Kill "starving" in Stone Age

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Daggerheart
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Joined: 14 January 2017, 01:18

Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Daggerheart »

The Starvation strategy don't need any rules changes to counter. You can read how it works here, and then you also find how to defeat it:

One of the most famous, and often unpopular (for the opponents), strategies in Stone Age is "The Starvation Strategy". It's mostly considered as an option for the player at the left hand side of the starting player. Why? Since the first player often picks fields, or some other option than "The Love Hut", as his first choice. The 2nd player is then 100% sure of getting two more tribe members the first two turns of the match = a tribe of at least 8 in turn 5/3p game, or turn 6/4p. If the first two players skips the love hut, the third player can also consider to go for a "starvation game". The key elements of the strategy:

Aquire as many meeples as "possible", and as fast as possible. A player using the starvation strategy will usually get between 8-10 meeples during the match, more often 9 than 8 or 10 (10 is the limit). Sometimes stopping at 9 can be smart.

Remember that every player receives 12 food before the match starts. Thus, in the first two turns your tribe will not starve, even if you get two more meeples and don't hunt.

A 4p match in Stone Age usually lasts between 7-11 turns (7 minimum). A match lasting the minimum 7 turns (rare) will give a total starvation penalty of -50 points, and a match ending in turn 11, -90 points. Thus, a player that uses the strategy will benefit from short matches. The end game score of the starver will usually be lower than "normal", but this goes for the other players too.

There are two main benefits of getting a big tribe: 1) The player gets more meeples available = more resources = more cards and huts 2) The player reduces the other players possibilities, especially in the first part of the match, to get resources, cards and huts
Lumberjack the first turns: It's quite common for the starvation player to put a lot of meeples in the forest for wood gathering the first 1-4 turns. Wood is always useful for getting early cards and huts, and partly blocking this resource early will cause a "slow" start for several of the opponents.

Usually the starvation player tries to empty one stack of huts fast to get a short match. The VP for huts are of course also needed to make up for the negative VP balance.

The Starvation player tries to get a lot of resources to buy huts. He/she will also prioritize to get the cards that give multipliers for meeples and huts. Cheap "1 cost" resource cards are of course also nice to pick up, the same goes for "good trade" cards (2 wood for 2 stone'ish cards). The rest of the cards should usually be skipped, but sometimes you need to stop your closest competitor from getting an important x2 bonus
Always try to evaluate which of the other players are your greatest treat, and try to body block resources and similar for a double benefit. "Only" 7 meeples are needed to "shut down" a resource.

If the other players stops "the starver" from getting the love hut and VP huts, yes even consider body blocking a hut to delay the ending of the match + stops the player from getting the cards that give him the meeple multipliers, he/she will get into serious problems. A player using "The Starvation Strategy" is of course also influenced by bad dice rolls, just like everyone else!

The main reasons that many players (opponents) dislike others using the strategy are: They get a slow start due to "no" extra meeples the first 2-3 turns and some resources, especially wood, are more limited during key turns of a match. If the opponents are not careful, a short match of 7-9 turns will further damage their win chances.
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Cappie
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Joined: 15 December 2015, 14:25

Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Cappie »

Burning spear wrote:
Why? Because this is a game about developping AND feed your people. Give to them zero food almost each turn of the game seems to be a bug.
Is it? Or is it a game About scoring as Many points as possible? Wrapped up in a Nice little story About cavemen in the stone age who collect Goods and using them to buy huts to get points. Wait, what? Points?

This a game with rules which arent broken. So why change it just because you dont like the rules? ITS like rewriting a book just because you dont like the ending. Well, great, in your head you can do that. But when you tell the story of the book to someone else you should really tell it the way the author ment it...
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Burning spear
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Joined: 15 August 2013, 18:27

Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Burning spear »

ok you develop a better idea than everything I heard until here, and technically, you're right, this is in the game rules, so it's not cheat.
But like I said before, I usually like and play games where mechanics are just a part of the pleasure, not 100% of it, amerithrash or eurotrash games (like Cyclades) where theme, ambience prevail. I know than german-like games are focused about mechanism only, and that's why, usually, I avoid them, but Stone Age seemed to be an exception, with an funny adequation between theme and mechanics. And starvation respects the mechanics I suppose, but not the theme.
So, for me, it's starvation users that change the end of the book lol, but I get your point
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Cappie
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Cappie »

I have to say i also get your point. It is a game with a strong theme and Not an abstract game like LITS for instance. So i dont like playing it that way and when i try (i think always in real life play) i never seem to win. But i do think you cant force your own rules on people when the author of the game doesnt. If he says anything About it and put Some extra rules out, then bga should also.
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Kojak
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Kojak »

I think the designers made a mistake in allowing people to be starved. Following that strategy tends to alienate the other players in a game and puts them off playing Stone Age. I am not against using resources instead of food as it could be seen to represent bartering those resources for food. However, the simplest solution would be for the designers/publishers to make a change to the rule and issue an errata stating that each unfed person is eliminated permanently from the game and that the VP point penalty applies to each person thus eliminated. That would stop people being left unfed on the last turn.
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Cappie
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Cappie »

Kojak wrote:I think the designers made a mistake in allowing people to be starved. Following that strategy tends to alienate the other players in a game and puts them off playing Stone Age. I am not against using resources instead of food as it could be seen to represent bartering those resources for food. However, the simplest solution would be for the designers/publishers to make a change to the rule and issue an errata stating that each unfed person is eliminated permanently from the game and that the VP point penalty applies to each person thus eliminated. That would stop people being left unfed on the last turn.
But the designers, who are well aware of this strategy, don't think they made a mistake. Otherwise they would have made some adjustments already.
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eoc
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by eoc »

Well, being unaware of a mistake you made doesn't mean it didn't happen, so here's my opinion: they definitely did make a mistake, and that mistake was framing the lack of food as penalty (if you cannot entirely feed your tribe) instead of a bonus (if you managed to).
Thematically there have been several suggestions on how this could have been worded already, and psychologically it's much less controversial to "miss out" on a bonus than to lose your hard-earned points, even if both would serve identical functions gameplay-wise (as there's no game interaction with someone's total points aside from comparing scores). I also believe some of the hatred towards this valid strategy comes from the "starvation" nickname as which it was and is being misrepresented, referring to the game designer's own commentary on the matter.

So yeah, my personal solution when teaching that I think was inspired by some BGA thread back in the day: Each round every worker in your tribe tries to eat one food. If your supply was big enough that everybody got one, you receive 10 bonus points. Done. I mention that it's valid to try to gain those points elsewhere, and that you should fully commit to that if so (since the workers will still eat what food you have left, but no bonus for you) but nobody has ever complained about how unfair that strategy is, and how it should be banned.
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N_Faker
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by N_Faker »

eoc wrote:
I find it funny how that would probably 'fix' this issue.
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Cappie
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by Cappie »

eoc wrote:Well, being unaware of a mistake you made doesn't mean it didn't happen, so here's my opinion: they definitely did make a mistake, and that mistake was framing the lack of food as penalty (if you cannot entirely feed your tribe) instead of a bonus (if you managed to).
Thematically there have been several suggestions on how this could have been worded already, and psychologically it's much less controversial to "miss out" on a bonus than to lose your hard-earned points, even if both would serve identical functions gameplay-wise (as there's no game interaction with someone's total points aside from comparing scores). I also believe some of the hatred towards this valid strategy comes from the "starvation" nickname as which it was and is being misrepresented, referring to the game designer's own commentary on the matter.

So yeah, my personal solution when teaching that I think was inspired by some BGA thread back in the day: Each round every worker in your tribe tries to eat one food. If your supply was big enough that everybody got one, you receive 10 bonus points. Done. I mention that it's valid to try to gain those points elsewhere, and that you should fully commit to that if so (since the workers will still eat what food you have left, but no bonus for you) but nobody has ever complained about how unfair that strategy is, and how it should be banned.
So you decide that the designers made a mistake?
Or did they admit to having made a mistake? I would love to read that.
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N_Faker
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Re: Kill "starving" in Stone Age

Post by N_Faker »

Cappie wrote:So you decide that the designers made a mistake?
Or did they admit to having made a mistake? I would love to read that.
Considering the unending number of complaints about this "starvation" strategy, is it that wrong to call it a "mistake"?
Maybe, design flaw, then?

"Starvation" isn't even a word in the rules, and doesn't originate from the developers. It is purely created by the playerbase, and despite the confirmation of the creator that this is an intended mechanic of the game, some still claim that this "abuses" the game mechanics.
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