City of the Big Shoulders now in Beta

[ggohierroy]

The game was pushed to beta this morning!

For those who know nothing about the game, I strongly encourage you trying it. It's obviously one of my favorite games.

BGG link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/214 ... -shoulders

In City of the Big Shoulders players take on the roles of entrepreneurs and investors seeking to rebuild Chicago into a city fit for the world stage. In this unique merger of 18xx-style stock manipulation mechanics with euro-style gameplay, players start companies, trade in shares, hire employees, equip their factories, produce goods and sell them to be delivered to homes across the midwest.

This has been about two months of hard work to adapt the game. Thanks to Raymond and Parallel Games for authorizing the adaptation to be made and for providing all the assets for the game.

I'll be monitoring for bugs and will read your suggestions on how to improve the game. It's been very stable for the past month in Alpha. I hope you'll enjoy this adaptation.

Link to the game: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... gshoulders
Please submit bug and suggestions here: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs

[Yaps]

Really great work on this one! I am thrilled this is now available to the community!

[ymdv]

I was so happy to try this game. I arrange 3 more friends and it was good.
not the best graphic but you just imitate the real game.

On the 2nd game with other people I understood the problem. A problem that killed the game for me -
You can buy someone else share, even more then one, and then at the next turn of the same round sell it and lower their price.
you can, and actually must do it for each and every company and just lower prices, likewise other players will lower yours.
Other games fix that problem:
a.when buy from the bank the price goes up.
b. if you buy something you can't sell it at the same turn
c.only the president sell will lower the price -
There are solutions...but not here.

YOU WILL HAVE NO PLAYERS FOR THE GAME WITHOUT FIXING THAT.
PLEASE DO, IT'S A GREAT GAME WITHOUT THIS BUG!

[ggohierroy]

I was so happy to try this game. I arrange 3 more friends and it was good.
not the best graphic but you just imitate the real game.

On the 2nd game with other people I understood the problem. A problem that killed the game for me -
You can buy someone else share, even more then one, and then at the next turn of the same round sell it and lower their price.
you can, and actually must do it for each and every company and just lower prices, likewise other players will lower yours.
Other games fix that problem:
a.when buy from the bank the price goes up.
b. if you buy something you can't sell it at the same turn
c.only the president sell will lower the price -
There are solutions...but not here.

YOU WILL HAVE NO PLAYERS FOR THE GAME WITHOUT FIXING THAT.
PLEASE DO, IT'S A GREAT GAME WITHOUT THIS BUG!

What are you talking about? These are the rules of the game and a perfectly valid strategy. It has been faithfully adapted. If there is an actual bug, then please submit it here: https://boardgamearena.com/bugs?game=1193. Thank you!

[nairobiny]

There's some discussion of this strategy over on BGG. It's not a bug.

[Danwarr]

Any plans to add the expansion companies at some point?

[Ordman]

Any thoughts on a way to view if there are resource spaces located under the automation tokens?

Once you buy a company and the automation tokens are added and you lose the ability to know what is an empty resource space or one that has an additional resource located underneath it. Maybe color code the square or provide a popout that states whether or not if there is a resource available.

One other small item that would be helpful to color blind people like me is to have the color of the resource cubes in a call out box when you hover over them?

[golux13]

This isn't strictly a bug, but there are some features missing from the implementation that make it very hard to play:

1: The usual eye icon that magnifies a portion of the board. There are a lot of places on the main board where things are pretty small. It would be very helpful to be able to examine them more closely.

2: Tool tips on the factory resource requirements. The game is not color-blind friendly to begin with, and the tool tips to identify the resource cubes in the supply chain and Haymarket are useful, but it can be difficult to distinguish what the factories need. A simple tool tip that pops up with "Requires 1 coal (black) and 1 livestock (pink)" or whatever would be immensely helpful.

2a: Somewhat more helpful would be to implement color-blind friendly changes to the cubes and the factory requirements - such as by superimposing a C, W, L, or S on coal, wood, livestock, and steel, respectively.

The game's great, and the implementation seems solid, but it's harder to play without these features.

Thanks!

[Eleon]

I have enjoyed playing this game in real life, and it is interesting.

I have to agree with the above posters about needing to be able to see "under" all of the icons. While you can download a copy of the rules and all of the board to reference them, that is a major pain.

The one small flaw in the game I have seen is not all of the tiles you can place on your row as actions are equal. Some will be selected every turn for the entire game and others will never be used. I have seen games won and lost by just bad luck drawing these tiles. It takes a bit of the skill out of the game, when a lucky player will have a lot more cash available to buy stock because they get the "must have" actions on their rows.

[jairo_tx]

1: The usual eye icon that magnifies a portion of the board. There are a lot of places on the main board where things are pretty small. It would be very helpful to be able to examine them more closely.

I believe that a kind of zoom could be a solution for the icons without change the original art, maybe in the same box that explain the icon.