Version 1.0

All of the standard rules will be used, with the following exceptions.


SETUP
-----
* 2 stacks of 7 Building Tiles each are placed on the board, with their topmost one revealed.

* Only 3 Civilization cards are used each round, placed into the three leftmost areas -- 2 resouce cost, 3 resource cost, and 4 resource cost.


PLACES
------
* Only 1 area is available in the "village" each turn -- either the Tool Maker, the Hut, or the Field.

* Within the resource areas -- the Forest, Clay Pit, Quarry, and River -- up to 4 Meeples may be placed (not the usual 7).


NEW RULES
---------
Wild Animals: if all of the player's dice on a resource roll in one of the resource areas come up 1's, he loses one of those meeples (they return to the "baby" stack). If the player sent only one meeple and it dies he can gain no resources, not even if his Tools would have allowed him to.

Raiders: at the end of each turn do the following ...
-- discard 1 Building Tile (this means the game will last at most 14 turns); player's choice which one to remove
-- discard the rightmost Civilization card that was unclaimed
-- Turns 1, 5, 9, 13: discard 1 Wood
-- Turns 2, 6, 10, 14: discard 1 Wood, 1 Clay
-- Turns 3, 7, 11: discard 1 Wood, 1 Clay, 1 Stone
-- Turns 4, 8, 12: discard 1 Wood, 1 Clay, 1 Stone, 1 Gold
NOTE: discard means that Tile or Resource is out of the game

Trade Cards: on those cards that give you items for dice (1 = Wood - 6 = +1 Field), roll 2 dice and keep both items.


GAME END
--------
The game ends either when both of the Building Tile stacks are empty OR if all the cards are used up.

Victory is the achievement of Prosperity signified when a player reaches or surpasses 300 points. This is a tough winning condition, but it should hone your skills when playing against live opponents.


Let me know what you all think.

Having tested these rules several times I found that work well except for part of the Raiders Rule. It should be adjusted in the following manner:

Only in a turn when the player does not construct one or more Building Tiles should a Building Tile of the player's choice be discarded from the game.

This will make the game tenser and allow for the possibility of meeting the Victory Conditions. It also limits the game to exactly 14 turns. I use a cube of a color I am not using and the Scoring Track to help me keep track of individual game turns.

Scores so far: 278, 245, 269, 310.

So essentially the first statement in your Raiders section can be rewritten as:

-- if the player does not construct one or more Building Tiles then a Building Tile of the player's choice is to be discarded from the game (this means the game will last at most 14 turns)

And I left in the 'at most 14 turns' because I could build 2 in a turn, correct? That's probably not a great idea as given no competition and thus I would be simply cutting my time to make progress short by a turn.

Thanks for the rules! I'll try and give this a try in the next day or so as it looks interesting.

Can't WAIT to get my copy and try these rules out...

One point need to be highlighted :
in the raider part of your solo rules, i don't understand the "raider" part. What is the impact of discarding a resource ?

In the french rules, resources are said to be unlimited.

I think you're implying in your solo rules, resources are limited to those available in the different places.

Am i right ?

Yes. The Raiders remove resources from the game, limiting the total available. This changes some of the game play and the order in which things are done.

The reason for this is to create a sense of urgency on the part of the player. Consider, if you prefer, that there is another village somewhere in the vicinity that is competing for the same resources. The game play impact, while minimal, does make for exciting play.

My first four plays with this system made me feel like I was in a desperate race against time.

Ok, i just had a try with your solo rules and ended the game with ... 298VP !
And i played with raiders discarding resources from the game but it didn't limit the number of resources i needed.
Many thanks for this solo variant

Hey Eddie. Well, once I figured out that I'd missed one of the rules in your solitaire variant (I wasn't discarding the rightmost Civilization card--BIG difference), I've really been enjoying it. It's a nice intellectual puzzle that plays fast, but has lots of variety because the way the cards come out really changes things. It's done a great job of satisfying my Stone Age fix while I'm between FTF games.

The rule about discarding a Civ card every turn is very good. Since you can usually control which card will get tossed, this lets you plan ahead a bit while simultaneously giving you some tough decisions. I also like the way you handle the Trade cards; two dice makes them valuable, but not overvalued.

The one thing I just don't get is the discarding of the resources after each turn. It's a fiddly process that doesn't seem to accomplish much. If you really want to put the squeeze on the resources, why not just start the game with fewer of them? After playing with it for a few games, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth and stopped doing it. The resource limits rarely seem to come into play and even when they do, you can always go to the next higher resource. Thematically, this seems to work for you, but I find it isn't worth the extra bother.

I also modified the Wild Animals rule, but only to suit my tastes. I like the fact that rolling a 1 on a single meeple will cause him to die; it makes single placements risky and that seems appropriate. But losing a worker when there's more than one present, just because you roll all 1s, rubs me the wrong way. The odds of it occuring aren't high enough to affect my decision making, so if it happens, it's just bad luck (with a pretty severe penalty). It seems like an unnecessary insertion of luck into the game, so I only use the rule with single meeple attempts. This works fine, but there's nothing wrong with the rule as written.

After several games in the 290s, I finally won with a game where everything went right (including some very good dice rolling). My score was 365 points. It'll probably take a bit of doing to top that one!

Thanks again for coming up with this variant, Eddie. Solitaire games which keep the flavor of the multiplayer design are always welcome and this is one of the better ones. Good job!

Yeah, I found the taking of resources out a little fiddly and accomplishing next to nothing.

I do like the idea of only 1 Meeple going out and being lost, but I would keep the "all 1s" as that reflects things better thematically and does put a lot of pressure on the player in subsequent turns. Again, it happens seldom enough with two or more meeples as to be superflous, but I do like the idea of the loss to "the elements".

Thanks for the kind words Larry.

First of all, thanks for creating this... I'll look forward to trying that out.

For the wild animals, I agree with Larry that it seems a little harsh, particularly as you've already rolled 1's and got hosed on getting any resources. It's like a double whammy to also lose a person for that. I might suggest making that rule for rolling 6's, instead. That way it offsets the benefit of rolling too incredibly well... you'll get a good amount of resources but you'll lose a meeple.

And perhaps it could be that if you have at least 2 meeples in a resource area and roll all 6's, you lose one meeple and if you have at least 2 meeples in a resource area and roll all 1's, you get an extra meeple. That would offer a benefit to rolling terribly as well as the balancing penalty for rolling the maximum. Thematically, that works for me, because rolling the 6's and losing a meeple could mean they were so focused on their work that they didn't notice the wild animals, or they worked themselves too hard and one of them died. And rolling the 1's and gaining a meeple could mean that instead of doing much work, two of the meeples were busy gettin' bizay, so to speak.

As for the raiders stealing resources, I like the idea of that, but also agree that it could be simplified. As Larry suggests, maybe just reduce the number of available resources to begin with... Or perhaps, assign a number to each resource (wood=1, brick=2, stone=3, gold=4) and roll a die. If 1-4 is rolled, place a different colored meeple there to represent the raiders making that resource unavailable for the following turn.

I think the idea of limiting resources is essential to having the game play somewhat like the multiplayer version, and people from other villages gathering them makes sense, thematically, but it may need to be both more harsh (completely shutting out a resource for a turn) and more random to better represent that. If removing a few resources here and there every turn as you currently have it isn't really affecting anything, then what's the point? But in a multiplayer game, there will likely come some times when due to the turn order or the circumstances of who has what resources, you could essentially be locked out of getting a certain resource for a turn.

Anyway, it sounds like a great solo version of the game, regardless, so thanks again for creating it.

So I got my hard copy shipped today and had some time tonight to try out this solitaire version, but I gotta ask you guys how the heck you're getting scores of 365?? I played 3 games and my scores were 132, 124 and 184. Are you not bothering with the food or something?

I'm pretty sure I'm following the rules right, and I'm not a slouch at the game multiplayer, so I can't imagine I'm that far off... Do you remove a building tile every turn, even if you've taken one or two of them? That's what I've been doing and the game just ends so fast. Anyway, if you can describe what you're doing to get to 300 points in that short of time, I'd really appreciate that (I'm sure it involves getting more Civ card multiples, but with such limited time/resources I've had trouble affording the resource cost for too many cards).

Regardless, it's a fun solitaire game. I think I'm going to make my goal 200 for now, though.

Eric, I believe these guys are dropping one hut tile only if none were built that turn by the player.

Aha, that would probably explain it (though I'd like Osiris to confirm). I was removing a building tile at the end of every turn, whether I had taken one or not, per the instructions.

Thank you for this solo variant. I thought it sounded entertaining, so I gave it a shot today. The rules were easy to understand and are nicely put in line with the theme. In turn 5 I suddenly realized that I intuitively applied the general rule that the game ends when one of the building stacks is empty, not both as suggested in this variant. I noticed that this general rule brings lots of tension to the game and forces you sometimes to discard valuable buildings on the higher stack. This would be my only suggestion for improvement. I continued the game using the rule as suggested in this thread. I think that forced discarding of civilization cards (I never bought all 3) is a good mechanism to really push you into "strategic thinking" mode.

A short report:

My people did a good job picking berries and stuff; I never hunted during the whole game. So instead they could focus on collecting all kinds of resources and spent most time in the forest. Wild animals showed up, but since my people were never alone, they could scare them away easily. You should have heared the sound At some point the population size stabilized at 8 people, which were able to keep themselves alive easily (with the food track on 9), built 8 huts (worth 140 vp), 5 tools, and civilized well, collecting 18 cards (worth 162 vp). Efficiently as they developed, they only had one wood left at the end (1 vp). Raiders never bothered them really, although wood became scarce during the last turns.

All in all I guess I won the game by collecting 303 vp.

thanks i will try this out, :)

Great job on this variant. I've played it several times and have enjoyed it every time. I've kept track of my scores, and here they are:

278, 295, 340, 284, 259, 341, 366, 353, 326.

I've been playing by discarding a hut only when I don't buy one, and I haven't been discarding resources, though I don't think it would make a big difference since I never find myself with a lot of resources on my player board.

A side note, I didn't realize my unused resources were worth a point at the end, so all of my scores should be higher by 1 to 8.

Thanks again for the rules, and if anyone is interested in this, you should definitely give it a try :-).

Thanks. Exactly what I was lookig for.
Certaintly makes for an exciting and tense game....love it.

Thank you for coming up with this. Stone Age is one of my favorite games and your solo variant rules are easy, make sense, and the game flows nicely. The only thing I didn't do is discard the resources after each turn because there seem to be plenty anyway and I spend them as fast as I get them (especially on huts so I don't have to discard THOSE). Got 250 and 192 for my scores and want to do better. Didn't realize ending resources were worth a point but that still wouldn't get me to 300.

For those of you that do not like losing all the meeples on a roll of all ones. It could be modified to losing 1 meeple total no matter how many there are. The animals get full after one meeple.