Brian Spieles
United States
West Carrollton
Ohio
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I've been interested in acquiring Age of Steam or Steam for some time now, but I have a few questions for you Age of Steam fans. It seems to me that most of the players who prefer AoS are those who played it prior to the release of Steam. I'm curious as to how many of you who now consider AoS to be your favorite of the AoS/Steam/Railroad Tycoon set, actually played Steam a significant number of times before ever playing AoS? If this applies to you, I'd be interested to hear what aspects of the game you found more appealing in comparison to Steam. I ask this after playing Steam last night for the first time and thoroughly enjoying the experience.
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Eric Flood
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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Celebros wrote: I've been interested in acquiring Age of Steam or Steam for some time now, but I have a few questions for you Age of Steam fans. It seems to me that most of the players who prefer AoS are those who played it prior to the release of Steam. I'm curious as to how many of you who now consider AoS to be your favorite of the AoS/Steam/Railroad Tycoon set, actually played Steam a significant number of times before ever playing AoS? If this applies to you, I'd be interested to hear what aspects of the game you found more appealing in comparison to Steam. I ask this after playing Steam last night for the first time and thoroughly enjoying the experience.
While I don't fall into your category, here is my history:
I bought RRT without having played it or having any idea about it prior. I came from having played only Settlers/Puerto Rico/Ticket to Ride. I loved RRT, and proceeded to play it many times.
Eventually, I found AoS. I loved it. I loved RRT, but I loved each in different ways that I found hard to put into words. At some point, Railways of Europe was released. I played it - and hated it (I probably would have loved it if I hadn't played either RRT or AoS prior, but would eventually have reached the same conclusion). It completely shattered my worldview.
When I played Steam, I had the same reaction.
Ultimately, RRT is great for a light, constructive, fun game. AoS is great for a tight, competitive, strategic game. Both Steam and the "tighter" RRT maps fall somewhere in-between, fulfilling the worst of both worlds for me. I can understand why new players enjoy this, but I believe the goals of each of the other branches are much more clear and far less muddled.
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Wystan Benbow
United States
Stoneham
Massachusetts
Blazars are a special type of active galaxy that indirectly pay for my boardgame habit
Life is good!
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Played AoS long before Steam.
I like both, but find Steam easier to teach with the basic rules & a bit less prone to AP. I think Age of Steam is the more rewarding game.
Railroad Tycoon is perhaps the most fun of the 3, but that is not to say the most rewarding experience. Not sure that makes any sense, but thought I'd throw it out there.
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Medievalbanquet
United States
Wellesley
Massachusetts
And if you never have, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
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Age of Steam.
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Brian Spieles
United States
West Carrollton
Ohio
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I appreciate the replies, but I know that most everyone on the AoS forum prefers AoS. I'm more interested in why someone with no AoS experience, but enjoys Steam would end up with AoS as their favorite of the two. I have to imagine there are some players who since 2009 learned to play Steam first and really loved the game(no AoS experience), but have since played and come to favor AoS as their game of choice. I'd be interested to hear whether or not something in Steam left them unsatisfied or if they simply found AoS to be a more enjoyable gaming experience.
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All right, you got your man.
I played Steam before playing AoS. Steam had just come out, AoS was out of print, and I was eager to finally give this game and its fabled brutality a go. I spent the entire game in my own little corner of SE Germany delivering cubes on my loopy network to my heart's content. I never felt strapped for cash. What's the big deal?
I had a chance to try AoS some time later. My opponents assured that they'd give me an one-time emergency loan if I couldn't pay my debts. Though I could see that such an occurrence is a possibility, given that one has to make all financial plans at the start of each turn, I made it through my first game of AoS without having to resort to the kindness of strangers. This was a significantly more challenging game, the turn order auction in particular.
With more plays of AoS on various maps, I became convinced that the economic system in AoS is more formidable than the one in Steam. This is attractive to me. I like games that want me to hurt.
Steam is a fine game, and I'm interested in trying the base game without the auctions, but it's steeped with the euro sense of abundant construction: You build big, grand things, and strive to make the most points. In AoS, you often just strive to survive. That's the key difference. If I want a fun-time, feel-good, grow-big-and-profit train game, I'll play Railroad Tycoon. If I want to play a real game, I'll play AoS.
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Jack Neal
United States
Madison
Ohio
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phunlvr wrote:
Played AoS long before Steam.
I like both, but find Steam easier to teach with the basic rules & a bit less prone to AP. I think Age of Steam is the more rewarding game.
Railroad Tycoon is perhaps the most fun of the 3, but that is not to say the most rewarding experience. Not sure that makes any sense, but thought I'd throw it out there.
+1
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Brian Spieles
United States
West Carrollton
Ohio
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I think that helps. During my play of Steam, money did seem a bit easy to come by. I can see where a bit more tension would heighten the experience. My only concern now is how often I would be able to get AoS to the table vs. Steam.
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Bryan Mosher
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
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Celebros wrote: My only concern now is how often I would be able to get AoS to the table Oh, good god, tell me about it. Welcome to Barbados!
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Alex P
France
Paris
Ile-de-France
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I've been able to to get it to the table quite a few times recently. But, then again, I have a weekly gaming group that is filled with medium to hard-core gamers. Of course, that is my own doing - gotta cultivate to get a good group!
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Breno K.
Brazil
BrasÃlia
Distrito Federal
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Played RRT, liked it but thought the game should be meatier
Then I Played steam, and disliked the overall design. It seemed poorly developed and clunky.
Then finally, played AoS and fell in love with it.
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Brian Spieles
United States
West Carrollton
Ohio
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I'm just curious how Steam could be "poorly developed and clunky," when it was designed as the simpler, streamlined version of AoS (and uses the same basic system)?
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Will rate 10 for Cash
Belgium
BRUSSELS
Saint - Gilles
'Accepting cash stuffed brown envelopes since 1980'
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I found the good delivery action just sucks the tension out of the game. When I played aos I couldn't go back to steam - it just felt flaccid.
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Stephen Smith
United States
Columbus
Mississippi
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Celebros wrote: I'm just curious how Steam could be "poorly developed and clunky," when it was designed as the simpler, streamlined version of AoS (and uses the same basic system)?
The original AoS apparently went through some notable development by Winsome games. Steam did not. In fact, there may not have been much development work done at all on Steam (speculation on my part). I'm not sure how the intention to make the game a streamlined AoS would prevent Steam from being clunky. To me, the simpler, streamlined AoS is called Railroad Tycoon.
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Richard Young
Canada
Victoria
BC
Old Ways Are Best!
Check Six!
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I played AoS prior to Steam and enjoyed it well enough. It is relatively unforgiving to noobs but you soon learn to plan ahead - restricting loans to a specific phase is an aspect that is meant to look forbidding but is basically gratuitous as a design element. You get used to it but wonder what the reason for it is thematically. The goods production scheme always seemed clunky to me and added a non-deterministic element that also seemed gratuitous - but again I got used to it. Then there was the much celebrated "production" role. A blind cube grab that then was foist onto the die-rolling goods production thing - a role you might pick late in the game when there was nothing left to do except fill in track tiles and maybe generate an additional delivery somewhere. Less than gratuitous, it was lame. None of these things broke the game or made it any "tougher" - they were just a batch of "things" that were put there by Martin as he's often wont to do (great ideas often surrounded by oddities).
Steam redid all that while staying much the same game - but now devoid of non-deterministic elements. Once the board is seeded, the layout is there for all to see and to plan around. The gamey income reduction is gone, the grey disks are no longer needed to mark your towns and there is a better choice of track tiles. And, it all just looks nicer in my view. But the best thing about Steam is that it gives you two equally legitimate and interesting ways to play.
Steam by four lengths!
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Posted Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:25 pm
