They got a skin and they put me in
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What if there was only one monument sheet in the game. Each player would use a color/symbol to mark boxes, but all on the same sheet. The first player to have the majority of boxes ticked would win it, everyone else would have an empty investment. Once build, remove all of the marks/symbols from the monument, and it can be rebuilt again but at a lower point reward.
Is there a way to make this balanced? I like the idea of more competitive building.
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Christian Killoran
United States
Denver
Colorado
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I don't think many players would end up with empty investments at all, as most monuments would be built in a single turn (since they would be half cost.) Since monument winners would pay half cost and other players would not spend workers at all on a monument once won, worker die rolls would become the only thing worth rolling in the first part of the game (or the whole game, depending on the number of players.) Put another way, whoever rolls the most workers wins.
Even if you doubled the cost of building a monument, I think the elimination of a "second place" option would skew the relative worth of worker rolls.
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Bryan Jensen
United States
Layton
Utah
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Bodysnatcher wrote: What if there was only one monument sheet in the game. Each player would use a color/symbol to mark boxes, but all on the same sheet. The first player to have the majority of boxes ticked would win it, everyone else would have an empty investment. Once build, remove all of the marks/symbols from the monument, and it can be rebuilt again but at a lower point reward.
Is there a way to make this balanced? I like the idea of more competitive building.
I don't think this idea would play out all that different than it does now - unless, of course, there were more high-cost monuments in the game than there are, or a limited order of how many monuments are available at a given time to be worked on. A player isn't going to "throw away" people on a monument unless they can get a majority or full completion on one turn -- which is essentially what the race to complete nature of the current scoring mechanism accomplishes. Otherwise someone is going to put workers toward a different monument than an opponent is working on in order to accomplish the same goal.
If there was a "Last Chance" game-type mechanism where last to complete wins (and the monument can't be built again) then players would be forced to use workers toward monuments even when they couldn't win a majority. Of course, doing so could intensify the building-up-cities choice, which I'm not sure would be a plus to incentivize, but who knows? The Developments are the better mechanism for managing the choice over how many/how fast to build cities, IMO.
For my "Iron Age" PnP expansion (okayed by Matt Leacock; pending approval by the publisher) I created some new monuments where the first completion gets fewer points than the rest -- and some with low points but other bonuses granted - to shake up the monument building aspect of the game just like you are trying to do. I also introduce some Developments mechanisms for strengthening other choices like opponent conflict, 1-Good and Coin rolls, and etc. What I didn't want to do is devalue Worker-rolls too greatly which is what I fear your idea might accomplish. Giving other paths to victory was my favored balancing ideal.
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David Valenze
United States
Springfield
Massachusetts
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Iron Age PNP!! Tell us more.
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