RE: [piecepack] Re: Alien City is cool

[Michael Schoessow <mschoessow@...>]

You might be right Karl and I admit that I didn't give a lot of thought into
making it work for three or four players. Your suggestion about common
ownwership is interesting because the progenitor game, San Jose, is more
like that; there are four kinds of buildings in that game but only one kind
is owned by the players, with the other three starting out in a common pool.
Also there are no pieces equivalent to the ownership caps that player's have
in Alien City.  I think the biggest issue for turning Alien City into a
4-player game involve the distribution of the small pyramids (the caps).
Right now we have a total of six of them in the game and this number seems
to work well. I don't think the number is extremely critical but on the
other hand I would be surprised if 12 (3 per player in a 4-player game)
would work well at all. Possibly eight (2 per player) would work, but having
only two chances to claim a building seems unattractive somehow. 
 
Suggestions are always welcome 
 
-Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl von Laudermann [mailto:karlvonl@...]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 12:18 PM
To: piecepack@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [piecepack] Re: Alien City is cool


On Thursday, August 22, 2002, at 02:18  PM, mschoessow wrote:

> Thanks Karl,
>
> How long did your game take?

Not sure, maybe 45 mins.

> A bit of history about the game: it's derived from another game of
> mine called San Jose that I was working on and play-testing when I
> found out about the piecepack game design contest. San Jose is a
> bigger game for up to four players with a bigger board and three
> scoring rounds. The bits are more specific too and I have yet to find
> time to build a good set. Alien City is kind of a streamlined,
> smaller, faster playing version of San Jose for two players. Now I'm
> beginning to wonder if Alien City is the better of the two games.
> It's strange sometimes how game designs evolve in unexpected ways.

I'm not convinced that Alien City can't work with 3 or 4 players. You 
just have to divide the pieces up more. Or maybe no one has their own 
pieces (other than caps), and you can just draw from a common pool of 
all the towers and domes.

This game reminds me of Kingdoms 
( http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/kingdoms.html).
<http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/kingdoms.html).>  In Kingdoms, you draw 
tiles from a common pool, but they're all face down so it's completely 
random. You have your own scoring tiles which are played into empty 
spaces, rather than "capping" what's on the board. And you score based 
on what's in the same row and column as your scoring tiles, rather than 
following "roads". But it's the same genre as Alien City.

--
                        Karl J. von Laudermann
                        karlvonl@...
                        http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/
<http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/> 
                        Richard's PBeM Server ID: karlvonl


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