Sure. I made it. Bruce, if you want to play the family game instead, just make a new one.
I just upgraded my iPad to the latest gen and am downloading everything. Taking a while. You can set a game up - I’m available tomorrow evening/night.
Off topic, but I thought I’d ask: did you use Apple’s recycling program, or did you just purchase a new one? Is there a preferred method for transitioning from a previous gen to the newest gen?
I don’t know if there is a preferred method or not - I just bought a new one and restored it from a cloud backup. Then I gave the old one to my wife.
Tim and Syzygy, looks like we are underway.
I picked this up, but have never played the board game. Really like what I’ve seen so far in the tutorials. I’ll be up for some async after I get a few solo games under my belt.
I could see it being hard to follow multiplayer async play in the same way you can in the physical game. A big part of competitive play is hinged on determining what your opponents need to do and outmaneuvering them, in a way that’s very similar to Puerto Rico. However, I’ve definitely found it harder to keep an eye on what everyone else is doing and keeping track of what strategies they’re going for because it’s quite a bit of drilling down. For what it is though, great port, and I am finding the Solo Series gameplay interesting.
I’m really looking forward to the release of the K and I decks though; I find the E deck occupations boring and it’s been quite a while since I’ve bothered playing with them as a result, and this hasn’t changed my opinion at all.
The solo series is going to come down mostly to luck of the draw on occupations. My current series gave me +1 grain when you take Day Laborer and +1 Plowed Field when you Plow a Field in my first two games. As a result I have 4 plowed/planted fields and quite a bit of excess food by the first harvest every game, which sets me up for absolutely insane amounts of food production by turn 8. If I can get something to reduce the reed cost of expanding my house I should be able to manage a consistent 4-5 family members by second harvest every game. I think breaking 90 will be based on whether you get these:
That may or may not be true about async games. But the score breakdown and game state interface Playdek created may be the best implementation for async worker placement games that we’re going to get.
Stone is definitely the roadblock in the Solo Series. You want to be able to build all the improvements that provide a bonus for stored resources, since you can usually max them all out. Well, I can with my wood and clay occupations. But I needed a stone occupation.
Why does the game take so many clicks to start an online game? Start the app. Ok. Then Play Online. Great. But now Log In? Why can’t I be continually logged in? It’s not like I’m afraid someone is going to grab my ipad and make a bad move in my online Agricola game. And it remembers everything anyway, so that Agricola hijacker could just do the same thing. Then I get the online lobby, where I need to select Game List. Couldn’t my in-progress games be on this screen? Finally on the next screen I can play.
It’s a wonderful port in so many ways (the way he animals wriggle when you pick them up always makes me feel just a smidgen badly when I cook them) but this game lobby thing seems even more clunky compared to the rest of it.
My solo series ended on game 24. I needed 83 points but only got 82. I could’ve restarted to try to be more efficient, but I figured that’s good enough. I got my 90 point game achievement thanks to some lucky +stone minor improvements. A few weeks ago I was tempted to start a new solo series with even better occupation cards. I think I’m done now.
I’ll probably try to grab those singleplayer achievements against the AI just for something fun to do. My multiplayer game has stalled since Bruce has been out this week, so once again anyone is welcome to send me a game.
I tend to agree. Async strategy games that involve any depth greater than move-something-here are always going to be somewhat difficult to follow, but this game handles it better than most I’ve seen.
I think I’m just about wrapping this up. The AI is too dumb (and painfully slow – maybe I need to reboot my iPad 2?) to enjoy playing against them. I’d rather play Le Havre if I want to beat up on AI in a worker placement game.
Multiplayer takes forever as I suspected. (Not blaming any of my opponents!) I’m still happy to play against anyone looking for a casual game. I have it on my iPhone so I can take turns pretty quickly.
Anyway, Agricola started out really strong with the solitaire game and the solo series. I thought it was going to become my favorite iOS game. But the other game modes weren’t quite as engaging. That’s okay. It’s still one of my favorites.
I don’t find the Agricola AI dumb at all, but then again I’m a beginner at the game. The AI is indeed a bit slow when playing with full rules (not family game), even on my iPad 3. Love the game otherwise, excellent port and great game mechanics.
I shouldn’t say it’s dumb. The AI usually gets some good points on Master. It just does weird looking things sometimes. And it’s the slowness that gets me. Rebooting didn’t help.
A couple friends and I have been playing the crap out of this. I’d heard about the board game a few years ago and have always wanted to try it but it never managed to get added to the collection. Judging by the number of pieces/counters/etc I’m sort of glad to have an electronic version instead, actually. The friends balked at the $7 price tag but I convinced them to get it anyway and now we can’t stop playing. Some seriously tense moments turn into hilarity when there’s an upset or someone makes an unexpected move. And now that we’re all getting better at it the strategies just keep getting more and more devious. It’s great :)
I have a lot of trouble remembering what I want to do between turns in my game against Bruce and Syzygy. Apparently I wanted to be the starting player this round, and I have no idea why.
I got this for my iphone and haven’t played it much as the icosn are too small to make out any details… I guess I need an ipad or a newer iphone with a better resolution? (still on the 3GS)
Thanks for finishing up that three player game, Tim and Bruce. I like 3+ a lot better than two players.
Sorry if part of that was the (at times several day) time lag between turns. Unlike Ascension, I’ve found I can’t play multiple games of Agricola at the same time or I get utterly lost. It’s kind of unfortunate. I expected Agricola to get more time from me but the need to concentrate on a single game is limiting. I haven’t tried the single player yet and may never do so. I bought it purely for asynchronous multiplayer.
The AI doesn’t really know how to play cards properly, so I find I can usually beat it without any real difficulty unless I play a game where I am stuck with a really bad hand, and it accidentally gets a good one. It can play the game fine otherwise, but since that’s such an important component of the strategy for the game it is hard to find the AI really satisfying to play against.
This is a huge problem for me. I could play the game with a notebook, writing down my thoughts and plans each time my turn comes up, and then carefully studying each player’s moves, but that seems like a drag. I completely lost track of my plans in that three-player game (and lost badly). Although I also haven’t played a ton of Agricola, and my guess is that Syzygy has.
We should burn down his farm.