Tim Collett
United States
Lenexa
Kansas
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We played this for the first time yesterday. After scanning through the rules questions, I didn't see an answer to this so I thought I would ask.
Can a player create more than one main department within an area like Communications?
We played it that players couldn't but thinking about it, that doesn't seem right because a player can move a main department so what would stop them from moving a main department to another department that already contained a main department?
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Jim Cote
United States
Maine
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You can have as many as you like, wherevee you like. This is my only issue with the system: divisions get clogged up with main departments, and there's no reason to every play there again.
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Dave Eisen
United States
Silicon Valley
California
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The clogging really shouldn't happen until late. Creating a main department is expensive --- you need to discard two workers --- and making too many early leaves you without much else you can do effectively.
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John Brier
United States
Aventura
Florida
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I find that people tend to get excited about making main departments for no good reason. It actually reduces the total amount of influence you exert. Unless I am going for the main department victory condition, I most likely won't create one. It has some marginal and very situational benefits, but in my view not enough to justify spending an action and losing influence.
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verandi wrote: I find that people tend to get excited about making main departments for no good reason. It actually reduces the total amount of influence you exert. Unless I am going for the main department victory condition, I most likely won't create one. It has some marginal and very situational benefits, but in my view not enough to justify spending an action and losing influence.
Really, it seemed to me like having main departments would be helpful in a number of victory tracks. Since main departments can't be closed, it looked like they could generate permanent board positions that you could use while resigning. Therefore, if someone has a control over a division via main departments, they can resign to put someone on the board or create a consultant, and then keep control of the division at the next board meeting. So they can do it again next round, possibly after some rearrangement.
Besides their own VP track, main departments look like they could be very useful for the consultant and influence tracks as well. Then you'd only need one more to win.
Sure, you have fewer employees on the board, but at the same time you don't need keep extra employees in the main departments to keep them from being closed - once it's there, you can transfer all the other employees away to other departments or fire them for influence. If other people use development or offer low bribes, any department with 1 employee is very vulnerable anyway. Firing 2 people to create one double strength main area actually seems roughly equivalent to needing 2 employees locked up to defend one ordinary department. At that point, creating a main department is an action for more permanent position AND progression on a fairly quick VP track.
Main departments do seem to have reduced synergy with Controlling, however. Normally, the payout from 2 regular versus 1 main is the same. However, with Controlling adding a flat bonus to each, 2 departments pay out more than 1 main.
Of course, I haven't played very much, so maybe it doesn't end up working out like that in practice.
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Martin G
United Kingdom
London
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I think the counter to that is that you don't really want to spend actions resigning when you can get the same effect for free by just having your department heads replaced by someone else at the board meeting. Actions are very limited in Power Struggle and you really have to squeeze out everything you can get. And it's not a game that rewards permanent control - often you want to lose control of departments, and to have your powers bribed away from you. This is part of why I like it so much.
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