by Ranior
lactamaeon wrote:
Have you tried stealing an explore-focused advisor from your friends? From the sound of it, there should be several out there, and it seems unlikely that they would have the investment necessary to take it back.
Also, since upgrades can act as extra "hit points" on your ships, raiding docks for even unrelated upgrades can get you a glory boost now and allow you to attempt higher explores without sinking a turn or two later. But I'm not sure you need that...
So you have seen the tombs (and thus the rules for tombs), so you know that some Tomb sites can be "explored" with other values instead of the explore, and that tomb sites can give out "unforeseen" bursts of glory and/or other great rewards.
(It's possible that your group misread the rules? When entering a tomb, the order is a bit off from other explores. You pick the site and go to the Captain's Booke *first*, and then only roll what the entry tells you. You don't have to succeed on an explore roll first.)
Indeed, I consistently raid docks. It is one of the best actions for my raiding ship to take. The extra hit points and abilities are nice.
I did one time go and steal a great exploration advisor and got one use out of him to explore a decently difficult site. But I was raided back not long afterwards. That is the issue I just cannot understand. Most people on these boards seem to suggest or think that you can raid one of those players in the lead to get a leg up. But the enmity system seems to just allow that player to very easily retaliate and do the same thing right back. Perhaps I could steal an explore advisory towards the end of the game and keep it, but again, is the right play really to switch to joining them in exploration and try to compete despite being down in end game ship upgrades to explore? Perhaps it is. Maybe I just have to do that. But if so, that's pretty lame and I'll feel pretty far behind still in trying to maintain. Not to mention now I may be leaving that player permanent enmity. I can sure try it again though. But has anyone out there really succeeded with this type of action? To me the fact your enemy can quickly retaliate means that raiding other players doesn't benefit you all that much as the enmity you leave behind allows your opponent to get that extra offense they need to raid you back.
We are playing tombs correctly. The first tomb that opened, we did not look at the back of the book right away. We thought you would just pick an entry like the front of the book and that you might randomly get an explore, or sail, or raid endeavor. Because of this I spent a few turns trying to build up a few ship upgrades so I could handle whatever endeavor I got. One of the other players just rushed into the tomb instead hoping to get explore--it was at that moment it became obvious you could essentially pick your type of endeavor, even though the rules did not make that clear, nor did any of us think it was clear we should take a look at that map until we were exploring a tomb.
So perhaps it is our fault there, but I don't really think so. So either way I got beat to the first one. We've only had one other one open up, and it was closed right after. I didn't even have a chance to go for the second one the way the turn order worked out.
I'd love to go to one with raid. I suppose eventually perhaps the explore based rooms will run out and only raid rooms will exist and I can go finally succeed? Perhaps eventually I just will be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of one? But as is my experience with them continues to lead in to my experiences of just random elements happening in the game that I can't really prepare for or play around that are giving my opponents a big edge over me.
I'm hopeful that I'm just unlucky and other groups aren't experiencing these issues. However I've read enough of these boards to see other players have rants like the OP and elsewhere that suggest to me that many moments in SeaFall are just flat out frustrating. I know my recent experiences in my last several games have had several moments of anguish for me and a few moments for the other players. I'm not sure my group is one to just want to solider though those for another 10 or so games.