yes you both are right on this.

I still think looking for an option in this direction is close to a balanced 'wonder of the world' that's still a card that's really wanted.

let's think...

yes, but if WotW is the ultimate card, then you buy it last, and therefore those 20 credits are pretty useless (will only take effect in the next turn).

I still like the ast-advancing-option. If it is too strong, then that might be because 5 points per AST is too much. I liked the idea that AST is much more important than it was, but 5 points is too much (or 1/2/3 per advancement is too little, that's the same ofcourse).
Regression gives 5 point penalty, which is the same as +/- 350 points in commodities (the cost of a level 2 + level 3 advancement).

I have maths on this proving that 5 or 6 AST points per AST vs 2 per civcards (average) would be optimal. That the vp from a card plus the vp from an ast step for just the cost of a card is overpowered only proves that the vp from an ast step is non-trivial compared to the vp from a card, which we already knew (5 vp is intuitively non-trivial compared to 3 vp).

If you are interested in the maths, the idea is to take ΔAST (difference in VP from AST between the player with the most and least VP from AST) and ΔCC (difference in VP from civcards between the player with the most and least VP from civcards) in a bunch of advciv and civproject games, taking an average and comparing them. This, ofcourse, assumes that advciv is reasonably balanced between ast and civcards, which imho it is. I used statistics gathered at Swedish conventions and then put together averages for advciv, as well as different civproject VP proposals (most notable 1-2-4, 1-2-5 and 1-2-6 (cities-civcards-ast)). I found that ΔCC was larger than ΔAST in all cases, but that ΔAST/ΔCC in advciv was somewhere between 1-2-5 and 1-2-6. Taking other (imho less important) maths models into consideration, 1-2-6 was no option, so we went with 1-2-5. I have not redone the maths since we changed from 2 to 1/2/3 vp per civcard, but I don't think it will be much off.

I am not so much as a mathematician. I chose for the artitstic direction in education. So I don't understand exactly what you meant.

I believe the (in)importance of the single card 'wonder of the world' would not be a reason to re-order the determination of VP's in general.

I was introduced to this expansion long after the determination was made on the ordering of VP's, that I believe that is well researched and playtested.

We had some suggestion before to order the advances in 1-2-4, 1-3-4 or 1-3-5, but as long as we never playtested along with the arguments of Jonno, I think the current ordering is the best option.

Previous time we played we kinda had some discussion about the fact that cities in the final round count in total score. This is not the topic to discuss that, but we did not all agree on that to be the best rule in the game.


To Mirjam: I think you are searching in to radical changes for both this card and the discussion on politics, monotheism. The game is almost perfectly balanced as it is, though 'almost' and not def. (in my opinion)

Well, I also think that cities isn't that important, but we have reduced their importance (one fifth of a AST step rather than one half) and without any VP from cities, last round calamities would be too unimportant (as basically only corruption and regression would hurt).


I totally agree

Nice idea, so I agree with it.

But I have another idea of it inpired by:During the Acquire trade cards phase, a player holding Wotw may reveal one calamity card and draw another card from the same stack. However, the calamity card then is treated as non-tradable for this round.

As stated above, while a nice idea, its most likely way overpowered.


This is an interesting idea. Might actually be balanced. What do the rest of you think?

Hard to say.

Worth a try.

I'm trying to get some folks together to playtest in march or april. Johannes is in.

After some thinking and reading I dropped the idea of 'messing' with the AST. Basic solutions will generally be too powerful in the game, and only complex solution might be balanced. However, I don't think it's our intention to increase complexity...

Nevertheless, I do like Johannes' second proposal. Drawing an extra trade card for free (in general) is powerful, but in this way, it would never result in a player getting two commodities of the same kind in one turn. Besides, revealing a calamity card to the opponents can be a disadvantage, so it offers a nice moment of 'wisdom' whether to use this ability or not. However, I have my doubts about the point of treating the calamity as 'non-tradable'; I think that tradable calamities should never be treated as non-tradable. Let other players decide whether to trade or not, while knowing what they can expect after a calamity has been shown by a holder of WotW...

Anyway, an interesting point for play testing.

The key feture of the world wonder would be it's high cost. This means that it would only be bought neer or at the end of the game. You need to think about wether it must be a card that is usefull during the game or just at the end of the game (do you want people to buy it during or only at the end of the game).

During the game:

it must have an advantage that means players would buy it. posibilities:

1. it is an extra virtual city. question is what the influence would be on AST progression, food production, trade card production and tax production. the card might be to strong if all four city aspects are given. but maybe a player could chose wheather to get an extra card or to lower the AST requirements.

2. It gives an extra card of one of the lower stacks. however when does this hapen?, before players get their cards?, at your own turn?, after all players got their cards?, I'm asking this as 1 and 2 stacks sometimes run out of cards. Maybe the rule must be that you get a card after all players got theirs and then get a card from the lowest stack available.

Note that getting one or two extra cards is quite a strenght in the trading part of the game.

3. extra wealth in the form of an extra "tax" levied just before trade card purchause (though it would be better to make it an extra discount equal to twice the amount of city's)

4. extra discount/buying of extra cards. however how mich would make the card interesting (i suspect it would have to be able to buy civ cards with special ability's)

5. The special ability is only valid for a limited amount of turns/diminishes over turns. for instance:

It gives an extra trade card of stack n, each turn 1 is substracted from n. negative numbers are counted as points. Thus when we asume n is 3, in in the turn folowing on the turn when it was build it gives a 3 card, next turn a 2 card, next turn a 1 card, next turn is worth 0 points, next turn is worth 1 additional point... This can be kept track of ising the AST, as an additionaly token on the owners track.
Maybe a player can chose at what n to start?


End of the game

This has three options:

1. the card gives extra VP. In that case it must be compared with the normal final turn purchauses. Generaly people will buy as many points, which generaly means that a lot of <100 point cards are bought or at least cards that have a lot of discount. You should see what the average amount of points is people get in the last turn. I would expect between 5-10 points for 300 credits (and more likely 7-10).

2. The card gives an extra AST position (as "Voxnovanion" proposed). I like that posibility. It would give a player 8 VP, something that he would probably have gotten if he had used the 300 on other discount articles (posibly it should be worth 1-2 VP less). It would have the added property of ending the game (i thus disagree with jonno. I would very much like the idea that it could end the game). I suspect that it would be used by the players at the front to unexpectedly end the game (as one advances 2 spaces and thus is at the end of the track).
Some research would be needed to determine if more than one player tend to end on the second last AST position, as the only game i played only one player ended there and if only one player can do this it would be less fair. Thus point three

3. Alternatively it could only have the property of ending the game and not giving more than x VP where x could be anywhere between 0 and 8. Posibly a player would have to anounce the buy before the advances buy round or a world wonder could take more than one roulnd to buitd (ie buying it would mean the game will end after the next round)

Evertjan van de Kaa

I missed the remark of johannes about the posibility to reveal a disaster and draw an additional tradecard. I like that one however the question would be what the influence would be on disaster evasion. ie what if a player has two nontradables and thus tries to change a tradable into a nontradable.

Good ideas evertjan.

Here's what I like and dislike:


DURING THE GAME:




I would make it less complex and just say 'lowers age requirements with one city'. This way you can still regress with no cities. It's sometimes a close call when someone tries to win and requires 5 cities. Especially when other players try to sack him. with this advance, it makes it a bit easier.



I like the idea of gaining a card only after all player have collected their cards. Choosing between 1 and 2 only. 3 might be too powerfull and 1 mostly runs out of cards.



I don't like this much. kinda an extra trade routes / mining type of card. This way it's an additional, and no 'special' card.



The same as point 3.

5. The special ability is only valid for a limited amount of turns/diminishes over turns. for instance:



I agree with Jonno about avoiding more things to keep track of. I also think this mechanism (that's great for many games) does not fit Cvilization.

AT THE END OF THE GAME



1a. What about giving VP only when you've reached the final space on the AST. This makes the card only interesting for people trying to win.

1b. What about giving VP when someone reaches the final space only and when you have some special requirements at that time, like number of cities, number of cards.



I think that's too powerfull. We've discussed it before and made me realize this is a bit too much.



Even more powerfull, so off for me.



To me, it should be: 'revealing a calamity gets you another one card of the same tradecard stack and futhermore nothing changes.' Thus non-tradables stay non-tradables.

First, I prefer cards that give benefits during the game rather than at the end of the game. A card that isn't worth buying until the last turn don't fit in Civilization imho.

Secondly, about the "virtual city" argument, I have experimented with that in my (and Halken's) scenario Mare Nostrum, where the Celts get trade cards as if they had one city more than they actually have, but at the cost of one more token per city in city support (like Cultural Ascendancy). The Celts also play with 60 tokens and 8 cities in that scenario, which makes those effects somewhat less extreme, but still nothing I'm not willing to play with.
That said, balancing such a feature is hard (I'm actually not that sure that Mare Nostrum is balanced, but then we warn about that in the introduction).
An 200+ civcard giving an extra trade card but requiring one extra token per city in support isn't worth it. However, an extra trade card for paying upkeep for an extra city might be. (Thus having Wonder of the World counting as an extra city for trade cards and city support, but not for AST advancement or taxation). In fact, I believe that is less powerful than gaining an extra level 3 card, as you can't get two cards of the same level by it, and you can't get more than nine cards total (as there is no tenth stack), but still a high level card (one level higher than you'd normally get) is probably way more attractive than a level 2 card.

While open to the idea, I'm generally not overly fond of the idea of lowering AST requirements. If you can afford Wonder of the World, you probably don't need that...

If you got an extra low level card from Wonder of the World, it would be at the same time as you can purchase cards. If we got his route I think we should have it work just like Cartography, Mining or Rhetoric, but working with the first and second stack, and the card being free. Thus you can still only get a total of two extra cards per turn, but if you can't afford to purchase high level cards, you can get up to two very low level cards for free.

I don't like the idea of an extra taxation, and extra credits is just lame.

The "diminishes by turn" is definitely off, as it's to complex, and don't fit well with the rest of the rules.

Is it wrong to gain an extra card for wonder of the world (like the 'extra city' option) AND count it in as AST requirement too (thus you can count it in in number of cities)?


I like the idea of the extra card being one higher than your current highest card, but also like the idea of a free card of both 1th and 2nd stack in purchasing round.

Actually this way, you cannot defend your city better, than building a wonder of the world in it. so you could read it as "one of your cities in indistructable"
(though not to be written like this)



Both Johannes' option of the free card for a calamity and this option does NOT give you a double card in one round, only a new extra.

I don't know, would have to be play tested.


Well, I could also go for either, but NOT both at the same time...


Except that it wouldn't take any space on the map, which makes it even more powerful.


Yes, but this one is simpler, that said, Johannes suggestion is also a possibility, though we'd have to decide about the tradability in the case a tradable card was revealed.

that's what I ment. Indestructable.



True.

I also ment either a higher extra card or the 1th and 2nd stack. Never both.