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It occurred to me that the following can happen (in Agora mode, and in exceptional circumstances):

Setup: choosing the wonders:
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First player chooses the wonder Knossos and places an influence token in the Agora to "Play the next turn if you play a Conspirator"
(The rest of the setup doesn't matter)

First turn:
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Now suppose a card structure in Age 1 where 3 Conspirators and 1 Politician are immediately available.
First player recruits successively the 3 Conspirators and places 3 influence tokens in the Agora. One of the Decree won must be the blue one "When determining the number of Senate actions you have, add 2 to the total number of Blue cards you have".
At this point, 4 Chambers are controlled.
Then, First Player recruits the Politician and, if it's white influence section is the right one, First Player can places 2 influence tokens in the 2 remaining Chambers.
Political Supremacy achieved ^^
(the total recruitment cost is 0+1+2+3 which fits the 7 gold at the start).


Even if this precise scenario won't happen easily, as a game designer myself, I can't imagine that the creators didn't realize this, and wouldn't fix this by tweaking the Wonders or the Decrees. To me, this is a very simple illustration that Agora is broken (in the "competitive" sense). I even come to think the "+2 Blue Decree" (and maybe also the black one) should be removed from the game.

The hardcore Agora players get very tetchy when you show them that the political wins are broken

Not all wins are broken, of course

"A vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire" ^^

It is super unlikely (more likely, you'll get a big advantage as first player, getting knosos) - but yes, there is a chance of insta win a game
That is also why knosos is one of the strongest wonders in game.

PS: maybe someone could calculate how likely that is ?

Lower than 0.09%...

This is very simplified math and presumes:

- 25% chance at the wonder with both expansion and opponent taking the wonder if they get the choice
- 37.5% chance having the decree token needed (6 in 16 chance)
- 41.3% chance having three or more conspiracies in the pick of 5 from 13 for age I
- 2.35% chance of having 4 of the 5 required cards in a pick of 8 cards (since taking 3 cards will likely reveal another)

This doesn't take into account the sectors needed and if you presume an extra card is not revealed from taking the 3 cards, this drops to 1.23%

This in turn drop the overall chance to < 0.048% which is likely more accurate but in reality it's probably lower still

I haven't touched agora for a long time so hopefully I remember the number of cards etc right!

... let me try to napkin math it too [Edit it was more like sheet of paper math, but it was fun^^]
for it to be a first move win you need open "blackReplay" and open "+2blue", 3 black in age 1, all of them in row 1 and a white which doesnt touch the open +2blue or blackReplay; also, obv. you need to be first and get knossos.
Note: some exception to this is, trying a hidden token and getting blackReplay and then trying another hidden token and getting +2blue. (because if you get knossos and got a white on first row, you wont try to search for black replay, since it is 1/13); And last plausible scenario is that you get open blackReplay and got lucky with one of the 2 hidden tokens, getting +2blue.

getting knossos is 25% (4/16) - but you might lose artemis, julia and/or divine theater for it.

getting four diplomats in first row:
(5/25*4/24*3/23*2/22)*"times the possible combinations of 4 diplomats and 3 non diplomats"(which is 17) = 17/2530 [neglected here the probability of having all 5 dipl. in row 1]

for sakes of simplification, lets say youd need 1 centre white and 3 black, out of the 4 visible:
[(3*6*5*4)/(13*12*11*10)]*4=3/143*4=12/143

getting blackReplay open [3/16] * getting +2blue open or one of the 2 hidden [4/15]

and all in all it would aprox. (with the simplifications) be 4/16*17/2530*12/143*3/16*4/15=[7.048*10^(-4)]% = 0.0007048% -> less than 1 to 100k to win with first move.
It is however way more likely to get a great boost with knossos as first player, which would be far more likely than 1/100000.

Yeah, I'm getting sick of broken games with the black and blue decrees, plus the Steal wonder god and Steal Wonder Conspiracy.

All those cards lead to automatic play, where luck play a huge factor. The more I play this game, the less "well-design and balanced' I think it is. I see the same moves repeated over and over, it becomes quickly very boring...

Pistolero wrote: ↑19 August 2022, 12:56 Yeah, I'm getting sick of broken games with the black and blue decrees, plus the Steal wonder god and Steal Wonder Conspiracy.

All those cards lead to automatic play, where luck play a huge factor. The more I play this game, the less "well-design and balanced' I think it is. I see the same moves repeated over and over, it becomes quickly very boring...

xDD sounds salty. maybe try to play good in vanilla, then good in agora, then good with both ? Think that would probably be the path to go, to play a little better and see ways to get an out of situations and even make pressure in other ways

Já aconteceu de um jogador ganhou e o outro nao jogou nenhuma partida. Tem até uma imagem mostrando e por isso há uma sugestão de mudança na regra. Está numa expansão de fãs no site da ludopedia. Uma expansão muito boa para print and play.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=315621689

just a real example that illustrates how a game is destroyed by those decrees.