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dblankenship81 posted:Anyone have a solid strategy for Food Chain Magnate? Going to be playing it this week again and have one friend (owner of the game) who always wins. I've only played twice so far but haven't found anything that clicks and am unsure what the important early objectives are. Here's some copy and paste from earlier in the thread. Apologies to whoever I ripped it from. I've added emphasis. -You can only sell an item if you produce it AND it's being marketed. -Multiple people can get the same milestone IF AND ONLY IF they all reach the milestone on the same turn. -Hungry customers determine where they want to go FIRST by (Unit Price + Distance in Tiles) THEN by number of Waitresses. -People advertising are removed from your plateau until the advertisement is finished. -Cart Operators check both sides of the road for drink stations, but not diagonals. -The person with the most empty slots gets first choice for turn order, not that he is first in turn order. -There's no middle management, ie only the CEO is allowed to manage other managers. -All the steps each turn have to be followed in the specific given order, with the practical implications being that you can't use employees on the same turn you hired them, and advertising doesn't kick in until the turn after the advertising campaign began. -Distance is always counted by numbers of tile borders crossed, this also counts for when a store has an entrance right on the border of a tile with a street on the next tile over. -Employees that take a salary must be paid every turn, including the turn they were hired and whether or not they were used in your structure or not. Going later in the turn order usually is better, not only because you can shut off a Milestone from other people as he mentions, but because you have perfect information regarding what the other players have done with their turns in regards to any new marketing, drink acquisition, Milestones, and of course new hires and training, better allowing you to develop your strategy around what they're doing. It's why the Executive VP is so incredibly powerful and limited- that many potential open employee slots can lock you into the position in the turn order that you want every round without any chance of being contested. So you can stay late until the occasion you choose to be first as a means of tie-breaking when necessary for selling to contested homes. As for first time play recommendations? Players should generally be hiring one of a few different roles on the first turn: Recruiting Girl, Trainer, or Errand Boy. Each has some strong pathing to specific Milestones you want to hit, but in general I'd say just dive in and figure it out as you go, and know that you'll do things super inefficient and make all kinds of mistakes. Just remember that basically all of the 1x employees are limited for a reason; they're all very powerful in their own way. Also, don't be surprised when no one has anything produced or sold for the first 3 or 4 turns. It's about building into a particular foundation initially, and then capitalizing off it later in the game. Opening is very important. For your first game (and much of the time otherwise) first turn hire should be either recruiting girl or trainer - there's the errand boy play and actually a number of different ways you can leverage recruiter/trainer, but for a first game let's keep it simple. You're going for either a wide employee structure of many workers with the recruiting girl strategy or deep with the training strategy which will support fewer, more powerful workers. In the recruiting girl case you're following up with hiring recruting girl + whatever else turn 2 so you can get first to hire 3 milestone on turn 3 and get the free management trainees that will let you support more employees. Training first will get you a discount on salaries which allows you to have trained employees before you start selling goods. It is possible to snag both of these milestones if everyone is going for the same strategy or just playing badly but it likely won't happen - getting at least one of these milestones is important. Make this explicit to everyone at the start of the game, if one person knows how to open and the others don't, that player is going to win. Speaking of milestones, they're non optional so be careful what you qualify for. Of most significance is first to produce a burger or pizza, which will net you a free cook. Great! Except cooks are salaried employees, you may be immediately firing that cook if you don't have the training milestone and haven't got any relevant marketing on the board yet to actually sell your burgers. The eternal marketing milestone is also nice but it means your marketers are permanently locked once used and you need to hire (and train) new marketers every time you want to do a new campaign, which impacts your action economy so plan ahead. Lowering prices at all if you're first to do so is going to lower it another dollar via the milestone (this is generally good) so be aware of that if you're running close to the line in terms of being able to pay your guys. Beyond that so much depends on the board that you're best just diving in and trying stuff to see what works and what doesn't, a bad first turn is the only way you're likely to genuinely screw yourself in a game of other new players so as long as everyone kicks off roughly on par don't worry too much about what the best move is, just pick one and see how it shakes out. Also do be aware that the game has a tendency to end very suddenly once the big guns come out. If someone gets a brand director online and there is enough production capacity across all players to meet the demand, you've got 1-2 turns left, even if everyone goes $300 reserve the bank will not last long with a lot of high value houses being hit by big area-effect marketing. Even single houses can be stacked into game enders (if only one player can service a house then a garden, 5 demands and a luxuries manager is $200 in a single round before bonuses. I *love* the island-house strategy but it's only viable on some boards ). Generally when people start picking 1-of employeed signals the endgame is approaching, whatever you're going to do, do it soon. Wide structures want to use low reserves, early marketing, and run the bank out before the mega marketing/production engines can come online. Deep structures want the opposite, setting up for huge cash value turns with bonuses that break the bank in one fell swoop and leave them with all the money.
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May 16, 2017 19:21
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Jedit posted:Africa is weak because it's boxed in by Egypt and Illyria/Iberia. If it can get out of its bad starting corner it can become strong, as both its fronts are on the same side of its territory. If I had to pick one of Africa and Egypt knowing the other wasn't in the game, I'd probably prefer Africa. If Egypt expands into Africa it is marching troops away from the front line with Babylon, but Africa is marching towards the front. (Plus of course your starting turf is so crap that everyone else will prefer to expand anywhere else.) If Egypt isn't picked it's not boxed in but whoever would pick Africa with an available Egypt is not playing optimally. I'm sorry Jedit but there's no inherent benefit to Africa.
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May 16, 2017 19:38
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Another good basic FCM strategy piece is map assessment. 1) are there any areas that are completely cut off from the rest of the map? 2) are there any beverages which will be asymmetrically accessible from certain board positions? 3) are there any big blocks which can be hammer marketed with mailing campaigns, especially in the early game? These three pieces of info can help choose your initial board position and strategy. If you watch the game that Angel Opportunity and I played, #2 and #3 really informed my initial approach. I realized that he couldn't access cola very well from his starting spot, and I spent the rest of the game putting pressure on that asymmetry every way that I could.
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May 16, 2017 21:03
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People were talking about a Star Wars COIN game. I have some questions I was mulling over today about how that would work while I was hanging around at work. I might as well ask them here and see what you all think. Some of the questions are for Star Wars experts, some are for COIN game experts, and I figure we probably have both in this thread. (Star Wars Question) It's space and you have hyperdrives, so there isn't really any adjacency - you can basically get to anywhere from anywhere without having to pass through other systems on the way, right? Some jumps may take longer, but it's not like to get from Tatooine to Hoth you need to pass through Coruscant first ... or is it like that? (COIN Question) What would be the trouble spots or interesting knock-on effects to watch for if you were to design a COIN game without adjacency? You can limit movement in other ways - e.g. rebels just can't get into systems that have Support and at least two cubes unless they use the infiltrate special action or pay some smugglers or something - but that might have other implications. (Star Wars Question) What could the four factions reasonably be? Scum from the x-wing game could be a faction focused on profiteering on the conflict like Cuba Libre's Syndicate or like ADP's Warlords, but who would a fourth faction even be and what would be their motive? (COIN Questions) Would a 3-faction COIN game work? How could initiative be fixed for 3p? I know there's a 2p COIN game coming out - do we know already how they do initiative? (COIN Question) Star Wars is a lot about the spaceships, i.e. the fleet. I only really know about Cuba Libre and ADP - do other COIN games do stuff with fleets and blockades and poo poo, and how does that work?
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May 17, 2017 06:18
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I'm more versed in SW so I can answer those. Note that most of this background info is grognard garbage knowledge that garbage nerds like me can recall even years later. It's mostly not even canon anymore, which is good because the EU had a lot of dumb poo poo. 1. Hyperlanes are a thing in star wars. There are definite "routes" that are taken. Many games make use of them. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperlane 2. You could have the Imperial Security Bureau, the Imperial Army/Navy itself, the Rebellion, and a collection of radical Rebel cells similar to the one in Jeddha in Rogue One. In TFA, the Resistance and the "Alliance to restore the republic (rebel alliance)" are different entities. There's also the Scum faction that some games like to use. They represent the collection of bounty hunters and gangster lords (Hutts) that are apparently central to the economies of many major worlds. They'd be similar to the ADP Warlords faction. I imagine they could even use a similar ethnic support mechanic like the Pashtun in ADP. Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 06:58 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 06:55
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Chill la Chill posted:I'm more versed in SW so I can answer those. Note that most of this background info is grognard garbage knowledge that garbage nerds like me can recall even years later. It's mostly not even canon anymore, which is good because the EU had a lot of dumb poo poo. You could also split the Imperials into mystics/sith and the mainline security forces.
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May 17, 2017 07:22
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The Star Wars LCG breaks the good/bad factions into 3 subsets each: Rebel/Smugglers/Jedi, and Imperial/Bounty Hunters/Sith. Some combination of those would do just fine I'm sure.
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May 17, 2017 09:51
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Is The Bloody Inn any good as a solo game?
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May 17, 2017 10:10
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Jimbozig posted:(COIN Question) Star Wars is a lot about the spaceships, i.e. the fleet. I only really know about Cuba Libre and ADP - do other COIN games do stuff with fleets and blockades and poo poo, and how does that work? Liberty or Death has a French Naval Intervention track, 0-3. The French player can increase FNI with a special activity, and thereby place a blockade on a city. The British are assumed to control the ocean otherwise. In cities without blockades they can deploy regular troops and teleport cubes to and from other cities, which is a big advantage. But in ADP and FitL, there's a counter-insurgent force that effectively controls the sky and can just fly its cubes wherever it feels like. Most of the time the situation on the ground is all that's really simulated and maneuvers on sea or air are abstracted, or restricted to the flavor text on event cards. Jimbozig posted:(Star Wars Question) It's space and you have hyperdrives, so there isn't really any adjacency - you can basically get to anywhere from anywhere without having to pass through other systems on the way, right? Some jumps may take longer, but it's not like to get from Tatooine to Hoth you need to pass through Coruscant first ... or is it like that? I dunno, I would probably just make it point-to-point like the other COIN games. That means hyperlanes or clearly delineated sectors, because having a map with no local movement is rather counter-intuitive, and I don't think it would improve things. Actually the old PC game Star Wars: Rebellion let you warp anywhere (though systems were clustered in sectors) but that game did everything wrong. Oh, and the upcoming Colonial Twilight, which is about the Algerian Revolution, is 2-player. This article discusses how initiative works in such a system: http://www.insidegmt.com/?p=10121 And 3-player would be viable too, the problem is more that it turns into 2 vs 1 situation. There are probably ways to counter this tendency though. 
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May 17, 2017 10:27
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Finally got around to playing the lords of Waterdeep expansion and my o my does this bring something to the game. The base game left us with a feeling of wanting something more to the game (as a couple of goons predicted) with the rather bland intrigue cards or quests for example. The expansion really takes it up a tier with much better intrigue and quest cards along with the new corruption board. After playing the base game about 10 times the other week, this game was going on the bottom of the pile. Expansion really brought this to life. Something I'll be playing much more of over summer.
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May 17, 2017 12:35
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Selecta84 posted:Is The Bloody Inn any good as a solo game? It's not good as any game.
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May 17, 2017 13:38
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Ok then. Care to elaborate?
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May 17, 2017 13:52
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Kiranamos posted:It's not good as any game.
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May 17, 2017 13:53
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Jimbozig posted:People were talking about a Star Wars COIN game. I have some questions I was mulling over today about how that would work while I was hanging around at work. I might as well ask them here and see what you all think. Some of the questions are for Star Wars experts, some are for COIN game experts, and I figure we probably have both in this thread. One of the big things about COIN adjacency is the inability to move and attack in the same turn, most of the time. If you wanted to design something Star Warsy to have something similar, there is the bit in ESB about Admiral Ozzel coming out of hyperspace too close to the intended conflict, tipping the Rebels off and giving them a chance to both dig in (doing more damage) and escape with most of their people. homullus fucked around with this message at 15:11 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 14:30
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Adjacency in COIN isn't really a big deal, as many factions have the ability to place cubes or cylinders in spaces without adjacency (govt in most) so I wouldn't get too hung up on it. Maybe require "adjacency" for a march equivalent, like putting a whole fleet into a sector. You could still have mapped sections of galaxy that are considered near each other, with planets taking the role of cities (an area within an area).
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May 17, 2017 14:35
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Rebellion and COIN games typically have a "sabotage" action which could represent an ongoing conflict or imperial lock down. Adjacency isn't such a big deal but I would probably work sabotage into this e.g. you can basically move anywhere but to enter a sabotaged region you either have to reveal yourself, pay extra, or start next to it. Something like that.
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May 17, 2017 14:56
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If this becomes a fleshed out little side project, you can even print out a custom deck of cards for all the events. 
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May 17, 2017 15:08
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Tai posted:Finally got around to playing the lords of Waterdeep expansion and my o my does this bring something to the game. The base game left us with a feeling of wanting something more to the game (as a couple of goons predicted) with the rather bland intrigue cards or quests for example. The expansion really takes it up a tier with much better intrigue and quest cards along with the new corruption board. I've played Waterdeep too many times for my liking but something that always struck me was the way quests were just randomly shuffled and drawn. I think it was earlier in the thread the past week where people were talking about the benefits of events or cards being locked behind timers per se, or doing it like let's say Twilight Struggle or Galaxy Trucker where you have cards that won't show up until X stage of the game. In my playthroughs of LoW I think that it would benefit from some form of this where you don't end up with a lovely mix of insane game end quests and little nothing ones right out of the gate but as you grind through the deck the draws get bigger and tougher. This would add some more depth to it and at the cost of knowing when some mega-quests will show up, let you sort of prepare for certain events and the inevitable scramble to acquire them.
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May 17, 2017 15:34
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Selecta84 posted:Ok then. The concept is unique and the artwork is fantastic. But the game itself is the slowest tableau builder I've ever played. Your choices are so limited that you end up deciding to do something, then taking 3 or 4 turns to actually do it. The money-laundering aspect just clogs things up even worse. As a solo experience, it's a "beat your high score" situation.
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May 17, 2017 17:16
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Welp, gonna pass on that one then. Thanks
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May 17, 2017 17:22
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FulsomFrank posted:I've played Waterdeep too many times for my liking but something that always struck me was the way quests were just randomly shuffled and drawn. I think it was earlier in the thread the past week where people were talking about the benefits of events or cards being locked behind timers per se, or doing it like let's say Twilight Struggle or Galaxy Trucker where you have cards that won't show up until X stage of the game. In my playthroughs of LoW I think that it would benefit from some form of this where you don't end up with a lovely mix of insane game end quests and little nothing ones right out of the gate but as you grind through the deck the draws get bigger and tougher. This would add some more depth to it and at the cost of knowing when some mega-quests will show up, let you sort of prepare for certain events and the inevitable scramble to acquire them. Maybe just seeding the deck a little would be enough? Shuffle the plot quests, and put them into the top half of the deck. Or deal each player a plot quest or two in their starting quests, this probably needs to be combined with some Lord choices as well because many plot quests are completely awful when off-faction (+2 to more Piety quests, etc.) while a random off-faction regular quest might still be worth completing.
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May 17, 2017 17:28
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 My copy of Neuroshima Hex 3.0, the Z-Man Games version that comes with the special 5th faction that you can't get in english outside of that particular version of the game. I haven't tried it out yet but I'm excited to give it a shot when I've got some people around to play with 
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May 17, 2017 18:01
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Can this Star Wars COIN game become a legit goon project? I'm down to help out if I can.
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May 17, 2017 21:05
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Some Numbers posted:Can this Star Wars COIN game become a legit goon project? I'm down to help out if I can. Same
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May 17, 2017 21:55
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Here let me save you all some time:  But really, that's an awesome idea and you guys should actually do it but keep it to like 3 people because Goon projects have a bit of a reputation.
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May 17, 2017 22:06
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Well, I'll type up what I've got for ideas. I've got some notes on scrap paper I scribbled out at work today and a little rough map drawn up. Should we take this somewhere else or should I just post it here?
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May 17, 2017 22:08
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Jimbozig posted:Well, I'll type up what I've got for ideas. I've got some notes on scrap paper I scribbled out at work today and a little rough map drawn up. Should we take this somewhere else or should I just post it here? We have a board game developer thread https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3518654 It's slow but the feedback you get there is great. If y'all need playtesters or anything I'm wrapped up in other projects but will take a look over rules and get it to a table
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May 17, 2017 22:10
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Bottom Liner posted:Here let me save you all some time: We'll pitch it to FFG.
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May 17, 2017 22:30
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STAR WNARS
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May 17, 2017 22:41
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Stare Wins
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May 17, 2017 22:47
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Our business plan: Step 1: Blatantly violate copyright. Step 2: Act all aggrieved when we get a C&D from FFG/Disney/whoever, and paint them as a bunch of big bullies who don't appreciate their fans Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit
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May 17, 2017 22:53
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Jimbozig posted:Our business plan:
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May 17, 2017 23:01
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Well anyway, here are my rough notes that need a lot of expanding. Comment and tell me how terrible my ideas are. If you want to contribute to the doomed goon project and are interested in putting in enough time to write a bunch of cards or help write up procedures for the actions or something, let me know (jmcgarva at gmail) and I'll give you edit permission. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fHl3K7PP4izjv9cZA6VC4Q0I32OiOu3x0gljUm653B0/edit?usp=drivesdk (Warning: if you don't know anything about COIN games, this will be gibberish)
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May 17, 2017 23:37
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Thanks for these.
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May 17, 2017 23:49
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SPI and Avalon Hill were hoping to get the Star Wars license for a 70s sci-fi wargame they were working on. It fell through so the result was Freedom in the Galaxy. In a remote corner of the universe the evil Empire feels the first sting of rebellion! Guide Adam Starlight and Princess Adora against the evil empire lead by Emperor Coreguya and his space-disco-samurai Redjac. Almost 40 years later, Fantasy Flight would do what they do best: rip off an old property and tie another license to it. Freedom in the Galaxy became Star Wars: Rebellion. Moral of the story is, if you can't get what you want (in this case the Star Wars license) then file the serial numbers off. Eventually someone will take notice and steal it when you're dead, spinning it into a wildly more successful product.
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May 17, 2017 23:54
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Jimbozig posted:Well anyway, here are my rough notes that need a lot of expanding. Comment and tell me how terrible my ideas are. If you want to contribute to the doomed goon project and are interested in putting in enough time to write a bunch of cards or help write up procedures for the actions or something, let me know (jmcgarva at gmail) and I'll give you edit permission. For the rebels maybe something like "espionage" as a special activity? Let's them look at the next 3-5 cards in the deck and then put them back on top in any order. Or would that be too good? I think that could work cause they don't have an immediate advantage but could Set up their next turns.
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May 17, 2017 23:57
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FulsomFrank posted:I've played Waterdeep too many times for my liking but something that always struck me was the way quests were just randomly shuffled and drawn. I think it was earlier in the thread the past week where people were talking about the benefits of events or cards being locked behind timers per se, or doing it like let's say Twilight Struggle or Galaxy Trucker where you have cards that won't show up until X stage of the game. In my playthroughs of LoW I think that it would benefit from some form of this where you don't end up with a lovely mix of insane game end quests and little nothing ones right out of the gate but as you grind through the deck the draws get bigger and tougher. This would add some more depth to it and at the cost of knowing when some mega-quests will show up, let you sort of prepare for certain events and the inevitable scramble to acquire them. There's only two house rules we have (so far). We draft 5 quests and keep 2 at the start and the intrigue card that lets you show your Lord but become immune to negatives like mandatory quest is never in the deck. We are pondering whether to split the quest cards into two decks with lower cost cards first then swap decks but since we play two player, it's not too much of an issue. The draft 5 and keep two has helped a lot. I should add that we have removed a lot of intrigue cards from the base game that rarely if at all got played. Like 30 or so just so we get more of the spicey intrigue cards. Had a game earlier where I finished a quest which let me draw and play another intrigue card whenever I played one. Along with having two buildings where one let be return corruption and play an intrigue and another where I get a rogue and a fighter and play an intrigue. She got murdered. Funny though!
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May 18, 2017 00:05
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Bottom Liner posted:Here let me save you all some time: Make a Spaceballs COIN game
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May 18, 2017 02:02
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Three Kingdoms: Redux came in woooo I was planning on playing Triumph & Tragedy this weekend, will I kill them by slipping 3KR in as well? Maybe!
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May 18, 2017 02:14
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Lorini posted:If Egypt isn't picked it's not boxed in but whoever would pick Africa with an available Egypt is not playing optimally. I'm sorry Jedit but there's no inherent benefit to Africa. As someone who played Civilization all the time when I was seven or eight, I'll have to strongly disagree. Africa had Elephants on their tiles, which is why I nearly always picked them. When I got older I gravitated to other start positions.
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May 18, 2017 02:18
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