I was pleased to see that there can be implemented official or semi-official variants for the games: Puerto Rico for example has a variant to balance the cost of some buildings and the starting money.
I believe that Caylus deserves his own variant too: for example in the previous editions of the game the lawyer granted four victory points instead of three, but above all there's the issue of balancing the third row of the royal favours.
The row of the resources is often recognized as the weakest of all: it can be useful but rarely as first choice. I don't think there's a general consensus on the best way to improve the royal favours of the third row, but this discussion can serve as a starting point, and my personal suggestion is the following (with official rules in parenthesis):
1) one food or one wood (instead of one food )
2) one stone or one cloth (instead of one wood or one stone)
3) exchange one resource for two that aren't gold (instead of one cloth)
4) exchange two resources for three that aren't gold (instead of the exchange of one resource for two that aren't gold)
5) one gold (same as always)
This way the net amount of resources gained would still be one for every step, but there would be much more flexibility and I think that advancing in such a track could be a good strategic alternative to the ownership of the best production buidings.
What do you think?
I believe that Caylus deserves his own variant too: for example in the previous editions of the game the lawyer granted four victory points instead of three, but above all there's the issue of balancing the third row of the royal favours.
The row of the resources is often recognized as the weakest of all: it can be useful but rarely as first choice. I don't think there's a general consensus on the best way to improve the royal favours of the third row, but this discussion can serve as a starting point, and my personal suggestion is the following (with official rules in parenthesis):
1) one food or one wood (instead of one food )
2) one stone or one cloth (instead of one wood or one stone)
3) exchange one resource for two that aren't gold (instead of one cloth)
4) exchange two resources for three that aren't gold (instead of the exchange of one resource for two that aren't gold)
5) one gold (same as always)
This way the net amount of resources gained would still be one for every step, but there would be much more flexibility and I think that advancing in such a track could be a good strategic alternative to the ownership of the best production buidings.
What do you think?