I wonder if the rule/line:

"- Holder may only have up to eight cities on the map. "

I think it would be better to say something along the lines that a player can never get more than 9 trade cards independend of the amount of cities. As i think that it is generaly more advantageous for a player to not build that 10th city but instead have more tokens on the board.

(the only time when 10 cities would be interesting is if one is afraid of the disasters and wants to progress on the AST. if one is certain of that though being able to attack other players might be more interesting)

The effect of having the WoW given the rules of gerart de haan would (i think) be:

A player would want to have 7 or 8 cities (7 if he wants to avoid regression, though i do wonder if that is such a disaster compared to losing those stack 9 cards(how many cards would it cost you?)). However this would mean that he can have more tokens on the board.

What limits the tokens a player can have on the board?

Generaly there are two mechanisms that pose a limit:

1. the taxes that must be payed
2. city support
3. civil war.

However the influence of taxes and city support are a fixed amount (depending on the cities) of the total stock. and the civil war does not hapene often. Thus we know the limits to the maximal tokens on the board (given space on that board).

Example of maximal expansion on the board:

Given a player with 8 cities and WoW. That player would need to pay 18 tax and need 18 support for a total of 36 tokens which he needs to reserve. this leaves him with (given 47 tokens in stock) 11 tokens that he could place on the board and use for attack. This only gets more if you start with 55 tokens in stock, build less cities and or pay les tax (coinage) . In those cases this can rise to (55 tokens, 7 cities and coinage)31 tokens for an attack (though you would need to leave at least 26 tokens on the board after disasters to repeat this (31 tokens translates to 4 cities conquered (assuming 7 tokens per city)).

This seems to indicate that it is a very agressive (or defencive) civ card.

When assigning the influences on disasters this should be kept in mind. If you want to make sure this does not hapen then a player should lose additional tokens. the easieest (and also not illogical) solution would be to let WoW raise the tax collected by 1 or 2 per city. Alternatively it could agravate disasters like epedemic and famine forcing a player to keep more tokens in reserve.

My advice would be:
1. Remove the 8 city limit but add the 9 trade card limit
2. add 1 (or 2) tokens to taxes that must be payed
3. agravate disasters that cause a player to lose tokens (notably epedemic and famine)

Evertjan van de Kaa

I see you don't just yell something, but have thought this out.
I had to read it twice. still thinking about it.

Great analysis Evertjan though I have some comments:

Firstly, in CivProject, you always use 55 tokens, never only 47, so your math is a bit of, but not much.

Also, as WotW requires city support and taxation just like a city, it does not give you any more tokens to attack with. It does, however, reduce your losses by 5 unit point to Civil War and 2 unit points to Tyranny, as well as increases by five unit points your stock when determining the beneficiary of Tax Revolt, Civil War and Tyranny (compared to not having WotW but one more city on the map).

As for not needing the 8-cities-maximum rule, I agree. In most circumstances it just wouldn't be profitable to build a 9th city on the map when you hold WotW, and in the few cases it would be (to ensure you don't go too low on your city count after calamities and special abilities), I think you should be allowed to do so, at the cost of having to support (and tax) 10 cities (and not getting the Tax Revolt, Civil War and Tyranny benefits described above).

As for limiting trade card draws to 9, that is unnecessary. As there is no cards in the tenth trade card stack you don't get any anyway (§22.2.1).

As for increasing the taxes, it already does (sort of), as it counts as a city during Tax Collection. If you mean that it should increase your tax rate by one per city I do not agree, as that would be way too severe.

As for aggravating disasters that cause loss of tokens, I don't agree. You seam to base this on your false assumption that WotW leaves you with more tokens to attack with. However, it would be interesting to aggravate a disaster that cause loss of cities (such as Iconoclasm and Heresy), thus perhaps inducing a player to build that 9th city on the map, just in case...

In the playtest of may24th I will state the following:


- A player can only have 9 cities. When a player has nine city tokens on the board AND has Wotw, it still counts as 9 cities. When a player has 8 city tokens on the board AND WOTW it counts as nine cities.

Thus:

Number of cities
Wtithout WotW________With WotW________City tokens on Board
________0________________1________________0
________1________________2________________1
________2________________3________________2
________3________________4________________3
________4________________5________________4
________5________________6________________5
________6________________7________________6
________7________________8________________7
________8________________9________________8
________9________________9________________9

If you use this way of interpreting WotW, this is what happens in a turn holding Wotw

-Tax. You collect 2 treasury tokens (or modified) for Wotw
If you cannot collect 2, there will be a normal tax revolt, but if you have no cities and no tokens in stock, Wotw stays yours and will not be taken over.
(rare case)
-Pop.ex
-Census
-Ships
-Movement
-Conflict
-City Building. (as said, whenever you have 8 cities and Wotw you can still built number 9, though, it counts as 9 cities total)
-Remove surplus and check for city support
(You should support your Wotw. If unabled to do so, you should reduce a city.)
-Collect Tade cards. You count your number of cities including Wotw and you get your cards the normal way (max 9 cards) You can purchase up to 2 additional cards. total cards stays 11.
-Trade
-Calamities (*)
-Check for city support. like above
-Special abilities. (Wotw can never be annexed or destroyed by Fundamentalism, Monotheism or Politics)
-Purchase advances
-Return excess tarding cards
-Alter AST



I see no confusing part here, nor is it difficult to write down or explain.

*Now for the calamities
general: Wotw cannot be destroyed, reduced, eliminated, or annexed by anything.

2. Volcanic Eruption. as always.
2. Treachery. Cannot annex or destroy Wotw
2. Squandered Wealth. as always
3. Famine. You cannot sacrifice Wotw
3. Superstition. You cannot reduce Wotw
3. Tempest as always
4. Civil War. Just ignore Wotw here. (cannot be destoyed by military cards, annexed or whatever)
4. Slave revolt. Count Wotw when checking for City support
4. City in flames. Wotw cannot be eliminated
5. Flood. Wotw is not on the board, so not on a flood plain
5. Barbarian Hordes. as always
5. City riots. Wotw cannot be reduced
6. Cyclone. Wotw is not on the board, so unaffected, unregarded.
6. Epidemic. You cannot reduced Wotw here.
6. Coastal Migration. Wotw cannot be sacrificed
7. Corruption. Discard an additional 5 face value point as drawback for holding Wotw
7. Civil Disorder. All but three meansincluding Wotw. you should leave city tokens and you hold Wotw. (thus NOT 3 cities AND Wotw)
7. Tribal conflict. as always
8. Tyranny. Count in Wotw when counting the units to be annexed. Still Wotw itself cannot be annexed. You just loose another 4 tokens for holding Wotw. This is a secondairy drawback.
8. Iconoclasm a.h. You cannot reduce Wotw, so you should reduce 4 cities on the board.
8. Minor uprising. Count wotw in when counting the number of tokens to be removed, thought wotw itself cannot be removed.
9. Regression. as always
9. Piracy. Wotw cannot be taken over (and is no coastal city).
9. banditry. Count Wotw in when counting the facevalue to be given away.




So no difficult things here. It just takes a few extra lines in the rulebook. Most important: State that Wotw can never be destoyed, annexed, reduced, eliminated, sacrificed, or attacked. maybe on the card itself too.


Holding Wotw especially keeps you from moving back when having no cities on the board, but wil NOT keep you from regression due to "Regression" (realistic!)

Flo: Seams the only thing we don't agree on now is that I think you should support and tax for 10 cities if you have 9 cities on the board and WotW. Considering the disagreements we have had earlier, this is really minor.

I had some email-contact about this with Gerart.

Your option is indeed an option.

Option 1: At 9 cities and Wotw, A player should support 10 cities and collect tax for 10 cities.
Option 2: At 9 cities and Wotw, A player should support only 9 cities and collect tax for 9 cities.


If we playtest option 1 and it might be a too dominating drawback we should playtest option 2 afterwards.

If we playtest option 2 and it might be too powerful, we should playtest option 1 afterwards.


So, we have to choose which option to playtest first. How to choose?

- I believe option 2 is not too powerful (just a interpretation)
- Collecting tax for 10 cities might even be an extra effort at the card, for example with cards like cartography, rhetoric, mining and buying '9'-card. This way thus not being a drawback.
- Democracy would nullify the drawback of collecting tax for 10 cities. When you have a strategy in Wotw, this could be a part of your strategy.
- Supporting 10 cities though seems reasonable.
- Keeping cards as simple as possible is a thing to try and achieve, therefore the addition of 'you should though support a tenth city' might confuse the card a bit.


Going though these reason to either try (1) or (2), I decided to go for the option I've chosen.

Whenever I was wrong we should adjust the rules in this. After all, this is still a playtest.

Afterwards people might say: "Hey, this card is just too powerful", but any player could try and go for the card, so at the starting point all players are equal. If you believe it is THAT powerful, you should go for the card from the very start. If you overlook it's power at this point, it's your fault at the starting point to not go for the card.

Only aftwerwards we can tell if the card is too powerful to unbalance the game. Still winning a game is only to try to unbalance the game in your favour.

Actually, the reason I think you should support and tax 10 cities is for simplicity, not balance, as the balancing aspects is pretty minor.
My reason is that you shouldn't have to specify "it counts as one city extra when doing X, Y and Z, except if you already have nine cities, in which case it has no effect".

Please xplain.

Basically, there will be three or fore sentences less in the rulebook if we go for option 1

I prefer option 1) for two reasons:

- The balancing effect (although this may be minor).
- The fact that I like to have the least possible exceptions to rules, which seems to be in line with Jonno's last quote.

Anyway, we will do the playtest with option 2), so we will see what comes out...

Well, it's not may 24th yet.

I could still be switching.

I'm looking for a good line to put on the card.

now it's:




Will that be:

Counts as an additional city in any case with a maximum of nine cities total, except you collect tax and should support for ten cities whenever you hold Wonder of the World and have nine city tokens on board.


Is there a shorter version?

"Counts as an additional city for the purpose of doing Tax Collection, making a City Support Check, doing Trade Cards Acquisition and during Movement of Succession Markers."

There is no need for "a maximum of nine, except for every case where 9 or 10 matters, in which case the maximum is 10", which is basically what you propose.

Also, by not specifying a maximum, that helps keeping the Imperial Civilization variant game rules simple.

(P.S. I don't like the "all cases" language currently used, as that might cause interpretation trouble during the calamity phase. )

So, its counts as 10 cities during calamity resolution

I see no troubles during this phase.

So the line should simply be:

"Counts as an aditional city in any case"

I do prefer 'in any case' to make sure it IS considered a city in any case.

Though at the calamity resolution-rules maybe a line should be added where possible.

For the playtest a make a temporary clamity quickchart

This line is needed too in my opinion to make it all clear:

- Wonder of the World cannot be attacked, destroyed, annexed, reduced or eliminated by players, special abilities, or calamities.

One addition to be rememberred and mentioned:

"Wonder of the World's additional city does noet count as Victory Point."