What do you all think of goals in Race for the Galaxy?

[IllusionKnight]

Right now I'm playing Arena, which utilises goals. I can see why people would like it, since instead of your priority solely being building your engine to either mass produce worlds/development tiles or get VP's you have to focus on meeting some of the goal requirements and checking on what your opponent is doing.

However in a game with limited resources, being cards, I feel as if you do not have enough resources to create a good economy/engine as well as go for some goals. In a lot of games this would be fine since having multiple win-cons is a staple of board games but in this game with very limited rounds having a weak economy is a death sentence making the game a lot more luck-based with the Prestige search bonus only being a slight offset to this.

Or maybe I just suck, I dunno . Any thoughts?

[ColShaw]

I personally find the goals a worthwhile addition, as they can actually give a weaker economy or engine a fighting chance. I do think the 4+ Dev goal is a little iffy from a balance perspective, as dev-spam is already so strong in Brink of War that it doesn't need any help.

The limited resources are part of the point of RFTG, I believe. Knowing you have very few turns in which to accomplish your aims, you have to ruthlessly economize your actions and know when to stretch for a given goal or card and when to be conservative. Rhythm is so desperately important to this game.

I can understand why people might not like them, just as with Prestige, but I think they add something to the game.

[spflynn29]

I don't love goals, but I don't mind them. I wish there were a way to not have goals double up on the same ingredients, though. For example, having out the goal for Blue+Brown worlds in the same game as the goal for Production Worlds. Some start worlds will have a much quicker path to reaching those.