by Prullenbak
rmsgrey wrote:
Even if you never draw the events, they add cards to the player deck, so the first couple of Epidemics are, on average, delayed slightly, which also makes a difference.
I'm not the best in statistics and chance calculations, but I doubt these 2 cards have that big of an impact. There is a slight advantage but to say it makes it worthwile to lose a game for it, is stretching it.
rmsgreay wrote:
And there's enough game-to-game variation in Pandemic based on the shuffles that not needing Events in one game doesn't mean they don't make a significant difference to your winning chance - they generally come out in games that are running longer, where you're more likely to lose (Pandemic gets harder as you go as you start drawing more cards in each Infection Step, so become increasingly unable to keep up with the addition of new cubes to the board)...
And my point was, that by the same token, losing games in P:l makes a significant difference to the state of the world in the game, so it makes you more likely to lose in the future (pandemic legacy gets harder as you go as you start degrading cities, so they become increasingly hard to cure diseases in...)
rmsgreay wrote:
More generally, there are scenarios where you face a choice between losing through deck exhaustion, or trying to win but risking outbreaks. For example, suppose it's late in the game, 8 yellow city cards are in the discard, the Scientist has 3, the Researcher has 1, the Scientist is next to a Research Station, and the Researcher can also reach a Research Station on their turn, which is now, but South America is ready to blow - a chain outbreak of at least 4 cities that would end the game - but the only city involved not in the infection discards matches the Researcher's yellow card. Either the Researcher uses that card to take a direct flight in and defuse South America, or they move to meet up with the Scientist and give them the last card for the last cure, but if that yellow city gets drawn before the Scientist's turn, there's a significant number of panic increases... Obviously, reaching that state means some mistakes have probably been made earlier in the game, but less contrived scenarios where you're choosing between a "safe" loss or a risky win are possible...
This is a totally valid point and that certainly is possible. It would But this is where my "A" comes in. Either you metagame, or you roleplay. The setting of the game is: You're scientists/doctors with the goal to cure the diseases. That is the goal. If you roleplay, you don't even know you need to cure the diseases again next month, because you don't know (how) they mutate. In this case, I think I would try to go for the win and see what happens. So in that case there are a couple of possible outcomes:
1. You win, and SA hasn't got an outbreak: high fives all around and a memorable ending.
2. You lose: also a memorable ending (we almost had it), even more so because this leaves a permanent reminder on SA.
3. a small disaster happens in SA but you still squeeze out a win. This is the best scenario from a "legacy"/story point of view, I guess.
If you metagame, you go for the strategic loss. Then, there is nothing memorable at all, and you essentially broke the game. And like I said: A lot of games aren't any fun if you refuse to play them. That's not the games fault.