20 yesterdays...
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J C Lawrence
Feb 1, 2016, 5:47:35 PM2/1/16
to Daniel A Barnes, Shelby Noonan, Bruce Murphy, sfbay...@googlegroups.com
Notes on yesterday's game:
- $1,200ea starting capital was about right.
- Called in SR#3 on time. A __lot__ of time was spent on rules and arguing and humming and hawing. I think at heart this is a 5-6 hour game that will consistently wrap in OR#6.x (possibly right at the end of OR#5.x), but we have yet to see that.
- SR#1: 13 companies floated.
- SR#2: 7 companies floated.
- SR#3: 6-14 more companies about to float. Some 5-share companies were going to grow up, one probably to a 10-share and another to a 20-share with a third grow-up possible but uncommitted. Both committed grow-ups were planning to be 50-share companies by game-end, but had different immediate capital needs.
- OR#2.3: Hostile takeover of a 5-share company by a private. It was announced that Daniel's public was going to be the target of a hostile take-over by both my and Shelby's public companies (Daniel's company had good tokens, a low low stock price, and a decent train).
- $120 2+Ts were Okay. Possibly could be $150 but $120 is not clearly wrong.
- Most companies were tight on train limit (6) through yellow and remained tight (5) in green. Only in blue (still 5) did companies start to fall short and stay short of train limit.
- $40 green B cities were good. The north is clearly now of comparable value to the south (even if Shelby kept just making it bad bad bad -- just look what he did to Manchester and Chester!).
- New dit placement rules were good (15 dits placed, ~3-4 more were possible with different track patterns). That's precisely how many I think should be in the game.
- New dit upgrade rules (green dits can be upgraded to yellow cities, to green switches or to brown dits) looked likely to be good.
- One hostile take-over executed (by Shelby!) which was excellent for him. Next OR was going to see Daniel's public fought over by Shelby and me (it was too cheap and its tokens were good).
- Requiring unique lobbies in parliament rounds worked well (even if I always paid more than everyone else).
- Restricting grow-ups to parliament rounds (and thus requiring a lobby) worked well.
- Income tax was 30%, and looked like it would top out at about 40%-50% before falling back down.
- New share art worked well enough.
- New tactic invented but not used: run a shitty major and then take it over with a high-priced new company to leap your stock price up the market. Tough to pull off, but strong and viable.
- New train maintenance fee chart worked well (though some numbers may need adjusting).
Problems:
- Income tax should fall as quickly as it rises (I'm bluntly reversing my prior position). Proposal: 0 loans taken increases tax (so by default it always goes up) but also have it fall by 10% if more are paid than taken out.
- Priority is almost always entirely irrelevant outside of a ~$20 variance in costs. Proposal: Do nothing but watch. Consider setting giving priority to the player to the left of the last player to act in parliament rounds.
- Forced green in OR#1.3 is wrong. Proposed: Government takes all 2Ts in OR#1.1, all 2.1Ts in OR#1.2 and then greens are on deck in OR#1.3 but green phase hasn't yet started until someone buys a train.
- Too many green trains (21). Proposed fix: remove 5 green trains. In our game this would have brought the blue trains out 1-2 ORs sooner and put the browns on deck certainly in OR#2.3 and maybe in OR#2.2 (maybe someone buys one?)
- Take-over rules by privates have obviously not been thought through and are...bad.
- Privates are a bit too good. Long-term unviable, critical for the first half of the game, but still slightly too good. Proposal: Privates pay income tax. Still no loans, but they pay tax. I doubly like this as it makes privates even weaker the later on the game they go.
- There's a currently viable degenerate strategy (which nobody has attempted) in which players make everything private and do all their grow ups at the last minute. Proposal: Privates can jump sizes when they grow up but must grow to 2-share companies first -- thus making them readily available and cheap for hostile takeovers. This shouldn't entirely kill the degenerate strategy, just make it...very hard.
- Loans probably need some more penalty. They are a presidential liability...but that only comes true very late. Proposal: Consider loan interest remains $10 until brown, and then $20 in brown, $30 in red and $40 in gray. Consider stock falls for every two loans taken at a time (round down), and stock bumps for every three loans paid off at a time.
- 9 stations for non-50-share-companies is fiddly/annoying. Proposal: Go to either 8 or 10. 10 is probably better. 50-share companies still get 18 stations.
- Stock market may be ~3 columns too long for the game length. Proposal: Do some counting. Possibly make stoke appreciation ~ 20% steeper at the upper end and thus the market shorter.
Other changes:
- Put in the future trains rules as discussed:
- $1,200ea starting capital was about right.
- Called in SR#3 on time. A __lot__ of time was spent on rules and arguing and humming and hawing. I think at heart this is a 5-6 hour game that will consistently wrap in OR#6.x (possibly right at the end of OR#5.x), but we have yet to see that.
- SR#1: 13 companies floated.
- SR#2: 7 companies floated.
- SR#3: 6-14 more companies about to float. Some 5-share companies were going to grow up, one probably to a 10-share and another to a 20-share with a third grow-up possible but uncommitted. Both committed grow-ups were planning to be 50-share companies by game-end, but had different immediate capital needs.
- OR#2.3: Hostile takeover of a 5-share company by a private. It was announced that Daniel's public was going to be the target of a hostile take-over by both my and Shelby's public companies (Daniel's company had good tokens, a low low stock price, and a decent train).
- $120 2+Ts were Okay. Possibly could be $150 but $120 is not clearly wrong.
- Most companies were tight on train limit (6) through yellow and remained tight (5) in green. Only in blue (still 5) did companies start to fall short and stay short of train limit.
- $40 green B cities were good. The north is clearly now of comparable value to the south (even if Shelby kept just making it bad bad bad -- just look what he did to Manchester and Chester!).
- New dit placement rules were good (15 dits placed, ~3-4 more were possible with different track patterns). That's precisely how many I think should be in the game.
- New dit upgrade rules (green dits can be upgraded to yellow cities, to green switches or to brown dits) looked likely to be good.
- One hostile take-over executed (by Shelby!) which was excellent for him. Next OR was going to see Daniel's public fought over by Shelby and me (it was too cheap and its tokens were good).
- Requiring unique lobbies in parliament rounds worked well (even if I always paid more than everyone else).
- Restricting grow-ups to parliament rounds (and thus requiring a lobby) worked well.
- Income tax was 30%, and looked like it would top out at about 40%-50% before falling back down.
- New share art worked well enough.
- New tactic invented but not used: run a shitty major and then take it over with a high-priced new company to leap your stock price up the market. Tough to pull off, but strong and viable.
- New train maintenance fee chart worked well (though some numbers may need adjusting).
Problems:
- Income tax should fall as quickly as it rises (I'm bluntly reversing my prior position). Proposal: 0 loans taken increases tax (so by default it always goes up) but also have it fall by 10% if more are paid than taken out.
- Priority is almost always entirely irrelevant outside of a ~$20 variance in costs. Proposal: Do nothing but watch. Consider setting giving priority to the player to the left of the last player to act in parliament rounds.
- Forced green in OR#1.3 is wrong. Proposed: Government takes all 2Ts in OR#1.1, all 2.1Ts in OR#1.2 and then greens are on deck in OR#1.3 but green phase hasn't yet started until someone buys a train.
- Too many green trains (21). Proposed fix: remove 5 green trains. In our game this would have brought the blue trains out 1-2 ORs sooner and put the browns on deck certainly in OR#2.3 and maybe in OR#2.2 (maybe someone buys one?)
- Take-over rules by privates have obviously not been thought through and are...bad.
- Privates are a bit too good. Long-term unviable, critical for the first half of the game, but still slightly too good. Proposal: Privates pay income tax. Still no loans, but they pay tax. I doubly like this as it makes privates even weaker the later on the game they go.
- There's a currently viable degenerate strategy (which nobody has attempted) in which players make everything private and do all their grow ups at the last minute. Proposal: Privates can jump sizes when they grow up but must grow to 2-share companies first -- thus making them readily available and cheap for hostile takeovers. This shouldn't entirely kill the degenerate strategy, just make it...very hard.
- Loans probably need some more penalty. They are a presidential liability...but that only comes true very late. Proposal: Consider loan interest remains $10 until brown, and then $20 in brown, $30 in red and $40 in gray. Consider stock falls for every two loans taken at a time (round down), and stock bumps for every three loans paid off at a time.
- 9 stations for non-50-share-companies is fiddly/annoying. Proposal: Go to either 8 or 10. 10 is probably better. 50-share companies still get 18 stations.
- Stock market may be ~3 columns too long for the game length. Proposal: Do some counting. Possibly make stoke appreciation ~ 20% steeper at the upper end and thus the market shorter.
Other changes:
- Put in the future trains rules as discussed:
-- JCLBefore the first green SR (SR#2) two brown trains are sold at auction (normally $700ea) with both selling individually but at the price of the winning bid. These go to the player's hand and can be assigned to a company and thence run/used as soon as a brown train is bought in the normal way (ie you might get an extra run compared to everyone else's brown trains). Repeat before the first SR in blue phase (should be SR#3), except with two red trains (normally $1,250).
This change should slightly slow the mid-game (blue) and then considerably accelerate the later game (brown/red). I'll probably need to also remove a blue train.
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