by KalKraken
AMartin56 wrote:
I also think the opening bidding would work better if the order was reveresed in rounds 2 and 4. This would somewhat mitigate the problem with picking last.
I HATE events. We always play with five, and event cards come out way too fast IMO. Multiple times the same player (with the most population) has benefited from event cards back to back with little to no chance of it getting around to me so I can change the on board situation. It's frustrating to see a single player luck into 10+ armies out of the blue. I almost wonder if we're doing something wrong. That's a huge advantage when it would typically take a large investment in coins to get such a force on the board.
As a group you can make events pretty rare if you want. Events only trigger if the revealed territory card has an even coin value, so you can start making all of the territories worth an odd amount. At some point you'll be stuck with at most 4 even territories (once they are all odd you have to make some even again). This gives you about a 10% chance of having an event each time someone takes a resource card.
I thought that the bidding already worked the way you proposed. My recollection is that the player who picks last in round 1 picks first in round 2. So with players a,b,c they pick in order abc and then cba.
In terms of first turn blitzes we've found that because of scars / cities there are a few spots for HQs that prevent an opponent from placing within 2, or that force the blitzing player to go through cities, weakening the blitz.
Also, as you note the first to blitz has a hard time converting that to a win, so we've seen it become less popular as a strategy (since it doesn't seem to work)