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Author Topic: Cities! :O  (Read 36731 times)

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AJD

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #25 on: August 28, 2013, 10:37:57 pm »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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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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Ref

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Re: Cities! :O
« Reply #45 on: September 03, 2013, 01:26:54 pm »
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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 »
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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.

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 »
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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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Jerk of All trades

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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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