by Becq
Scapemage wrote:
colinmarsh wrote:
3. our campaign was pretty competitive with 4 of the 5 players leading at some point during it but some of the games will be swingy.
My group got through only half of the campaign and then quit, and this point here is exactly why. After about 5 or 6 games, two of the five players were so far astoundingly ahead that the other three players were in near-impossible-to-win situations. No joke, there were leads of upwards to 40 or 50 Glory by the end of game 6.
The reason we found this to happen was because we found some things like exploring and raiding to be worth significantly more than things like being a merchant. Each player quickly began to sink into what they wanted to do, and upgraded their characters and ships to play towards those things. However, a few games in, it was clear that some things were more valuable, and at that point it was too late, since the player who had spec'd into those traits had total control over the actions, thus the other player's stats were not good enough to tackle the challenges on the board.
I think you may be underestimating merchanting. The merchant/builder in my first campaign *won* the campaign. It's hard to find another way to turn six goods in game 4 into about 15 glory over the course of the campaign...
Ok, sure, I'm simplifying that a little:
In game 5, spend six goods building a colony. Gain 4 glory.
In every subsequent game, spend 6g to gain 1 glory, plus about 2g and 2 goods during the game.
You can then spend one of your free goods, plus the 2 gold you get during the second winter to build a structure on the colony for no additional net cost: +1 glory!
That's a great value!