There are already some hardcore gamers who pretend to have "solved" Stone Age. The superior strategy is starvation. Yes, you lose 10 VP if you don't feed your workers, but then those players claim that using all workers for getting resources instead some of them for food will get you much more VP than other players that do feed their workers. It really seems that at the end of the game, players that use a starvation strategy will get between 170 and 240 VP (depending on dice rolls and of course available spaces for resource collecting, assuming that other players try to feed their workers and do not block resources). This seems more than with a mixed strategy. Kind of sad, that the rules (at least the German ones) allow this and don't force players to use also resources to get food units (this only optional due to German rules).

So what would happen if 4 experienced players all adopted the starvation strategy?

170-240 is hardly a guaranteed winning score. I've not seen a starvation strategy attempted yet, however the games I've played have seen winning scores mostly in the 200s and even into the 300s.

Perhaps it is a viable strategy to try, but if the scores are topping out in the mid 200s I don't see it being dominant.

-MMM

In my first game I had about 120 VP. Therefore I thought 240 VP must be a great score... so I didn't try this strategy on my own either.
Just wanted to know your opinion (from already experienced players) if this seems a viable strategy. Not talking about the fact that meeples that are not feeded would be condemned starving to death and not losing any VP



In normal play the single spaces on farming, tools and the huts (2 spaces) are taken first, as they are important.
In a 4 player "starvation" game theese wouldn't be taken that often (however tool ans mor workers are still useful) but the resource spaces (7 each). So being the first player will become very important, so that you get the place you want.
Saying that, it would have been nice, if there was a place on the board, where players could place a meeple to be first player (as known from Caylus or similar). Well, if 4 players go for this strategy there will be a shortage of recource spaces as well as the resources itself. If this is still any fun has to be proven. I am sceptical about it.
I agree that this strategy ruins a bit the game as it was not intended by the author.

Dan, I think those players you describe are yet another set of victims of the dreaded "Gathering Rules Syndrome". The rules in the box for Stone Age say that if a player lacks food counters to feed his people, he must lose a resource counter for each food he is short (and eating wood is surely less efficient than eating food). If the player has insufficient resources to lose, he then loses 10 VPs per unfed worker. That, my friend, is not a winning strategy to this game. However, this is certainly not the first, and won't be the last, group to have screwed up the rules to a new game at the Gathering.

Discussing the idea some, there is at least some merit to the strategy from a purely mathematical standpoint. I'll paraphrase (most of it coming from fellow BGGer LemonyFresh)

Food is essentially converted to 10 points per turn if you spend n per round, n being the number of people in your tribe.

If you convert this into pips you see that with a tribe of 5, 10 pips becomes 10 points, or one point per pip - same rate as any other resource. As n increases, the ratio becomes less favorable.

The counter argument is that you can have a higher unused remainder, and thus more unused pips, on the other resources. Resources also require an additional worker placement to be converted into points, either via a card or building, to realize their full value.

So the question is whether or not the other players can hinder a starvation player enough so that he isn't able to convert the extra workers into enough points to make up for the 10 lost per turn.

-MMM

Larry, the rules in the Rio Grande version explicitly say a player may, if he wants to, discard resources to make up for the missing food, and further say that the penalty is a flat 10VP if the player cannot or does not want to to feed his tribe.

I learned the same rules you quote above, but it seems that those are the victims of GRS.

-MMM

(bold added by me to emphasize)

Larry I am under the strong impression that you talk about American rules (RGG), as the German rules do firstly not force you to use resources as substitute for food (it's optional) and secondly the 10 VP lost are per turn not per worker.

IF RGG changed to rules as you described them, then of course a starving strategy wouldn't be possible anymore. As I learned from BGN Jay from RGG wants also to start the game with only 12 food units instead of 15 as the German edition does. This would be a more realistic rules approach than the German edition, I agree. But then, digging for gold in Stone age is not realistic (historical correct) either.

The German rules as posted here list 12 food to start:

http://www.schmidtspiele.de/fileadmin/thumbnails/Stone_Age48...

That's correct. 15 units was only in the pre-release rules (the ones I played with). It seems that this was downgraded to 12 food also in the final German edition. So please ignore my above statement about this change.

Actually, I think it's the opposite, Dan. The rules I quoted come from Ekted's translation of the German rules. I just looked at the rules posted on the RGG site and they do indeed state that the penalty is 10 VPs per turn.

So we have several possibilities:

1) Ekted mistranslated the rules;
2) Jay mistranslated the rules;
3) Jay changed the rules, to make the game friendlier, not realizing that he was promoting a starvation strategy;
4) Jay changed the rules, because he wants to include the possibility of a starvation strategy.

I have no idea which is true. Until this is resolved, I'll probably play with Ekted's translation, since it seems to make for a better and less perverse game.

By the way, my first reaction to this post was the same as Walt's: what if several players are trying this? Won't the resource spaces, particularly the cheap ones, get awfully crowded? Hunting for food and avoiding the 10 VP penalty might be the proper play in those instances. But I still think the game plays better if the players are kicked in the head when they're short of food, instead of getting slapped on the wrist.