Starvation strategy abusers

[Savage Lizard]

I just feel like the penalty should be more severe so intentionally starving your people isn't a valid strategy. Seems contrary to the spirit of the game/theme. No tribe ever thinks the best way for their tribe to thrive is to starve everybody.

[Meeplelowda]

I just feel like the penalty should be more severe so intentionally starving your people isn't a valid strategy.

Perhaps this is a valid critique of the game design, but BGA follows the official rules of games, so unless a new edition comes out that modifies the penalty we are stuck with it.

[MoiMagnus]

I just feel like the penalty should be more severe so intentionally starving your people isn't a valid strategy.

Perhaps this is a valid critique of the game design, but BGA follows the official rules of games, so unless a new edition comes out that modifies the penalty we are stuck with it.

Official approval is usually enough for variant to be added to BGA. "Official" can be for example an approval from one of the original designers. Some designers are quite responsive on the boardgamegeek forum associated to their game, which helped a few variants to be implemented for some games. Though in other cases the author fundamentally disagreed with the variant.

However, in the case of the Starvation strategy, I'd say it's unlikely to have such a variant approved:

rkonigsberg on BGG
I personally thought this was a mistake: that surely the starvation tactic was not intended by the designer. So sure in fact that I wrote to the publishing company 3 months ago. I was wrong: while it wasn't an initially designed facet of play, they discovered and allowed it before publication.

thank you very much for your question.
I do not know if the strategy was intentionally added in the first place, I assume it was not.

But we were aware of that strategy before we released the game. If I remember correctly, what the designer Bernd told me was: one of the first players to play with that strategy was our Czech partner
It could have been something that we could have cut out, if we didn’t like it.

But we did like it gameplay wise. Thematically it’s rather weird. But we hoped, that „normal“ players do not play like this anyways, but it offers another strategy for „pros“. But we do not think, that this strategy is overpowered.

To settle your discussion with your friend: it was intentional

[Meeplelowda]

In an ideal world, this would settle the matter and people would move on. But this world is far from ideal....

[Wreckage]

I enjoy playing the starvation strategy . I haven't played with the expansion, so I can only comment on regular 2, 3, and 4 player games, and I like 4p games the best. I never use starvation in 2 player games because it is really inferior, and will usually lose. It is much stronger in 4 player games.

The optimal starting position is 3rd, because after the first player takes the agriculture spot, and the second player takes the tool spot, then the third player can take the meeple hut without tipping anyone off about the strategy. Then second turn getting the meeple hut is likely again, then third turn you can take meeple hut a third time and it shows what you are doing, but with 8 meeple you are fine if they start blocking now.

Third starting position is also strong because the game is likely to end in 11 rounds, giving you the first choice in the last round which can be a game winner.

Trying to starve while starting in any other position is not as good. If you are the first player, starving will almost certainly fail, as it's unlikely you will multiply meeple very fast.

If two players try to use starvation, they will probably both lose to the other 2 players. It's only a good strategy if a single player is using it. If 2 players are doing it, and one is in front of the other, the second one should abandon this strategy right away.

If someone is using starvation, besides blocking the meeple hut, don't let them get the building and meeple multiplier cards for points.

When all 4 players get an item, and the last couple choices are agriculture or tool, take the tool. The tool is nearly as good for you and the agriculture is completely worthless to them.

At about round 9 or 10, blocking the meeple hut (or just taking it) is not a very strong play, so forget about blocking it by then unless you think that player is winning and is strong in meeple multiplier cards.

In the early rounds, the starver is using 2 meeple on the meeple hut, so they are getting fewer other items than other players. In the later rounds they are getting more items than anyone else. Each round the game continues is good for a starver, so if you let the game go 14 rounds the starver will win. If the game ends early, the starver is way behind, so you could focus on one building stack and make sure the game ends sooner.

Even if you are not planning to starve, if you need to gain 5 food to feed your meeple on any turn, consider using your meeple somewhere else instead of gaining those 5 food. Because that's 10 dice pips of food which is equal to 10 points. You are using your meeple but not improving your future position.

This can be a very fun strategy indeed. I once grabbed all 7 spaces of wood first play for 3 rounds in a row mid to late game. Needless to say, I didn't need 25+ wood, but wood was needed for every building that was showing, and cornering the market on buildings was a lot of fun. When I hogged the wood the second time, I didn't buy any buildings because I knew I could block wood again since I would be first player the next round. I did eventually get to use all that wood. What made it even more fun was all the other players commenting that I clearly didn't know how to play, and I was making bad decisions, and then won by a huge margin.

That is when starving goes well, but it can be blocked and it loses regularly too. If I am first player, I am almost assuredly going to take agriculture, because it's a better choice than trying to starve.

[FSKFSK]

I don't understand why there can't be a houserule option for increasing the starvation penalty. Add the option and see how popular it is. I predict a houserule for increasing the starvation penalty would be played in more than 50% of games.

The reason starvation strategy is harmful is that (in 4p) the starvation player wins unless the other 3 players gang up on him. If one player chooses starvation strategy, it forces the other 3 players to play in a certain way or the starvation strategy player wins easily. The other 3 players have to drill one pile of huts to end the game early, and deny the starvation player the breeding hut.

[Meeplelowda]

I don't understand why there can't be a houserule option

Because rule variants have to published by, or approved by, the rights holder for the game. The fact that this was an intentional design choice is discussed above, but feel free to lobby them to approve this variant.

[FSKFSK]

Does the contract with the rights holder really say that? "Game must follow official rules without variation?" Or is that just a policy BGA follows?

Other games on BGA have houserule options. Castles of Burgundy has a houserule option to eliminate board 8, because it's generally accepted to be unbalanced and give too big of an advantage. No Thanks and For Sale have an option for visible chips, even though the official rules don't say that.

[RicardoRix]

Does the contract with the rights holder really say that? "Game must follow official rules without variation?" Or is that just a policy BGA follows?

Other games on BGA have houserule options. Castles of Burgundy has a houserule option to eliminate board 8, because it's generally accepted to be unbalanced and give too big of an advantage. No Thanks and For Sale have an option for visible chips, even though the official rules don't say that.

The visible chips thing is just because it can deduced, playing turn-based games means that tracking chips becomes annoying. So it's not really breaking the rules, just providing some logical sense to the situation. Given it is an option means players can play with or without it depending upon their preference. Normally even then the publisher needs to agree with any rule changes. If you like then you need to do the same, petition the game developer / publishers of Stone Age - see what they say.

[MoiMagnus]

Does the contract with the rights holder really say that? "Game must follow official rules without variation?" Or is that just a policy BGA follows?

It's not "official rules", it's "approved rules". I'm not sure if there was an actual issue early in the life of BGA to make them take this policy, but they follow the policy that any change that is not a bug fix (so major interface changes, balance changes, etc) have to be approved by the official right owners. It's probably even part of the contract that allow them to put those games on BGA.

In the best case, some of the designers are actually involved on BGA, making it pretty easy to get any houserule approved.
In other cases, that means that some willing developer has to work to implement the change and then take the time to contact the game's representatives (I'm not sure how it works exactly) to have the new version accepted.

Often, the reasons why the houserule is not implemented is the lack of willing developer to work on it, that's where legitimacy of the request come into play: if you have some good proof that this houserule is seriously considered by the original designer of the game or has massive support from the BGA community (i.e a lot of votes on the feature request on the bug report page), a willing developer that knows nothing about the game and is just feeling generous with his time to help on games that have no active developer might pick up the issue.

And sometimes, the reason is that the answer from the publisher is simply "no".