18PA rule gaps and suggestions..
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Anttoni Huhtala
Dec 14, 2012, 2:53:51 AM12/14/12
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Hi!
We tested 18PA with a group of hardcore 18XX players and found some gaps in the rules:
1. Do all station tokens count as a bonus to a trains route? and do all companies (local and public) get this bonus?
in other 18XX games (eg. 18EU) a company only gets bonuses from their own stations, but as this was not specifically elaborated in the
rules we ruled that all stations would give the bonus. Our income really started to hit off after the bonus came into effect.
Local companies started to push into 180-230$ and public company's really started to make money.
This made local companies too good to sell and money started to just roll in "through the doors and windows" as a Finnish saying goes..
2. Do local companies count to the certificate limit? If not, then they are really really good compared to other companies.
Even if we played the station token rule wrong, a local company paid for itself within 2 stock rounds.
We never felt a need to sell local's to companies, there just was no initiative to sell it.
It just would have not boosted the economy of a company enough compared to the 50% only-for-me-income a local would give.
In the other hand, if the local companies would have counted to the certificate limit, there would have been a initiative to sell them off
to gain a share that might have more potential. One of the problems was that almost all of the stocks where sold out, so you didn't get to use the
onetime bonus of buying your own stock in between stock rounds. There is a possibility to get a huge boost to your points in the second to last OR, if you sold all of your
local companies to your main company after diluting it's stock. this would mean that you could get closer to 90% of shares compared to the maximum 40 % of the shares.
As the stock price of the company would still rise once, you would reap a nice bonus + the money that you got from diluting. (there is no SR at the end of the game thus you don't check the stock limit.)
We played with the idea that a local would actually count as two shares and thus give a nice boost to selling it as it would free two slots.
I guess then the rulebook would have to elaborate how good locals can be in the right hands..
3. Is there really a reason not to dilute the stock price? And do 5-share company shares count as 1 share (or 2 for president-share) when calculating points?
The buying price of a 20% share is according to the market value which suggests that it counts as 1 share in the end of the game.
As you can only own 40% of a 5-share company you effectively only own 2 shares compared to 5 share maximum of a 10-share company.
There just is no initiative to not dilute. This also brings up the fruitfulness of withholding earnings.
As a company can just by snapping its fingers get a huge amount of money, there is no reason ever to withhold earnings.
This means that rusting trains is not really a problem, you just go one step back because you don't have a train.
A snap of a diluting-finger and "vola!" a permanent train has arrived! The economy of the game is just too easy right now.
There is also no reason to buy someone else's 5-share company share as it's calculated income will just go down sooner or later..
4. Is NYC starting cash a bit too much? right now it starts with 770$ + 1/2 of what 1,2 and 3 have made. it even might have a train already!
NYC is very very powerful, even if you just get it for one turn. That is enough time to buy a ok train from your
other company with all the money you have and get a extra boost to the company that no-one else has.
what if NYC started with 770$ minus the amount it used on trains? that would hinder it a bit and it would only be a extremely good company vs. the best thing ever.
We probably have misunderstood some rules or played the game very differently then how the designer wanted(tm), but i feel that is what you are looking for when the game is still a prototype.
Anttoni Huhtala
We tested 18PA with a group of hardcore 18XX players and found some gaps in the rules:
1. Do all station tokens count as a bonus to a trains route? and do all companies (local and public) get this bonus?
in other 18XX games (eg. 18EU) a company only gets bonuses from their own stations, but as this was not specifically elaborated in the
rules we ruled that all stations would give the bonus. Our income really started to hit off after the bonus came into effect.
Local companies started to push into 180-230$ and public company's really started to make money.
This made local companies too good to sell and money started to just roll in "through the doors and windows" as a Finnish saying goes..
2. Do local companies count to the certificate limit? If not, then they are really really good compared to other companies.
Even if we played the station token rule wrong, a local company paid for itself within 2 stock rounds.
We never felt a need to sell local's to companies, there just was no initiative to sell it.
It just would have not boosted the economy of a company enough compared to the 50% only-for-me-income a local would give.
In the other hand, if the local companies would have counted to the certificate limit, there would have been a initiative to sell them off
to gain a share that might have more potential. One of the problems was that almost all of the stocks where sold out, so you didn't get to use the
onetime bonus of buying your own stock in between stock rounds. There is a possibility to get a huge boost to your points in the second to last OR, if you sold all of your
local companies to your main company after diluting it's stock. this would mean that you could get closer to 90% of shares compared to the maximum 40 % of the shares.
As the stock price of the company would still rise once, you would reap a nice bonus + the money that you got from diluting. (there is no SR at the end of the game thus you don't check the stock limit.)
We played with the idea that a local would actually count as two shares and thus give a nice boost to selling it as it would free two slots.
I guess then the rulebook would have to elaborate how good locals can be in the right hands..
3. Is there really a reason not to dilute the stock price? And do 5-share company shares count as 1 share (or 2 for president-share) when calculating points?
The buying price of a 20% share is according to the market value which suggests that it counts as 1 share in the end of the game.
As you can only own 40% of a 5-share company you effectively only own 2 shares compared to 5 share maximum of a 10-share company.
There just is no initiative to not dilute. This also brings up the fruitfulness of withholding earnings.
As a company can just by snapping its fingers get a huge amount of money, there is no reason ever to withhold earnings.
This means that rusting trains is not really a problem, you just go one step back because you don't have a train.
A snap of a diluting-finger and "vola!" a permanent train has arrived! The economy of the game is just too easy right now.
There is also no reason to buy someone else's 5-share company share as it's calculated income will just go down sooner or later..
4. Is NYC starting cash a bit too much? right now it starts with 770$ + 1/2 of what 1,2 and 3 have made. it even might have a train already!
NYC is very very powerful, even if you just get it for one turn. That is enough time to buy a ok train from your
other company with all the money you have and get a extra boost to the company that no-one else has.
what if NYC started with 770$ minus the amount it used on trains? that would hinder it a bit and it would only be a extremely good company vs. the best thing ever.
We probably have misunderstood some rules or played the game very differently then how the designer wanted(tm), but i feel that is what you are looking for when the game is still a prototype.
Anttoni Huhtala
David Hecht
Dec 14, 2012, 8:19:17 AM12/14/12
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Hey, Anttoni, thank you for the report! :-) Comments always welcome.
In answer to your questions:
1. All companies, including locals, get the bonus. However it is only
your own tokens that count. Importantly for locals, this means only the
base token, and for 5-share companies, at most three (for LGC: base, x2,
and $40 tokens).
Presumably this will reduce your incomes, though they will still be
pretty good.
One question (also applies to your comments in #2): since the local
companies' 2-train dies with the 4-train, locals become effectively
worthless starting with phase 4. So where is the disincentive to sell
them then?
2. Yes, each piece of paper (except the two fixed-income privates, #0
and #4) counts against the cert limit:
"Except for fixed-income private companies, players are limited to
owning certificates (not shares) in accordance with the table shown on
the map. Each pre-NYC and local company the player owns counts as a
certificate."
As previously mentioned, local company 2-trains die when phase 4 begins,
ergo the companies now provide no revenue at all. And while it is true
that their revenue per "share" or cert is quite high, they have no cap
appreciation so their contribution to your net wealth is not so
substantial. And since they continue to count against your cert limit,
it can be quite a problem to have them blocking spaces in your hand late
in the game.
You state that it is only possible to get 40% of a 5-share. I don't
understand how you come to this conclusion. The rules clearly state "A
president is normally limited to owning two certificates of a 5-share
company, or five certificates of a 10-share company." Note the use of
the word certificates, not shares: since you have to own the president's
certificate to be president (duh), one additional certificate (at 20%)
brings you to 60%.
Now you may ask why I have chosen to express the limits in certs rather
than in percentages of the company: the problem is then that it is much
harder to write the rule for the increased company cert limit bonus
since it is by 20% increments for 5-share companies and 10% increments
for 10-share companies.
As far as taking advantage of this goes, typically it works like this:
either the player saves some cash from the SR, or he earns some in the
first OR. Then he grows up his company (of which he would typically own
60%, Presidency plus one 20% share). He then buys as many shares as he
can afford with cash, hopefully getting to at least 60% and maybe more.
Now he buys in a local or two, and uses the cash from that to buy even
more shares. He then gets the full benefit of the revenue for at least
one OR, maybe both, and hopefully doesn't have to sell down in the SR.
You have also grasped the play to grow up in the final pair of SRs and
benefit from going over the cert limit.
3. The only reason not to grow the companies from 5-share to 10-share is
the same as always: 5-share companies provide twice the revenue per
share (and per cert) as 10-share companies. If you can manage to get 80
(or 100!) percent of a 5-share company by buying in locals, that, plus
the fact of running three (or four) trains on the company is incentive
enough, I would think. It's often possible to run one company as the
train shed and another for revenue: in that case the revenue company
should be kept as a 5-share as long as possible and simply buy its
trains from the other company.
As to the ease of getting cash, it is certainly there. This is not
intended to be a punitive, 1841 (or even 1830) style game: as with most
of my designs, the emphasis is on construction and train management, not
trashing other peoples' companies through adverse track and token
laying, stock trashing, or complicated maneuvers to make trains
obsolete. But I think you will find with repeated plays that going back
when your train dies is a lot worse for you than you realize.
4. The NYC has been tweaked up and down many times in the course of the
development. At the moment it seems tolerably balanced. The weakness of
the NYC is threefold: (1) the predecessor companies are not great
providers compared to many other companies, (2) because the train limit
is always two, the train manipulations of which you speak are not so
easy to pull off as you may think, and (3) the NYC turf is not so great
(also it has no x2 token).
If the NYC starts trainless, you wind up going back and losing the
potential revenue from it for an entire OR. And then you must face the
dilemma: buy lots of shares now to ensure control and majority ownership
(even if they go back), or not? And then you still have to spend $500 on
a 4-train. If you started with no train, of course, there is an
excellent chance of getting a second 4-train to either keep for the NYC
or to feed to another company. This doesn't seem so dire to me.
But usually the NYC starts with a 3-train. You then happily buy up
shares, maybe feed it a local or two, and run your 3-train for $160 or
so. Perfectly decent but nothing extraordinary. Now you use your company
cash to buy a 4-train: or, in your strategy, to buy a 3-train (the only
kind that will be in play other than at most one 4-train) across from
your other company. OK, great. But eventually you will have to buy a
permanent train for the NYC, so what have you gained? Unless someone
else was careless enough to have left themselves vulnerable to a dump.
And I can't do anything about that: "Mit der Dummheit k�mpfen G�tter
selbst vergebens" as Schiller so pithily put it.
So give it another go, and tell me what you think then.
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In answer to your questions:
1. All companies, including locals, get the bonus. However it is only
your own tokens that count. Importantly for locals, this means only the
base token, and for 5-share companies, at most three (for LGC: base, x2,
and $40 tokens).
Presumably this will reduce your incomes, though they will still be
pretty good.
One question (also applies to your comments in #2): since the local
companies' 2-train dies with the 4-train, locals become effectively
worthless starting with phase 4. So where is the disincentive to sell
them then?
2. Yes, each piece of paper (except the two fixed-income privates, #0
and #4) counts against the cert limit:
"Except for fixed-income private companies, players are limited to
owning certificates (not shares) in accordance with the table shown on
the map. Each pre-NYC and local company the player owns counts as a
certificate."
As previously mentioned, local company 2-trains die when phase 4 begins,
ergo the companies now provide no revenue at all. And while it is true
that their revenue per "share" or cert is quite high, they have no cap
appreciation so their contribution to your net wealth is not so
substantial. And since they continue to count against your cert limit,
it can be quite a problem to have them blocking spaces in your hand late
in the game.
You state that it is only possible to get 40% of a 5-share. I don't
understand how you come to this conclusion. The rules clearly state "A
president is normally limited to owning two certificates of a 5-share
company, or five certificates of a 10-share company." Note the use of
the word certificates, not shares: since you have to own the president's
certificate to be president (duh), one additional certificate (at 20%)
brings you to 60%.
Now you may ask why I have chosen to express the limits in certs rather
than in percentages of the company: the problem is then that it is much
harder to write the rule for the increased company cert limit bonus
since it is by 20% increments for 5-share companies and 10% increments
for 10-share companies.
As far as taking advantage of this goes, typically it works like this:
either the player saves some cash from the SR, or he earns some in the
first OR. Then he grows up his company (of which he would typically own
60%, Presidency plus one 20% share). He then buys as many shares as he
can afford with cash, hopefully getting to at least 60% and maybe more.
Now he buys in a local or two, and uses the cash from that to buy even
more shares. He then gets the full benefit of the revenue for at least
one OR, maybe both, and hopefully doesn't have to sell down in the SR.
You have also grasped the play to grow up in the final pair of SRs and
benefit from going over the cert limit.
3. The only reason not to grow the companies from 5-share to 10-share is
the same as always: 5-share companies provide twice the revenue per
share (and per cert) as 10-share companies. If you can manage to get 80
(or 100!) percent of a 5-share company by buying in locals, that, plus
the fact of running three (or four) trains on the company is incentive
enough, I would think. It's often possible to run one company as the
train shed and another for revenue: in that case the revenue company
should be kept as a 5-share as long as possible and simply buy its
trains from the other company.
As to the ease of getting cash, it is certainly there. This is not
intended to be a punitive, 1841 (or even 1830) style game: as with most
of my designs, the emphasis is on construction and train management, not
trashing other peoples' companies through adverse track and token
laying, stock trashing, or complicated maneuvers to make trains
obsolete. But I think you will find with repeated plays that going back
when your train dies is a lot worse for you than you realize.
4. The NYC has been tweaked up and down many times in the course of the
development. At the moment it seems tolerably balanced. The weakness of
the NYC is threefold: (1) the predecessor companies are not great
providers compared to many other companies, (2) because the train limit
is always two, the train manipulations of which you speak are not so
easy to pull off as you may think, and (3) the NYC turf is not so great
(also it has no x2 token).
If the NYC starts trainless, you wind up going back and losing the
potential revenue from it for an entire OR. And then you must face the
dilemma: buy lots of shares now to ensure control and majority ownership
(even if they go back), or not? And then you still have to spend $500 on
a 4-train. If you started with no train, of course, there is an
excellent chance of getting a second 4-train to either keep for the NYC
or to feed to another company. This doesn't seem so dire to me.
But usually the NYC starts with a 3-train. You then happily buy up
shares, maybe feed it a local or two, and run your 3-train for $160 or
so. Perfectly decent but nothing extraordinary. Now you use your company
cash to buy a 4-train: or, in your strategy, to buy a 3-train (the only
kind that will be in play other than at most one 4-train) across from
your other company. OK, great. But eventually you will have to buy a
permanent train for the NYC, so what have you gained? Unless someone
else was careless enough to have left themselves vulnerable to a dump.
And I can't do anything about that: "Mit der Dummheit k�mpfen G�tter
selbst vergebens" as Schiller so pithily put it.
So give it another go, and tell me what you think then.
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David Hecht
Dec 14, 2012, 8:41:49 AM12/14/12
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Wups! :-) The quoted price for a 4-train should of course be $400.
Anttoni Huhtala
Dec 18, 2012, 6:48:02 AM12/18/12
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Thanks for the fast responce! We were thinking that most of the errors were probably just
either ommited from the rules by mistake, or that we just could not find them.
We will try 18PA again asap and let you know how it went!
Anttoni Huhtala
David Hecht
Dec 18, 2012, 8:25:44 AM12/18/12
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I expect that a lot of them are the product of differing a
prioris as well. For example the issue of which tokens count
has never before been raised: which is not to say that it shouldn't
have been, just that I think people automatically assumed that it
was limited to the company's own tokens.
I really am surprised at some of your questions regarding the value of absorbing the locals after phase 4, since it's set up to be all gain, no pain...Is it possible you did not realize the locals' 2-trains die on the first 4-train, and that the 2R only comes in if the local has been absorbed by a major?
I really am surprised at some of your questions regarding the value of absorbing the locals after phase 4, since it's set up to be all gain, no pain...Is it possible you did not realize the locals' 2-trains die on the first 4-train, and that the 2R only comes in if the local has been absorbed by a major?
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