Although I love the theme and game, TtAges is a bit on the long side for the Friday night games evenings at our FLGS, so doesn't get much table time. We have played a few 3-player sessions, but this will then be the entire evening. It works best to arrange these games in advance. So I thought it would be good to try out a solo version of play instead. Unfortunately, there didn't appear to be a good, easy or official solo rule version out? Wiltgren's Solo variant ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/294904) seemed a bit too complex and confusing, but on re-reading, was probably the basic inspiration for my eventual rules. That said, it also appeared incomplete. I also decided that I wasn't interested in simulating a two-player game, as per Lafe's solo variant ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/299765).

A few weeks and about 8 solo games later (with various tweaks between games), I had something workable, and fairly straightforward once you had played a few turns. However, the end result was too long to just post as an article, so I uploaded it as a PDF [blatent plug]: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/33098 [/blatent plug], i.e. something you can easily print off and use as a reference while playing.

Please let me know what you think?

My thoughts so far:
1. This variant has helped me develop/improve my own military play in TtA games, which was previously poor. It hurts to be low down on strength and be subjected to aggressions - but at least here you can blame the barbarians, and try do better next time. (One minor benefit is that no-one's feelings are hurt in the process, unlike in regular games!)
2. This version of the solo game does not really allow a flexible game development, the way a real game has everyone responding to cards taken and actions of other players. So it's not the real thing. However, the Card Row mechanism does tend to mess up your plans in a way that is very similar to what other players do (to you) in regular games, so the solo game can still feel like a good simulation.
3. One strategy for success is to try take as many colonies as you can, to deny them (and their future points) to the barbarians. This is much less important in the regular game, although can still be quite helpful.

Overall, my biggest surprise was the apparent lack of interest and activity in the solo play area (here on the Geek). After all, those other articles are months old..? As mentioned by another poster, it should have been easy to come up with a solo version. Or is it just that there are not that many people actually interested in playing TtAges (as the initial enthusiasm led us to believe)?

I don't even know what the "solo play area" is. But I'm not so surprised that there's not a lot of interest in solo variants. That doesn't seem to say much at all about the overall interest in the game itself.

Perhaps I should have written "solo play concept"... but you're right, I'm sure most other BGGeeks expect to be able to play games with others. So solo game players are likely in the minority.

These look good, David; I'm going to try them out. But I don't believe in going for high score, even in a solo game. I prefer a win/loss setup. You give me that, but it's only dependent on Strength, not Culture points. I could ignore Culture and still win the game. But that's easily handled. You say to aim for 160 Culture points; I say the player needs to exceed the strength of all three barbarians AND score 160 points to win. Sound reasonable?

The lack of solo rules discussion may be because TtA is fairly easy to play solo against yourself.

I thought about this, but decided against requiring a specific points target to "win". The final culture point total is too randomly dependent on what and how many Age III event cards you draw and seed. That said, the higher your end-game strength, the more points you can score from barbarian-held events. Again, military strength is the key requirement in this variant. However, I do think it useful to have a specific culture point "par" level, to gauge whether you are doing well or just barely making it. The level might need adjusting over time (i.e. with more experience/testing), if I find that it is possible to consistently reach a specific culture total AND defeat the barbs. Your input is welcome here!

True, to a degree... [I'm assuming you mean playing both sides of a 2-player game]. But you need a certain level of schizophrenia to do it well, and which side do you root for?

Take 'em out! Seriously, almost all of these only benefit the human player, so if we're just talking about a pointless luck factor, either take them out of the game or consider them to be blank cards that earn the human player 3 VPs if he seeds them (but which do nothing if they're drawn). An alternative would be to start the game with some of them face up (like in the Advanced Game) and use this to generate different scenarios (each with its own VP requirement to win).

Thank you very much for these. I for one have been waiting for playable solitaire rules for this game. (No offense to Wiltgren: my laziness is what prevented me to try his.)

Once I try them out I'll let you know what I think.

David, I think there's something missing in your description of your solo variant. Point 7 reads "End of Ages I, II and III: In addition to retiring leaders, unfinished wonders and your own civil and military cards from the prior age (Age A if ending Age I, Age I if ending Age II, and Age II if ending Age III), you also remove"

Remove what?

Oops! You remove expired military cards that any barbarian tribes may be holding - unused aggressions/wars or Defence/colonization cards. You also still remove two tokens from your yellow population bank as usual.

Thanks for spotting that Larry, I'll get an updated version uploaded this weekend.

I'm assuming, starting with turn three, the Barbarians' turns take place after the player's. Correct?

No. The Barbarians' turn(s) takes place in between the Card Row phase of turn three, and the rest of the player's turn 3 (political action, etc.).

I guess I should have gotten that from the order you put the explanations in the rules, but I guess I wanted it to be the other way.

Okay, David, I finally got in a solo game where I got all the rules correct. For some reason, I butchered some of the details in my first few attempts.

I really like it. The game plays quickly, but the task of keeping up with the strengths of the three barbarians is a good challenge that still maintains the basic play of the multiplayer game.

I really think you need to have a Culture point objective. If your only goal is having the highest strength, it isn’t that hard to accomplish. However, if you also have to reach a specified Culture point goal, then you have something you have to sweat over. Based on my plays, I think 200 Culture points is a challenging, but realistic requirement for winning.

My first “real” game had quite an exciting finish. Despite the fact that the barbarians managed to uncannily target all of the mining technologies (I still hadn’t progressed past Bronze by game’s end!), my production engine was adequate. But I wasn’t producing enough Culture. I had a ton of colonies and Cook didn’t come out until late in Age II, but when he finally did, I grabbed him and figured that would be more than enough to meet my Culture goal. But after only one turn, he was taken out by Iconoclasm! Maintaining sufficient strength didn’t look to be a problem (thanks to an ill-timed War launched by the most dangerous barbarian, the one who had all the colonies), but I thought that losing Cook doomed my chances of reaching 200 Culture.

On the last turn, my Harp total was still in the 120s. I had managed to pick up First Space Flight on the previous turn and finishing it gave me a nice Culture boost, but the 9 ore cost left me with little to help myself further. But I noticed that it was just enough to build a last military unit that would give me a 5 point lead over the strongest barbarian’s final strength. At least that would give me one pick from the “possible events” pile. Once the barbarians got their final strength increase, all that was left was checking out the future events pile. The Age III events I had seeded helped me more than I thought they would, but they still left me at 183 Culture. The blind pick from the possible events was my last chance and I wasn’t optimistic. I shuffled the cards and turned one over: Impact of Government. 2 points for each of my 7 civil actions and 1 for each of my 5 military actions picked my total up to...202! Quite a finish!

I definitely want to play some more to make sure the game plays in a varied fashion, that there are no obvious strategies, and that the 200 Culture objective is a good one. In particular, I want to see if focusing on colonies is an easy, and maybe necessary path to victory (they give you a lot and if you let the barbarians win them, their strength will skyrocket in Age III). But I think you have a winner here. I’ve been looking for a good TtA solo game and it looks like I’ve found one. Thanks so much for creating this and posting it!

I as well managed to play today; must have something to do with the holiday. This was clearly more fun than going to work, so it had that going for it, which is nice.

Unfortunately, unlike Huzonfist this was my first go, so I think I had some beneficial "rules hacks" in the early going. I'm not sure I paid my military actions for an early aggression, and the game seemed to be moving pretty slowly and it's possible I forgot to take the cards out of the first three slots once or twice.

This allowed me to get the early jump on the Barbarians. Since I had the lead, also due to a nice tactics card, I was able to "keep the man down" with an occasional aggression, and the barbarians never seriously challenged.

At the end I had over 200 culture even before the final scoring, so I didn't bother to add in the final events, chalked it up to a learning game, and resolved to remember the rules better the next time.

It was fun though; good set of rules. It felt much like playing the game, without the hassle of waiting for other players to take their turns.

There's a lot to remember, Todd, and it's easy to leave out some details. Unfortunately, when you're playing solo, there's no one to remind you of something you've missed. I rearranged David's rules so I could get the most important ones on a single sheet of paper that I could keep in front of me while I played. Unfortunately, I left some stuff out and that was the source of some of my early troubles. Even this last time around, I forgot that a barbarian can't gain more than 3 strength from colonies in a single turn (no barbarian in my game had more than 3 colonies, but I was trying like hell to keep that guy from getting his fourth!). So I'm not surprised you missed some stuff on your first attempt.

In that vein I had some rules questions. I was typing these out last night but somehow clicked the "back" button on my browser and lost it all. (Alcohol may have been involved.) At that point I was too crestfallen to type it all in over again.

I assumed that if a Barbarian was at zero strength, they couldn't Colonize even if they had Colonization cards. This was a big deal, as the White Barbarian therefore couldn't bid, and I grabbed the colony.

It also seemed like it was easy to keep the Barbarians down, due perhaps to my "rules hacks" and a fortunate Tactics card. Now, if my strength is 20, and a Barbarian's is 9, assuming no defense cards, the Barbarian goes down to zero if i aggress him. And, in the same example, if he did have, say two +2 defense cards to put him at 13, he would sacrifice seven to tie, and still go down to two, and lose the defense cards?

That was my assumption as well, Todd. David deliberately starts them at zero, as opposed to 1, which would be the case if they were actual players. I have to assume the reason for that is to allow the solo player to grab some early colonies cheaply (and to keep the barbarians from also getting them cheaply, which would give them quite a boost in strength during Age III).


That all sounds correct. I don't think I've ever opened up a strength advantage of that amount at that stage of the game, even with a tactics card, so you may have forgotten to boost the barbarian's strengths a few times. But yes, knocking down the barbarians with aggessions seems to be a viable tactic. Of course, you have to get the aggression cards and spending the military actions makes it harder to continue to upgrade your strength and/or keep a flow of cards coming in. In addition, smacking down the trailing barbarian doesn't sound too profitable; it's the lead one (or, at least, the one with the most colonies) that I'm worried about and the gap between his strength and mine is rarely that great. But if I can get a lead of about 5 strength points or so on my Most Feared barbarian and I have an aggression or war card, I'll definitely use it to enlarge the gap. He'll be back threatening me soon enough.

As for your more general concern, yes, I think it isn't that hard to keep your strength above the barbarians. In fact, my goal is to maintain a superior strength for the entire game, so I don't have to worry about being attacked. I fell a little short of that goal in my last game, but fortunately had enough Defense cards that I never suffered a loss (and having the barbarian use up the aggression card wasn't a bad thing). Still, if all you concentrate on is strength, you should be able to stay on top of the barbarians without too much trouble. That's why I think it's important to also require the player to reach a challenging Culture point goal as well. And while it's true that there's luck involved in the different ways you can score culture, there's so many ways of doing so that I think a specified goal is reasonable. There's Age III events (and since you're drawing half of those cards, you should get a reasonable number to seed), wonders, theaters, and leaders like Cook. It would truly be an unlucky game if you got shut out of all of those.

Hopefully, David will be able to respond to your questions so we can be sure we're playing his creation correctly.

I played again today and things went similarly; once I got Napoleon I kept a nice lead in Strength. (Oh and Transcontinental Railroad is the bomb in this version.)

The closing events gave me plenty of culture to end at 231; since I neglected to count I lost one of the special events at the end as my score was 39 to 30 for the next Barbarian. (Yeah I knew they were going to have one last strength increase, but I built a building for the three culture instead of building a military unit. I hope my people liked their library.)

I'm pretty sure I was remembering to always advance the Barbarians' strength, even in the first game. The ease of the first game came from the extra turn I got forgetting to clear the first three slots of the card row one time. Big difference.

The second game I had food problems for a long while. (Moses went away before I could grab him.) Finally Ocean Liners took care of that.

I'm going to try to get in another solo game this weekend to give me a better idea of how tough the challenge is. Maybe 200 Culture points isn't quite enough. Maybe the barbarians need to get a few more strength boosts (although they sure seem to pressure me enough as it is). I'd expect that with a military-oriented leader like Napoleon, the strength goal would go easier, but Culture might be a problem. Similarly, with a VP-oriented leader like Cook, strength might be more of an issue. But we probably need some more data points before we start tweaking the system.

Okay, I just finished my second solo contest and now I see what can happen when things go your way rather than against you. Todd, I apologize for suggesting you may have missed something in your first game; I did well in the early going and had a Strength lead on the barbarians very similar to the one you spoke of. Culture was again pretty low after two Ages, but it's just too easy to score it in huge clumps in Age III. Elvis, Movies, and Fast Food got me up to the 160s by the end of Age IV. The three Age III Events I'd seeded yielded another 60 or so, raising my total to about 225. In my last couple of turns, I focused on raising my already comfortable Strength lead and wound up topping the lead barbarian by 16, giving me three picks from the Possible Events pile. They picked my final total up to 278.

I want to try it one more time with David's original rules, but I suspect it's just a bit too easy. The core is there and all that should be needed is a bit of tweaking, but right now, it isn't quite challenging enough, particularly if you focus on your military.

One of the things I really enjoy about the variant is that it lets you try out different things each game. In this one, I decided to focus on science. Library of Alexandria got me started out and Isaac Newton gave me a nice boost in Age II. I've never seen anyone even consider ol' Ike in one of my normal games, but like all of the leaders, he's a righteous dude under the proper circumstances. Anyway, this game played a lot different than my previous one and it's good that the variant gives you the freedom to try out such varied strategies.

Some of the suggestions I think I'll eventually make include the Age III events. They're just too easy to come by and are too valuable. Including the ones that came up before the end of the game, they provided about half of my Culture total, and while that's fine in a game against opponents who will also score for them, it's way too much for a solo game. I'm thinking that cutting their Culture benefit in half may make sense.

I also think it's too easy to get picks from the Possible Events pile. The justification for them in game terms is a bit weak, but I still like the idea of a surprise influx of points at the very end. However, one pick per 5 points of your lead is too many. My main concern is that you could do nothing but focus on strength, build a big lead, and then hope to use these picks to carry you past your Culture goal. That kind of single-dimensional play is just what I'm trying to avoid with the Culture requirement. Maybe something like a pick for every 8 points of your lead might work better.

Finally, acquiring colonies seems like an essential part of any strategy and they're just a bit too easy to grab. I think I wound up with half a dozen of them in both of my games, which feels like too many. I like the fact that they represent a constant drain on your military, but their benefits are so considerable and the ramifications of letting the barbarians get them are so dire that you find yourself taking just about every one you can. One solution might be to remove a small number at random prior to each game, but a better idea may be to give each of the barbarians an automatic bonus for colonization. Two possibilities are a constant +1 or maybe a bonus equal to their strength addition (i.e., one less than the Age). Letting the barbarians wind up with more of the colonies might also make keeping ahead of them in strength more of a challenge.

I'm still enjoying this and feel with a few tweaks it can be a really outstanding solo game. I'm interested in hearing of other people's experience with this and any suggestions that they might have.

In the absence of other people's experience let me tell you about my third game. BOY that was a different kettle of fish.

First of all I couldn't get a relevant Tactic card. By relevant I mean all I had was cards with horses on them and anything with horses in the card row was disappearing as fast as, well, horses. So in order to beat off the rampaging Barbarians all I had was a squad of Swordsmen (and my Strategy advance.)

Meanwhile, like in your first game Larry, the mining technologies were disappearing before I could grab them.

Through all of this I was reluctant to seed Territories at first, but then I realized that if the Barbarian takes a Territory he has to sacrifice some strength. I used this as an alternate strategy to keep the Barbarians down some. They still were able to prosecute a successful Aggression on me for the first time, however, destroying my Lab.

Just when things were entering Age III and looking bleak, Winston Churchill made his appearance in the card row and turned things around. I paid three actions for his services; I was in no mood to fool around. (Republic comes in handy sometimes.) I played him, and played the Armor card I would have not been able to afford without his discount. I also grabbed a Wave of Nationalism, since the odds were the Blue Barbarian was going to declare War next turn.

I built my new gleaming Bronze Tank (steam powered, presumably,) putting me just behind the Barbarians after their advance. Blue did declare War, as he had one saved and did not draw an Aggression. With the nine rock from the Wave of Nationalism and Churchill's ability I was able to build two more tanks and play a Tactics card, now easily outpacing the Barbarians.

The closing events took me to 187.

So maybe the rules don't need tweaking as much as the game ending totals. Maybe a sliding scale based on how many points you have:

180 Marginal Victory
200 Clear Victory
240 Smashing Victory
280 Overwhelming Victory

Or something like that.

After a few plays to get the hang of it, it seems pretty easy to score well into the 200s.

It seems too easy to get most of the colonies. I think giving the barbarians a bonus to take colonies would be good.

Perhaps a cap on the barbarian losses in a War/Aggression. Maybe max 5 strength loss? In some games I was able to get a lucky strength lead and then smack down all three barbarians enough to not have to worry about them again.

Maybe another possibility would be to alter the card grabbing mechanism slightly. Two ideas off the top of the head. Either
- if the die rolls result in no military cards being taken (anything related to strength), also remove the lowest cost military card from the row.
- or every time a military card is taken, increase all barbarian strengths by 1.

Just to let you all know, it is possible to have a really disastrous score if everything goes against you. I just finished such a game. This time, all the Farm advances were snapped up by the barbarians, as well as many of the more valuable leaders and wonders--their die rolling was uncanny. Without food, it was a real struggle staying ahead militarily and there was never time for Culture. Trying to worm out this tight spot, I took some gambles and not all of them were the wisest course. There were also astonishingly few colonies making an appearance. In addition, I could only draw one Age III event, so very few points were being scored with those cards.

The final indignity came at the very end, in which one barbarian drew aggression/war cards on his last three turns, adding 12 points to his Strength in those turns. Because of that, I had to add another military unit and wasn't able to finish the last segment of the Wonder I had saved for the end. It was a fitting ending to a very frustrating game. My final point count--an anemic 96!

In a way, it's good to see that the 200 point Culture goal isn't guaranteed. I mean, given the events of that game, I should have lost. But seeing valuable card after valuable card continually fall on the "9" or "13" space got me to thinking. David has set up the card row mechanics so that you'll be drawing at least 5 new cards each turn. At least two of those will always be discarded. Those are cards you never had a shot at, even for three actions. That seems like too many to me; not because the game is too hard, but because it makes an "unfair" result like the one I just had more likely. So I have an alternate method I'm going to try out next game.

I also like Rob's idea of capping the maximum Strength loss the barbarians can suffer in an aggression or war. Otherwise, it's too easy to abuse the system. However, it makes no game sense for a barbarian to lose, say, 5 Strength points from an aggression if his Strength is more than 5 points behind you. Why would he sacrifice points and still lose the aggression? So some modifications will have to be made. (For a war, it makes sense to lose points in that situation, since it will lessen the severity of the result.)

I'll outline my changes for these mechanics, along with the other ways I intend to play, in my next post (it'll be easier to refer to them if they're all together).