Why have an east and west trade card deck when playing with 12 or more players? I am just curious what the design goal is behind this? Is it to make two smaller trade groups?

For those that have played a large game, is it worth the bonus to get commodities from the 'other half' of the world?

Craig

Just to speed up trading and make it more manageable.

It should only be worth it to cross trade in a 16-18 player game when you have aquired a number of "shared" commodities.

(actually we do need rules for placing the shared commodities back in the deck I think).

With the original expansion, we played 13-players a few times, and it seemed to work very well with one trade stack. I am a little concerned about the 12-15 player game. It seems like the game may end up as two 6 or 7 player games just playing beside each other. I am also concerned that one player may make trade more difficule in one side, leading to all players in the 'other half' of the map having an advantage.

I suppose if my concerns are shared, we could just play a variant where the east/west stacks are combined into one big stack

Has anyone that has played a 12-15 player game have any other thoughts or feedback? Our November 18 game will likely be in the 12 to 15 range.

Craig

A legitimate concern. I would probably suggest that if one group ends up with one additonal player than the other (an odd number of players) that some cards from the smaller group be removed (perhaps just a card from one of the commodities in stacks 2, 4, 6, and .

We haven't had any real playtests with that amount of people I don't think.

Remember, as far as splitting up the game, only the commodities handed out are segragated. Calamities, order of movement and conflict all is completely interactive.

Hmm... I didn't even think about there being an odd number of players. 13 or 15 players would make the drawing from the stack uneven. I'm not sure about removing a card, because that would make some sets on that side have less potential.

I was thinking if one side had a player that refused to trade. That entire half of the world would have difficulty making as large sets as the side of the world in which all players traded.

I am very stronging considering merging the trade stacks to help even the odds for all players, and take care of the 'odd number of players' problem. One problem with merging the stacks is when reshuffling a stack with 2 non-tradable calamities. Would they both go to the bottom of the stack? If so, that would mean they always come out in pairs.

I'm not sure yet. I'd like to read some more thoughts on the east/west trade stacks. Please post any thoughts.

That would be the intention.



I don't really ever see that problem, so I suppose I don't worry about it.

i played a 13 players scenario in pinse.

what happend was that east and west traded on each of their own sides, and then at the end of the tradefase players (i started the trend) ran over to the players from the other sides starting to trade a full tradesets. that way the players that managed to do that made like 30-60 pts more than they would have done otherwise.

a concern i have about the 13 players is that then you will have 6/7 split, and if then the 6playerside have 1-2 unlucky or new players. they will come in a situation where there are not enough cards drawn from that side, making it that much harder to complete a set. this will ensure that among the top 5 finishers there will prolly be like 4 players from the 7 side.

so conlusion of the game.

1st place celts(W)(me), 2nd assyria (W) 3rd, Rome (W) 4th arabia (E) 5th Egypt (W)....


this result is mainly because out of the six player east there where two player that where really bad at managing the stock and their treasury. one guy actually saved up 30 coins in stock to pay for a tech.

Good point. Last year I played a 20 player game on another map, but with (almost) the same rules having two east sets, two west sets, and a shared set. At the beginning I tried to trade with the other side of the map, but that didn't work. So after two rounds I traded with players of my own side, what worked much better. I hadn't time to trade full sets with players on the other side because we had only 10 minutes to trade in one round.
But with 12-15 players we can make one east set, one west set, and two shared sets.

A solution to this is to still create an east stack and a west stack, but to shuffle all tradable cards together and in the end divide it into two equal-sized stacks. The non-tradable calamities are put at the bottom of the stack where it belongs.