Race for the Galaxy

Thanks, email and screenshot sent.

I have a silly issue: it seems the game creates a new random online identity on each of my devices, and I would like to be able to share one across two of them. Is there any way to do this?

Device linking is what I’m working on this exact moment ;) Should be in the next major patch.

Oh, awesome (and thank you for the express answer!).

Edit: also would like to throw a little thanks for the fair european pricing, after Apple Muaddib’s dreams of 1 dollar=1.5 euro they decided to make true on their monopolistic store. If you could spread that to the Expansion packs (they are 4.49 euros for 3.99$) as well. Edit2: or maybe it can’t be adjusted?

The European price includes about 1.30e of tax, which makes it pretty close to even. But hey, you get healthcare or something, right? ;) Technically we can change prices individually, but managing that (particularly over time) isn’t really feasible so the stores just end up doing it all for everyone.

As I just got back from the orthodontist… Stop pushing where it hurts! If only I was still living in Europe, I might have got that healthcare :(
Apple not able to let you manage multiple iTunes account on a single device without jumping through stupid loops is another sucky part of it, and the reason why I am still using my European account.
Anyway I ended up paying 8,98 euros (roughly 10 bucks) for the expansions: know that you made me miserable, and the kids won’t have shoes this year.
PS: the goal mechanics rock, and that hard AI is no joke!

It’s amazing how much better the iconography for Roll for the Galaxy is than Race for the Galaxy.

I bought the app for Race, thinking it would finally let me learn the iconography and play the physical card game with friends. But then I realized, there’s no way a normal person (i.e. my friend) is going to ever learn the iconography without playing the game a billion times.

I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this game since picking it up last week. I’ve always got at least 2-3 games going in multiplayer, and unlike my very first multiplayer match described in this post, I haven’t experienced another crash in all that time. I guess the few crashes I had in that first multiplayer match were some sort of fluke.

I’ve probably completed about 20 games or so against other players, and several times that number vs the AI.

If I had one request to make for future version, I’d like the game to be more persistent when I have a turn waiting in multiplayer when I’m blitzing through a single-player match. I sometimes miss the indicator that pops up in the upper right, and missing that for several minutes can mean the difference between more or less playing live against another player for the duration of that match, or having them get bored of waiting and setting the game down for the rest of the day. Too many times I wrap up a single player game, just to get back to multi-player and see one or more games waiting for my input, when I would have dropped everything in single-player had I known that were the case. Thankfully, due to the nature of the game, playing asynchronously isn’t that big of a deal, but it does seem more thrilling when playing against another opponent real time.

Anyway, I’m loving this game. I’m also thrilled I didn’t find out about its release until shortly after it actually came out. So sick of seeing threads for games I must own, only to find out they’re going to be in development/early access for the next 3+ years anyway. Although, I guess its too bad now I’m stuck waiting for the Steam version.

The more multi-player games I complete, the more I wish this game had a couple extra social capabilities, such as:

Multi-player Rematch. You can already “rematch” single-player AI if you don’t want to change any match settings, but you can’t rematch human players in MP.

The ability to add current or recent opponents to your friends list. Unless you know the the other person’s in-game player code, you can’t add them as a friend; and the game doesn’t share your opponent’s player codes (which in itself is understandable, games like Hearthstone don’t share that either until after they’re added to your friends list).

As lower priority, but something I’ve wished I’d had when playing vs someone in real-time (meaning, you know they’re at the other end because you’re both blowing through turns pretty quick), is a sort of emote or communication system I can use to wish them a “good game” or “nice move” etc.

Now, if I’ve learned anything from every other multi-player game I’ve ever played in my life, it’s that the more social features a game adds, the more tools are put into the hands of trolls and “BMers.” But Due to the nature of this game, and the type of player I’d expect to meet in this environment, I’m not sure how much of a concern that might be here, overall.

Someone above already requested device linking, so I won’t bother bringing that up here, but it’s another quality of life thing that, while nice to have, doesn’t make or break this particular game for me. And that’s really what all this social stuff boils down to for me as well, just quality of life features that would be nice to have, but aren’t actively crippling the game in their absence. I’m still having a ball, and getting just a little better at it every day.

It’s called joining the slack channel ;)

Don’t lose hope: join the wonderful world of Twilight Struggle, where we chat, add friends and the worst players will be merely grumpy or early-quitters!

Yea, I haven’t played that. I come from a world of 6 billion Hearthstone hours played, where a simple “Hello” or “Well Played” delivered at just the right moment can induce a catastrophic stroke.

I firmly believe, like you are inclined to, that RTFG might become one of those rare online gentlemen club :)

Yeah, when I started this project, the network model I decided on had a very hard line between ‘online or offline’, like many games. If I were to do it again I would make it so you were effectively always connected (if your device itself was online) so you could jump between single/multiplayer at will.

Rematch/post game friend adding just barely didn’t make the cut for this patch. Will prob be in the patch after.

This is enormous fun now that I’m over the learning curve, and the three levels of AI are great (haven’t tried MP). The middle AI is perfect for advanced beginners who know the rules but haven’t grasped good strategies, like me. I lost the majority of games against the middle AI, but the scores are generally close and when I win it feels like a great accomplishment. It also motivates me to keep playing, since I want to get to the point where this AI is not a challenge, and I move on to hard AI.

In short, having three levels of AI makes this game really shine.

Does this play well enough on a phone’s small screen, or does it really want to be played on a tablet?

I play on the phone. No issues for me, and it scales failrlt well.

I’ve also played over 1000 matches of Ascension on the phone, so take accordingly.

I have the board game, along with Roll For the Galaxy - but my wife is anti-playing competitive games right now and she’s the only one I have to play games with. So, getting this on the phone may be a good thing for me. I’m not real good at it as I’ve only played the board game about 3 times.

We’ll get this then! And then join us on slack for vigorous multiplayer games :)

re: phone

Controlling the interface is fine on phone, but I do find the iconography to be a little too small for my tastes. The cards in the game seem to be a direct 1:1 translation from the physical game, so just imagine one of those cards scaled down to the size of your fingertip. I can double-click to zoom in on any visible card in the game (whether I have it in play in play, it’s in my hand, or it’s on the enemy’s board), but otherwise it’s sometimes hard to distinguish certain iconography for certain cards at a glance.

And due to the nature of the physical game’s chosen font (which seems preserved for this release), I also find the card-names to be completely unreadable on my phone unless I’ve zoomed into a card by double-clicking it. But card names aren’t that important unless you’re either trying to avoid playing duplicate cards (which the card art helps distinguish more at a glance anyway), or you’ve got a certain Development or two that require certain specific cards be in play for extra VP.

Overall, the game is fully functional on my phone, I just find it a little more finicky, in that I find myself double-clicking cards more often to zoom in on couple of them. But this is something players have to do in other card games as well, so it’s not unique to RFTG.