Board Game Arena

I will start by saying I have read all the BGG threads, but I just bought the game. Can someone tell me why the Moles now get awarded 6 VP's per tunnel in a 4 player game? It seems like alot, but I have no experience to compare it to. Does that apply only when they tunnel and build, or to tunnel "without building" as well? Thanks!

I don’t remember where I read it, but they are using BGA to test balancing changes for the reprint; tunneling is proposed to change from a flat four points, to players plus two points. I assume it’s due to the expectation that it gets harder to use with more players; but in the early beta stage, where half the players aren’t really familiar yet; it does seem very strong.

I would like to see some rework on moles' tunnels because it feels ridiculous that moles can score like 100 pts or more from their passive. A moles' player gameplan has almost no thinking. It is based on getting a high tools income and slowly but steadily abuse it via tunnels. Moles, unlike any other faction, don't care about which competency tile they should take at certains points in the game. They can grab the tool+discipline step tile and then maybe the edge scoring tile (at some point) and that is about fine. They don't really need to worry all that much about upgrading to guilds and then to schools. They can just abuse the 6 pts (in a 4-player game) passive.

I think that you can't abuse it to those levels of 100 or more pts in evey single game, meaning that in a "bad" moles game you might score something like around 60-70 pts from it, but it is still remarkable, because getting those 60-70 pts is not even achievable for some other faction even if they get 3 pts-scoring innovations (like 3*18 pts ones).

I don't think that moles should be nerfed to the ground, that is not my point. I would like to see some change though. I was thinking that maybe they should get those fat pts only if they they build a workshop when tunneling or, if that's too brutal to of a nerf to them, to change their passive to like a flat 6 pts in every player count, but instead of 6 pts for every tunnel they make, they could be getting 1/3 of the full passive (meaning, 2 pts) if they just terraform a hex via tunnel, but get the full pts reward (6 pts) if they build on that hex.

That seems to me like a more fair approach than their current passive, although it might not be the best solution to the problem. I would like to know what other players think about moles, if they are too strong when they are strong, or too weak when they are weak, and hopefully change moles to something that's more balanced and not that simple-minded when it comes to their gameplan.