New ending condition

[317070]

Put on top of the board a single track, where the difference of the score is kept left-to-right, and a boundary is moved right-to-left. You win if you pass this boundary. Add to your personal board a track with your income this round.

[nymanjens]

Put on top of the board a single track, where the difference of the score is kept left-to-right, and a boundary is moved right-to-left. You win if you pass this boundary.

Could you clarify how this would work?

Add to your personal board a track with your income this round.

I will do this

[317070]

Like this And there is a bar gradually shifting from left to right during the game, while the winning team is kept. You win if you cross the bar. This should end the game sooner when there is a clear winner. You also only need this track on the board to keep track of everything.

You could also have a tracker on each player board as to how many stars they have.

[nymanjens]

Ok, so that's an aesthetic clarification, but I actually meant when what moves.

Right now, there are 10 turns and 7 points cut-off. Would you start with 12 points and go down 1 point per turn to 3?

[317070]

I would also change the 7 point cutoff rule. The way I proposed, the cutoff is 1 lower every turn, until the game is guaranteed to end when the cutoff reaches zero. This way, unbalanced games end sooner, while the tight games (which are more fun) last longer.

I would start with 10 points and go down 1 point per turn to zero. I think if you pass this moving cutoff, the chances where you would have still won the game are very small. You would need on average more than +1 per turn until the end of the game to make up for how bad you have played so far.

[nymanjens]

About the numbers: this would mean that:

• at the end of turn 1, the cutoff decreases to 9
• at the end of turn 9, the cutoff decreases to 1
• at the end of turn 10, the game has to end (cutoff is 0)

I think this effectively reduces the most balanced games to 9 turns, rather than 10.

I think we should thus start at 11.

About the idea: Other than that detail, I'm not against although I'm not sure we are solving an actual problem here. On the other hand, it was a valid strategy to ignore scoring points in the beginning and make up on the long term. This proposal makes that a lot less interesting.

--> I'm not convinced

[nymanjens]

Also, I think this proposal would make the individual goal unattainable in practice.

[317070]

I'm in favor of dropping the individual goal for now (or the other one). I have no mental image of its rules anymore anyway. I prefer working on 1 version.

The problem we solve is the fact that the last games we played, we considered the game was over a few turns before the end (and before either of us had a score of 7). That makes the win feel less winny.

I think we could start at 12 or 13 as well, as most games will now finish before the 10th turn.

[nymanjens]

Ok, fair enough I agree with your problem.

But there are 2 things that bother me:

1. The individual goal, which I at least want to try before we bin it
2. Allowing the strategy of focusing on exponential growth first

To fix 2., a workable alternative could be to start at 13 and go down to 3. I think it's important that no game is longer than 10 turns.

To fix 1., I think the limits ought to be even higher (e.g. 15 down to 5).

[nymanjens]

By Jonas on duplicate bug:

Let's discuss the ending condition: At turn X, you win the game if you have accumulated 12-X points with your team At turn X, you win the game individually if you have 13-X stars at any point

This way, the longer the game is, the more balanced the teams need to be, the higher the pressure is on the alliances to break. Also, in this scenario, I think we don't need to differentiate between the number of players? At any point, you can calculate whether the team will win before an individual of the team wins.

When is the pressure on the alliances highest:

• Towards the end of the game
• When the alliance has one big player
• When the team is losing in accumulated points
• When the teams have a balanced number of stars

When is the pressure lowest:

• In the beginning of the game
• When an alliance is balanced
• When the team is winning in accumulated points
• When the teams have a very different number of stars

It has as benefits:

1. It is easy to design clearly, only a single track on the board left
2. It benefits balanced teams #10
3. No more artificial end after 10 rounds.
4. The rule has low complexity, but it makes the game far more strategic and complex
5. Games with a clear winner are ended earlier
6. Games can start with piloting of new players in the first rounds, but this is over later in the game

I also do not immediately see room for backstabbing. Only in the last rounds it might become relevant, but I reckon the odds of getting there are low.

[nymanjens]

We agreed on the following:

Group win - B 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 + artificiëel einde (stars, coins) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

[nymanjens]

@Tantali FYI: Jonas and I decided that at the end of turn x (x in {1..10}), you win if are ahead with 11-x points or more.

After turn 10, the team with most stars wins.