During our playtest we found out that trade between east and west was too profitable. During our 11 round, there was a total of 3 round where I (playing Thrace) traded in more than two western card. All in all we got our sets, and then went to the other side to exchange set. This doesn't make sence. Either make a restriction of who to trade with, or skip the east - west stacks. It would also be easier with for example calamities, which we had a hard time putting in the right stack. The problem with having one shared stack was that it would be harder to trade with everyone to get your full series, so we developed an idea based on the following: In a game with 8 or more players you could add extra cards of every serie. I.e. the max amount of cards you can trade in is still the same, but they will be easier to get as you does not have to get ALL the cards to get one set. We was thinking on something similat to this:

Players	Series	Extra cards	Calamities
5-7	2	no	1 non-tradable, 1 tradabe
8-11	3	1-7: 1 extra	1 non-tradable, 1 tradabe, 1 minor
12-15	4	1-9: 1 extra	1 non-tradable, 2 tradabe
16-18	4	1-7: 2 extra 8-9: 1 extra	1 non-tradable, 2 tradabe, 1 minor

This will probably need some tweekings (especially the calamities) but could perhaps be used as a beginning looking for answares.

There's a problem with this reasoning of adding extra cards. If there are 10 salt in play and only nine can be traded as a set, the tenth salt is worthless. All trade cards should have a set to be in. That's why I disliked Mining in the original Adv Civ, and why East/West trading has to change in some way.

I was afraid of this.

I'd rather think of a way to make east-west trade more dangerous then...

Another option (I just made up) is to lessen (but keep) the benefit from east-west trade.
My idea is to just adding 1 to the value for each card, so that for example 8 salt is worth 192 for the east, and 192+8=200 for the west. Then you'd still benefit from east-west trading, but not that very much, and exchanging sets isn't worth the trouble and calamity risk any longer, except when you are trading with shared cards. This would also solve the problem Aron mentioned.

The idea of making eastern calamities more dangerous for western civs and the other way around doesn't make much sense to me. Sure with Epedemic, but Civil War?

IMHO, rule 28.53 is broken and none of the current solutions (extra cards with more players, harsher long-way calamities) seems satisfactory.

A solution would have to be as simple as possible. The whole concept of trade regions is clearly un-civ-esque in that no other part of the rules (with the lone exception of starting positions) discriminates civilizations from each other. It is the civilization advances that changes ALL parts of a civilization globally. When Metal Working is acquired, ALL counters of that civilization benefits (whereas another game perhaps would solve this with new, separate "Elite" counters). This is also the sole how the rules differentiates between the civilizations - from what advances has been acquired during the game.

So if the concept of trade regions is to remain, it must be because the game really benefits from it. As I understood it, the concept of different trade groups came from a desire to keep the trading between 18 players on a sane level without prohibiting anyone from trading with each other. Then let exotic commodities be exotic - they are rare, but the rarity in itself doesn´t mean anyting. If one would benefit extra from this commodity, it wouldn´t be such a rarity in the first place! (This seems also to be in line with another one of the original civ design concepts; there is no free lunch anywhere within the original rules. This is why optional rules like trade cities and capitals and stuff just aren´t civ-esque either). If a Flax just happen to get to your hand, look at it and say "wow, all the way from the other end of tha world".

I think that having shared commodities would be enough to have just enough traffic between east and west. Since there are currently no shared commodities with 12-15 players, I propose this change: When playing with two trade regions, only one commodity is exclusive to each area. When playing with 12-15 players, there are in addition 2 shared commodities. When playing with 16-18 players, there are in addition 3 shared commodities.

I participated at both playtests in Sweden.

I played chorasmia in the latest playtest in Linkoping. I built 7 cities very quickly and later 9 without any problems. One problem though was that the other 5 players in the east had very few cities 5-6, except Persia which had 6-7 most of the time, thus I could not get any higher series of cards, but the western players could. As Babylon in Apollo18 I have already seen these tendencies.

I noticed that the east-west trade did not work well at all (see Jonnos comments)! The "mining-effect is just wayyeee too powerful".

I came up with a new idea that many people thought was interesting: Just add the commodity cards from two sets of Adv. civ together, draw in AST order and trade with all players. Trade between 15 persons worked fine in only 15 minutes per trade phase.....

I think that adding only a few cards is not good enough in a large game. However, adding cards enough for making 2 full series sounds much better than adding extra series as it is in the current game, at least with 18 players. Five different series is NOT going to work with one big trade since it is too difficult to get any large series unless you make twice or three times as many trades.

Ofcourse, in a 12+ player game, two sets of calamities should be used. Minor calamities does not add much. One calamity (both NT and T) should be put in the bottom (or mixed with 2 other cards first) and one calamity should be put back in the middle of the deck to spread them out evenly.

One idea is to take away ONE card from the two added series per player missing (i.e. 15 salt in a 15 player game), but full decks in a 18-player game. If you then happen to hand in 10 salt for example, you get draw an extra 3-series card next turn per card, instead of getting extra points for the 10th card.

The more I think about this simpler system the better it sounds. I am definetly going to try this If I get the chance...

Staffan

Sounds like a good idea to me.

In games with less than 18 players, taking away 1 card per series and player might be too harsh. A better idea is probably to start with one set of commodity cards for 9 players as in a normal game and then add one card per series per player.

For example in a 13-player game: Add 4 cards per series, i.e. 11 Hides and ochre, 11 papyrus and 12 iron (plus one extra volcanic eruption and treachery) and so on. This will create an additional full serie of commodity cards up to 4:s. For a 14-player game, add slave revolt and for a 15-player game add civil war. Now I hope you get the picture....

It is still possible to make one full series and and one smaller series, but I guess it will very difficult to get as many as 10 silver for instance. Two series of 5 silver each is still very good for 2 players. It is just more competition of some series which cannot make two complete series.

The exact number of cards probably needs some play-testing.

Staffan

I don't know.... this sounds like it would make it too easy to acquire large sets of trade cards. If the credit system is as valuable as it sounds... players having large sets of trade cards seems like it would compound the problem to me.

I like the variety that multiple commodities gives you... plus it would be such a waste not to use such fine looking cards

I still think my idea is the best, perhaps with a few tweaks on the amount of extra cards. Personaly I don't think kruppman's idea will work as well, but martins idea is interesting. With no benefits from east-west trading, more than the shared commodities, it would probably be balanced. I think, however, that 8-11 players could still have a single trade-stack and 16-18 players should have 2 specific and one shared commodity. 12-15 players sharing 2 and having one specific sounds good though.

I'd rather have several different series than adding extra cards to existing ones. Somehow it seems wrong to have 14 salt but only being able to trade in 9 of them as a set. Might be the best way to solve this problem, but it's not very beautiful.

I agree (especialy with your last sentence) that's why I like martin's idea. I don't think that's the best solution game-play wise, but it doesn't screem WORKAROUND to every player the same way as mine or kruppman's.

I really don't like the idea with east-west trade !

I believe that one big trade is better where all commodities are shared. The question is if it is better to have 4-5 different series of commodities (I agree, that it is more fun to use the new cards) or use more sets of the existing ones !?

As Aron mentioned, it is probably not good to have for example 14 salt because you cannot make two complete sets with that. In principle I agree. It was a sub-optimal solution, however there is more competition over the commodities with 15 players in this example, which makes it unlikely to obtain 10+ salt !

Using 5 different sets or shared commodites makes it much more difficult to obtain series with many players since you have to make many more trades. I have already noticed that in Apollo18. A few shared cards seem worthless if you want to get the last few cards in series belonging to one block (east or west).

I guess that there is no easy solution to this problem, we just have to test a few of the alternatives and try to figure out which one works best (or is the most fun) !

I still belive that my idea of adding two sets together will work best, even though it is a bit dirty. It is at least the closest alternative to the original Adv. civ.

Yet another alteranative of my variant:
9 players:Add one serie 1 and 2.
10 players: Add one serie 1, 2, 3 and 4.
11 players: Add one serie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
12 players: Add one serie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
13 players: Add two serie 1 and one serie of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
14 players: Add two serie 1, 2, 3 and one serie of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
15 players: Add two serie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and one serie of 6, 7, 8, 9.
16 players: Add two serie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and one serie of 8, 9.
17-18 players: Add two series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

How do you think this would work ?

Staffan

Hmmm... lots of fairly complex solutions. Here is the "newest" suggested fix. Let me know what you think:

28.53 In a game with 12-18 players the face values of set redeemed in its non-native trade block is added to the set value. That is if an eastern player trades in three oil cards (each worth 4) it has a value of 3 x 3 x 4 + 3 x 4 = 36 + 12 = 48, rather than 3 x 3 x 4 = 36, which is the value if a western player had traded in the same three cards. This means the set can be worth more than the maximum set value on the cards.

This will obviously make east-west trade less profitable, but then... that's the entire point .

So the equation for native trades is
n*n*v (n = number, v = value)

the old equation for non-native was
(n+1)*(n+1)*v

the new equation for non-native is
(n+1)*(n)*v
For you math geeks, that is 2v * triangle(n)

Is that correct? (Unless we see some big abuses, I'm tempted to let Apollo 18 continue without change)