Board Game Arena

Starwarrior1128 wrote: ↑22 July 2025, 18:03 Currently, each ocean tile on the board provides a 2M€ placement bonus for any player later placing a tile next to it. But I find it that ocean tiles are placed later in the game and that those spaces next to empty ocean tiles are usually already filled up when you do put down an ocean so you don't get any placement bonus when putting down an ocean. I feel it would be better if you can get the 2M€ placement bonuses when you put down an ocean next to tiles you control and any tile later on. What do you all think?

Yes, I agree. Would make things more intuitive. You would have to rebalance a lot of cards and with all the expansions its far too late for such a change, but it is a nice idea. It will not be a popular idea on here because most people have little imagination and treat the rulebook as a religion text.

So many things are unnecessarily confusing for new players. A better game designer would have not created all these issues. The biggest one for me is we have a stat for income, victory points, and terraforming rating; with 1 TR being just one each of the first 2 stats. You could of streamlined the game so much by eliminating TR altogether. Scratch out anything that gives you TR and instead you get 1 income and 1 VP. There is already so many stats you have to track. Reduce complexity without reducing strategy.

ArchDevious wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:07

Starwarrior1128 wrote: ↑22 July 2025, 18:03 Currently, each ocean tile on the board provides a 2M€ placement bonus for any player later placing a tile next to it. But I find it that ocean tiles are placed later in the game and that those spaces next to empty ocean tiles are usually already filled up when you do put down an ocean so you don't get any placement bonus when putting down an ocean. I feel it would be better if you can get the 2M€ placement bonuses when you put down an ocean next to tiles you control and any tile later on. What do you all think?

Yes, I agree. Would make things more intuitive. You would have to rebalance a lot of cards and with all the expansions its far too late for such a change, but it is a nice idea. It will not be a popular idea on here because most people have little imagination and treat the rulebook as a religion text.

So many things are unnecessarily confusing for new players. A better game designer would have not created all these issues. The biggest one for me is we have a stat for income, victory points, and terraforming rating; with 1 TR being just one each of the first 2 stats. You could of streamlined the game so much by eliminating TR altogether. Scratch out anything that gives you TR and instead you get 1 income and 1 VP. There is already so many stats you have to track. Reduce complexity without reducing strategy.

What issues?

Place any tile next to an ocean, gain a 2 MC rebate. That does not sound confusing to me. I've taught this game to many people who are not advanced gamers. Nobody struggled with this rule.

TR is confusing? Add the TR to the MC production; that's how much money we get. I've never heard of anyone being confused by this.

At the end of the game, TR is one of the 6 categories of scoring.

I've read thousands of posts about this game across multiple different websites, and you might be the first person I've heard who has referred to these as confusing issues.

Don't get me wrong; I have numerous grievances with the rules and the manner in which the game was set up, but my grievances are different from yours.

I agree that generally speaking, ardent fans of the game treat the rulebook like a religious text that must never be modified. This has resulted in a large number of asinine official rulings that essentially amount to nonsense.

But I don't think a refusal to flip-flop the way Ocan rebates work is a good example of "people lacking imagination". From a thematic standpoint, the idea makes sense. Placing an ocean next to a city is something the citizens of the city would likely appreciate. So, granting a rebate makes thematic sense. That's also true for placing a city next to an ocean. That city would be more valuable than one in the middle of nowhere. SO, with regard to cities, I would think the logical approach would be for the rebate to work either way.

But other tiles? Who cares whether a greener y is next to an ocean? Maybe we could think of the greeneries as parkland, which would be nice next to an ocean, but that might be a bit of a reach.

What about other tiles? Why should lava flows or nuclear zone result in a rebate either way? Or mining rights, mining area, etc.

If we started rewriting the rulebook by using our imaginations and also applying logic, we would likely re-write much of it. Much of which I would agree with, some of which I would disagree with, and that might be true for a large number of people. So, I am not even sure how that would play out logistically.

The rulebook has a lot of flaws, but the number one issue with the rulebook is that people don't bother to read it. And/or they don't bother to read the text on the cards.

The vast majority of bug reports are user error resulting from one of the two things I just mentioned, not from lack of clarity in the rulebook.

No, if you understand the game TR vs VP is what makesTM beautiful.

RoyalRook wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:57 No, if you understand the game TR vs VP is what makesTM beautiful.

Apologies to arch-devious if I am misquoting here, but I think arch-devious was saying to still make a TR with a point and an income, but to avoid having it as a third component.

I am still not sure how that would work; it would mean that increasing the temperature would add +1 to the MC income, and +1 to a newly created category of "points from TR", which defeats the purpose of eliminating TR as a category.

Milestones, awards, corps etc, etc......

FrankJones wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 21:55

RoyalRook wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:57 No, if you understand the game TR vs VP is what makesTM beautiful.

Apologies to arch-devious if I am misquoting here, but I think arch-devious was saying to still make a TR with a point and an income, but to avoid having it as a third component.

I am still not sure how that would work; it would mean that increasing the temperature would add +1 to the MC income, and +1 to a newly created category of "points from TR", which defeats the purpose of eliminating TR as a category.

No newly created category. The old category: victory points. Release of inert gases? Gain 2 MC income and 2 VP. Repeating what I said before it's far too late to make changes like this, but would of made the game easier to learn, for sure

ArchDevious wrote: ↑28 July 2025, 04:54

FrankJones wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 21:55

RoyalRook wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:57 No, if you understand the game TR vs VP is what makesTM beautiful.

Apologies to arch-devious if I am misquoting here, but I think arch-devious was saying to still make a TR with a point and an income, but to avoid having it as a third component.

I am still not sure how that would work; it would mean that increasing the temperature would add +1 to the MC income, and +1 to a newly created category of "points from TR", which defeats the purpose of eliminating TR as a category.

No newly created category. The old category: victory points. Release of inert gases? Gain 2 MC income and 2 VP. Repeating what I said before it's far too late to make changes like this, but would of made the game easier to learn, for sure

Understood, but the entire game is eventually scored by comparing victory point totals.
So, during the game, these VPs from terraforming would need a separate category, and likewise at the end game screen.

In other words, let's say I have real-time scoring off. Without a separate scoring category of "VP from Terraforming", how would anyone know what the score is? How would we know how many such VPs anyone has?

The answer to that very question is, "by using the TR track", right ?

FrankJones wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:54 TR is confusing? Add the TR to the MC production; that's how much money we get. I've never heard of anyone being confused by this.

Tbf I've introduced many people to the game IRL and they pretty consistently find this confusing. (Not that I'm saying it should be changed, just that it is confusing to new players)

advanced-ecosystems wrote: ↑28 July 2025, 12:51

FrankJones wrote: ↑27 July 2025, 20:54 TR is confusing? Add the TR to the MC production; that's how much money we get. I've never heard of anyone being confused by this.

Tbf I've introduced many people to the game IRL and they pretty consistently find this confusing. (Not that I'm saying it should be changed, just that it is confusing to new players)

For a game played by this many people, I can understand that different gaming groups will find different things confusing.

Maybe it depends on how we define terms. To me, "confusing" means I need to explain it more than once.

"Here is your TR tracker cube, which we move around the perimeter of the board as you gain TR throughout the game. During the production phase, add this number to your MC production number to determine how much money you get. If your TR is 32 and your MC production is 8, you gain 40 MC during the production phase." And, there is iconography on the player mat which shows the TR symbol with an addition symbol next to the MC production area of the mat.

I am having a difficult time envisioning why that would need to be explained more than once, but, that falls back to my first sentence of this post.

advanced-ecosystems wrote: ↑28 July 2025, 12:51
Tbf I've introduced many people to the game IRL and they pretty consistently find this confusing. (Not that I'm saying it should be changed, just that it is confusing to new players)

The problem with changing it is mostly a balance issue. TR and MC are separate for a reason because of balancing the value of pure money that doesn't score versus points that produce money. Sponsors would have a difficult time being balanced if it gave 2 TR rather than 2 MC prod. A lot of the cheap cards are balanced around not inherently producing points but allowing players flexibility in scoring paths later and the distinction between MC and TR is important for that reason.

Not that altering this isn't possible, it could certainly be done and help with confusion, but it requires a complete and massive overhaul of the entire game. There are folks interested in that sort of thing, the rebalancing crew from web app certainly come to mind.