Board Game Arena

Posted: **05 July 2021, 13:47**

Castles of Burgundy is a nice opportunity for me to experience the perspective of playing a game for the first time on BGA that I hadn't played in person. I viewed a comprehensive rules video before starting a game, and even read some basic strategy ideas on BGG. However, I was not prepared for the choice of seven different starting board options when configuring a game.

I play a lot of games that have different setup options, so I can guess at the reasons why there might be so many in this game. But from the perspective of a new player, I don't actually have any way of figuring out what some of the options are without leaving BGA, or why they are possible. For example, how would a new player find out what "Board 8" is or why one of the options is to exclude it?

I'd propose that if a variant that is not in the official rules is implemented (as with most of these board options), a brief summary of their meaning and purpose should be provided or linked to so that newer players can start to understand the choices they are making when setting up a game.

Posted: **05 July 2021, 19:25**

For a beginner, there is the beginner setup: random, board 1 or board 2.

In the real boardgame, beginner should start with board 1 where the initial castle is placed in the middle.
Otherwise, there single board 2 to 9 (in first edition)... then is not possible to have an identical board for all players (except board 1).
In theses board, we choose where to put our initial castle.
The board 8 is a special board where here is an area of 8 beige tiles... which give a lot of points but is also very hard to fill up.

Classical setup: each player have a choice between two boards (including the 8 one)
I don't know too much the change between the first edition of the 2019 edition.

Posted: **05 July 2021, 19:48**

Board 8 is considered overpowered in competitive play; it has many small zones easily filled early, as well as the large building zone as mentioned. In theory that combination of zone sizes leads to higher scores, and that is seen in practice as well - it has been shown that the highest average scores by far are achieved on that board, in both online play statistics and for stats kept by tournament organizers.

Posted: **05 July 2021, 22:56**

Hi,

While I was writing the following paragraph:

All these informations (and many more) are available in the wiki game help page. This page is available for all games (except when it has never been created) at the bottom of every game in progress (How to play tab), and in the How to play section (you must click the Show more button) of the game overview page.

... I noticed that there was a separate wiki for each language! So without noticing it, I had created this help page only on the french wiki, and it wasn't available from pages displayed in another language. (Which I think is a shame, by the way, because I think very few players who have chosen another language than english know that when the website displays (in their language) "Game help: This page has not been found. Create this page", usually this page does exist, but in english.)

So I just copied the help page on the english wiki, but it seems that it is not yet imported in the main website pages (game overview page and games in progress). So right know you can see it directly on the wiki.
Edit: ok, it is now imported in the main website pages

Posted: **06 July 2021, 01:02**

fafa-fr wrote: ↑05 July 2021, 22:56 So without noticing it, I had created this help page only on the french wiki, and it wasn't available from pages displayed in another language.

Ah, wonderful! That's just what I was thinking ought to be created! Of course players could look it up on BGG or another site, but I think it's always good to have the basic information here on BGA. So thanks for taking the time!

Posted: **06 July 2021, 07:59**

fafa-fr wrote: ↑05 July 2021, 22:56 ... I noticed that there was a separate wiki for each language! So without noticing it, I had created this help page only on the french wiki, and it wasn't available from pages displayed in another language. (Which I think is a shame, by the way, because I think very few players who have chosen another language than english know that when the website displays (in their language) "Game help: This page has not been found. Create this page", usually this page does exist, but in english.)

Quick explanation here: the general principle for the wiki is the same than for text in games. The source text is English, and if there has been no translation (ie if the specific language wiki page is empty) we display the English wiki page.

About options, I would suggest using the "description" field for the option values when defining the game options. The description will be displayed directly under the option when the matching value is selected, which makes the option meaning immediately available to the player when it's not self explanatory.

Code: Select all

'description' => totranslate('this option does X')

Posted: **06 July 2021, 11:22**

Ok, thanks for the explanations. I read the doc page about game options a long time ago (I re-read parts of it since then, but not this bit), so I had forgotten the description field.

Posted: **06 July 2021, 11:48**

fafa-fr wrote: ↑06 July 2021, 11:22 Ok, thanks for the explanations. I read the doc page about game options a long time ago (I re-read parts of it since then, but not this bit), so I had forgotten the description field.

Probably it was even added since then, I think it's from last year or so

Posted: **06 July 2021, 13:47**

Een wrote: ↑06 July 2021, 11:48
fafa-fr wrote: ↑06 July 2021, 11:22 Ok, thanks for the explanations. I read the doc page about game options a long time ago (I re-read parts of it since then, but not this bit), so I had forgotten the description field.
Probably it was even added since then, I think it's from last year or so

Oh ok. Two or three months ago, I checked all the recent changes in the Studio doc pages from the last few months, but I think I didn't go that far in history.

Posted: **06 July 2021, 21:01**

flolem wrote: ↑05 July 2021, 19:25The board 8 is a special board where here is an area of 8 beige tiles...

Where can I see all the boards? In http://www.fwtwr.com/fwtwr/cob/boards.asp, board #8 does not have a big beige area, board #2 does, but that seems to be board #10 in BGA, at least it was in the last game I played.

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