Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2004-02-12 15:30:54
Converted from Phorums BB System

===And what about the earlier ages, in which multiple Attack and Next Age cards do you about as much good as a frontal lobotomy? ====

What about them?
That's exactly the kind of "non strategy" I'm talking about. Early on taking from the random deck is a huge risk for little reward. And later taking from the random deck is a minimal risk for a modest reward.

There is almost always an obviously right choice and an obviously wrong one. That's not a strategic choice.

===Once you've taken the inital risk by drawing a random card as opposed to a permanent one at a point in the game during which you can't afford to pass or take a useless action, there's not supposed to be a down side. Retaining valuable random action cards for later use is simply part of the game.===

Right...and what makes Puerto Rico such a fabulous game is that there is ALWAYS a down side to EVERY choice. Which makes every choice a nail biter and every choice strategically important.

AoM tries to go down this road, but ultimately it falls short because several actions (like holding on to good cards) wind up being automatic because there is no downside.

You see this same occurance happen with wastage. In Puerto Rico, producing before the ships come in is risky if the ships are near full because you stand a good chance of getting clobbered by spoilage. In AoM they tried to go for the same effect, but because wasteage happens at a known point and you get to save much more than in PR, there is much less risk of being hit hard by spoilage...making over production much less risky. Again reducing the down side and thus reducing the importance of making the right choice at the right time.


===Are you kidding? Gather: Resource or Terrain Type vs. Gather: All, "fairly minimal"?===

Its absolutely fairly minimal. Gather All helps EVERYONE. Its only significantly better if you have a significant production advantage. Otherwise you're letting your opponents produce as much or more than you.

Producing by Terrain Type or Resource is quite often MUCH better because you can often score big on something your opponents can't produce much of.

So yes...while there are times when one is better then the other...over all the standard powers are better than the random powers often enough to make taking the risk of the random deck less important.



===Build: 1 vs. Build: 3, "farily minimal"? Recruite: 2 vs. Recruit: 4, "fairly minimal"? The random cards are often equivalent to playing two or three permanent cards of the same type all at once.===

Yes, fairly minimal. Because you're failing to account for the weighted average effect of how likely you are to draw that Build 3 card when you need it.

Yes Build 3 is notably better than Build 1. But you have to discount its value (and this is standard quant analysis type stuff) because Build 1 is a known and Build 3 is an unknown. Or to put it in other terms...a build in the hand is worth 3 in the bush.

The Build 3 card is rare enough that the odds of having it when you need it are low enough, that it often simply isn't worth trying for it. Thus, the net effect is that the random deck is only marginally better than the standard deck.

I don’t see how you can disagree with this when later on you admitted that as an advanced player you stick to drawing primarily from the basic deck. Right…I agree the advantage of the random deck is only marginally better than the standard deck, which works against the purpose of having the decks split to begin with. Which is my entire point.

===The Explore card you're talking about gives one of your opponents a "take it or leave it" situation as opposed to two tiles to choose from, as with the permanent Explore card. Whether or not this is "worse" depends on the circumstances specific to the time at which the card is played. ===

Exactly. Sometimes its better, sometimes its worse. Hense…the advantage of going for random cards is much less than if the random cards are always better. The way the draw method is set up, its set up with the assumption that you can gurantee pick a poor version of the action or random draw and hope to get a much better version. That’s the whole trade off between deciding how many cards to take from each deck.

But in practice the cards in the random deck aren’t reliably better enough to make this trade off work properly.



===You are ignoring two very basic but very important facts. Number one, trading costs you an action. Every action counts. If you build or recruit what you want without having to spend an extra action acquiring the resource to get them with, you're better off. ===

Not ignoring at all. You’re ignoring the cost of acquiring diversified production. Sure trading takes 1 action. And yes that action is essentially wasted. But building up a diversified production base takes SEVERAL actions.

Actions to explore. More actions to explore when the first exploration didn’t get you a tile you can use. Actions to build houses to use villagers to help boost areas where you’re light. Maybe actions to attack to steal the tile you need. It takes MANY actions for an Egyptian player to acquire sizeable reliable gold production (unless he gets a lucky draw), getting a sizeable food production is pretty easy. It takes MANY actions for a Norse player to acquire a sizeable reliable source of food (again unless he gets lucky). Its ridiculously easy for the Norse player to produce gold.

So the trade off is not 1 wasted Action Trading vs. no wasted Actions not needing to Trade.

The trade off is 1 wasted Action Trading vs. A LOT of wasted Actions trying to get yourself into a position where you don’t need to trade.

That’s a lot of Trading actions you can perform and still be ahead of the game.


===Number two: when you trade, you can only take what's left in the bank. You say "unlimited ability to trade" but in fact there is no such thing. ===

True. But so what. This is the same situation you have with balanced production.

If there isn’t enough gold in the bank for me to trade for it, there isn’t enough gold in the bank for you to produce it either.

You could produce take all the gold and leave me unable to trade. I could trade take all the gold and leave you unable to produce.

There’s no difference either way, the cube mix effects both strategies the same.


>>3) The ease of beating up the weak guy. This is the huge exploit. You have no armies, or few. I play a production card...now you have lots of production. I then play an attack card and with minimal risk go and take your production away from you.<<

===News flash: barring the "fourth action" god powers, you don't get to play a Gather card and then immediately attack someone. They get a turn in between your two actions. And, being army-less, if they have even the slightest bit of sense in their heads, they will at least have a permanent recruit card in hand and use it right after they collect their resource cubes. ===

News Flash yourself. Theres no reason to start sounding all cocky. In a four player game, there is another player on the other side of him who can do the attacking, especially effective if you’re playing the team option from the rules. Further, unless he happens to pick up the big recruit card his army isn’t going to be worth squat when its my turn to attack him again. How hard is going to be to beat up his army of 2. Especially if the player across from me already beat up his army of two, vultured 5 cubes leaving me to attack for free and swipe another 5.


====Stealing five resource cubes at a time will not make you win the game.====

Stealing 5 resource cubes that I don’t produce easily, that I don’t have to waste a trade action to get, and which there may currently be none in the bank but I can obtain them from this other player, while simultaneously picking up the “most recent battle” victory points, and setting an opponent back at the same time…is HUGE. No, the game is layered enough that no single strategy by itself will “win you the game”…but this is a very effective one.


==== While you're picking on the guy who can't do anything and is no threat to you, the other player(s) will amass the largest army and the most buildings, and possibly The Wonder too, thus winning the lion's share of the victory points and leaving both you AND your punching bag in the dust. Now don't you feel silly?===

This is nonsense. You should feel silly for even saying it. The other 2 players are going to do all of that simply because 1 spend 1 Action attacking a weak player. I can see that you’re a fan of the game, but at least try to keep your objections to my criticisms reasonable.

====If the leader is the guy you can't attack in a four player game, then the other two players should be making a concerted effort to stop him. If they don't at least make the effort, then the problem is THEM, not the game itself. ====

Riiiight…in every game theres the possibility of the best player getting screwed because some other player couldn’t be relied on to play intelligently and due to his stupidity cost the best player the game. That’s a pretty common things actually. Sooooo….lets go write a rule that actually makes this undesireable situation even MORE common, and yet which doesn’t actually have any real purpose to it…

This makes sense to you why?


====One extra resource cube gained EACH time an appropriate Gather card is played CAN make a difference over a few turns. That extra stuff can let you build an extra building, recruit an extra unit, or recover more easily from getting pillaged. ====

Ummm, unless I’m really misremembering the rule, you only get an extra cube IF the tile the villager is on is one of the ones that are producing. If the Gather is for something different, no bonus…and you can be certain that experienced opponents when choosing what to produce will be taking your current villager allocation into account. Only if YOU play the gather card can you be certain the villager will produce for you.

So it winds up being something less than 1 cube every time a Gather is played.

Further that is NOT an extra resource cube at all. It only starts being an extra cube after you’ve made up for the cost of building the house. So the first Gather card played only breaks you even (or is the cost of the house 2 cubes…meaning its 2 Gathers to break even, I forget now).

Plus, as you who were railing about the importance of not wasting actions will certainly appreciate, building a house takes an action.

So, what you have is

1) waste a build to build a house.
2) Hope that when Gathers get played they’re for something your villager is on
3) The first bonus (or two maybe) doesn’t even count because you just get back to break even
4) And only then does the extra cube income start trickling in.

Dude…if this sounds like a good strategy to you…I hope you still feel that way should we ever play, because it’s a complete waste.

For a single attack action I can steal more production than your villagers will net you for several turns AND harm an opponent at the same time AND have a chance to score battle victory points.

Sorry. Villagers as implemented are a waste.



====Houses count as buildings. Most buildings gets you some victory points. And, in case you hadn't noticed, there are random Build cards that let you build more than one building at a time. ====

Yup, and that is the only remote time when its even worth considering building a house…when you get lucky enough to get a multi build card but can’t afford the building you really want, but could afford a house.

It still probably isn’t going to be worth it in the long run, but at least in this situation you avoid wasting a build.

===There. That's the lesson for today.===

Thanks for your thoughts. I find them to be pretty much…wrong, but I do appreciate the discussion.