by Ranior
So for Seafall, the only way to win consistently is to race for the milestones.
I don't think this is really correct. I've already seen how much glory someone can get without milestones. We'll likely disagree on this point. Perhaps it does change later in the campaign, but through the first five games the race for milestones seems to be the main way to win. You could explore some islands I suppose for quick glory gains, or getting to those tombs quickly, but in general the best way to get glory and permanent upgrades is to get those milestones. At least in my campaign I have lost the race for several milestones and now sit in last place with few upgrades. I am getting some decent catch up bonuses, but for the most part they just serve to get me to be on equal footing with the other players whose upgraded leaders and fields already grant them more gold and fortune/reputation than I start with anyhow.
The idea that you will try to purely raid is the one that confuses me.
But if you read the OP (spoiler alert) you also know that there are some decent actions which can crop up and grant significantly higher rewards based on your raid value.
It's possible you haven't unlocked this yet, or all those possibilities have been claimed already. But there should still be ways to set up for next game.
I should clarify, I didn't mean to literally purely raid even though that is what I wrote. In particular here though I have spent some time upgrading my ship to be better at raiding. I also do have once permanent upgrade that enables me to tax for four instead of three. Finally I have the advisor that gives two fortune tokens when he is activated, and also provides a benefit to raiding and taxing with his upgrades. In general it would seem to me that main advantage I have over my other players is in my ability to raid effectively and efficiently. I cannot compete easily with their exploration focused choices. Unless I get very lucky with some great advisors falling to me, but in general that hasn't happened. So I mostly have been trying to raid to get ahead as that is what I can do better and faster than them.
The issue is right now that there are not things that are making that work for me. The explorers continue to explore islands and skull sites that are difficult for me to manage since I do not have explore upgrades. They also have some research upgrades that make that action better and more efficient for them. The large benefits from the skull sites make that a great use of actions, while the burst glory from finding a new island is great for them. Meanwhile I try to raid the best targets I can find, but in general it does not exist. So I go for the milestone I can which relate to having some colonies. But I struggle to get colonies built, especially when the game lasts so few turns and I need to upgrade my holds which I haven't yet done since I didn't know I'd need to until the colony rules emerged. So my games have been trying to raid a hold upgrade and then get enough money to get the goods I need to build a colony to set up for some long term advantages. But suddenly a tomb emerged and I didn't get another turn to actually build my colony when someone went into it and suddenly ended the game rapidly through that unforeseen burst of glory.
I may just be playing poorly, but I personally don't really think that is it. I am taking actions that make sense based on what I know about the game, but the game keeps presenting crazy things that are benefiting the explorers in the group while my upgrades to raid are not rewarded through any milestones or easy sources for big glory. Perhaps another tomb will open soon and I can get some great glory from visiting it, but that assumes I know when and where the next tomb will open so I can be the first to deal with it, but that will require some luck to have that occur.
Overall, things may work themselves out with more plays. To be honest I dearly wanted this game to be great and I overlooked some of these issues when I was playing my first several games. I wanted to believe all the others reviewers and reports were over stating the problems the game had. But as I play more games, I am finding and running into the exact same issues I have been reading about others having. In particular, I strongly agree with the OP of this thread, as my experiences are very similar.SeaFall is frustrating me more than it is providing enjoyment to me at this point, and there are noticeable failures that I overlooked until they actually happened to me. I personally hope you continue to have great fun with the campaign and love it. Some certainly have. But for those who are having problems and are quitting their campaign, I also totally understand that and will agree that SeaFall has true problems that hold it back from being great.
See, this is part of my confusion. To me, Seafall offers the option to raid, explore, AND be a merchant, and it is up to me to decide how hard to pursue each one depending on the current game state.
I do get that the hidden rules make it feel like you had to make some blind choices and got punished for it sometimes. I don't know that there is a way to avoid that entirely for legacy games. I also think that you should be able to find some stuff to do with what you have, though.
I suspect there is a way to avoid that for Legacy games--you simply have to make the choices more balanced and support the different choices roughly fairly. In my experience right now, those who preemptively increased their holds before the colony rules emerged have benefited as they can construct colonies easier and quicker. Those who increased their explore values are getting rewarded with glory rich explore targets in the skull sites and finding new islands. But I upgraded my raid early and often and feel I am getting screwed because of it right now as my opponents can race towards glory quicker than I can hope to. If there was a milestone or two I could go for via raiding right now it would seem better, but there doesn't seem to be one. While there is some stuff to do with what I have, I find it hard to figure out a strategy that will enable my build to actually earn glory faster than my opponents, unless I get flat out lucky with what advisors show up or certain events tip in my favor.
While SeaFall does allow you to be a merchant at times or an explorer at times or a raider at times, I didn't realize how much you may want to diversify. Early on it seemed upgrading raid would be fine as I could raid upgrades and compete with the explorers and merchants for glory via raiding. But those choices to specialize in raiding are not getting rewarded, while upgrading other things is. I think that's clearly a game design problem that could have been handled better.
For what it is worth, I will admit in particular this issue may be exacerbated in my three player campaign however as there is so much to explore for three players that there really isn't a need to raid to get stuff as there are plenty of readily available goods and places to explore. So maybe I just made a mistake in upgrading raid so often early on, but again how should I have known that?
We have had several games in our campaign so far that ended before anyone could get a milestone, or where the only person to get a milestone came in last. I think that's become more common as we've gotten farther in the campaign and there are more varieties of non-milestone points (we have opened 4 boxes).
Gotcha. That does sound really good. The early games are dominated by milestones and have been ending in like 5-8 total turns which is just so fast and makes winning require milestones or other bursts of glory. And again, the only sources of those that I have found are skull sites, the tombs that rapidly close, exploring new islands, or milestones.
I'd love if the game got a bit better in the future. Pherhaps I just need to ride out some bad games to get to the good ones. But I don't really see why I should do that when I have so many other great games and everyone in our group is mostly finding SeaFall to be an alright but not remarkable game. For those who are loving it, I'm very glad. I wanted to love SeaFall, and I still think there are many brilliant parts to SeaFall and many things I do love. I still love legacy mechanics and look forward to future legacy games. I just hope that the flaws of SeaFall are recognized and future legacy designers take some of this feedback to make better games. To be honest, I would be ecstatic if they make a SeaFall 2 and use many of the same base mechanics and work on some of the balancing aspects and the other complaints here. I'd be all in. But as is, I am not sure I will bother to play through the rest of this campaign on the hopes that the games get a bit more fair and better compared to how it currently looks and feels.
I also happen to like the variability and the reasoning and decision-making based on inferences and incomplete information. I can understand that's not everyone's cup of tea.
For what it's worth, to the extent that our group has specialized (which, it sounds like, is less than some groups), the dominant specialization (source of victory points) has switched around quite a lot over the course of 7-8 games.
The incomplete information in particular is the killer for me. I can't very well make well informed decisions to dictate my strategy when sudden twists and turns can screw me but reward my enemies. I was confused when one guy was upgrading his hold in an early game just to make it harder to raid him and so he could sell a bit more easily as a merchant. But then colonies emerged and he was well ahead of the race to be able to found some because he made that choice when no one else knew what was coming. That's just frustrating to me, particularly when many milestones reward a player for being the first to have some colonies. I do not see how I can stop them from completing that before me, nor can I see how I can possibly earn enough glory quickly enough to prevent him from winning the next game because of that.
As is, I'm glad that the source of glory has shifted around during the campaign. Like I said for the three of us at least, the games have mostly been about exploring. There are so many good sites to explore, most give nice benefits, and exploring new islands gives tons of quick glory to end a game. I could try to join them and explore, but when they have a 5 explore ship and some good advisors to manage it, while I haven't upgraded my explore, it's pretty impossible to challenge them for exploring the juicy targets.
Ah well. I think I've made my points clear, and I don't expect everyone to agree. I know a few weeks ago I ignored reports and rants that I am now typing--back then I hadn't experienced the issues for myself and wanted to believe SeaFall was the great game I hoped it would be. I can still understand how many groups will absolutely love SeaFall still. But for the type of gamer that I am, the incomplete information and the random swings in glory and the reveals making prior decisions seem foolish in hindsight....well it is really frustrating. And with no clear way forward right now in order to stop someone from beating me this next game, it just doesn't seem like a game for me. I totally understand why it may not be a game for many, and how it will lead to frustrations for some. To the OP and others who are having rants about the balance, you are not alone. I really doubt I will every complete SeaFall. To those who are loving it and either don't agree these are problems or just can overlook them for the other fun parts, great! I hope you love SeaFall and have a great time with it. There are many parts to like and even love.
Thanks for the discussion everyone. It's interesting to see what makes games for different people stand out and be enjoyable. Like I say, I really hope we continue to see new and interesting legacy games. I love the legacy mechanics of SeaFall. I just hope we get some legacy games in the future that improve upon mine and others experiences of actually playing SeaFall.