Ok, referring back to Issues & Assumptions take 1:] .
I think all of us are on board with FL's rough rendering of issue #1. So on to issue #2 and 3. Starting and Tile placement.
Does anyone have any problems with the 3 x 3 tile sized start area? Again, this will yield 8 different starting areas, which I think is more than plenty. We can stagger the player start squares between the 8 tiles rather easily (remembering that the corner tiles have two possible edges to enter the cave from).
Now, the placement is the hard part. We need to decide the following things:
How and where tiles are drawn from. I.E. Do you draw one and immediately place it, do you have a hand from which to place the tile from, is there a 'community pool' of upturned tiles? If you have a hand of tiles, how do you replenish it?
When do you place tiles? At the beginning of your turn you get a free placement? Do you pay APs to place tiles during your action phase? Is it a combination of both?
I know we have discussed all of these issues to some degree previously.
My personal opinion is this:
Players have a hand of X (possibly 4) tiles face down in front of them (they are allowed to look at the tiles). They get one free placement at the beginning of their turn, before actions are taken. In addition, they may choose to pay X # of APs to place ONE additional tile during their action phase. Anytime a player places a tile, they draw a tile from the face down pool to replenish it.
Thoughts?
-Darke
That seems fine as long as they are they can only draw new tiles to replace tiles placed.
That reminds me, what about an initial building stage in the game? Like going around the table each player takes turns placing (and subsequently replenishing their pool of tiles) up to a certain # of tiles; let's say for example, four. This will give a pretty solid start to the cave system..... This could be done even before the starting squares of each player are chosen. If you don't know where you're going to start, it might help to balance out the placement of the starting build tiles. This preliminary phase wouldn't take long to complete, perhaps 4 or 5 minutes at the most, even with a lot of players.
-Darke