Been on that date.
Uh, I suck at this game and hate phones, although I lost at it on Steam a lot.
Arise.
So they added AI to online MP games. If you had a friend or a couple and really want those extra slots filled, well there you go. Per usual, AI turns can take a little long though. It definitely adds to the experience to have all slots populated.
I’ve found that Through the Ages is a completely different game at 2,3, and 4 players. Definitely worth changing up the player count for people who never have.
Even wiht bots?
I can’t speak to whether or not the bots are worthwhile, but they should still affect the player count differences the same way, especially if you have at least one human opponent.
Interesting. I’ll mess around with it. Thanks!
I don’t know how worthwhile all the bots are, but I have played a game with a couple of them and just having 4 players in game still adds enough to shake it up a bit. As abrandt said, the game just plays differently based on the number of players.
Our AI and MP game feels pretty good so far, and yeah it’s nice actually having pacts and something kind of unknown happening with bidding even which you do not have in say a 2 player game.
A question to you guys who actually understand this game. I have 2 tactics available: Medieval Army which gives 2 “swords” (power?) and Heavy Cavalry with 4 swords.
So naturally I thought the Heavy Cavalry is better, but when I choose it, my military power is 3, and with Medieval Army it’s 5.
I have 1 warrior and 1 knight.
How does this work?
Your tactics card gives you a bonus for building armies which match the card.
Medieval Army gives you a 2 strength bonus for each army, consisting of melee + horse.
Heavy Cavalry gives you a 4 strength bonus for each army, consisting of 3 horse units.
So your 1 warrior (melee) and 1 knight (horse) combine to form a medieval army, giving you the 2 bonus strength. You don’t have 3 horse units, so heavy cavalry offers you nothing currently.
In general, medieval army is very strong early on because it provides a good strength bonus per unit and doesn’t require much of an investment in military to pay off. It also segues nicely into some later tactics.
By comparison, getting three knights together for a heavy cavalry is pretty expensive, both in resources and population, especially as it doesn’t make any use of your starting warrior.
Thanks, that makes sense. Now I feel slightly stupid for not getting it.
Another question. I was using one of the leaders (can’t remember which one right now), edits trait is that when replaced, his card returns to my hand, and I can use it to complete a wonder.
I had a wonder, but when replaced, the leader just disappeared.
That’s not a leader I’m familiar with.
I’m guessing that’s Homer. You’re misreading it’s effect:
When he’s your leader you get 1 happiness and an extra stone to build military each turn.
When you replace him, you would loose both effects since he’s not in play anymore. But, you can choose to apply the 1 happiness bonus to a completed wonder. If you do you do not get back the civil action you usually get when replacing a leader.
I’ll re-read the description next time he comes up.
I’ve been obsessed with this game this past week. I’m also very bad at it. Another question:
What’s the relation between the various blue chips, happiness, and corruption?
I played the tutorial twice and can’t get my head around it.
Glad you’re enjoying it. I’m of the opinion it’s one of the best bits of board game design ever.
The blue and yellow tokens act somewhat similarly and controlling how they move about is important for playing the game well.
Blue tokens represent “resources” in some nebulous sense. They start off in the blue bank; during the production phase at the end of the turn they move onto farms and mines to represent stores of food and minerals respectively; you spend them from there back to the blue bank to increase population or build things.
A blue token on a farm or mine represents one turn’s production for that building type, i.e. 1, 2, 3 or 5 depending on the level. You can make change when spending these, but not combine them. This can make it difficult to move as many blue tokens as you would like back to the bank.
The reason to have tokens in the blue bank is to avoid corruption at the end of your turn (more on that later).
Yellow tokens represent “people and land” in some fashion. They start off (mostly) in the yellow bank (free land); you spend food to move them to unemployed people (populating the land); you spend resources to build things for the unemployed people to work in (military / resources buildings / urban buildings).
A yellow token on a military card or building provides strength or happiness or whatever that building produces at the end of the turn.
As you gradually increase your population by removing yellow tokens from the bank, it increases the amount of food you have to pay to produce new ones and the amount you have to pay as upkeep. It also increases the amount of happiness you need to entertain your people. Any missing happiness can be covered by unemployed workers. If you don’t have enough of those, you will suffer an uprising which is really really bad.
So, the production phase at the end of the turn. The relevant bits here are:
- Corruption - pay minerals if you have too few blue tokens in the bank
- Produce Food
- Consume Food - more the fewer yellow tokens in the bank
- Produce Minerals
So, what’s the strategy here? Well, it’s great if you can spend enough of your production to avoid paying corruption, particularly in the early game. It’s not the end of the world to pay corruption once or twice to let you spend actions on grabbing key cards instead. But you’re certainly incentivised not to stock up too much for too long. The legal techs, some colonies and a few wonders provide you with more blue tokens, giving you effective resistance to corruption. Higher level mines and farms also help a lot. Getting more actions helps indirectly, as you now have more opportunities to spend.
There’s less you can do with yellow tokens. You might look to avoid increasing your population for a turn at a critical moment but that’s about it. It’s worth remembering that you lose two yellow tokens at the end of each age, which can really mess with your plans.
Thanks. I think I vaguely knew this, it’s just the underlying precise math that eludes me.
By now, I’ve played 5 games against the easiest AI settings. Strangely enough, I won my first game and lost each and every other one after that.
Just 1v1 or have you tried with more players? As I noted earlier in this thread, the game is very different for each player count. Between the way cards cycle and the military balance changes how you’re playing the game changes.
Two player games let you really shoot for a particular strategy as it’s reasonably likely an expensive card will still be available and cheap next time around but you can know for sure all the cheap cards will be discarded. With four players what will be on the board is more of a crapshoot, to look ahead a turn you’re more likely paying attention to what is still in the draw deck to get an idea of what might be available to you. Or you’ll hit a turn where the other opponents don’t buy much and it turns out a lot of the cards from your last turn are still available.
On the military side two player games are really all about keeping pace with the other player. If one player gets way out ahead of the other they can really mess with the weaker player, especially late in the game where a lopsided war can be devastating. Whereas in 3 and 4 player games if you don’t want to focus on military strength you can spend most of the game just making sure you aren’t the weakest in the pack, as the strongest player will usually won’t want to risk that an aggression will get defended against. Once wars come into play then targets will more likely shift to the player who looks to be winning, so that can change the balance there. However, a strong economy can overhaul their military in a single turn allowing risky things like baiting another player into declaring war just to produce a killer military overnight.
Anyway, long of way saying to make sure to play with varying player counts!
I wasn’t aware I can do that at all. I’ll give it a go.
So unhappiness is directly linked to number of (employed?) population?
In the app, you can see the yellow box divided into a number of sections. You need one happy face for each section of the yellow box that’s completely empty. Instead of a happy face you can have an unemployed population (who is called a discontent worker, for the purpose of a couple of events).
Empty sections also determine how much food it costs to create a new population and how much food you pay in upkeep.
Similarly the blue box has a number of sections. You pay 2 resources in corruption for each empty box.