Octopus Overlords

SpaceLord wrote:Unrest tokens on player boards reminder

During the final phase of a turn, Interest, for each Unrest token a player has on their player board, that player must pay 1 towards each outstanding Loan they have. Note that this does not actually increase the amount owed, it's simply a forced payment. If they cannot pay, nothing happens.

When a player receives a 3rd Unrest token on their board, there is a Revolution at Home.

Revolution:
The player discards all Treasury
The player discards all Unrest tokens on his board
The player will not be allowed to play cards during this Endeavor phase, except during Last Chance
Then, this player gains 1 Prestige

So, basically, don't let things get that far.

You gain 1 prestige from a revolution in your country? Is that the prestige of the new more assertive government or something?

I do find it amusing that you could theoretically win the game by virtue of having suffered a revolution, if that prestige put you over the top.

El Guapo wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:Unrest tokens on player boards reminder

During the final phase of a turn, Interest, for each Unrest token a player has on their player board, that player must pay 1 towards each outstanding Loan they have. Note that this does not actually increase the amount owed, it's simply a forced payment. If they cannot pay, nothing happens.

When a player receives a 3rd Unrest token on their board, there is a Revolution at Home.

Revolution:
The player discards all Treasury
The player discards all Unrest tokens on his board
The player will not be allowed to play cards during this Endeavor phase, except during Last Chance
Then, this player gains 1 Prestige

So, basically, don't let things get that far.

You gain 1 prestige from a revolution in your country? Is that the prestige of the new more assertive government or something?

I do find it amusing that you could theoretically win the game by virtue of having suffered a revolution, if that prestige put you over the top.

Yeah, I'm not sure of his reasoning for the Prestige bit. Of course, getting hit by a Revolution at home is a *huge* penalty. Maybe that's the thinking.

Vorret wrote:The people of Spain love their gold and pressure has been put on the kingdom to bring more home.
We sent an expedition to Peru hoping that we can put a foothold in America and bring home more gold.

Peru: Difficulty 5 - Seafaring 3. Target number is 3:



Success! Spain gains 1 Prestige.

Choose a method to put down a disk.

Nice job, Pizarro.

Hey, New World gold is mine! Hisss!!

Spain will build a trading post.

El Guapo, play Merchant please.

Since you only have 1 Fleet currently, essentially you gain 1 orange token in the Market, and Portugal gains 1 Treasury.

Thank you, drive on through.

El Guapo wrote:As a side note, I don't think people need to color their actions. I can tell it's England doing something by the fact that you write, "England does X". Coloring it blue only makes it extremely difficult to read on the black background format.

Noted. I will gladly cease and desist. I suppose kt's a habit carried over from Jow's Chaos in the Old World game where he requested faction colored orders.

Isgrimnur now needs to play Merchant/Governor.

You have 1 Merchant Fleets, and control resources in Egypt, and the Barbary. Because Portugal controls the Booming City, you place 1 black token into the Market, and Portugal gains 1 Treasury.

doublepost

And to round out 2.4, Grundbegriff needs to play Explorer or Ambassador.

After that, I'll start with the Last Chance round.

Explore Ethiopia

Grundbegriff wrote:Explore Ethiopia

France explores Ethiopia:
Difficulty 4, -1 for Exploration, -1 for adjacency, Target number of 2+:


Success!
France gains 1 Prestige. Choose a method to place a token, Grund.

Market status Turn 2, Last Chance Endeavor phase
4 black tokens - Isgrimnur
1 white token - Grundbegriff
1 red token - Vorret
2 blue tokens - Vorret
1 orange token - El Guapo

Spreadsheet is updated again: HERE.

As my last chance action, I'll play Financier, and gain 10 Treasury as well as 10 debt.

It's now on Qantaga, choose one of your 4 remaining roles to play.

SpaceLord wrote:Market status Turn 2, Last Chance Endeavor phase
4 black tokens - Isgrimnur
1 white token - Grundbegriff
1 red token - Vorret
2 blue tokens - Vorret
1 orange token - El Guapo

I think the two blue tokens should be mine? Or did Vorret stage a coup?

England plays a Conqueror into the West Indies, placing a Colony token and forming a Company.

I'll use my final Merchant Fleet to establish a Trading Post in Ethiopia.

is it my turn?

I'm not 100% sure what happens if I play either a trader or merchant...

Merchant takes goods from your provinces to Market. Trader takes your goods already in the Market to your treasury.

Cards are also on the front page here and more detail in the recruitment thread starting here.

Isgrimnur wrote:Merchant takes goods from your provinces to Market. Trader takes your goods already in the Market to your treasury.

Cards are also on the front page here and more detail in the recruitment thread starting here.

I'll try the merchant I guess!

Vorret:

Ok, ship goods equal to your Fleets. You ship Portugal's first. Then, you see how many resource slots you control and ship those. If you still have fleets left over, then you ask for assistance if you'd like.

I'll ship 2 goods (just realize we were waiting on my answer )

El Guapo, play your Last Chance action please.

So yesterday I played a 5 player game of Colonial, and had two new players, and two other players had played once.

I decided to try a Economic/Viceroy/Booming City strategy. It had major problems:

To really make big money in Merchant/Trader, you need Monopolies. If you don’t Explore far afield, it’s hard to get Monopolies.

Improving your Econ is *expensive* - to get to 6 Econ, you need 10 Treasury. To swipe resources from others, you need Viceroy improvements. To put down tokens, you need more Treasury.

The strategy also gives you crap for Prestige. At the end of the game, I had 6, despite founding two Booming Cities.

So I think I’ve come up with a variant: When you found a Booming City of size 4 or larger, you get 1 Prestige, and an additional, temporary Prestige. If someone else founds a larger Booming City, they take this Prestige from you.

Not sure what to do about the money thing, tho.

SpaceLord wrote:

The board is getting a bit more crowded. Notice the Booming City in Angola. This board is before any of us have played actions on round 4.

The Google spreadsheet updated to the beginning of Turn 2, Endeavor Action 4 is here. Let me know if there are any corrections.

Why is my diplomacy one to the left? I hadn't thought I had done any diplomacy penalty actions yet, though maybe I'm forgetting.

As my last chance option, Holland will do the Trader action.

My understanding is that I can move a number of goods to treasury equal to my economy (2) plus all of my colonies' native population (also 2), so a total of 4.

Naturally I'm moving my good to treasury, which means (I believe) that I can move three foreign goods in the market as well, right? If yes, I'll move the goods of the next three powers to post and say that they're fine with me moving their good.

El Guapo wrote: Why is my diplomacy one to the left? I hadn't thought I had done any diplomacy penalty actions yet, though maybe I'm forgetting.

I believe you are correct. Perhaps I thought you had broken the Monopoly on black resources on turn 1.

The last action of turn 3 is on you, Grund.

I'll play Trader to bring my white counter from Market to Treasury.

I think we're missing Isgrimnur's bonus action.

SpaceLord wrote:

El Guapo wrote: Why is my diplomacy one to the left? I hadn't thought I had done any diplomacy penalty actions yet, though maybe I'm forgetting.

I believe you are correct. Perhaps I thought you had broken the Monopoly on black resources on turn 1.

He did. He's at 3 because his Exploration of Mozambique broke the monopoly on the black resource that you had established in Angola.

I understand why you're forging ahead out of sequence, SpaceLord, but I think it introduces a modest but real confusion (e.g., skipping Isgrimnur, or not knowing whether we're in the Merchant acquisition phase or the Navy acquisition phase, and other uncertainties that many of us have shown).

The convention we usually follow in these games is to do things in strict sequence, even if it means exercising some patience while a player notices that he's up. (PMs can expedite things here.)

Does anyone else feel that strict sequence would be helpful?

Grundbegriff wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:

El Guapo wrote: Why is my diplomacy one to the left? I hadn't thought I had done any diplomacy penalty actions yet, though maybe I'm forgetting.

I believe you are correct. Perhaps I thought you had broken the Monopoly on black resources on turn 1.

He did. He's at 3 because his Exploration of Mozambique broke the monopoly on the black resource that you had established in Angola.

Ok, let me check. It wasn't Vorret that broke my Monopoly? I'll have to review the thread.

As to player order, you're right, I skipped Issy. That's what I get for trying to figure stuff out while fixing a problem at work. Mea culpa.

Pretty sure it was me since I remember losing a spot

Vorret wrote:Pretty sure it was me since I remember losing a spot

When you explored W. Africa, nobody else had explored anything. So you couldn't have broken a monopoly there.

Here's where you lost the Prestige point for breaking the monopoly on the black resource that Portugal had established. It was Vorret's Viceroy move. El Guapo's off the hook.

Here's how I'm keeping track of play, in case anyone else finds it useful:

link

SpaceLord wrote:As to player order, you're right, I skipped Issy. That's what I get for trying to figure stuff out while fixing a problem at work. Mea culpa.

No big deal. We all have jobs, I think, so it's easy to understand the juggling problem.

Thanks for running the game.

I'm just suggesting that process might be our friend here.

Trader.

Grundbegriff wrote:

SpaceLord wrote:As to player order, you're right, I skipped Issy. That's what I get for trying to figure stuff out while fixing a problem at work. Mea culpa.

No big deal. We all have jobs, I think, so it's easy to understand the juggling problem.

Thanks for running the game.

I'm just suggesting that process might be our friend here.

Yeah, I agree with Grund - I think it'll be easier to keep track of things if we follow the player order more specifically. Especially since people in this game seem to be doing a good job of keeping up the pace. I don't think we need to wait when someone has a choice that's either automatic or essentially obvious (say, moving 1 good to market when you don't have a choice of the good due to booming city), but generally we should keep the order I think.

Speaking of keeping up the pace...I'll get this all processed tonight.