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Author Topic: Cities! :O  (Read 36453 times)

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AngelKurisu

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Cities! :O
« on: August 27, 2013, 01:19:58 pm »
+5

Doug has implemented the next expansion, Innovation: No Place Like Home on Isotropic, for beta testing. 

I am in the midst of moving my apartment, so I will and have been scarce in August, but I'll try and pop on there for some games at times :)

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Kirian

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2013, 04:26:48 pm »
+10

"Istanbul3 was Constantinople3. Now it's Istanbul3, not Constantinople3. Why'd I change it? I can say. Because it fits on the card that way."

DougZ wins at life.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2013, 05:18:09 pm »
0

The real beauty of this is that Constantinople is famous for having had multiple different names throughout the course of history, so swapping its name between the RL and online version is a flavorful echo of the name changes it had from regime changes.
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dougz

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2013, 05:23:52 pm »
+5

Just for the record (in case it's not clear), the card is really "Constantinople", but that doesn't fit.  I generally avoid making arbitrary changes to the games I implement but this way seemed way more amusing than some awkward abbreviation (I'm looking at you, "Rio de J.".)

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Darthcaboose

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2013, 05:51:08 pm »
0

Just for the record (in case it's not clear), the card is really "Constantinople", but that doesn't fit.  I generally avoid making arbitrary changes to the games I implement but this way seemed way more amusing than some awkward abbreviation (I'm looking at you, "Rio de J.".)



Nifty!

Thanks for implementing Cities Dougz! Now my brain will burn for an eternity when I make sure I have exactly two top cards of... wait...
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ConMan

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2013, 07:37:35 pm »
+1

The real beauty of this is that Constantinople is famous for having had multiple different names throughout the course of history, so swapping its name between the RL and online version is a flavorful echo of the name changes it had from regime changes.
And also, there's a song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", which I believe dougz was specifically referencing.
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2013, 08:33:49 pm »
0

i'm not sure i understand how attack cards work....

either that or the condition are absurdly hard to achieve

also i've seen people take a city action and ending up tucking a card... is that normal?

why not change the "city" button into something like "attack!!!" ?
« Last Edit: August 27, 2013, 08:38:44 pm by teasel »
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dougz

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2013, 08:43:57 pm »
+1

City actions and Attack actions are different things.

The City action is, basically: at the start of your turn, if you have a city on top and a card of that city's age or less in your hand, you can tuck the card and then you get a free dogma action of any top card whose featured icon matches one of the icons on the city.  It's free because it doesn't count as one of your two actions for the turn.  The dogma part is actually optional; if you want you can only do the tuck.  (The tuck is required; if you don't have an eligible card to tuck then you can't do a City action.)

Attack actions are using the Pillage/Raze/Invade/Conquer/Annex cards you get for melding a city with a meld action.  If you have one of those cards and you meet its conditions for attacking a particular city (each one has different requirements), you can use it.  (The attack card will appear as a button if it is currently possible to use it on some city.)  This is not a free action; it counts as one of your two for the turn.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2013, 08:47:25 pm by dougz »
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2013, 08:46:49 pm »
0

ooooooohhhh i see,i skipped the part about the city action and assumed that was how you did attack since the attack button never popped out

now i feel like a dunce

EDIT: is there a reason why i can't take a city action even if i have an equal or lower value of that city age in my hand?
« Last Edit: August 27, 2013, 08:54:49 pm by teasel »
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dougz

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2013, 08:58:29 pm »
+1

EDIT: is there a reason why i can't take a city action even if i have an equal or lower value of that city age in my hand?

It has to be the first thing you do on your turn.  If you've already taken an action it's not an option any more.  That and having a card of the appropriate age are the only requirements I think.
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2013, 09:15:13 pm »
0

ah that has to be it then...

let me see if i understand the attacks

Red - get triple the icon of one of the kind of icon on the card,score that card and card of the same value in opponent hand
Purple - if i have double the top of card of that value,that's it,if you have a card of value 1 i need two cards of value 1 and if you have two cards of value 1 i need four cards of value 1... and if you have three cards that have the samue value this attack is impossible to use if you do score that card and card of the same value in opponent board
Green - if that color is splayed and i have 4 more card than you,achieve that card
Yellow - if all your cities have a total of 3 times bigger than opponent city (that's it,you have a 9 city and your opponent has a 3,or you have a 4 and 2 and your opponent has a 2) steal that card and card from your opponent hand
Blue - you need to have at least as many as that icons city and one of them you need them double,so if you want to steal a crown/castle city and your opponent has 2 castle and 3 crown you'd need 4 castle and 3 crown or 2 castle and 6 crown,if you do you steal the city and the highest card in your opponent hand like if you just used archery

isn't the purple attack pretty much impossible to use? and the green attack seems way to better than the others
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ConMan

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2013, 01:45:03 am »
0

ah that has to be it then...

let me see if i understand the attacks

Red - get triple the icon of one of the kind of icon on the card,score that card and card of the same value in opponent hand
Purple - if i have double the top of card of that value,that's it,if you have a card of value 1 i need two cards of value 1 and if you have two cards of value 1 i need four cards of value 1... and if you have three cards that have the samue value this attack is impossible to use if you do score that card and card of the same value in opponent board
Green - if that color is splayed and i have 4 more card than you,achieve that card
Yellow - if all your cities have a total of 3 times bigger than opponent city (that's it,you have a 9 city and your opponent has a 3,or you have a 4 and 2 and your opponent has a 2) steal that card and card from your opponent hand
Blue - you need to have at least as many as that icons city and one of them you need them double,so if you want to steal a crown/castle city and your opponent has 2 castle and 3 crown you'd need 4 castle and 3 crown or 2 castle and 6 crown,if you do you steal the city and the highest card in your opponent hand like if you just used archery

isn't the purple attack pretty much impossible to use? and the green attack seems way to better than the others
The purple attack should be doable more often than you think, and it encourages some tricky decision making about melding over certain values of card - if you've got an Age 1 city and Age 1 base card as two of your top cards, and I have a board of 3 Age 1 cards, a City (which may or may not be one of the Age 1s) and Pillage, then if you meld a 2 over the base card then I can score your City. Alternatively, you could use a blue card like Physics aggressively to force your opponent to cover up some of their cards, thus allowing you to use it - same goes for most of the attacks, really.

I must admit, looking at the v0.85 rules I have, some of the attacks seem to have been tweaked, or at least clarified. I also note the change to the ruling on Attacks - originally you could hold as many as you wanted, so I assume the "keep only one rule" was because they needed serious nerfing.

Edit: Also, I haven't looked to see if the attacks have changed between 0.85 and 0.95, but I do remember there being some confusion over the wording when I tried playing with them (not even counting a typo on the red one).
« Last Edit: August 28, 2013, 01:47:56 am by ConMan »
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Ref

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2013, 01:53:40 am »
0

If you are in a situation where you could draw a Figure or a City, and the figures of that age are exhausted, do you get a City or a Base card?
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #13 on: August 28, 2013, 02:03:37 am »
0

Base, I think.
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #14 on: August 28, 2013, 03:09:26 am »
0

The drawing rule is surely confusing!

And frankly speaking after a game I haven't found much appeal. There is no yee-ha moments for newbie players since the cities have no dogma and they are too similar to one another. Why do we need 10 city cards for every age? And I have to constantly track how many what age cards I have on the board just to draw correctly. The attacking conditions are fairly hard to keep track of too.

I think a worthwhile question to ask is that "suppose you have not yet played enough innovation, will you find the expansion more fun than base itself?" For the two previous expansions I would say yes. The added mechanics are fun. (Well, except echoes is somewhat broken with the current drawing rule...) This new expansion does not give me the justification of the more complicated rules.

 
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #15 on: August 28, 2013, 09:36:37 am »
0

what i like

+ 6 icons card
+ reward icon dominance
+ getting a free action is awesome

what i don't like

- the cities having no dogma kinda makes them flavorless and lot of the cities feel the same even if they do have some subtle difference's
- not having any new instant victory condition (especialy not any new age 10 card)
- playing with all the expansion feels super complicated,i feel like a headless chicken running most of the time
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AJD

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #16 on: August 28, 2013, 10:34:33 am »
0

By contrast, I find it refreshing to have a new expansion in which I don't have to try to read and learn and understand a whole bunch of new dogma/echo/inspire effects. Not that I dislike the card effects from Echoes and Figures, you understand, but there sure are a lot of them and it's refreshing to have a break from so many new card effects.
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Kirian

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #17 on: August 28, 2013, 10:41:06 am »
0

Like timchen, I can't say I'm thrilled about this one.  The thing that strikes me most is the forced drawing mechanic.  One is forced to draw Echoes cards instead of Base cards under certain conditions, but one usually doesn't mind drawing Echoes cards; they're generally enough more powerful than Base cards that being able to draw them is restricted anyway.  Similarly, Figures are powerful enough that getting to draw one often requires a sacrifice--either falling behind, or letting an opponent share your dogma.

But drawing of Cities is entirely based on board state, and it's possible to get trapped in a loop where it becomes difficult to impossible to draw non-City cards for a turn or two.  And it's a double-whammy: if the Cities drawn are in the same color as your already-melded cards, not only would melding them cover one of your dogmas, but melding them doesn't help you draw anything but more Cities.

Now that wouldn't be so bad if Cities had dogmas on them... but they are, as teasel points out, individually flavorless, and the lack of a dogma means that a board full of Cities feels like spinning your wheels--especially if you can't draw anything but Cities for a turn or two!
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #18 on: August 28, 2013, 11:18:25 am »
0

I dunno about you guys, but having three actions in a turn is pretty powerful.  I only did this in solitaire, but I managed to have industrialization and a factory city.  Being able to churn out three industrializations in one turn is pretty sick.  you keep drawing cities?  Just use a city action, even if you don't get to use the bonus "action" it is still a free tuck and more power on your board.  I agree about the rules about those five attack cards being confusing, but you can just not pay attention to it, because the icon actually changes when you can use it.  However, it is nice to know how they work so you can be prepared when your opponent suddenly achieves your board or steals your hand.  The conditions are pretty easy to comprehend though, and after playing a few games, I'm sure we'll get used to it. 
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #19 on: August 28, 2013, 11:23:55 am »
+1

city a scoring dogma and then use your 2 action to achieve 2 ages,that's the best part of the expansion

another nice thing is that it makes the icon figures a lot more usefull... i had an hilarious game where i melded adam smith so i could conquer the opponent city so my opponent melded margaret thatcher and killed off adam smith ;D
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2013, 02:29:12 pm »
0

playing more game i don't like this expansion... most of the time it's hard to use the free action or the attacks so in the end you just end up drawing more junk card than you should... if you play with all the expansion you have to get 9 achievements and 75% of the time the game will ends either by special victory condition or by someone teching up to 10 and ending the game by drawing eleven

changes that i think would be really needed

- add a rule to better control the city draw like the rule for drawing echoes card,the problem with the current rule is that i end up drawing a city card even when i don't want to draw a city card
- make it so that the city action can be used at any moment,one of the trouble that make city action hard to use is that it has to be your first action... sometimes the card you want to city is in your hand and sometimes you have no card in hand and therefore nothing to tuck and it just make the city sit there unused

maybe

- rework the purple attack,i've never seen it used... nerf the green attack,a free achievement is just too powerfull compared to the other which is weird because green is probably the easiest... maybe you could make the condition of each attack easier but they only affect the city instead of the opponent hand/board

lot of work

- put actual effect in those city card,yes i understand the point is to have a textless expansion but one of the thing that makes the game fun is that each card has it's own personality,A.I destroy the game by causing a robot uprising,banking buys the card from the opponent board by giving them money (score) the cities do nothing,they just sit there... maybe instead of having 5 different attack,you could have each city have it's own attack action,or each city action is different,for example sparta attack might count your castle's to return an opponent city since spartan have a fame as warmongers... washington might be higher on the list and be an age 9 card and have the effect of nuking the whole board if your opponent has more achievement than you since that's where the white house reside and we all know about the red button jokes

amsterdam is famous for their cheese so maybe when you city amsterdam on top of the free city dogma,you get another free dogma out of your yellow pile,or your score the top card of your yellow pile,or you transfer the yellow card from an opponent board to yours and so on... if it steal a card then i have a reason to use the city action even if i don't have any dogma that share an icon with the city

less work

- instead of having 5 attack per color,make 50 attacks and have an attack for each age and as age progress the attack gets better and more easier to use,this way you don't see stuff like "i meld singapore and then raze berlin" which is really silly,higher age attack might be stuff like "send tanks" or "cause stock crash" and of course they could be more thematicaly fit (stock crash eat all opponent crown cards for example) this way it still remains textless but still become more flavorfull


« Last Edit: August 28, 2013, 05:51:53 pm by teasel »
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Jerk of All trades

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #21 on: August 28, 2013, 05:55:54 pm »
0

I'm loving cities, it adds a LOT of options and strategies.  The new options to tech-up and splay are amazing.  Too often I've been stuck, unspayed, at level 2, or level 6 with all of the good tech-up cards gone, and my opponent at level 5.  and I just keep drawing and drawing.  now I can meld 2, 2s (get a free city).  And draw cities until I get a + or even better a ++.

Play ++ (draw 2 next level cards)
Meld 2 next level cards (get a free city)
....
Profit!
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2013, 06:33:24 pm »
0

That sounds slow. And one thing I like innovation is precisely that sometimes u will stuck at certain age. It's  all about doing the right things at the right time, not about endless techups.

Oh and one thing i also dislike is that those splay and tech effects only kick in when you meld them. Isn‘t this a bit excessive when the card already has no dogma? Draw and meld becomes quite undesirable as your dogma option becomes less.

Maybe the idea is to have an icon arm race? Not sure how it really pkays like...
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2013, 09:51:38 pm »
0

Cities decreases choices, it literally removes choices by covering up cards with dogmas with cards with no dogmas.  Choices are what make games fun.
I think the city action is really bad for the game.  There's not enough downside, you almost always want to do it.  You just randomly might have bad icon sync, and will get disallowed from doing it that way.  It introduces variance without introducing a meaningful choice. 
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Kirian

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #24 on: August 28, 2013, 10:37:02 pm »
0

Cities decreases choices, it literally removes choices by covering up cards with dogmas with cards with no dogmas.  Choices are what make games fun.

This is a much more succinct statement of what I was getting at.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #25 on: August 28, 2013, 10:37:57 pm »
0

Cities decreases choices, it literally removes choices by covering up cards with dogmas with cards with no dogmas.  Choices are what make games fun.
I think the city action is really bad for the game.  There's not enough downside, you almost always want to do it.  You just randomly might have bad icon sync, and will get disallowed from doing it that way.  It introduces variance without introducing a meaningful choice.

I think the "choice" here is, do you want to meld a city (and thus gain access to the city action), at the cost of losing a dogma?
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Kirian

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #26 on: August 28, 2013, 11:10:51 pm »
0

Cities decreases choices, it literally removes choices by covering up cards with dogmas with cards with no dogmas.  Choices are what make games fun.
I think the city action is really bad for the game.  There's not enough downside, you almost always want to do it.  You just randomly might have bad icon sync, and will get disallowed from doing it that way.  It introduces variance without introducing a meaningful choice.

I think the "choice" here is, do you want to meld a city (and thus gain access to the city action), at the cost of losing a dogma?

Except that sometimes that choice is taken away by forced melding or the like.  If you're forced to meld the city (opponent's shared Domestication, for instance), then you might be screwed.  Often meaning you have to hold off on melding that second starting card, which means--of course--fewer choices.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #27 on: August 28, 2013, 11:49:46 pm »
0

Cities decreases choices, it literally removes choices by covering up cards with dogmas with cards with no dogmas.  Choices are what make games fun.
I think the city action is really bad for the game.  There's not enough downside, you almost always want to do it.  You just randomly might have bad icon sync, and will get disallowed from doing it that way.  It introduces variance without introducing a meaningful choice.

I think the "choice" here is, do you want to meld a city (and thus gain access to the city action), at the cost of losing a dogma?
The "choice" in figures is, do you want to meld the figure (and thus gain access to the karma and inspire), at the cost of losing a dogma (and usually some icons). 
If you indeed meld the figure, you get an inspire action that you may or may not want to use once a turn, and you have 4 dogma effects to choose from for the other action of the turn. 

The difference is that if you do indeed meld a city, the subsequent game state is more simplified.  Whether you want to use the city action is too overwhelmingly yes, and you have fewer dogmas to choose from for the other two actions of the turn.

Another nice thing about figures is that you can only have one top figure at a time, so the once-per-turn limit associated with the expansion's inspire action doesn't reduce available options all that much.  (At the worst, you'll only have 4 dogmas/inspires to choose from for your second action).
With cities, there's no limit on how many top cities you might have, and cities in excess of one are as superfluous as extra inspire options, if not more so.  From just shared sailing or a player's natural motivation to get control of a particular icon, you can very easily have 3 top cities and only 2 dogmas to choose from, for both (or all three, if you are fortunate enough to have icon sync with either of those dogmas) actions of your turn.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2013, 11:54:12 pm by popsofctown »
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #28 on: August 29, 2013, 11:27:14 am »
0

I'm glad this expansion finally arrived, because my "emperor of all the icons" strategy once again reigns supreme.  I had my doubts when I was playing through figures, which is why my level dropped so dramatically.  But now, Emperor Palpatine can return.  Mwahahaha!
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #29 on: August 29, 2013, 12:50:14 pm »
0

yeah cities seems to be all about taking the icon dominance,it's not uncommon to end up with 15 icons of every kind or half the cities game ending up by empiricism
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #30 on: August 29, 2013, 02:36:58 pm »
0

So what happens when you play cities with figures?
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AngelKurisu

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #31 on: August 29, 2013, 02:47:12 pm »
+1

Thanks for all this feedback -- am reading it and compiling what everyone thinks. 
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #32 on: August 29, 2013, 03:16:18 pm »
+1

The 10's with two bonuses all seem really weak, for the record.  You can only achieve Wealth one time, and I thought the goal was for you to be able to play with Cities by itself.  As a player with Base and No Place I would be really disappointed to open the box and see that one of the 10's has the equivalent of an eleven bonus, three icons, and two black hexes.
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AngelKurisu

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #33 on: August 30, 2013, 10:55:24 pm »
+1

Carl and I chatted this morning, and we're substantially altering the way things work with Cities.  We'll hopefully have it implemented on  Isotropic too :)
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BitTorrent

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #34 on: August 31, 2013, 12:41:46 pm »
0

From my personal feelings from the closed alpha test to the beta:

Base + Cities 2p => like a chess game, tactically a game but too much of calculations, not much room for you to be creative or innovative about plays;

Base + Echoes + Cities 2p => Advanced version of the chess game, you won't feel this as a newbie or rookie but with the veterans we have in our community (marco2012, me, etc), brain cells are dying for 'how to prevent my cities being take away' stuff;

Base + Echoes + Figures + Cities 2p => This one is more on the chaotic side, a lot room for innovative plays but the problem is: standard achievements REALLY diminished a lot in this one. Say I can intentionally give up achievement 1-6 without any stress or pressure in my mind:

http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201308/31/game-20130831-044122-adc7cbd3.html

As the value of standard achievement really diminish in the 9 achievement run, board strength becomes a necessity. Unlike the Base + Echoes + Figures which you can win without a huge board, I would say in Cities play huge board got absolute (over 80%) advantage on the control of the game. Think of the fact that you have 2+1 actions, solo dogma effects which develop your board every round (say any cities with factory + Industrialization becomes an absolute nightmare). Such kind of power plays for a couple of turns can destroy any comeback chance of your opponent, since you have 2+1 actions you can easily rob every hand from your opponent after you achieve a standard to halt your opponent from doing achievement/decree rush completely. It is just no way for you to get around this since 9 achievements are just so far away.

There got to be some sort of more complex structure within it or I am going to start my game with 'meld my 1, got my first city' 90% of the time. Real, simple and neat.
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #35 on: September 03, 2013, 08:18:20 am »
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i only played a single game under the new rules but the new rules seems so much better,now that you can't draw city with a normal drawing action anymore there isn't a risk of drawing a city card when you don't want and since playing cities now draw you card you never find yourself out of gas to use the city action nor you are forced to use the action on something you don't want to use because it has to be the first thing you do... it also makes some card better like flight and metric system which now draw you 2 cards for free

i'm somewhat sad to see the attack gone but in hindsight they were kind of a "win more" mechanic and this way we solved all the balancing problem

what about putting cities with bonus as the top center icon and when you meld them you score a card of the value equal to that bonus? those bonus age 10 city now looks way more inviting as a 20 point jump no and it would give a logic sense to their double bonus icon as one of them is splayable and the other is not





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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #36 on: September 03, 2013, 10:22:07 am »
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Is there a link somewhere to the updated rules?
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dougz

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #37 on: September 03, 2013, 10:55:30 am »
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http://asmadigames.com/innovation/CitiesBetaRulesheet.pdf (the PDF there has been updated to version beta 0.97.)
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #38 on: September 03, 2013, 11:37:29 am »
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Is there a link somewhere to the updated rules?

the tl;dr version

- you now draw cities when you meld a new color with a basic meld action or when you splay a pile
- attacks are gone
- when you play a city you draw card equal to that city age and keep all the card that matches the top center icon of that city
- city action can be now taken at any moment
- taking a city action work as before but it now triggers a dogma twice instead of just giving you a free third action,the first dogma activation is shared but the second is not
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #39 on: September 03, 2013, 11:53:15 am »
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ok the splay thing is ridiculous.  I played a game against eric where he started with flute.  he can just keep using flute forever to draw cities.  Even splaying already splayed colors!  How is that even balanced.  He just endorses flute / upper purple card to draw cities forever (2 a turn).  Then he draws reformation, which allows him to KEEP drawing cities and tucking all of them, so now I am way behind in symbols.  in fact, he can keep splaying yellow left / right to draw 2 cities a turn !!!  if he endorses reformation with flute's echo, he can draw 4 cities a turn and tuck all of them.  If he just uses reformation with his normal action he can draw 6 cities a turn!!!  Someone tell me how the balance isn't just totally out of wack.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2013, 12:41:51 pm by ksasaki »
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Ref

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #40 on: September 03, 2013, 12:40:45 pm »
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Hmm... OCD kicking in. I don't like it that the attacks were gone and weren't replaced by anything, making it break the nice 15 + 9*10 + 5 cards scheme.

I thought at first that there wouldn't be enough high level city drawn, but the splay the unsplayable rule will help with that.
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #41 on: September 03, 2013, 12:43:29 pm »
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yeah I don't like that the attacks are gone either.  There needs to be some danger for cities being on the board.  With this flute example I just outlined, Eric also got masonry, allowing him to easily splay all those beautiful cities he got from flute.  Meanwhile I can't do anything because I'm way behind in power, and unable to draw any cities because I didn't draw a splay card. 
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #42 on: September 03, 2013, 12:57:10 pm »
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ok the splay thing is ridiculous.  I played a game against eric where he started with flute.  he can just keep using flute forever to draw cities.  Even splaying already splayed colors!  How is that even balanced.  He just endorses flute / upper purple card to draw cities forever (2 a turn).  Then he draws reformation, which allows him to KEEP drawing cities and tucking all of them, so now I am way behind in symbols.  in fact, he can keep splaying yellow left / right to draw 2 cities a turn !!!  if he endorses reformation with flute's echo, he can draw 4 cities a turn and tuck all of them.  Someone tell me how the balance isn't just totally out of wack.

well it's not much different than mass spamming industrialization isn't it?
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #43 on: September 03, 2013, 01:04:01 pm »
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no it's not teasel, but at least that isn't until age 6.  This is in age 1, the first turn for christ's sake.  After he drew all those cities, is there any way I could ever catch up on symbols.  With industrialization, at least there are some counters, you can do some trolly road building, maybe enterprise or some shared sailing or whatnot.  With flute, once he has splayed purple left, EVEN if i cover flute the echo can still haunt me in my sleep forever.  And ever.  He just places down a crown city, and endorses flute, then for his third action, why not just use flute again!  3 city cards a turn.  Of course naturally he gets masonry as well so now he can plop down all that city power.  Again, flute has been splayed left, so it is a recurring effect.  I would argue in this version that whoever gets flute wins the game.  Straight up.  Even if it is shared you can still get a free action from endorsing.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2013, 01:06:18 pm by ksasaki »
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #44 on: September 03, 2013, 01:10:59 pm »
0

maybe we could change the rule so that you draw when you meld a card of an age that isn't in your board? or make it like echo and you can only have 1 city card in hand... i still think city should be handed out as bonus for doing something rather than drew like normal cards
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #45 on: September 03, 2013, 01:26:54 pm »
0

Also, rules question: Don't the rules imply that the action on the bottom-center icon doesn't activate? This would mean changes to the higher level cities.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #46 on: September 03, 2013, 02:56:08 pm »
0

no it's not teasel, but at least that isn't until age 6.  This is in age 1, the first turn for christ's sake.  After he drew all those cities, is there any way I could ever catch up on symbols.  With industrialization, at least there are some counters, you can do some trolly road building, maybe enterprise or some shared sailing or whatnot.  With flute, once he has splayed purple left, EVEN if i cover flute the echo can still haunt me in my sleep forever.  And ever.  He just places down a crown city, and endorses flute, then for his third action, why not just use flute again!  3 city cards a turn.  Of course naturally he gets masonry as well so now he can plop down all that city power.  Again, flute has been splayed left, so it is a recurring effect.  I would argue in this version that whoever gets flute wins the game.  Straight up.  Even if it is shared you can still get a free action from endorsing.

Were you playing with Figures?  Figures has a twofold way of balancing out the city issues: decrees make it less awesome to have huge hands, and having icon dominance can be a bad thing, especially early on.

There's 2^3 = 8 playable formats now, and it could prove too difficult to make all 8 of them super balanced.

I've only played a couple games so far, so my opinion and experiences might change, but so far my all-expansions games have been fun
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #47 on: September 03, 2013, 03:36:00 pm »
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yeah i think we can at least agree that the situation has improved from the previous ruleset
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #48 on: September 03, 2013, 03:45:26 pm »
0

ksasaki may not necessarily agree with that, and he's entitled to his opinion.  he's played a lot of innovation
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #49 on: September 03, 2013, 05:52:15 pm »
+1

I personally liked most of the old rules.  The attacks didnt work. Annex was too good, and many of the others were just terrible.  For example, if you had triple the icons of a city, well, that city wasn't very useful in the first place. Who cares if it destroyed, thanks for the free draw action!
The cit draw rules also were annoying, after you played the second card of an age, you had to play a city, or you just keep drawing cities.

I have not played with the new rules yet, but the flute example doesn't look quite right.  Plus splaying is already pretty strong in 8 or 9 achievement games, why make it even stronger, giving a free draw?  At the very least change it so you have to splay in a new direction, so you could still spam a combo of like, flute and a splay right. But no abusing flute or one of the other splayer dogmas.

I don't think the "new color" rule for drawing cities is good either. It gets you some early cities, but soon is useless, so the only way to draw cities after a while is by splaying, or re-splaying a color?

Here's a few other city drawing mechanics I thought of:
1) once per turn, remove a top card from the game, draw and meld a city of the same value
2) IMO, The old meld 2nd card of a value, draw a city worked. But to get more cities you could change it to: Any time a card is melded (even via dogma or inspire) if exactly 2 stacks have a top card of that value, draw a city of that value.
3) If you take a meld action to meld a card with a value different than all of your other top cards, draw a city of that value. (this would actually hurt many of the draw-and-meld tech up cards that are already quite powerful.)
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #50 on: September 03, 2013, 06:11:49 pm »
0

Also, shouldn't the players get a city from their initial meld? Consistent with one of the cards being Echoes when those are in play.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #51 on: September 03, 2013, 07:31:10 pm »
0

Also, shouldn't the players get a city from their initial meld? Consistent with one of the cards being Echoes when those are in play.

I thought that too, but I think it says, when you take a meld action.  The initial meld is not an action.
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #52 on: September 03, 2013, 08:23:45 pm »
0

my opponent just shared paper and i drew a city card by splaying my non-existant green pile... that's probably a bug
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AJD

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #53 on: September 03, 2013, 08:49:50 pm »
0

my opponent just shared paper and i drew a city card by splaying my non-existant green pile... that's probably a bug

Nope, that's the rule. Draw a city for splaying, even if the splayed pile is already splayed in that direction, or has zero or one cards in it.

...Hafta say I'm not crazy about the rule.
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AJD

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #54 on: September 03, 2013, 08:51:33 pm »
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...Hafta say I'm not crazy about the rule.

...The entire "splay to draw a city", rule, I mean.
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #55 on: September 04, 2013, 01:16:52 am »
0

I think I agree on most changes in the update. The draw condition is improved, and the attacks are simply removed. I think the decision here is good. I haven't had specific things to say about the new draw rule as I haven't played much.

However, one potential problem I see is that I don't see me buying this expansion. Ok, if I can play it online for free I guess its' pretty reasonable and fun, but if I have to pay for it I don't want to pay a full expansion, just for a bunch of extra icons and the ability to dogma a card twice. In this regard the original attack cards sort of helps, but needs some substantial redesign.

But maybe that is just me fundamentally likes too much the "each card is unique" aspect of innovation. It just does not do me enough with only different icons on each city...
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brokoli

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #56 on: September 04, 2013, 04:05:49 pm »
0

What I dislike the most in Innovation is the way to deal with expansions...
Every expansion has apart stacks, in which you draw card on specific conditions, and every expansion add achievements or cards you gain on a certain condition. I think this is great for a first expansion, but it's too onerous for a second or third...
I like the new mechanics (echoes, bonuses, karma), but I don't want to have 10 stacks for each age with special and complicated draw rules.

I would have preferred either something simpler (like new cards you mix with the echoes stack) or something completely new (why not a secret achievement that each player has at the beginning of the game... ?).

So in cities, I like the new mechanics and I like the fact it boost the race for majorities, but otherwise I'm not really convinced, sorry...
« Last Edit: September 04, 2013, 04:07:15 pm by brokoli »
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #57 on: September 04, 2013, 04:58:23 pm »
0

It's complexity creep.  I think it might be a major way of marketting and pleasing collector-sampler style board game enthusiasts, which runs counter to the demographic of this forum a bit.

I don't think there's any moral high ground to say complexity creep is an inherently inferior way of expanding compared to the way Dominion or League of Legends or Magic the Gathering expands, which is why I didn't include it in any of my criticism.  I definitely prefer the way those games expand though.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2013, 05:00:00 pm by popsofctown »
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Darthcaboose

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #58 on: September 04, 2013, 11:32:13 pm »
0

My thoughts thus far:

1. Removing the attack cards was a good decision, albeit one that sort of hurts the symmetry of all the Innovation expansions (as there'll be 5 fewer cards in this set). Ah well...

2. The simplification of the draw rules for Cities is extremely interesting and fits a nice niche that hasn't yet been exploited (melding new colors, and splaying). My only problem is the 'meld action for a new color' will only happen a few times while the splay one will happen multiple times. With the old draw rules, it seemed like both rules would come up consistently. Not saying this is a bad thing, but this asymmetric draw rule will be interesting to look at in the future (it certainly makes Clothing a little less powerful since you aren't drawing Cities when you run it).

---

I really like the 'meld a new color' rule, and the splay rule. Perhaps we can add on to the 'meld a new color' rule to also include when you Meld a card for an Age that's not already on your top board (e.g. all your cards are Age 1, you take a Meld action to put down an Age 3 card... this means you'll only have one Age 3 card on top, so you get an Age 3 city).

---

3. Endorse is a very interesting change. It shares the same tucking action as before, but the ability to dogma something twice in a row will be very, very interesting to see play out. Not sure if the added complexity of not sharing the second time is necessary, but it keeps explaining Cities to new players a lot simpler.

4. Just as before, having lots of Cities on top does very little to things you can do during your turn. With these changes, you won't be drawing as many cities as before (unless you have a way of splaying things, or have good dogmas that also splay).

5. The change to drawing base cards when you meld a city is cool. It certainly adds a lot more strategy to how you want to deal with the Cities you draw (most likely, with the benefits of drawing X cards = age, you'll want to Meld that city).

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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #59 on: September 05, 2013, 08:42:57 am »
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rules have been updated so that only actual splaying draw you city card... this should improve balance right?

oh and there are new achievement for when you have icon dominance... i was wondering why there wasn't one for clock but then i realized world was a thing :D

i'm not sure i like having an achievement for dominating castle's... if you are playing with all the expansions and get masonry it ends with a player getting monument,supremacy and authority all at once... how about changing that you need at least 10 and 10 more than an opponent instead of double? doing double is really easy because unless your opponent has at least 6 of an icon,the double always mean 10 but if it was done as i said,if i had only 4 castle it would force the opponent to get 14 castle... that's already way harder

alternatively what if you made them stealable achievement like the decree?

« Last Edit: September 05, 2013, 09:43:03 am by teasel »
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Mecherath

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #60 on: September 05, 2013, 09:50:24 am »
0

Drawing a city every time you add a new color gives some nice incentive to board destroying cards such as Coal.

I also like that only splays that do something get cities. Would be nice to have a small little engine with one card that splays up and one card that splays right. If you can endorse those with your Cities, they'll keep rolling in. The Arrow icon on cities will usually get you a free city too, which is nice.

Do we know what defines Icon Dominance though? It's 12 clocks for the World achievement. Do you need 12 for each (12 castles seems difficult), or something like: At least 4, and double all other opponents?

I'm also a bit confused by the special city action when the top center is a standard icon. So Age 2 Base from a Age 2 city, 3 Base 3 from an Age 3 city, etc? By age 10 it's looking at the whole pile and if there are any Clock cities, that will end things fast.

Would be neat to draw 1 Base, Echo, and Figure, substituting Base for any expansions you aren't playing with. That way you get some cool cards rather than a bunch of Base, and possibly Teching up your opponents.

Just some random thoughts. :)
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #61 on: September 05, 2013, 10:51:57 am »
0

I'm glad that splaying already splayed colors has been amended, flute was really really broken.  However, I still think there needs to be another way to pick up city cards, I didn't think the meld the second top card of the same value was a bad idea.  However, I do think the "after two top cards, keep drawing cities" can be abused badly (industrialization, the wheel anyone?).  I think the endorse versus the old bonus action was a good idea.  Flute with reformation does seem to me like it is still pretty crazy, keep splaying yellow left and right indefinitely...

I liked how Figures addressed the "runaway leader" problem, but I"m not convinced the new expansion addresses that.  Rather, it seems to make it even easier to be the runaway leader.

As a quick note about the "runaway leader," someone needs to address almanac.  Endorsed almanac is just crazy, you can end the game in age 3 without so much as a blink of the eye...I feel like each expansion has made the "strong to ridiculous" cards even stronger and more ridiculous.  There need to be more ways of board control (war was a good one, but it's usually not a good idea to fall too far behind in symbols in the new expansion).  I remember one of the original "conquer" cards allowed you to remove all other top cards of the same value.  candycorn also felt watermill was kind of ridiculous, but I feel that at least the other player can catch up with a well-timed archery or construction.  There is no way to assault forecasts; thus the crazy power of almanac, now amplified because of endorsements.




« Last Edit: September 05, 2013, 11:28:26 am by ksasaki »
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chomskyrim

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #62 on: September 05, 2013, 02:18:16 pm »
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I think they really need to make the special achievements about something other than board size, if they're going to include them at all. Here's what I would suggest:

Cosmopolitianism - claim this achievement if you have 5 visible cities, each with at least one of each icon type.

Centralization - claim this achievement if you have four visible cities with in one color, each sharing an icon type.

Tradition - Claim this achievement if all five bottom cards on your board are cities.

Constitution - claim this achievement immediately if you have five top cards on your board and melding a city would splay your last unsplayed color.

Trade Centre - claim this achievement if you have six visible bonuses on city cards. 
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brokoli

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #63 on: September 05, 2013, 02:31:04 pm »
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Personally, I think the new achievements are really great because :
- Simple (easy to remember, unlike the achievements in echoes and decrees in Figures)
- Focus on the icon dominance, which is after all the essence of innovation, and which is IMO a little miss in figures.
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chomskyrim

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #64 on: September 05, 2013, 02:45:50 pm »
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Well, my main concern is that they make the already good massive-board-generation cards too good. Industrialization is already good in base, great echoes. So with cities and echoes together, it's one card in age six which can get you Wealth, Heritage, History, Monument, Empire, Supremacy, World, and 4 of 5 new achievements, after only a few actions. Reformation + Fermenting + x is also made better.

I think it makes the game more like competitive tucking, as opposed something more chess-like.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #65 on: September 05, 2013, 05:08:27 pm »
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The update is the opposite of what seemed right to me.  I think splaying should only draw you a card when you splay something that is already splayed in that direction.  That way you are exchanging part of the effect of the card for draw power instead of randomly handing out power to various innovation cards.
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #66 on: September 06, 2013, 02:43:34 am »
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I don't like rewarding icon dominance even more. All my city games thus far are already who-build their-boards-more competition.
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #67 on: September 06, 2013, 11:10:52 am »
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I agree.  Though it is my preferred style, I feel like having multiple paths to victory makes the game more interesting, and doesn't make it a "first to fermenting / paper to reformation" race, or "first to industrialization" race.  This expansion just marginalizes achieving, and rewards power building, or power almanacing.  Seriously, power almanacing is terrifying...
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #68 on: September 06, 2013, 05:06:52 pm »
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I agree. This game should be about adapting to what you draw, not about hoping you draw the key card first.

I would like the new achievements to have some variety, too. People complains about samey cities, but samey achievements are great?
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #69 on: September 06, 2013, 06:16:19 pm »
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I think having the old conquer cards was a good idea, but maybe simpler conditions to activate them.
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JimKam

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #70 on: September 07, 2013, 11:41:09 am »
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Tested the five new achievement and here is my thoughts after a few games
1. They are broken, as they are permanent
2. The game concludes much earlier then before, as the achievements are permanent
3. Some combination can quickly achieve them (Masonry + Wheel) (This points credits to ksasaki)

I agree with the ideas of the new achievements, but they should be returnable (the player have to keep the condition to receive the achievements, like the white flags)
 
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TrojH

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #71 on: September 07, 2013, 05:57:22 pm »
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Anecdote != data, but if you want an example of how powerful power-building can be with the new expansion, try this game on for size:

http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201309/07/game-20130907-143216-bd255e6f.html

I agree with the group here: these new special achievements need to be changed. Some reasons have already been given, but let me add one more reason to the list. (A less important reason, but still...)

The Echoes expansion includes special achievements involving the new mechanics: echoes, bonuses, and the forecast. With the Figures expansion, you need to collect Figures cards in order to claim the new Decrees. So I think the special achievements in the Cities expansion should require the use of Cities; it doesn't feel right that you can grab them simply by splaying a bunch of cards.

My proposal: instead of having each special achievement say...

Claim this special achievement immediately if you have 10 or more X and at least twice as many as each opponent.

... have each special achievement say this.

Claim this special achievement immediately if you have three top Cities that contain a X.

Then you wouldn't be able to claim those achievements simply by having a powerhouse board; you'd still have to take the time to collect and meld the right Cities.
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blank101

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #72 on: September 07, 2013, 08:59:51 pm »
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I liked the Attack cards' flavor, though I agree there were some balance issues.  I don't like the flavor of the new icon domination achieves.  What I think would be fun to try: (1) Attack cards mostly the same as originally implemented (tweaking conditions some), (2) using the attack card claims it as an achievement and removes it to that player's achievement pile (so the achievement one would also need to be adjusted).  Perhaps there could be a mechanic to return them into play akin to the Figures one, though obviously it would have to be more complex than just melding a city color (maybe later meeting the conditions to use that attack, and then sacrificing a city of the appropriate color to reactivate it / remove it from other players achievements to your board).

I also liked that the City action was constrained to happen before other actions (made for nice hand management considerations), though the extra dogma seemed a bit overkill.  Maybe instead allow activating the special icons (+'s, arrows), but on the pile tucked into.  Or perhaps something like doubling the icons on that City for that turn.

Lastly, the draw mechanic still seems meh.  Why not the same sort of constraint as Echoes (just with secondary precedence, or precedence set at the beginning of the game by the order of the stacks)?  Alternately - allow the option to spend the extra city action to draw a city, which would make that usable every turn at least, and would definitely limit some of the complexity creep.
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timchen

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #73 on: September 07, 2013, 10:00:04 pm »
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I think one interesting thing that might work is to let the original attack work in reverse: that is, you have to have icon weakness to use it. That way it may become an effective way for the behind player to catch up.
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #74 on: September 08, 2013, 11:16:43 pm »
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http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201309/08/game-20130908-201433-d5925647.html

I've always strived to achieve using only special achievements, but this game is particularly ridiculous.  Endorsed nylon for 5 achievements in one turn....I think the new achievements need some thought...
« Last Edit: September 08, 2013, 11:47:50 pm by ksasaki »
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #75 on: September 09, 2013, 12:16:42 am »
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http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201309/08/game-20130908-201433-d5925647.html

I've always strived to achieve using only special achievements, but this game is particularly ridiculous.  Endorsed nylon for 5 achievements in one turn....I think the new achievements need some thought...


To be fair, only one of the specials from Nylon was a new achievement.  The others, though... yeah, icon dominance is already a huge lead.
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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #76 on: September 09, 2013, 05:56:46 am »
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http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201309/08/game-20130908-201433-d5925647.html

I've always strived to achieve using only special achievements, but this game is particularly ridiculous.  Endorsed nylon for 5 achievements in one turn....I think the new achievements need some thought...

i've had a game where my opponent won by getting all 5 of the new achievements,supremacy,empire and 2 temporary achievement by robert. e lee... it's getting to the point where i wonder why i even bother to score and claim age achievements
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #77 on: September 09, 2013, 01:26:20 pm »
+1

So there's no question that cities distorts the game WAY more than the other two expansions.

I've been playing games with all three expansions recently, and I barely even notice the presence of echoes and figures cards.

There's just no time for them. I need to spam cities! Splays! Endorsements! Faster, faster!

Achievements? Sure, grab them if they're available. But if you dominate icons they'll just come rolling in anyway.

You might say that icons deserve this moment. After all they used to be a noob trap. In the base game, most of the games where I'm being icon-dominated are the games that I win, because I'm spending energy scoring and achieving while my opponent is busy making his board pretty.

So maybe this isn't a bad thing. But I REALLY think endorsements need to be toned down and redesigned. Their spamminess just gets tiresome. They encourage using the same dogma over and over instead of diversifying your tactics.

How about this: When I endorse a dogma, I use it ONCE, as a FREE action, and then cannot use it again that turn. For example, I can endorse Fermenting, which activates it ONCE, and then take two more actions, neither of which are endorsements or Fermenting-activation. (Similarily, if the first thing I do in a turn is make a basic Fermenting action, I can't then endorse Fermenting).  Conceptually, your city has taken over the production of that dogma, giving you, the emperor, freedom to turn to other matters. They'd sort of be the "planeswalker" cards of this game. In fact, it would be cool if you could have two different cities each endorsing two different dogmas, and then still having two actions left.. although they'd probably just be drawing or melding, since you've already "locked out" four of your five stacks.

So cities give you just as much efficiency but force you to use more than one dogma. You can't just have 4 cities plus Industrialization.

Or as a radically different idea, endorsement could be: "Tuck or meld a card from your hand whose featured icon matches an icon of the city. Execute the dogma of that card." Anything to stop the double-spam.

Also, I like the idea some other fellow had about changing the icon achievements to "have 10 more than your opponent" rather than "have at least 10 plus double". That'll make it a little harder to reach that threshold.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2013, 01:43:29 pm by Kahryl »
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blank101

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #78 on: September 10, 2013, 10:50:08 am »
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How about this: When I endorse a dogma, I use it ONCE, as a FREE action, and then cannot use it again that turn. For example, I can endorse Fermenting, which activates it ONCE, and then take two more actions, neither of which are endorsements or Fermenting-activation. (Similarily, if the first thing I do in a turn is make a basic Fermenting action, I can't then endorse Fermenting).  Conceptually, your city has taken over the production of that dogma, giving you, the emperor, freedom to turn to other matters. They'd sort of be the "planeswalker" cards of this game. In fact, it would be cool if you could have two different cities each endorsing two different dogmas, and then still having two actions left.. although they'd probably just be drawing or melding, since you've already "locked out" four of your five stacks.

...

Or as a radically different idea, endorsement could be: "Tuck or meld a card from your hand whose featured icon matches an icon of the city. Execute the dogma of that card." Anything to stop the double-spam.

I do kind of like the idea of "available endorsement actions == # of top cities".  It trades action flexibility for the ability to pump up icons / hand.  But that definitely needs to combine with something other than standard actions; using it tuck cards or draw more cities seems okay, but getting to dogma 5 times then take two more actions seem silly.  What if endorsement action were a choice between "draw a city of the same age" or "return a card with shared color/icons to double the icon values of this city for this turn"?
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chomskyrim

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #79 on: September 10, 2013, 11:40:04 am »
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Also, cities seems to be all about manipulating the action economy, which is one of the most potentially game breaking mechanics you can add. 1 endorse per turn is plenty. If you want to make it less good, require tucking more cards, or tucking cards with particular icons.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2013, 11:42:06 am by chomskyrim »
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #80 on: September 10, 2013, 12:34:06 pm »
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I do kind of like the idea of "available endorsement actions == # of top cities".  It trades action flexibility for the ability to pump up icons / hand.  But that definitely needs to combine with something other than standard actions; using it tuck cards or draw more cities seems okay, but getting to dogma 5 times then take two more actions seem silly.  What if endorsement action were a choice between "draw a city of the same age" or "return a card with shared color/icons to double the icon values of this city for this turn"?

You wouldn't get to have 5 endorsements plus 2 actions because under my proposed rule, whenever you endorse a dogma, you lock out both that city and the endorsed card for the rest of the turn.
At best, you'll be able to match 2 different cities with 2 different dogmas, and that will lock out all but your 5th stack - unless you drew and melded or something with the endorsed dogmas, and melded new dogmas that had not been locked out.

But yeah, having one endorse per turn would be fine, too. The main point of my suggestion is that an endorsement would give you 1 use of the dogma at the cost of 0 actions, instead of 2 uses for the cost of 1 action, and lock out the dogma so you can't end up using it 3 (or even 2) times that turn. You've turned over the production of that dogma to the city - you don't have to manage it yourself, but you also can't rush it.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2013, 12:38:58 pm by Kahryl »
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #81 on: September 11, 2013, 03:51:56 am »
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The comments have mainly been about game mechanics, which have to be sorted out for sure, and I am glad that we get the opportunity to beta-test before the printed edition is released.

My comment is about flavour. The tech cards are related to the age when the technologies have been discovered, not when they were used to their maximum effectiveness. Carl stressed that point when Echoes were introduced.

In contrast, the cities are not really related to the time when they were founded. It irritated me to see Frankfurt pop up as late as Age 8 (I think; cards lists, anywhere?) while it was a direct subordinate of the German Empire in Age 3. I would have loved to see more of Brasilia, Magnitogorsk, Milton Keynes, Mannheim or Ligang in later ages.

Edit: It was Essen, not Frankfurt (which is aptly placed in Age 4), which also was a direct subordinate in Medieval ages but much less significant. But IIRC Essen came up in Age 9 or 10 where Age 3, 7 or 8 would have been appropriate.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2013, 05:14:07 am by ipofanes »
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WalrusMcFishSr

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #82 on: September 11, 2013, 06:16:32 pm »
+1

The comments have mainly been about game mechanics, which have to be sorted out for sure, and I am glad that we get the opportunity to beta-test before the printed edition is released.

My comment is about flavour. The tech cards are related to the age when the technologies have been discovered, not when they were used to their maximum effectiveness. Carl stressed that point when Echoes were introduced.

In contrast, the cities are not really related to the time when they were founded. It irritated me to see Frankfurt pop up as late as Age 8 (I think; cards lists, anywhere?) while it was a direct subordinate of the German Empire in Age 3. I would have loved to see more of Brasilia, Magnitogorsk, Milton Keynes, Mannheim or Ligang in later ages.

It seems to me like the idea of cards appearing at the absolute earliest age is something mostly contained within Echoes. For example, in the base game why don't we see the origins of Democracy in Age 2? Isn't Sanitation (age 7) basically the same as Plumbing (age 1)? Instead these dogmas are held off until they feel more relevant. Honestly I think this was a strange design decision for Echoes--I take thematic issue with the idea of my cavemen ice skating around with umbrellas by candlelight.

I agree that the age value of some of the cities is very arbitrary. But at the same time, I think that trying to find enough prominent age 8,9,10 cities that were actually founded in the past century would probably end up seeming forced or obscure. I don't really have a problem with a city showing up when it "should"; I think that Echoes is the oddball in this regard.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #83 on: September 12, 2013, 03:40:27 am »
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Ok, point taken that assigning innovations to the time when they originated is a thing of echoes, which lends itself to the idea of foreshadowing. Age I, the age of Hammurabi and Homer, is hardly the domain of cavemen though, and ice skates are definitely a thing of the bronze age.

Once I was irked by the ahistoric depictions in the hexes (Atomic Theory sports Rutherfords model, which would be Age 8 in my book), but icons of prehistoric ice skates and perfume would hardly be recognisable. The Puppet is neat though :-).



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antony

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #84 on: September 18, 2013, 10:18:02 pm »
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After playing a lot of Cities, I kind of agree with Kathryl proposition (endorsing as a free action, but locks out the corresponding stack for the rest of the turn, and only if the action hasn't been used before).  This would encourage more diversity and also prevent ridiculous spamming (not even talking about industrialization... but an early code of laws(->tuck+[tuck, splay, draw]x2) or metalworking (->monument anyone?)) can be quite deadly too).
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #85 on: September 18, 2013, 11:27:18 pm »
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Draw when you splay is worse than the old city draw rule, as bad as that rule was
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #86 on: September 19, 2013, 03:02:24 am »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect. Other than that I don't think it's too bad. You can theoretically build sick engines like Kaleidoscope/Flute echo (as splaying to and fro nets two cities) but I haven't seen this pulled off and the idea of Innovation is "every card is overpowered".
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antony

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #87 on: September 19, 2013, 04:26:44 am »
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Oh, you can certainly build nifty boards allowing you to endorse invention while splaying back with philosophy, allowing you to grab quite a few points as well as a ton of cities, but I agree that this goes with the idea that "every card is overpowered".  Moreover, I feel it's a less "artificial" rule than the 2-top-card rule (which just seems to come out of nowhere).
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #88 on: September 19, 2013, 12:11:03 pm »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect. Other than that I don't think it's too bad. You can theoretically build sick engines like Kaleidoscope/Flute echo (as splaying to and fro nets two cities) but I haven't seen this pulled off and the idea of Innovation is "every card is overpowered".

You don't want things to go even further off the deep end than they already are, though.  Flute is the best age 1 card, without cities.  With cities it is now even more absurd. 

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teasel

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #89 on: September 22, 2013, 01:22:09 pm »
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soooooooooo there hasn't been a change in a while...

i don't want to be that guy that looks in the horse mouth but finding people that will play without cities (it's either "all of the expansion" or "none of the expansion") is getting harder and i really don't like the current implementation and it's making playing the game frustating

« Last Edit: September 22, 2013, 01:37:27 pm by teasel »
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #90 on: September 22, 2013, 01:43:49 pm »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect. Other than that I don't think it's too bad. You can theoretically build sick engines like Kaleidoscope/Flute echo (as splaying to and fro nets two cities) but I haven't seen this pulled off and the idea of Innovation is "every card is overpowered".


That's an interesting point...would it be ridiculous to suggest that you draw a city whenever your opponent splays a pile? Or maybe everyone draws one? Without Echoes that might discourage splaying too much, but I do like the implementation of the Figures cards the best...it makes you think strategically about tradeoffs without just snowballing to victory. You might think twice about splaying with Industrialization if you knew your opponent might draw Dublin and win.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #91 on: September 22, 2013, 09:57:49 pm »
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soooooooooo there hasn't been a change in a while...

i don't want to be that guy that looks in the horse mouth but finding people that will play without cities (it's either "all of the expansion" or "none of the expansion") is getting harder and i really don't like the current implementation and it's making playing the game frustating

Uh.. that's bad luck.  Whenever I'm on I have no trouble finding people for E, F, or E+F, and quite often see other people who refuse to play cities around.

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #92 on: September 23, 2013, 05:09:24 am »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect.


That's an interesting point...would it be ridiculous to suggest that you draw a city whenever your opponent splays a pile?

I fear it would not scale in multiplayer matches.
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #93 on: September 23, 2013, 09:29:50 am »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect.


That's an interesting point...would it be ridiculous to suggest that you draw a city whenever your opponent splays a pile?

I fear it would not scale in multiplayer matches.
"Player to your right", then. 
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #94 on: September 23, 2013, 04:58:31 pm »
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Draw when you splay is a Matthew 25:29 effect, unlike the sharing bonus/draw figure when opponent achieves effect.


That's an interesting point...would it be ridiculous to suggest that you draw a city whenever your opponent splays a pile?

I fear it would not scale in multiplayer matches.


No different from drawing Figures in multiplayer.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #95 on: September 24, 2013, 03:25:06 am »
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There is a difference in that the number of splaying events is roughly proportional with the number of players, whereas the number of standard achievements does not.

You are right in that the number of cards drawn per event increases in a linear fashion, but the number of triggering events behaves differently.
 
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #96 on: September 24, 2013, 09:25:26 am »
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"Draw when you splay" makes splaying too good
"Draw when someone else splays" makes splaying too bad
"Draw when anyone splays" would create too many cities
"Draw when the guy to your left splays" would still make splaying too bad (depending on what other xpacs you're playing)

IMO keep the rule like it is unless someone has a better idea. Cities might be too strong, but at least they're FUN.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #97 on: September 24, 2013, 11:04:55 am »
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"Draw when you splay" makes splaying too good
[...]
IMO keep the rule like it is unless someone has a better idea.
Does it mean you are fine with "splaying too good"?
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #98 on: September 24, 2013, 11:09:08 am »
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If you really wanted some negative feedback action it could be "player(s) with the fewest achievements draw a city", or something like that. That might be heavy-handed though.
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TrojH

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #99 on: September 24, 2013, 11:46:05 am »
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Here's the ruleset I'd like to try right now:

1. Keep the current rules for drawing Cities (when splaying, or when starting a new color pile)

2. Get rid of the new Special Achievements.

3. Go back to the old rules regarding City actions and Attack actions.

Under the old ruleset, I thought that Cities were way too weak. Perhaps that's just because I hadn't yet figured out the best use for them. Now that I've gotten some experience with them, I'd like to go back to the old ruleset; perhaps Cities won't feel so weak anymore.

The old rules for drawing Cities were definitely too fiddly; the new rules are way better. But maybe that's the only change that was needed.
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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #100 on: September 24, 2013, 12:43:23 pm »
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2. Get rid of the new Special Achievements.

Would you keep the 8 - #players + #expansions rule for number of achievements?
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #101 on: September 24, 2013, 12:59:35 pm »
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"Draw when you splay" makes splaying too good
[...]
IMO keep the rule like it is unless someone has a better idea.
Does it mean you are fine with "splaying too good"?

No but I think it's the least bad option.

Hmm. I wonder if perhaps a slightly rarer city event would be better. Like "draw a city when you tech up" (i.e. meld a card whose value is higher than any top card on your board).

..except, again, this is basically telling the player "tech up whenever you can!"

I think the real problem here is that cities is the first expansion that ADDS draw events instead of replaces them. You drew an echoes or figures card when you would normally draw a base. But you draw cities when you normally would not draw any card.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2013, 01:06:10 pm by Kahryl »
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Jerk of All trades

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #102 on: September 24, 2013, 01:48:31 pm »
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One City drawing solution is to make it optional. At all times if you were to draw a card into hand, you may draw a city of the same value instead.

A lot of the other city drawing rules have resulted in games with both players having massive hands, making bicycle and some of the hand stealing/attacking cards far too powerful.
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TrojH

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #103 on: September 24, 2013, 02:01:57 pm »
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2. Get rid of the new Special Achievements.

Would you keep the 8 - #players + #expansions rule for number of achievements?

Yep. Remember, there are Cities that give an extra achievement simply by being in your tableau. I think that's good enough; no need for Special Achievements as well.

I think the real problem here is that cities is the first expansion that ADDS draw events instead of replaces them. You drew an echoes or figures card when you would normally draw a base. But you draw cities when you normally would not draw any card.

Not quite; the Figures expansion added new draw events, also. With the Figures expansion, you draw a Figures card whenever another player claims a normal achievement. That's a new draw event.
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ipofanes

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #104 on: September 25, 2013, 02:42:47 am »
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"Draw when you splay" makes splaying too good
[...]
IMO keep the rule like it is unless someone has a better idea.
Does it mean you are fine with "splaying too good"?

Hmm. I wonder if perhaps a slightly rarer city event would be better. Like "draw a city when you tech up" (i.e. meld a card whose value is higher than any top card on your board).

If it is a common meld action instead of a card effect, similar to the other city drawing rule, I think you'd be on to something. Otherwise, Mathematics would be sick in that it provides its own fodder, like shard Mathematics does.

Another possibility is "draw when you would splay in a new direction, instead of splaying." Like some "if" karma effects. Note: This would make Philosophy an early Machine Tools.


 
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popsofctown

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #105 on: September 25, 2013, 11:03:26 am »
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Brainstorming some draw rule suggestions.

"Whenever you score a card, you may return a card from your hand and draw a city of that value."
"Whenever you draw a card while you have exactly 3 cards in hand, you draw a city" (really nice for letting an Agriculture or Oars opener catch up with a Sailing opener.  Wheel would seem to benefit a lot, but it's actually not so much, wheel-meld-meld-wheel-meld-meld won't churn out cities as fast as draw-meld-draw-meld"

"Whenever you take a draw action that is not a share bonus, you name a color.  If you draw a card of that color, you may return it and draw a city instead."
Alternatively, put it on top and draw a city instead.
"Play with the top city of the [1] stack revealed.  Any dogma effect that features an icon that appears on that city will draw cities instead of echoes or base, drawing from the second card of the pile (right beneath the revealed one).  After the end of any dogma that features an icon appearing on that city, return the top card of the revealed city stack.
Whenever a player achieves an age [alternate rule: melds up to a certain age] [alternate rule: everyone has melded at least to age X], stop revealing the [1] stack or current stack, return the top card of that stack, and use that new age's city stack for this rule"
When I write it out it's complicated but I hope it's a native villagey thing.  If you do a dogma and it uses either icon on the top city, the dogma's effects draw random cities instead or random bases or random echoes.  Then it cycles and a new city is on top so some new icon might become important.  If the top card is a leaf and all you've got to work with is medicine then you can still use the dogma just to cycle the stack to something you might be able to match.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2013, 11:05:11 am by popsofctown »
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #106 on: September 25, 2013, 03:41:53 pm »
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This draw when splaying IS too good.  I brainstormed this earlier, but my opponent pulled this stunt on me twice today with reformation / flute tucked (splay yellow left, splay yellow right draw two cards, keep building power like a madman).  Flute is just a devastating card, constantly trolling your opponent's bonus cards while splaying up your board / drawing up more fodder for another endorsement.  Even if your opponent is level with you on crowns the endorsed share is not bad, you get a free effect and a bonus figure.  If you had bad runaway leaders in echoes, I'd say the problem got even worse in this cities expansion.  At least FiTs tried to address balance (which I thought was a good thing); nowadays, it is just a little out of control.
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ipofanes

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #107 on: September 26, 2013, 03:58:04 am »
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This draw when splaying IS too good.  I brainstormed this earlier, but my opponent pulled this stunt on me twice today with reformation / flute tucked (splay yellow left, splay yellow right draw two cards, keep building power like a madman). 
What's worse is you still managed to win the first match. Yes, I felt a bit dirty after those two matches. Would have rather liked to play them against Carl.
Quote
Flute is just a devastating card, constantly trolling your opponent's bonus cards while splaying up your board / drawing up more fodder for another endorsement.
Yes, but two thirds of this are irrelevant in the situation described above, as its echo effect only splays. And Flute only splays left, not up as you say, so without the City drawing rule this Echo effect quickly wears off. By the time Flute is covered the Echo effect is not even needed in many situations.

I think we can agree that the draw City when you splay rule should go.
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #108 on: September 26, 2013, 11:59:42 am »
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"Whenever you score a card, you may return a card from your hand and draw a city of that value."
"Whenever you draw a card while you have exactly 3 cards in hand, you draw a city" (really nice for letting an Agriculture or Oars opener catch up with a Sailing opener.  Wheel would seem to benefit a lot, but it's actually not so much, wheel-meld-meld-wheel-meld-meld won't churn out cities as fast as draw-meld-draw-meld"

I like both of these a lot. Especially the scoring one; scoring just seems almost pointless in the cities xpac.

Plus one often struggles to find a reason to score if they are very behind in score.

AND this gives a reason to keep cards in your hand. One thing that thematically bugs me about Innovation is that your hand is not treated as a consistent reserve tank for surprise moves, but more like half-swallowed food to be gotten rid of as fast as possible.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2013, 12:03:21 pm by Kahryl »
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Ref

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #109 on: September 26, 2013, 02:49:28 pm »
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I agree. Those are good rules. But currently what bothers me much is the achievements.

The old attack cards were cool, they just needed a bit balancing.
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Kahryl

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #110 on: September 28, 2013, 02:57:10 am »
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As much as I dislike the new achievements, they pass the most important test: you can't get them by spamming Industrialization :P
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ksasaki

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #111 on: October 01, 2013, 02:09:16 pm »
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I think the achievements should be attack cards to fit into the general theme.

Think about it:
echoes (blue) - light bulbs became that much more important
figures (green) - lots of culture / trade (scoring became more important again)
no place (red) - war, destruction, attack, burn
?? (purple) - purple feels like civics / religion, later more science
?? (yellow) - yellow feels like farming / agricultural later medicine
« Last Edit: October 01, 2013, 02:13:43 pm by ksasaki »
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ipofanes

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #112 on: October 02, 2013, 03:23:11 am »
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We had:

base: achievements that honour different aspects (splaying, icon depth, teching up, fast scoring/tucking) that you want to go for anyway.

echoes: more achievements that can be collected incidentally with a phat board (I hold this against the expanison, as much as I like it otherwise).

figures: achievements that require a non-trivial investment (returning your whole hand can be huge) but give a one-time boon.

How about: achievements that require little investment (such as return a top [1]; should probably be a bit more expensive) but handicap you for the rest of the game (such as a minus one Archimedes karma effect). 

The investment should require a bit more effort towards the end of the game (that's the reason for the top [1]) so the handicap lasts longer than the split second between you claiming the achievement and the "You win!" banner showing.
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NoMoreFun

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #113 on: October 03, 2013, 12:18:04 am »
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Some mechanic ideas that could add flavour in lieu of echo/inspire effects:

* Effects that trigger if the icon is visible and you meld a card on that pile and/or you meld a card on top of it. Makes sense thematically as some cities keep on growing and influencing the world as they grow.
* Effects that trigger as soon as you reveal the icon (ie the initial meld, and when it first comes out of hiding when you splay a pile). Could be called "displays" or "festivals".
* Effects that trigger when that card is scored, or when a card from the pile/of that colour/some other link is scored. "Rubble" effects? "Ruins" effects?
* There could be an icon (top middle) that signals that the city in play is achievable (standard or special) and when you achieve it, something happens. Maybe it could activate the same effects as the "when scored" effects.
* In cities games, the standard achievements could be required to be cities cards. When you get a standard achievement you could reveal what the card is, and activate some kind of effect (eg one of the above 2).
* Double icons
* Cards where the icon distribution is part of some joke (eg a "Valencia" card with 6 flag icons)
« Last Edit: October 03, 2013, 12:52:03 am by NoMoreFun »
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HB

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #114 on: November 14, 2013, 05:13:40 pm »
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http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201311/14/game-20131114-140813-4f833fd2.html

look how many cards Miami drew me turn 16. cities are awesome.
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