I have been playing a bunch more Civilization 6, and while the addiction is strong there are some fairly serious frustrations I have with the game. One of the things that the theme of the game supports is the idea that wonders of the world are really important and powerful. They are unique in that only one copy of each can be built, they often have tricky placement rules and requirements, and they all have cinematics and quotes associated with them. Finishing a wonder is obviously supposed to be a big deal.
It usually isn't. In fact much of the time finishing a wonder is mostly just a good time to mourn all of the production you poured into making it, and wonder why you didn't spend that production on something useful.
There are certain kinds of bad wonders that I have no problem with. For example, I don't think that Stonehenge is a good wonder. It is useful if you want a religion because it gives you one right away, but if you go for Stonehenge and someone else beats you to it your early game position is awful because you threw away all that production on something that isn't new cities, infrastructure, or military. It isn't good for a religious game particularly because if you are doing that you want to build holy sites and shrines and such anyway. I don't think there is a strategy in which Stonehenge is the best build.
Big Ben is another crazy wonder that doubles your current treasury. If you are in the late game and the other players let you stockpile 10,000 gold and double it then sure, Big Ben is ludicrous. So what though? If you have done that you have already won the game anyhow. In any game where you pull off a massive Big Ben you are just winning more.
Both of these wonders have unique effects, but I doubt they are ever actually relevant or a good idea in terms of optimal play. This is fine! The wonders I have a problem with are the ones with boring effects that are also bad. There are wonders that are basically comparable to generic buildings, but they suffer from the possibility of getting blown out if someone else finishes them, they occupy a space on the map, and they have restrictions on placement. Plus they take a really long time to make so they come online slower and make timing other builds more annoying.
A wonder is a risk, and comes with real costs, so it should be exciting. You can make something exciting by doing something unique, like Stonehenge or Big Ben, or you can make something exciting by making it powerful. But if you make a wonder like The Hermitage, you have a wonder that is barely better than a regular building and costs an enormous amount of production, in addition to the basic risks of placing a wonder. It is an embarassment.
I don't want wonders that are as powerful as wonders were in Civ 1 and Civ 2. Those were world shattering in many cases, easily meaning the difference between a sweeping victory or crushing defeat on their own.
One serious struggle in terms of wonder design is long vs. short term. The game really shouldn't go beyond turn 250, and a lot of late game wonders can't possibly pay for themselves in less than 50-100 turns. They literally can never be worth the production you pour into them before the game is over. Some wonders, like Big Ben or Oxford University, immediately give you their benefits so they are surely worth building. Others, like Forbidden City or Colossus have slow benefits and those are going to rarely pay off sufficiently.
All of this is mostly sad because when I look at a city build queue I should be excited by my options. I should wonder if I ought to take the risk of building Forbidden City for that huge payoff when it arrives. Instead I pretty much just ignore the wonder section because there isn't any point. I would be far better off just building normal buildings, infrastructure, or troops. The real kicker is that even if there was no risk of someone else building it out from under me I wouldn't want to build most of the wonders anyway! Risk should come with reward, and the way the game is now most of the risk comes with no reward at all.
All this makes me want to get back into modding. I spent a year tinkering with Civ 5 and I absolutely loved doing it. One of the most critical things I was doing there was making sure that each wonder, building, or troop had a place. They don't all have to be good in every game, nor even part of optimal lines of play at the highest difficulties. They just have to have some way to shine, some reason to be there. You don't have to say that Forbidden City is the thing to rush for, but you should at least be able to say that when you finish it you look at what it does and are excited that you snagged it.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Invisible walls
Recently I got involved in a dungeon crawl 5th edition DnD campaign. It is meant to be a short run, no roleplaying, grind through the insane dungeon sort of thing. I find this tricky sometimes because I like roleplaying games, and I like games where you try to win with tactics, but this particular iteration combines them in a way that is pretty absurd.
We started out being told that a incredibly powerful wizard who somehow is still alive after more than a millennium has stolen several artifacts from their place of safekeeping and left behind a note to tell everyone where his hideout is. Our job is to go into the hideout and get the weapons.
This is preposterous. Look, if the villain specifically says "I am right at the X on the map" my first assumption is that the villain is definitely not there. Pretty much anywhere else, really, but definitely not where they say they are. Why in the world would they do that? Any villain with two brain cells to rub together would just put the X in the middle of the most dangerous place on the planet and hope some fools were stupid enough to try to go there to get their stuff back.
And we are fools that are exactly that stupid.
This same scenario happened to me in a game many years ago. The villain sent us a message about his dastardly plan. For no reason other than to brag, apparently. We all agreed he must be lying to us to trick us to we assumed he was doing something else. The GM got furious at us because the villain totally got away with his plan since we didn't just go where he told us to go. Why would we believe the villain? That dude is EVIL and tricky and certainly would lie, so why would he give us the truth? The game blew up after that in part because I was so disgusted with the GM ranting at us for not doing what the villain told us to do!
Anyway, we are gigantic idiots who do exactly what villains say. This is our life.
And because this module is silly, presumably this will actually help us to some extent instead of being a pointless way to die.
We get into the dungeon and right away we discover that when we step in the wrong place a wall of force stops us. We do not have any magic capable of breaking it, nor can we teleport past it. We can, however, answer the riddle of a Sphinx to lower the wall of force.
But then we traipse on through the dungeon. Into the lair of a wizard who has demonstrated that he can cause walls of force to appear at will. Why exactly he wouldn't just have a trap right before his room that causes two walls of force to appear in the corridor, pinning us in place, and then fill the corridor with gas / fire / ice / acid / whatever is completely unclear. Our characters have faced the certainty that whatever is in here has the capability to kill us easily, and without us having the slightest chance to defeat it.
But we soldier on, because we are suicidal idiots relying on plot armour.
Now I get being brave. Sometimes you face down hard odds to do the right thing. But we are just mercenaries here, being paid to get back some weapons that are just rotting in a dungeon. Who cares if they are in the dungeon? Nothing bad is happening! We should really start to worry only when the weapons leave the dungeon and threaten people. Going into this dungeon (which, in any sensible world, wouldn't have the stuff we are looking for) to fight this enemy (which, if we consider the stuff we know it can do, can dispose of us effortlessly) isn't brave, it is just a quick way to die.
I like roleplaying brave. But to play these modules I have to roleplay a blithering idiot with no sense of self preservation... and to survive it I need to roleplay an extremely intelligent, careful, cautious person.
Good thing we insisted from the start that this was just a puzzle game, not a roleplaying game. The puzzle part has been okay so far, which is good. If you refuse to roleplay at all and just try to beat the game with the character you have, munchkining as hard as possible, then it is a fine thing to do. Just don't ever consider your motivations.
We started out being told that a incredibly powerful wizard who somehow is still alive after more than a millennium has stolen several artifacts from their place of safekeeping and left behind a note to tell everyone where his hideout is. Our job is to go into the hideout and get the weapons.
This is preposterous. Look, if the villain specifically says "I am right at the X on the map" my first assumption is that the villain is definitely not there. Pretty much anywhere else, really, but definitely not where they say they are. Why in the world would they do that? Any villain with two brain cells to rub together would just put the X in the middle of the most dangerous place on the planet and hope some fools were stupid enough to try to go there to get their stuff back.
And we are fools that are exactly that stupid.
This same scenario happened to me in a game many years ago. The villain sent us a message about his dastardly plan. For no reason other than to brag, apparently. We all agreed he must be lying to us to trick us to we assumed he was doing something else. The GM got furious at us because the villain totally got away with his plan since we didn't just go where he told us to go. Why would we believe the villain? That dude is EVIL and tricky and certainly would lie, so why would he give us the truth? The game blew up after that in part because I was so disgusted with the GM ranting at us for not doing what the villain told us to do!
Anyway, we are gigantic idiots who do exactly what villains say. This is our life.
And because this module is silly, presumably this will actually help us to some extent instead of being a pointless way to die.
We get into the dungeon and right away we discover that when we step in the wrong place a wall of force stops us. We do not have any magic capable of breaking it, nor can we teleport past it. We can, however, answer the riddle of a Sphinx to lower the wall of force.
But then we traipse on through the dungeon. Into the lair of a wizard who has demonstrated that he can cause walls of force to appear at will. Why exactly he wouldn't just have a trap right before his room that causes two walls of force to appear in the corridor, pinning us in place, and then fill the corridor with gas / fire / ice / acid / whatever is completely unclear. Our characters have faced the certainty that whatever is in here has the capability to kill us easily, and without us having the slightest chance to defeat it.
But we soldier on, because we are suicidal idiots relying on plot armour.
Now I get being brave. Sometimes you face down hard odds to do the right thing. But we are just mercenaries here, being paid to get back some weapons that are just rotting in a dungeon. Who cares if they are in the dungeon? Nothing bad is happening! We should really start to worry only when the weapons leave the dungeon and threaten people. Going into this dungeon (which, in any sensible world, wouldn't have the stuff we are looking for) to fight this enemy (which, if we consider the stuff we know it can do, can dispose of us effortlessly) isn't brave, it is just a quick way to die.
I like roleplaying brave. But to play these modules I have to roleplay a blithering idiot with no sense of self preservation... and to survive it I need to roleplay an extremely intelligent, careful, cautious person.
Good thing we insisted from the start that this was just a puzzle game, not a roleplaying game. The puzzle part has been okay so far, which is good. If you refuse to roleplay at all and just try to beat the game with the character you have, munchkining as hard as possible, then it is a fine thing to do. Just don't ever consider your motivations.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
I got beat
I played my Blood Bowl semi final match last week against Umbra's orc team and I lost 1-0. This wasn't surprising as I didn't particularly like my odds, but some things changed before the match that really swung it against me. Umbra fired his goblin and thrower so his team had absolute maximum armour and minimum ball moving. This was a good move against me, I think, as it trimmed his team value down and made him as tough as possible. He was left with just 11 orcs on the team, but I decided to keep an extra dwarf around and run with 12 players.
The way the game played out was I received and then we both took out a couple of each other's players in the first half, and I found myself with a good scoring opportunity. I screwed up though because I forgot that it was a blizzard so when I did a double go for it with my ball carrier to get in prime scoring position I slipped on the ice, fell down, and got stunned, and that was the end of the first half. I had a reroll back but it turns out it wasn't enough. The half ended 0-0 and we both fielded full teams for the second half of the game. I had other plays that were superior if the weather wasn't a blizzard and this was definitely a screw up on my part. Even still it was likely to work... but that is dice rolling for you.
In the second half Umbra got lucky and injured a bunch of my players out quickly. He made a terrible misplay by running his ball carrier right up next to my dudes for an assist (forgetting where the ball was...) and while I knocked the ball carrier down I did not get lucky in doing so and he easily recovered the ball. I kept making more and more desperate plays as I was down a lot in numbers but eventually he locked me out and scored to secure a 1-0 victory.
I say that Umbra got lucky but I don't want to imply I deserved the victory or anything. His team building against me was strong and he played well. I do think he got better luck on the injury dice in particular than I did, but since nobody in the league had inflicted an injury on me the entire season thus far I can't complain about my luck overall. I suppose I can complain that my bad injury luck all concentrated in my semi final game, but I lost to a good player in a tough matchup and that is just how Blood Bowl goes.
I have been thinking about what I might do to change the odds in my favour, in the event of a theoretical rematch. There are some ways I can trim team value off of my team and that might well have been enough to give me a real shot at victory. I recently levelled up a dwarf to get Leader which grants a bonus reroll and I think I should get rid of one of my regular rerolls. This would have dropped me by 50k team value and put me below Umbra's team which is a big advantage. Secondly I could fire my extra dwarf on the bench to free up another 70k of room. If I did this I would have 90k of inducement money to work with and I could have easily thrown another 60k of cash at it to get a wizard. That would definitely be enough to swing the game my way, at least potentially.
My real problem though was that my team didn't have enough gas in the tank in terms of raw power. Rather than a wizard I think what I would really want is 4 or 5 extra skills on my players to make up that 90k difference. If I take my current team and add 2 copies of Guard and 2.5 copies of Mighty Blow to make up that 90k I am much more likely to be able to just outbrawl Umbra. I still don't think it is a great matchup but at that point I have better ball handlers than him, vastly more Guard, Mighty Blow and Block. He has strength, certainly, but the game looks a lot more even.
So what I need to do this season is level up like crazy, getting good skills on all the players that need them, and be prepared to trim down my team as necessary. I need to make sure that every point of team value is absolutely maximized, and I do that by getting more Guard and Mighty Blow and cutting back in the two ways I can cut back.
In terms of play during the game I clearly need to pay attention to the weather. My play was a strong one under normal circumstances, but I made a mistake. Still, with 2 minute turns stuff like that is going to happen. There was one thing I did that generated some discussion though, which was to run a dwarf around to Umbra's backfield to pressure the ball carrier. Both Umbra and Ziggyny thought this was a terrible plan because dwarves need to be in a pile to use all their Guard and win the fight.
In general I agree with that. The Guard should be in the pile. However, one of the dwarves I sent to the backfield to harass Umbra's ball carrier was my runner. My runners don't have Guard or Mighty Blow so I don't get much from having them in the pile, and the runner caused a high strength orc to dash off to pin him down and I think that is actually good for me. I can't win the pile if all the orcs are there because I only have two more copies of Guard than Umbra does and I have way less strength. Using the runner to get rid of a powerful orc seemed good to me, or at least as good as anything else that runner was doing.
However, I also sent a blitzer to the backfield once, and that blitzer had both Guard and Mighty Blow. He did draw off two orcs, which is great, and honestly if I can consistently get two orcs to run off after a single dwarf I should do that every time! However, I could have probably found a stupid lineman to accomplish the same goal and not wasted the blitzer on it. I think it is a fine plan to send a dwarf to the back field to make protecting the ball hard, but I should have made sure the dwarf doing it was always someone who is has little else to offer.
I can't complain about my season. I got a third/fourth place result in a group of sixteen players, and I lost only two games in the entire season - one due to not being able to show up, and one to the eventual champion, Umbra. I learned a bit about how to handle that particular matchup, and I will be more ready next season to crunch the necks of whoever gets in my way.
Time for more Blood Bowl!
The way the game played out was I received and then we both took out a couple of each other's players in the first half, and I found myself with a good scoring opportunity. I screwed up though because I forgot that it was a blizzard so when I did a double go for it with my ball carrier to get in prime scoring position I slipped on the ice, fell down, and got stunned, and that was the end of the first half. I had a reroll back but it turns out it wasn't enough. The half ended 0-0 and we both fielded full teams for the second half of the game. I had other plays that were superior if the weather wasn't a blizzard and this was definitely a screw up on my part. Even still it was likely to work... but that is dice rolling for you.
In the second half Umbra got lucky and injured a bunch of my players out quickly. He made a terrible misplay by running his ball carrier right up next to my dudes for an assist (forgetting where the ball was...) and while I knocked the ball carrier down I did not get lucky in doing so and he easily recovered the ball. I kept making more and more desperate plays as I was down a lot in numbers but eventually he locked me out and scored to secure a 1-0 victory.
I say that Umbra got lucky but I don't want to imply I deserved the victory or anything. His team building against me was strong and he played well. I do think he got better luck on the injury dice in particular than I did, but since nobody in the league had inflicted an injury on me the entire season thus far I can't complain about my luck overall. I suppose I can complain that my bad injury luck all concentrated in my semi final game, but I lost to a good player in a tough matchup and that is just how Blood Bowl goes.
I have been thinking about what I might do to change the odds in my favour, in the event of a theoretical rematch. There are some ways I can trim team value off of my team and that might well have been enough to give me a real shot at victory. I recently levelled up a dwarf to get Leader which grants a bonus reroll and I think I should get rid of one of my regular rerolls. This would have dropped me by 50k team value and put me below Umbra's team which is a big advantage. Secondly I could fire my extra dwarf on the bench to free up another 70k of room. If I did this I would have 90k of inducement money to work with and I could have easily thrown another 60k of cash at it to get a wizard. That would definitely be enough to swing the game my way, at least potentially.
My real problem though was that my team didn't have enough gas in the tank in terms of raw power. Rather than a wizard I think what I would really want is 4 or 5 extra skills on my players to make up that 90k difference. If I take my current team and add 2 copies of Guard and 2.5 copies of Mighty Blow to make up that 90k I am much more likely to be able to just outbrawl Umbra. I still don't think it is a great matchup but at that point I have better ball handlers than him, vastly more Guard, Mighty Blow and Block. He has strength, certainly, but the game looks a lot more even.
So what I need to do this season is level up like crazy, getting good skills on all the players that need them, and be prepared to trim down my team as necessary. I need to make sure that every point of team value is absolutely maximized, and I do that by getting more Guard and Mighty Blow and cutting back in the two ways I can cut back.
In terms of play during the game I clearly need to pay attention to the weather. My play was a strong one under normal circumstances, but I made a mistake. Still, with 2 minute turns stuff like that is going to happen. There was one thing I did that generated some discussion though, which was to run a dwarf around to Umbra's backfield to pressure the ball carrier. Both Umbra and Ziggyny thought this was a terrible plan because dwarves need to be in a pile to use all their Guard and win the fight.
In general I agree with that. The Guard should be in the pile. However, one of the dwarves I sent to the backfield to harass Umbra's ball carrier was my runner. My runners don't have Guard or Mighty Blow so I don't get much from having them in the pile, and the runner caused a high strength orc to dash off to pin him down and I think that is actually good for me. I can't win the pile if all the orcs are there because I only have two more copies of Guard than Umbra does and I have way less strength. Using the runner to get rid of a powerful orc seemed good to me, or at least as good as anything else that runner was doing.
However, I also sent a blitzer to the backfield once, and that blitzer had both Guard and Mighty Blow. He did draw off two orcs, which is great, and honestly if I can consistently get two orcs to run off after a single dwarf I should do that every time! However, I could have probably found a stupid lineman to accomplish the same goal and not wasted the blitzer on it. I think it is a fine plan to send a dwarf to the back field to make protecting the ball hard, but I should have made sure the dwarf doing it was always someone who is has little else to offer.
I can't complain about my season. I got a third/fourth place result in a group of sixteen players, and I lost only two games in the entire season - one due to not being able to show up, and one to the eventual champion, Umbra. I learned a bit about how to handle that particular matchup, and I will be more ready next season to crunch the necks of whoever gets in my way.
Time for more Blood Bowl!
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
A bashdown
I am in the semi finals of my Blood Bowl league. It turns out that Ziggyny decided to just concede to me via not waking up for the game so instead of me bashing his elves to bits I just got my free win. Tomorrow I will need to face down a team of Orcs coached by Umbra and I am a lot less confident of my chances in this matchup. Orcs and Dwarves are two of the most bashy teams with both teams lacking in speed and ball handling. It will be a brutal slugfest.
I have some real advantages. I have Block on my entire team, and my opponent is missing 3 copies of it. That helps me. I also have 2 extra copies of Guard, and 2 extra copies of Mighty Blow. I rate to get more assists and do more damage. Plus I have Thick Skull on my entire team, which normally isn't a big deal, but against another powerful bash team it will keep my dudes from getting KOd, in fact it reduces 'off the field' injuries by a full 33%.
This all sounds great! I have better blocks, more assists, and superior injury and armour rolls.
But.
The Orcs have strength. They have four dudes with Str 4, and one with Str 5. This is a serious problem for me. That additional strength means that I am going to have a really hard time pushing through their lines, and when their Str 4 dudes manage to single out one of my dwarves the dwarf is getting dominated. I do way better in a massive dogpile where my superior Guard numbers help out, but I am worried that Umbra will be able to punch through my lines too easily.
My opponents so far have been way behind me in overall fighting ability, mostly through me having lots of Guard and them not having much or any. The one game I won where my opponent had more strength they didn't have any Guard to speak of. Umbra has both lots of strength and lots of Guard and this means that I can't rely on a line of dwarves to hold. Umbra is going to roll more dice than me, and I am going to have better odds on each die rolled. Overall though... I think he has the advantage.
However, I do have one ace up my sleeve, which is that my team value is lower, just enough so that I can buy a Wizard for our game with the extra cash I get to compensate. A Wizard can do a nasty 3x3 fireball once a game and since my opponent's strategy is almost certainly going to involve caging around the ball carrier I have a great tool to blast that cage wide open. The Wizard can potentially turn a half where I am just getting beat into a half where I score, or at least one where nobody scores.
And while I generally rely on the game plan of beating my opponents into bloody submission, I can't expect that against the orcs. They are almost all 9 armour, and that means it is going to be extremely difficult to actually get a man advantage on them. Umbra, of course, is facing down roughly the same dilemma. It is even harder to get a man advantage on the dwarves, because of Thick Skull, but he at least has better options for getting good blocks in.
When I look at the four top teams I see a Chaos Dwarf team, Ziggyny's Dark Elf team, my dwarves, and Umbra's Orcs. I think the Orcs are the team I am most scared of. I really like my odds against the Chaos Dwarves, and although elves normally rate to beat dwarves I think my chances of beating Ziggyny's Dark Elves are pretty good. Meeting what I consider to be my toughest matchup in the semis is not the result I wanted, but there is nothing for it but to hope that my singular fireball can swing the match to me and catapult me to the finals.
I have some real advantages. I have Block on my entire team, and my opponent is missing 3 copies of it. That helps me. I also have 2 extra copies of Guard, and 2 extra copies of Mighty Blow. I rate to get more assists and do more damage. Plus I have Thick Skull on my entire team, which normally isn't a big deal, but against another powerful bash team it will keep my dudes from getting KOd, in fact it reduces 'off the field' injuries by a full 33%.
This all sounds great! I have better blocks, more assists, and superior injury and armour rolls.
But.
The Orcs have strength. They have four dudes with Str 4, and one with Str 5. This is a serious problem for me. That additional strength means that I am going to have a really hard time pushing through their lines, and when their Str 4 dudes manage to single out one of my dwarves the dwarf is getting dominated. I do way better in a massive dogpile where my superior Guard numbers help out, but I am worried that Umbra will be able to punch through my lines too easily.
My opponents so far have been way behind me in overall fighting ability, mostly through me having lots of Guard and them not having much or any. The one game I won where my opponent had more strength they didn't have any Guard to speak of. Umbra has both lots of strength and lots of Guard and this means that I can't rely on a line of dwarves to hold. Umbra is going to roll more dice than me, and I am going to have better odds on each die rolled. Overall though... I think he has the advantage.
However, I do have one ace up my sleeve, which is that my team value is lower, just enough so that I can buy a Wizard for our game with the extra cash I get to compensate. A Wizard can do a nasty 3x3 fireball once a game and since my opponent's strategy is almost certainly going to involve caging around the ball carrier I have a great tool to blast that cage wide open. The Wizard can potentially turn a half where I am just getting beat into a half where I score, or at least one where nobody scores.
And while I generally rely on the game plan of beating my opponents into bloody submission, I can't expect that against the orcs. They are almost all 9 armour, and that means it is going to be extremely difficult to actually get a man advantage on them. Umbra, of course, is facing down roughly the same dilemma. It is even harder to get a man advantage on the dwarves, because of Thick Skull, but he at least has better options for getting good blocks in.
When I look at the four top teams I see a Chaos Dwarf team, Ziggyny's Dark Elf team, my dwarves, and Umbra's Orcs. I think the Orcs are the team I am most scared of. I really like my odds against the Chaos Dwarves, and although elves normally rate to beat dwarves I think my chances of beating Ziggyny's Dark Elves are pretty good. Meeting what I consider to be my toughest matchup in the semis is not the result I wanted, but there is nothing for it but to hope that my singular fireball can swing the match to me and catapult me to the finals.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Hang out next to the kitchen
I played Castles of Mad King Ludwig last night and was asked a tricky question at the end of it. I was in seat 4 and won the game by about 15 points or so, and the player in seat 2 asked what I thought of her arrangements of the tiles during her master builder turns. 2 had the issue that she ran low on cash in the middle of the game and felt like she just hadn't been able to make enough money.
It is tricky sometimes to figure out whether arrangements were correct when you didn't know at the time what everyone's cards were. I might look askance at a placement but if a tile has 5 bonus points on it from secret cards it really changes how you think about it, and how the placement goes. That said, I thought her placements were fine and she certainly wasn't giving up money like crazy.
So why was it that 2, who should have had more money than me because I was 4th chair, struggled with cash? Also why was it that I ended the game rich?
A big part of the answer is yellow rooms. Yellow rooms give you extra turns and you usually want to use those extra turns when you have the best selection, so most of the time you use them when you are the first player to choose tiles. Also when you use yellow rooms you end up paying a ton of money out all at once, so you really want to do that right before your own master builder turn so that going low on cash won't break you.
When I thought about this I looked at the board and lo and behold the player after me in position 1 had three completed yellow rooms and I recalled distinctly that I got paid off on the turn when he activated two of them. Not only did he buy three things, but the other players also bought stuff and I sold all but one of the tiles in front of me. That happened on turn 4 and it took me from nearly broke to rolling in cash.
Part of this was deliberate of course because I priced those yellow rooms to move. I wanted to get paid so I let people have some sweet buys to build up my bankroll. But part of it was just luck because those tiles might well have come out differently.
I think the key is that you want the player after you to buy yellow rooms. When they do that you can set it up so that they have multiple good buys and make sure that the options get scarce, which means that other players after them will often end up paying more for things than they would otherwise. Cash itself may not be that great but I noticed during the game that I had plenty of chances to pay about X money for X points and that means that if I can sell an additional tile at 8 bucks it is absolutely amazing for me and could easily raise my final score by 8, assuming I am cash limited at any point.
Getting yellow rooms into the hands of the player after you is a hard thing to take advantage of. Aside from giving away yellow rooms for really cheap on your own master builder phase it isn't exactly an easy thing to do and is highly luck dependent. I think though that it strongly emphasizes the strength of giving people good deals on your turn when they have yellow rooms out no matter which seat they are in. You don't want to give away the farm obviously but if you make sure that they are at least strongly tempted to use both turns you rate to get paid. You can't afford to let them get a deal on a tile for 1 coin but any intermediate amount is pretty solid. The trick is that they are going to spend those turns buying stuff. Once they have the yellow room that much is a given. What you can control though is whether or not those extra turns and the associated income come to you, or to somebody else.
That concept is a key thing to grasp in many games and I see a lot of players fail at it. They often see someone setting up something big and do everything they can to stop it but fail to consider whether or not that interference will actually work for the whole game. If someone sets up a big score and you know that they are going to cash in on it at some point you shouldn't desperately try to delay it; rather you should figure out how to cash in as much as possible personally when they finally do make their thing work. Making sure people with yellow rooms use them on your master builder turn to get yourself paid is a great example of this.
It is tricky sometimes to figure out whether arrangements were correct when you didn't know at the time what everyone's cards were. I might look askance at a placement but if a tile has 5 bonus points on it from secret cards it really changes how you think about it, and how the placement goes. That said, I thought her placements were fine and she certainly wasn't giving up money like crazy.
So why was it that 2, who should have had more money than me because I was 4th chair, struggled with cash? Also why was it that I ended the game rich?
A big part of the answer is yellow rooms. Yellow rooms give you extra turns and you usually want to use those extra turns when you have the best selection, so most of the time you use them when you are the first player to choose tiles. Also when you use yellow rooms you end up paying a ton of money out all at once, so you really want to do that right before your own master builder turn so that going low on cash won't break you.
When I thought about this I looked at the board and lo and behold the player after me in position 1 had three completed yellow rooms and I recalled distinctly that I got paid off on the turn when he activated two of them. Not only did he buy three things, but the other players also bought stuff and I sold all but one of the tiles in front of me. That happened on turn 4 and it took me from nearly broke to rolling in cash.
Part of this was deliberate of course because I priced those yellow rooms to move. I wanted to get paid so I let people have some sweet buys to build up my bankroll. But part of it was just luck because those tiles might well have come out differently.
I think the key is that you want the player after you to buy yellow rooms. When they do that you can set it up so that they have multiple good buys and make sure that the options get scarce, which means that other players after them will often end up paying more for things than they would otherwise. Cash itself may not be that great but I noticed during the game that I had plenty of chances to pay about X money for X points and that means that if I can sell an additional tile at 8 bucks it is absolutely amazing for me and could easily raise my final score by 8, assuming I am cash limited at any point.
Getting yellow rooms into the hands of the player after you is a hard thing to take advantage of. Aside from giving away yellow rooms for really cheap on your own master builder phase it isn't exactly an easy thing to do and is highly luck dependent. I think though that it strongly emphasizes the strength of giving people good deals on your turn when they have yellow rooms out no matter which seat they are in. You don't want to give away the farm obviously but if you make sure that they are at least strongly tempted to use both turns you rate to get paid. You can't afford to let them get a deal on a tile for 1 coin but any intermediate amount is pretty solid. The trick is that they are going to spend those turns buying stuff. Once they have the yellow room that much is a given. What you can control though is whether or not those extra turns and the associated income come to you, or to somebody else.
That concept is a key thing to grasp in many games and I see a lot of players fail at it. They often see someone setting up something big and do everything they can to stop it but fail to consider whether or not that interference will actually work for the whole game. If someone sets up a big score and you know that they are going to cash in on it at some point you shouldn't desperately try to delay it; rather you should figure out how to cash in as much as possible personally when they finally do make their thing work. Making sure people with yellow rooms use them on your master builder turn to get yourself paid is a great example of this.
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