good point.
You guys make a good point. If the tool is used as the final pip needed for a gold, then it would actually be worth 6 points that turn, since it saved you from wasting 5 meeple pips. I guess figuring out the usefulness of a tool is more complicated than I had suggested, and the usefulness changes depending on how much you spread out your meeples.
-
Dominic Crapuchettes
United States
Bethesda
MD
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
-
Oblivion wrote: domcrap wrote:
The good: Stone Age is fun to play! There is enough dice rolling that people don't play it as if it is a test of their intelligence. This means that people enjoy themselves while playing.[/b]
Yeah we wouldn't like that to happen. Just think of what might happen if we all started thinking while playing these games.... no way... not for me... bring on the dice, they should do all the thinking. heheeheh I had Stone Age under my radar but after reading the rules imho the dice killed the game! It may however be a fun gateway game!
Stone Age is more than a gateway game. There is a lot going on and it requires plenty of thinking to do well. The dice adds an element of risk analysis at the same time as it adds the chance to get lucky or unlucky. But enough dice get rolled each game to keep the luck from being too big of a factor (everything evens out after a while).
If you want a game that makes you think, then Stone Age is a fine choice. But if you want something that "seems" like an IQ test, then you should probably look into chess and go. They might be more interesting to you.
-
Curt Carpenter
United States
Washington
-
BTW, it should be obvious that gathering from the most expensive tools first is optimal, although I saw lots of people who didn't do it (after they do it a few times I usually point it out to them). The expected return of one tool when gathering all resources+food from cheapest to most expensive (food to gold) is only:
1/2*2 + 1/2*1/3*3 + 1/2*2/3*1/4*4 + 1/2*2/3*3/4*1/5*5 + 1/2*2/3*3/4*4/5*1/6*6 =
1 + 1/2 + 1/2*2/3 + 1/2*2/3*3/4 + 1/2*2/3*3/4*4/5 =
~2.28
Significantly less than the 3.33 you can expect going from most expensive to cheapest.
-
Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
-
curtc wrote: BTW, it should be obvious that gathering from the most expensive tools first is optimal...
One might argue that rolling whichever resource is most important at the time first is better play. But yeah, generally speaking, unless you really need that wood right now then you should probably roll for higher cost stuff first.
-
|
|
NorthStarGames: Bringing Gamers and Non-Gamers Together!
1 of 4 personal boards for each player
