Game #55: The Sands of Time by Jeff Warrender

Thanks; glad to hear it!

No offense to your group, but this appears to be a problem with your rulebook reading style rather than with the rules themselves. And in the rules, several different areas reference the “Chronicles” section of the rules; I chose to put that after the Game End rules, but sure, one could reorder the various sections, for sure.

This is a flaw in terminology on my part, I think: the “Chronicles” are one side of the “History cards”, which are drawn using the “Scribe” prefect ability. The other side of the “History” cards are called “achievements”, which give you ways to gain achievement tokens. This dual-use aspect of the History cards caused me to coin an entirely different term for the scoring aspect, namely, the “Chronicles”, which may have been confusing.

They are drawn randomly, so it’s accurate to say that you don’t know exactly what you’ll get, but there will probably only be 2 or 3 different kinds of Chronicles in each category (Political, Cultural, and Civic), so once you’ve played the game once, you’ll probably have a good sense for what kinds of things the game rewards.

That said, there may be some aimlessness in the first couple of turns, but that may not a terrible thing necessarily, and anyway, I think there will be enough to do to ramp up your society to a certain level of stability that probably you won’t really be thinking about strategy all that much in, say, the first and maybe even the second turn. But you may!

It may. I’m guesstimating about 3 hours for a 6 player game, but that may be a little conservative. It will depend a lot on the players. The actions are pretty short and punchy, so in principle it should be possible to play quickly. But it will probably never be, say, a 1 hour game, and maybe not ever less than 2. I think the length is justified by the depth it provides, but obviously that will be the call of the players to make as to whether they think the game is worth the investment of time.

Yes, I’ve thought at some point that it would be fun to try to make a “fair” or “historical” setup. I haven’t sought to do that yet simply because it then adds another variable to testing the game -- if Joe lost, was it because the game is broken, or because the “fair” setup is broken? Also, as pertains to the issue of “ramp up” -- this is a key consideration in balancing the game: giving players enough that the game gives 10-12 turns of substance, and that it’s not either a case where the game is so brutal that you can never do anything (it may be leaning a little in that direction at this point) or so loose that you can do everything you want.

Yes, there isn’t a consistent terminology for that yet; I have to make that uniform. Thanks!

I haven’t actually decided whether it will be recorded with tokens or a track on the player mat. You start with 0 combat laurels

I agree, and in reading the rules myself, I myself was able to find a few points that seemed like a good rules lawyer could find ambiguous. I’ll need to tighten a few things up a bit. But really, at this point, the game is pretty much only going to be played in my presence until the game itself is “done”, so while rulebook concerns are important, the game itself isn’t something I’d subject to blind testers until I’m sure the game works.

Thanks much for your thoughts!

-Jeff

Thanks so much for your kind words!

Yes, I agree, the rules aren't exactly "user friendly" just yet; I'd like to add some more pictures at some point, and more concrete examples. I don't tend to like "detailed turn examples" myself, so that's why I didn't write one, but I could try to whip something up. Part of the problem with the rules is mainly that the rulebook was written on a PC but all of my images and such are on a Mac, and I don't really have a way to connect the two, so it wasn't easy to get a lot of the images from one to the other. I'll try to at least post a turn example sometime this week.

Let me try to explain this aspect a bit more, because it's important. First, there are "achievement tokens". These can be received in two different ways: one is building Structures. When you build a Structure that has "Achievement Icons" on it (with the number of icons corresponding to the level of the structure), you receive the number of tokens depicted on the structure. Alternatively, one side of the "History Cards" provides a way to get achievement tokens (e.g., "Initiate 2 battles to receive 2 Political tokens"). (And remember, History Cards are drawn using the Scribe prefect ability).

Ok, so you have these "achievement tokens". What can you do with them? One option is to use them to pay for Advances using the Philosopher ability. Another option is to use them to record Chronicles, which are printed on the other side of the History cards. Chronicles are the VP mechanism of the game. A Chronicle might say, for example, "Total number of Territories in your Empire:", and would have a row of boxes each of which has a possible number of Territories. When you record that Chronicle (which you do as a free action at the end of any of your turns), you pay Achievement tokens in the appropriate category (in this case, Political) in an amount equal to your current Unrest; then, you place the card on the table and place your marker in the box corresponding to the actual size of your empire. And below that box, is a VP payout. When a Historian Event occurs, you'll receive that many VPs.

The idea I'm going for here is that scoring is a two-step process. Instead of just giving everyone points for the size of their empire (to continue this example), you have to invest some work to get achievement tokens, to "establish a heritage" in political accomplishments, which you can then "cash in" to declare yourself to have accomplished something -- you're making a record that a historian will then hear about and write down. But that heritage could alternatively be used to gain you advances; you have to choose what the best use of the tokens is.

The loss of advances is related to Unrest "boiling over" during Unrest events. Basically, as you know, Unrest sets your cost for just about everything you'll buy during the game, but I wanted some more serious effect for players who choose to ignore their Unrest level. The first try at this was "lose advances", the idea being that your citizens "rebel" and your overall society diminishes as a result. But this could change with testing.

Hope this makes things more clear!

Control of a territory comes from "Annexation", which is one of the actions allowed by the "General" prefect ability. Like Chronicles, control is a 2-step process. To annex an unowned Territory, you must have the majority of peasants; to annex an owned Territory, you must clear out all of the other player's citizens. You must win a combat in that territory to do that. (you can also use combat to gain resources as "spoils"). Yes, you still control a Territory if you have no units, but doing so puts you in danger of another player moving Peasants into the Territory and annexing the Territory.

No, he'd keep control of the Territory; only having a Territory annexed by another player causes you to lose control of a Territory, and it's only possible to annex another player's territory if none of that player's citizens are present in the territory (and the annexing player must have the majority of peasants).

The idea here is that it's possible for 2 players (or more) to peacefully coexist in a Territory. This is mainly an economic arrangement, since when you choose the "Produce" prefect ability, all players with Peasants in your territories produce based on the number of peasants they have. So by spreading your peasants into foreign territories, you can produce without having to choose the "produce" action, freeing you to do other things. Of course, the standard way of doing things is to only allow one player per territory. This certainly would remove some ambiguity, but I liked the opportunity for cooperation that the system I used permits. So, I think it's justified.

So, to summarize, to gain control of Territories you don't already own, you use the General prefect ability to annex the Territory. If the Territory is unowned, you simply need a plurality of peasants in the Territory. If it's owned, you must use combat to clear the owner out of the Territory before annexing.

In effect, they do. Let's say, for example, I want to use the "General" ability. With no Diamond tokens, I could initiate 1 battle (or annex 1 Territory). If I add a Diamond token, I could initiate 2 battles. It's a bit confusing because the "upgradable" abilities aren't uniform in scope across the different Prefects. I'll also note that the use of the term "Diamond tokens" is motivated mainly by me having some leftover tokens from an earlier iteration of the game which had Diamonds on them, so I chose them to take on this function. But a better term might be more appropriate.

Yes. The only restriction is that you yourself couldn't take over the city (you can only build a market in a city) unless you removed your market prior to combat.

Looking forward to it! Please let me know if anything is still unclear!

Thanks again,

Jeff

The idea there was meant to shake up the turn order a bit, rather than always following clockwise order around the table. The reasoning was that if you're always going after the same person, for example, mounting a military campaign against them could become difficult. But it may not actually end up mattering, and I may just use a standard clockwise order.

The way it works, though, is that starting with the player who currently holds position 1, each player gives his position card to one other player, and can't keep it for himself. So let's say I'm player 1, you're player 2, and Joe is player 3. So perhaps I give the "player 1" card to Joe, you give "player 2" card to me, and Joe would have to give his "player 3" card to you. And that would be the turn order for the next turn: Joe, me, you.

[qquote]
The scoring is a bit confusing. I like it alot because the cards you score will also determine your strategy in playing the game, but you need to clarify it in the same manner you did in your previous post.

I'm not sure I completely understand the question; could you be more specific about what is confusing? I'm not skeptical that confusion exists, just unsure what aspect I've explained poorly.

I do agree that the cards you draw will shape your strategy to some extent, and I think it will be a legitimate strategic question as to whether you'll try to play to the cards you draw, or keep drawing cards until you get ones that fit the strategy you're following; the latter will cost more turn actions, so it may be a tough choice.

Not a bad idea at all, and in the original version, instead of 3 types of events (Attrition, Unrest, Historian), there were a bunch, with some being good and some being bad. In the long run, it just added a minor dose of chaos but didn't make the game more interesting, so I tossed it. It would be nice to have something like this because it would add a lot more historical flavor, and something like this could be a nice way of bringing back a runaway leader, but I'd have to think more about how to implement it. I do like the idea of a moving catastrophe token; kind of like the Robber in Settlers. Nice!

Thanks again for your thoughts!

-Jeff

They are, but I don't have Word on the Mac, and I use "AppleWorks" for all my artwork on the Mac, and that can't really talk to any of the PC progams. I also don't have the two connected. The moral of the story is, it's best to pick a single computer to do all one's design work on!

-J

Steve,

Thanks for the compliment! It’s taken a lot to get to this point, but I do feel I’ve finally incorporated all of the elements I wanted to include (production, combat, trading, unrest, road-building, etc) but in a system that hangs together tightly. Of course, if a need arises to hack stuff out, I'm in trouble...

Not at all, your comments are perfectly valid and much appreciated. Ironically, I’m not a hard core fan of games like Civ or History of the World either. Mainly due to lack of exposure (and that due to lack of time, as they all require a big time investment). So I undertook this project more to see if I could do it than out of a deep love for games in this genre.

24 History Cards, each usable as either a Chronicle or an Achievement

The dual terminology is very important to keeping the functions discreet, but the terms should be mentioned early on in conjunction with the History Cards so that players draw a clear connection. It may be that the actual playing cards make that clear enough, but it never hurts to state to the first time player what is obvious to the experienced player.

Good suggestion, thanks. Part of the trick of writing a rules set, as you know, is putting yourself in the position of the first-time player. It’s harder than it seems! Clearly I’ve failed on some counts, and I thank you guys for catching them!

Yes, this is an algorithm that sounds complicated but makes sense to me when I perform it. Your proposed explanation was a good one. The other thing I realized recently is that there’s really no reason for the number and Resource tokens to be separate; you could have 3 tokens that say “6 Crops” and 2 that say “6 Gold”, rather than 5 tokens that say “6”, 3 that say “crops” and 2 that say “gold”.

Additionally, for the setup, I’ve written a little computer program that generates as many random setups for the game as you’d want, pretty much in the blink of an eye; you can then open it up with a spreadsheet program. So instead of describing the setup algorithm in the rules, it may just be better to provide a lookup table with 20 random setups (and probably put up the application online so people can get their own setups as well). Then it’s just a matter of putting the tokens where the table says.

Yes, but it isn’t just any 4 -- basically, you close off most of Asia for the game. This is untested, but I suspect that 26 Territories would make the game too “loose” with 4 players, and I think there need to be “impingements” between empires from a pretty early stage for the game to work well. But it’s a new addition, and I probably didn’t describe it well. The idea is basically, that you pull from the distribution a 6 Crops, 5 Gold, 4 Crops, and 3 Crops from the tileset prior to commencing the setup algorithm.

That’s a fine idea, thanks!

Disregard that section completely, I’m pretty sure the algorithm is incorrectly described. Basically, just read the introductory post in this thread to read what the Event Deck will look like. I haven’t yet written the actual, correct algorithm to do it, but trust me to be able to...Your proposal for improving the algorithm description was a good one, thanks!

Bottom line: The game lasts 10-12 turns. In Turn 1, the Event will be a special 1st turn event. In turns 2 and 3, the event will be either Attrition or Unrest. For the remaining turns, it may be one of those two, but once in each of the following sets of turns: 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12, one of the Events will be a Historian. The 3rd Historian ends the game.

Correct.

Yes; there’s something of a componentry question as to whether “pawns” and “markers” will be the same objects or whether there will be different types of pieces for these; probably depends whether the published version of the game (should that ever happen!) uses miniatures or wooden pieces for the Citizens.

No, not currently.

Exactly right; originally, the players were dealt Prefect Cards at the start of the turn. Since there’s no longer any variability in the Prefects, this is now unnecessary. That sentence is an anachronism in the rules. Although, one thing that was nice about the cards is that they could be traded between players. (so, it was possible to Produce twice, for example, if you could make a deal for a duplicate “Population” prefect). It may be something I’ll go back to.

Yes, you will have 3 markers, which you place on the Prefects on your player mat as you use them.

Correct, good catch.

You draw the History cards using the “Scribe” prefect ability. They stay in your hand till you use the Achievement side, or record the Chronicle side.

Currently, there’s a separate board. Because of the way I’ve implemented the board and structures (structures are cards placed under the territories’ information boxes at the edge of the board), I couldn’t have a VP track going around the outside of the board like most games do.

In the end, I’ll pick just one. I am going to start with the “almost fully deterministic” option and see how it goes, but if a little uncertainty is desired I may go to the die-rolling variant. Ideally, I sort of like the “cube tower” variant at the end of the rules, but since it adds a big, expensive component, I doubt it would be feasible publication-wise, unless I could get Queen games to publish it.

No, not the total initiated; the only aspect that would look at combats initiated would be the Achievement cards, and those you’d use on the same turn you initiated the combats, presumably making tracking unnecessary -- you have to assume a little short term memory sometimes, I think...

Glad to hear it’s opened you up to a new genre! Big, epic games aren’t for everyone but I hope this one has enough meat that it is worth the investment of time. I think that once it’s balanced, and doesn’t have a single “best” strategy, it should have a lot of replay value. And I hope that there are plenty of tough decisions; that’s what I look for in a game! This game is meant to be, for the most part, a study in dichotomies. With almost every aspect of the game, you can choose between “this” or “that”: do you choose Prefect Ability X, or Y -- you can’t use both! Do you cash in the History card for Achievement tokens, or keep it to use as a Chronicle for VPs? Do you use achievement tokens for Advances or to pay to record Chronicles? If you choose to Advance, do you choose an enhancement, or to improve your rating in one category of Structures? These decisions are all simple, but hopefully none will be easy!

It’s a legitimate concern, but not one I’m worried about yet without more testing. The old game, which featured every action (all of the Prefects, basically) in every turn lasted about 5 hours with 6 players. I’m positive this will be shorter, and I hope about 3 hours but we’ll see. From the numbers, each game turn will include 3 Prefect actions per player for
18 actions in a 6-player game. Assuming each player turn took 1 minute, a 10-turn game would last 180 minutes. Some turns may take more than 1 minute, but many should take less -- drawing a History card, or choosing an Advance, or reducing Unrest, e.g. Most of the actions are short and punchy, and can be done quickly. Some length due to decision-making is inevitable, but in most cases, you should be able to plan your actions during the other player’s turns. Moreover, with each round, your choices become more restricted since each Prefect you choose really closes off 2 abilities for the rest of the game turn. With a game of 4-5 heads-up players, I really wouldn’t be surprised if the game could be played in 2 hours, but I wouldn’t quote that as typical, necessarily. It remains to be seen...

There’s no question about this: a playable Civ is the holy grail of game design, the one game that a large chorus of gamers wish existed.
Many games have attempted to fill this goal -- Vinci, Mare Nostrum, e.g. -- with varying levels of success. This game is my attempt at this “holy grail”, but we’ll see whether it’s what people are looking for or not! At this point, I’m happy with where the game is heading, and even if it never gets picked up, I’ll be happy that I worked on it and have it to play.

Thanks so much for your detailed comments and opinions!

-Jeff

Yes, this game is meant to live in between the rather avstract Vinci and the too-long-for-one-session Advanced Civ. Ironically, despite being more complex, I think this game might actually be of comparable length to Vinci. Vinci, I find, has a huge Analysis Paralysis issue because you can optimize every turn (and it’s important to do so!) I think the actions in Sands should be punchier and mayber shorter. We’ll see if it works out. Regardless, Vinci is a great game.

Hey, I'm going to hold you to that!

Yes, this is certainly the big question. From my perspective, this is the “stripped down” version of the game but I wouldn’t be surprised if more whittling is needed! One comment, though. Lack of clarity in the rules is my fault, and I apologize, but just ask that people keep in mind that it’s a separate issue from the quality and complexity of the game itself.

Pretty understandable. I think, in hindsight, that it would have been better for the GDW if I just described what the board, event deck, etc. would look like after the setup, rather than explaining how you get there, since I obviously botched the latter and it has kept people from understanding the former, which is what’s really of interest.

Cute idea! The only thing that would be weird is that a Historian could emerge “mid age” and you’d think a scoring round would “end an age”. Probably a semantic issue.

I actually have a summary card that shows the costs of actions, maybe I can upload it. In it, you see what the different resources are for. It breaks down like this:

Crops:
--Add a citizen
--Annex a Territory
--Initiate combat
--Reduce unrest

Gold:
--Pay for structures, cities, or markets
--Reduce Unrest

I’m actually toying with the idea of making Unrest reduction payable by Gold-only. This would nicely separate Crops and Gold strategically -- Crops would be more for “expansion”-oriented activities, and gold would be more for “enhancement” oriented activities. I considered a one-resource economy, but I think this asymmetry between Crops and Gold is important to the overall strategic depth of the game, despite coming in a pretty simple package.

It may be unnecessary; it was mainly meant to give a way to get diamonds without having to build cities. Since there’s a structure that can do that, and since you can now build markets in other player’s cities to get diamonds, it’s probably superfluous as an option for now, and I may do away with it in initial playtesting. Good call!

The short answer is that in the tests of the old version of the game, the answer was definitely yes. The “annex” action, as you know, brings a cost with it, which is meant to reflect the idea that as your empire gets bigger, expanding it further becomes more difficult. However, since this effect is also captured in the escalating cost of Unrest reduction, it may be unnecessary. I’m trying to avoid a situation where military might rules the day, and making annexation more difficult seems to be a way to achieve this. (Plus, it also lets you use combat for other purposes -- currently, “looting” resources is the other option).

As for allowing annexation immediately upon settlement, the answer there is, yes, it must be a two-step process. Otherwise, the first person into the territory can claim it, and that may create too-strong of a turn order effect.

But your concern is legitimate and I’ll consider it some more.

Maybe not. This is another case of trying to make the all-out military route difficult (yet still feasible!). Originally, combat happened for all players in the same phase, so you’d go around the table and if you wanted to fight, you paid the current round number in resources. This meant that you could pass in an early round to wait and see before attacking, but that this would cost you more if you chose to attack in a later round. That reasoning doesn’t apply here, and it may be unnecessary to have this. Maybe I’ll do away with it for now; any reduction in number of rules is almost always a good thing!

Each player can have one market per city, so there can be 5 markets per city in a 6 player game. (I toyed with the idea of having the number of markets restricted by the territory’s capacity. This would actually be nicely symmetric and be a nice tension point -- low capacity cities are cheaper to build, but could be less powerful as a result; might be nice). When the city owner produces, he gets 1 diamond token for the city itself, plus one per market. Each player with a market in the city gets 1 diamond token.

Maybe, but a city is distinct in that its territory no longer produces Resources; it only produces Diamond tokens. You’re giving up production for enhanced flexibility (and a couple of other things). I’m not sure how much to restrict what can be built in a Territory. It’s an open question.

Keep in mind, though, that there are only 3 face up advances at a time and you can only auction advances you already own. It’s mainly meant to be a way to (a) create “technology sharing”, which introduces cooperation, and (b) to give you a way to “parse” the pile without having to invoke something like “draw the top X cards, choose 1”, which I don’t like.

Good question. I think that I originally meant “he can take any other prefect action”, but I see your point, so he should probably be limited to the philosohpy prefect, and probably to the Philosopher specifically. Moreover, if he couldn’t initiate another auction with the Philosopher, that would solve your other concern. So how about “if he does not receive an acceptable offer, he may use the Philosopher to purchase one of the other available advances, if it’s possible to do so; he may not initiate another auction”.

Think of it like this; there are 3 advances in each category. You need 2 advances to get to level 3 structures. So you have to decide whether to choose special abilities or advanced structures, but not both. It’s a dichotomous choice, and that’s what this game is all about. It’s a restriction, which is the soul of decision making, which is the source of strategic play. The advance-hoarding wasn't a primary concern, but it's probably part of the reason for the current rule.

It’s possible that your way would be a better way of doing things, and really, the history card source of achievement tokens is mainly to set up a dual use for the history cards. But I would worry that if every action gave Achievement tokens to boot, that would just give WAY too much to learn and to think about. If I adopt a scoring model like what Seth proposes (with cards chosen from a display rather than drawn and played), I may need an alternative “achievement token” mechanism, so I’ll keep your ideas in mind!

I hope you’ll get the chance! Thanks for the great comments, I appreciate your feedback!

Seth,

Separating the setup algorithms which I grant sound bad (though they really aren’t that bad in practice, however ham-handedly I’ve explained them!), I don’t agree with this claim. What you’re calling a “complex system of qualifications, etc”, I just call, rules. Every game has rules. You need to have restrictions and definitions of what players are allowed to do. The presence of rules doesn’t in and of itself equate to the presence of complexity.

That said, it’s quite possible the game is overly complex for what it aims to be. I think part of the problem may be my verbosity moreso than the game itself, but it’s a valid concern. It may be an “eye of the beholder” thing. Certainly, my opinion is not of much consequence, but I don’t think it’s nearly as complex as you repeatedly allege. We’ll see what others say, and more importantly, how it plays.

The setup takes a little too long if you follow the algorithm, as as I mentioned to ... Steve, I think, I’ve created a lookup table of randomized territory setups that will make that much faster. Other than that, you shuffle the decks, give out pieces, prepare the Event deck, then players seed the board, Settlers-style. It’s not that bad.

What you’re seeing now is the product of just such a process. It may not be the terminus of the process, but believe me, the game is greatly streamlined from what it once was.

Ironically, the setup is probably the last thing I wrote. To me, the part of the game I invest the most effort in is the game play. I haven’t yet settled on a great starting configuration for the game, nor have I explained the setup algorithms I’m using currently in the clearest language. I’m relatively unworried about this issue, actually, since I’m always the one setting up the game currently, although I grant that it’s something that’s worth worrying about at some point.

Sure, that might work. I think starting in adjacent territories is really just common sense more than anything else. It’s not a hard rule to remember, or an undue imposition on players’ strategic flexibility.

Quite possibly. One motivation for the 3rd level is that there are some abilities I wanted to have Structures confer that are just a little too “good” for what you could get with only 2 advances. Perhaps the structures could start at level 2 (ie, you must advance once to even be able to build structures). It’s not a bad thought.

I think that the uncertainty of when an Historian will appear is an important element that gives tension to the process of recording Chronicles. That’s not the only justification for a random onset of Historians, but it’s a justification. I think the Event deck allows the Historians to be assimilated with the other principal kinds of events in a pretty seamless way. The algorithm sounds like a mess, but for the purposes of this discussion, just look at the outcome of the process, and assume that it’s possible to explain how to actually do it in a understandable way.

A fair opinion. I don’t agree, and I don’t know that I’ve necessarily defended any of the systems that way, but probably I have.

I think it’s in the rules, but in case it isn’t, after you use a Prefect, you place a marker on that Prefect on your player mat. In that way, you know which round you’re in. As for player order, the “player order” cards currently handle this, although as a result of our discussion, I’ll probably just go with clockwise order for now, and there will be a “Start Player” token so you know which player starts and ends a round.

I did have this initially, except that ALL prefect abilities were present every turn, and it just made the game too long. Going in some order of Prefects could be ok, perhaps even a random shuffling of the 4 Prefects. There’s probably more flexibility in the current system, and indeed, an ordered system would be a little too close to Wallenstein (which this game is already a bit too close to in some ways...), but I agree that in general, structure is a good thing. I’ll keep it in mind!

I agree, I tend to be pretty wordy and (try to be) pretty precise, but it could be said more succintly. The “add more citizens with Diamonds” is somewhat of a holdover from an older rule set, but the idea there is that there has to be some upgradable aspect of each ability for the Diamond tokens to have meaning. Could the game work without Diamond tokens at all? Yeah, maybe. The likely way would be to go back to an older model where you’d get Prefect cards and each ability would have a number beside it corresponding to the number of times you’d take that action. I liked the Diamond tokens as a way to remove luck-of-the-draw aspects, and I think they work well as a way of giving you extra flexibility at a cost, but it’s possibly unnecessary, I’ll grant that.

No, the first territory is “free”. “Activating” other territories costs one Diamond token per territory.

I think that’s accurate, but the bigger problem would be trying to move that same citizen into a 3rd territory, and that’s what I’m trying to avoid. Not sure the rules are airtight.

You read the rule correctly. I think, though, that for now I’m going to change it to “you must use gold to reduce unrest”. The reasoning, you’ve already correctly figured out:

Exactly right. As I just mentioned to Bill, I think the idea is that crops are more for “expansion-like” activities and gold are more for “enhancement-like” activities. It’s a restriction that should drive strategies.

Yes, I think you need to make sure you have a viable production of the types of resources you need to accomodate your strategy. It’s particularly important when deciding which territories to convert to cities, since doing so removes that territory’s production capability.

I think if a territory could produce either resource, it would be just as valid to just go to one resource type. Which may not be a bad idea, but I like the asymmetry of the resources currently. 2 types of Peasants would be ok, but I don’t think much different thanthe current system of 2 types of resources. I did consider a system whereby all territories initially produce Crops and then you must “upgrade” a territory so that it produces Gold, but it seemed that it would lose some of what made the initial territory distribution so interesting (and it really is need to see how the initial board sets up and to try to plot a strategy based on what size and resource territories you can get access to...), and that it would add another ramp up effect that could make the game even longer.

Not sure I understand the question. The rule is this: you can’t attack a city in which you have a market. (But, you can remove the market prior to attacking). Maybe it’s an unnecessary rule; maybe the better rule would simply be “if you annex a foreign player’s city in which you have a market, the market is lost; return the peasant pawn to your supply”.

I answered the latter question above -- it’s a good point. The first question is easier; if you could build markets in your cities, and enhance your diamond production, there’s be no incentive to put markets in foreign cities, and this mechanic exists to motivate cooperation between players.

Only diamonds.

For the first question, I think the reason is to keep you from just overloading one Territory all at once. Since you get a cost reduction for building with Peasants, a fully-stocked Territory could then build a lot of buildings all at once inexpensively.

With respect to the latter question, first, keep in mind that Unrest is meant to set the cost for most actions in the game. Building a Level 2 structure should cost more than building a level 1 structure, and multiplying by the level seems like an easy way to achieve this . (The main advantage to building a level 2 over a level 1 is that you only need to use one action to get two levels-worth of building, rather than 2 separate actions). And the cost reduction for Peasants is meant to accomodate the fact that you’re giving up production to take that action. I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I think the game’s resources may be tight and so this is meant to give you a way to utilize your peasants either to produce or to build, and to reflect the fact that more peasants build more cheaply than fewer peasants, which is mainly thematic. But come on, Seth, you’re an engineer -- you can handle this little bit of math!

Correct.

That’s probably the only reason, although perhaps you’d do so if there was a particular player you wanted to deprive of an extra diamond token (and could afford the loss of a diamond token for yourself).

It may take longer, but I don’t think so. We’ll see. Let me equally apologize if I was too defensive. If I was, I think it’s because I felt that your remarks appear to place the game at an earlier stage of development than I personally feel that it’s at. I think it’s way further along than “some good starting ideas but flawed execution”. Obviously, that’s just my opinion, and it’s pretty heavily biased! But I do thank you for your remarks and consideration!

-Jeff