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[Kuildeous]

Unfortunately, BGO doesn't offer advanced game, but it does offer the no wars & aggressions variant, which can be good for learning the game (and it's still fun and challenging)

Theoretically one could jot down the culture at end of Age II, then keep passing and add the bonuses of the next n+2 impacts that come up.

Practically one may just keep on playing.

Aren't the Impact cards revealed ahead of time so that you can plan for them?

I only played the Advanced game once, and the people involved admittedly were not as savvy with the rules as I thought (they were surprised when I advanced my Culture after playing an event card). But the one time I played, we had the Impact cards sitting out.

Although, this could be accomplished by having someone randomly pick cards and post them in the Chat. Then stop the game at the end of Age II.

But, really, a Full game isn't much harder to play. What makes the Full game really challenging is that attacks can have greater impact, which is, of course, nullified in a no-aggression game.

[Tables]

Yeah, the Advanced game has four impacts visible at the start of the game. I find it actually really changes the game - you need to plan for them and work towards them, unless you have a good strategy to score well outside of them.

[Kuildeous]

I'd like to nominate f.DS 31 as the filthiest world ever. Not just because I lost horribly, even though any world not ruled by me as benevolent dictator is indeed a sad place to live, but because in modern society, we still get rats in age IV. Gross!

And I lost all my beer!

[Thisisnotasmile]

Age 4 Rats was pretty awesome, especially as I was player 1 and it came straight after I played my last turn in the game and no longer needed that food.

[Kirian]

35 is up now.  Because apparently I can't get enough.

[Galzria]

I've been in 0 games for a few days now. It's been... Weird.

[ipofanes]

Late-game attacks trumped early culture again in f.ds33.

Wait ... is this a rematch button I am seeing up there?
 

[Twistedarcher]

I have a rule question.

We played our first full game tonight. However, how does one lose colonies? Once you have one in play, is there ways you can lose them? The rulebook states that they can be lost through events or aggression. Are there specific aggression cards that say "take a colony" or something such as that?

[Tables]

Yes, exactly: Annex aggression takes another player's colony (you gain and they lose the permanent bonus, the one time bonus is ignored). And Independence declaration makes the weakest player lose a colony (along with it's permanent bonus)

[Twistedarcher]

Thanks for the answer tables!

We paused until tomorrow just after reaching age II. We're playing with the advanced rules but with no war and it just feels like we're all playing sooooo inefficiently. Really need to watch someone who's good at this game to try to pick up more on the tempo / what we should be doing better. We're all having a blast though!

[Tables]

No war, or no wars or aggressions? Aggressions are the brown cards that resolve immediately, and give a fixed reward/penalty if you winner is stronger. Wars are the black cards that last a turn and have an effect that scales depending on the strength difference.

The normal advanced game has no wars, but has aggressions.

As for efficiency, that's definitely a normal thing in the first few games . You get the hang of things after a few games, as you begin to learn, some technologies are more backbone that you really want early, while others are more flair you can get once you have your infrastructure up.

[Twistedarcher]

No wars. We are playing with aggression a but we've only had one successful one so far. It's interesting to see how the small differences in building up our civilizations have led to each of us to take very different paths on what were doing.

Out of curiosity, what's a good goal for culture by the end of the game?

[Thisisnotasmile]

Out of curiosity, what's a good goal for culture by the end of the game?

100, 150, 235, or 368 depending on the order the cards came out, how aggressive the game has been, what events get seeded and pretty much everything else that could happen differently from game to game. This is one of the reasons I love this game so much.

[Tables]

It's impossible to say, basically, because a LOT of culture depends on endgame events, how many turns the game lasts, and how aggressive people are. A lot like Dominion in that way. 40 is a great score with no alt. VPs, but if it's a Goons megaturn board, it looks pretty poor compared to your neighbours 150.

In the advanced game, I'd tailor your civilisation to your impact events, but also grab some from Libraries and/or Theaters (as well as any small trickles from things like Wonders, Temples etc). Occasionally you can pull of something crazy like Michelangelo+St. Peter's Basilica, but usually you're looking primarily at endgame events. And depending on what ones are there, anything from 40-100 is plausible.

In the Full game, things get even more insane. Because of Wars, you can have people producing very little culture, who just suddenly steal 30 from you in the last few turns. Or you might have four people scoring 15 per turn with a wad of Theaters and the like. And each Impact event is about 10-20 culture each on average, so if you get a game with lots of people drawing the right ones for themselves, and compare to an almost identical one where people draw lots of the wrong ones for themselves, the score can be different by an order of magnitude of over 100.

For reference, looking over my recently finished BGO games, I've won a 3 player game with 95 culture, and come 3rd of 4 with 197. Usually my score's in the 170-230 range though.

[Joseph2302]

Rules Question: On end of game impacts, do they include bonuses of Age III leaders or not? Or do all leaders get discarded before doing end of game impacts?

i.e. Bill Gates gives extra resources, so are these resources counted in Impact of Industry?
i.e. Sid Meier increases culture, but decreases science, so would these changes be reflected if Impact of Science came up?

[Tables]

Your leader stays in play. Why wouldn't they?

[Joseph2302]

Your leader stays in play. Why wouldn't they?

Because the last turn, is technically Age IV, hence at the end of the game, Age IV ends and so I was thinking leaders from Age III die. Also, this is good to know, gets me some extra culture in a game I'm playing.

[Tables]

Age IV doesn't end though. Or everyone would lose 2 yellow tokens, all pacts would end, etc. and that doesn't happen.

[Kirian]

Indeed, Age IV is still going on even outside the game!  At least, I suspect Bill Gates and Sid Meier think so.  Maybe not Gandhi.

[Thisisnotasmile]

In a few generations' time age IV will end and an age V expansion will need to be released for TTA.

[Kirian]

I think that expansion will be released about the time space travel becomes common.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Space Travel is a new urban tech and there is an errata to remove First Space Flight as it is no longer wonderous.

[Twistedarcher]

Just finished our first game! I won with 180, while my roommates had 121 and 63.

Overall, it was pretty competitive -- I won because of my steady culture point trickle -- I was getting 4/turn as soon as Age I. One other person went heavy into science, and was getting new technologies basically every turn. However, he didn't start building up culture points until it was too late.

The player in third place got pretty unlucky, and didn't have a chance to build up his infrastructure -- he never saw an iron card, and the two coal cards were both near the very end of Age II. He just fell too far behind, and couldn't build the military to avoid pretty frequent aggressions against him.

It was really fun, and definitely inefficient, even playing without the rule to lose two population per age. Happiness would have been a serious problem for all of us if we kept losing workers.

Looking forward to playing again, and I'll probably want to join games with other F.DS people after my finals are over

[Kirian]

It was really fun, and definitely inefficient, even playing without the rule to lose two population per age. Happiness would have been a serious problem for all of us if we kept losing workers.

Remember that you don't lose workers; you lose cubes from your yellow bank.  Otherwise, the game would become rapidly almost unplayable.

[Tables]

Just finished our first game! I won with 180, while my roommates had 121 and 63.

Overall, it was pretty competitive -- I won because of my steady culture point trickle -- I was getting 4/turn as soon as Age I. One other person went heavy into science, and was getting new technologies basically every turn. However, he didn't start building up culture points until it was too late.

The player in third place got pretty unlucky, and didn't have a chance to build up his infrastructure -- he never saw an iron card, and the two coal cards were both near the very end of Age II. He just fell too far behind, and couldn't build the military to avoid pretty frequent aggressions against him.

It was really fun, and definitely inefficient, even playing without the rule to lose two population per age. Happiness would have been a serious problem for all of us if we kept losing workers.

Looking forward to playing again, and I'll probably want to join games with other F.DS people after my finals are over

180 is a seriously good score for an advanced game! Did you play 3 ages instead of 2 by any chance? If not... I'm scared, I don't think I could ever get anywhere near that in two ages.
Or you might have made some other errors along the way, but eh, not that significant. You learn the mistakes while playing online.

As for the third person... Iron and Coal aren't that good. Missing Iron isn't good, but you can easily work around it - build an extra bronze mine or two, grab useful yellow cards, research Architecture or Masonry, get a leader who helps etc. If you're doing the proper Advance game (age II end), then I'd be fine with missing Iron. In a full game, seeing Coal that late would definitely be a big blow, but not terrible. Especially if, judging from your wording, I'd say you took Iron for 3 CAs each? That's a huge tempo loss for you two he didn't have.
Still, for a beginner I can definitely see the issue. Experienced players can easily work around not having Iron, and can even be in situations where Iron would be actually detrimental to them (I've had one 4 player game where nobody researched Iron). Less experienced players though, it's definitely good to have.