Board Game Arena

Very impressed by the BGA implementation of TM - it is attractive and works very well.

But I believe the turn based variation could be improved quite a bit by adding the following setting:

How many points are you willing to give up in exchange for power?

• - Ask me every time (default),
  - 1 pt for 2 power
  - 2 pts for 3 power
  - 3 pts for 4 power
  - 4 pts for 5 power

(If you choose any but the first option you will not be asked!)
("0 pts for 1 power" is always accepted automatically - never asks.)

At the beginning of a game the setting would default to 'ask me every time' for each player, but after getting a few notifications that it was their turn and then discovering that it wasn't really their turn, rather they just had to respond to power/points query, the players would probably change the setting.

I know that the people I play with would really appreciate this improvement.

Thanks.

I think that it would be better if it asked you every time-especially with cultists in the game. I may not want to give a cultist a free advance on a cult track even if I don't lose any vp. I also may want 5 power for 4 points in round 1 or 2, but not in round 5 or 6.

However, I don't know if the game needs to halt until everyone makes the decision on whether or not to take power. I would like it if there were a button to select if you wanted to wait (because what you do on your turn depends on how much power someone else has), but the default option was to continue with your/other players' turns until it was that player's turn to move. In other words, you could take your turn before seeing what players decided to do about power, but you could also choose to wait and see what happens via power. I have no idea how easy/hard that is to implement (but I am fairly certain it is an option based on what I have seen on other sites;)

dremaa wrote:I think that it would be better if it asked you every time-especially with cultists in the game. I may not want to give a cultist a free advance on a cult track even if I don't lose any vp. I also may want 5 power for 4 points in round 1 or 2, but not in round 5 or 6.

With what I was suggesting you would still have the option for it to ask you every time - that would still be the default. Regarding the cultists, there could be an exception (permanently, or as an option to your setting) to always ask you if the other party is a cultist, regardless of your setting.

dremaa wrote:However, I don't know if the game needs to halt until everyone makes the decision on whether or not to take power. I would like it if there were a button to select if you wanted to wait (because what you do on your turn depends on how much power someone else has), but the default option was to continue with your/other players' turns until it was that player's turn to move. In other words, you could take your turn before seeing what players decided to do about power, but you could also choose to wait and see what happens via power. I have no idea how easy/hard that is to implement (but I am fairly certain it is an option based on what I have seen on other sites;)

But then you are changing the game. I was trying to come up with something that doesn't change the game in any way - just the interface.

That's a good addition, but it should be managed for each play separately, and let you activate/deactivate it at any time (when it's your turn). I usually accept a lot of power early on, even for 2-3-4 points, but later in the game there's a good chance I would refuse even 2 pw for 1 VP (especially in the last round).

Tortom,
I would disagree with suggested enhancement simply because it means A LOT of work for developers (i would rather dedicate their effort for implementation TM expansions ) with little benefit to players. Why? See below:
1) first of all this could really benefit only for asynchronic games. In real time games you simply decide that within few seconds without downtime
2) as you grow in TM so you see there is very little space for something like "always" accept mana. One case is mentoned cultists, but other because there are too many factors. Sometimes this game is all about 2-3 points at the endgame and at that point crucial might be accepting always 2mana for 1 VP. In one turn you may need that in other not because you simply take blessing token or receive reward from cults. Basically at the end you spent same amount of time(or more) to control which settings of mana accepting you have in every moment. (We are talking here just 6 turns not 20). Such enhancement would be just for lazy players who actually don't care if they win or not

Regards
Jacek

Jacek,

Regarding your points.

1) Yes, this is just for turn-based games.
2) Not sure I follow you on this, but yes, this is not meant to reduce the amount of thinking or work the player has to do, but rather to allow the player to do that thinking ahead of time (if they want to), rather then having to come back to the game between turns to make the decision. It is just meant to speed the game up - each time you get a notice that it is your turn, it really is your turn!

You say this means that me and my friends are lazy and don't care whether we win.... Well, I admit that, as you note, if the developers are working on this idea then then they are not working on your priorities, but I suggest we let the developers decide what is too much work for them. To your point though, I won't trash talk your ideas just because they might distract the devs from mine.

Tom

I'd rather the base game itself (by fixing the timer issue, especially in turn-based games) than releasing expansions on an already long turn-based game.

Turn-based Terra Mystica is more common in competitive player groups.

What do you mean by timer issue?

that games in Turn-based TM are quite long. big part of this is the power leeching. automating power leeching would make the time much more manageable.

Hi, can someone push this as a suggestion in the bug report tool and post back the link for people to vote for it there?

It would give us a better idea of the quantitative interest about this extra feature for turn based (this would be only for turn based, not for realtime).

Also, this way we won't forget to take it into account when making another round of work on TM for expansions or such