TheRedMachine wrote: ↑27 July 2020, 13:20
PatrickoftheIsles wrote: ↑29 June 2020, 17:04
TheRedMachine wrote: ↑29 June 2020, 14:26
Didn't notice those violations yet. Are they fixed already?
No, the rules haven't been changed on this site. I think most of us have gotten used to playing with this variant, but it still seems it would be better to make the small corrections so we are playing officially.
The rule that impacts the game is that officially one is not suppose to be permitted to return a train to the factory until all four slots are filled, rather than just three. So if I want to turn my #1 train into the engineer-scoring factory, on this site I can do that using the "buy train and factory" spot even if I do not have the other train spot filled on that line. That makes that maneuver possible a round earlier in some cases, and changes the timing.
Ah, I see. This bug can be fixed with no effort. The developers just have to merge the patch I created recently. Could you tell me what the second bug is?
Hey, it's very thoughtful of you to work on this. This is my favorite game of all time, and it's the only one I would notice these small rules issues.
The second discrepancy is a bit more complex and rare in regular gameplay.
The general principle is that if a player is doing something that another player could do, they must complete it fully or it is not a legal play. But if doing something only the player can do, a partial fulfillment is allowed. That's why a "brown track plus five points" engineer cannot be activated for the points only without the track movement when it is on the main board, but can legally be activated in that way when owned as a personal engineer. So that's all good and correct.
The specific abnormality concerns the bonus tile that allows one to take one of the five bonus power cards. Those bonus power cards are public and competitive, so should not be legally selected if not fully fulfilled. Three of those bonus power cards (the blank-reverse 9-train, the engineer #1 plus a ruble, and the black worker) will always be possible. However, the other two involve industry movement, so should not be possible if the player had reached the end of the track. On this site it is possible to select those cards and skip the industry movement.
How might this affect strategy? If a player has no industry movements remaining, they can still currently on this site select the "buy engineer and two industry movement" bonus power card, usually in order to deprive a competitor of a high-scoring engineer currently on the market, but the official rules would not allow this to occur.