Back to @pillbox
@pillbox, looks like you are out of the running already. That inn destroyed your potential for farming, and you now have no source of food.
Hmm. I could have sworn I had another fish to harvest… but… that is not the case!
You lost one due to lack of storage, but the main thing is that you just don’t have any way to get more food, other than 3 more fish. Perhaps there is a way out of that hole?
You get a fisherman with wood but for all other foods you need the appropriate seed. You can either try to build biology or build a market and trade for food.
edit: You can buy the market next building phase and I’ll trade you some grain for your fish if you want.
@mr.ister to pollute.
Forgot about storage!
I think I can build a market and trade 2-to-1 with the game.
Done building and I’m out for today. See you tomorrow!
I think your only way out is a 1:1 trade, fish for other food, then cart to build farm, assuming that order works.
Your explorer has nowhere to explore.
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Yeah, I really botched this game!
I’m just lucky that my mistaken assumptions were correctable. I placed my city thinking a harbour would be useful, then I thought I could risk you two not exploring immediately, and I thought I had room for a university. Then I realized the harbour would be pretty useless about the same time I realized the university was right out of the question. I had also completely underestimated the speed at which pollution would swamp me. By sheer chance, I had room for and was able to pivot to a brewery, despite mistakenly thinking you could flip tiles and not just rotate them, and this solved all my problems.
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Studying the rules of this game only gets you so far, the only way to really figure out its systems is to play it, so the first one or two games will always be learning games.
Also, I just read in the FAQ that the trade mechanism apparently doesn’t work in this implementation, which means I have you bad advice, you lost another turn and now the only way back is by building biology. And that’s going to take at least three more turns before you actually can get food again. Meaning there is no way you are going to catch up, and chances are you won’t have a lot of fun.
If you guys want we could call it and reset?
(@Benkyo would be up)
The trade mechanism doesn’t work properly, I’m not sure that means it doesn’t work at all. Maybe it means only the player who built the market can initiate trade in their own build phase - I’m not sure of the “correct” timing procedure. You would probably want to implement some way to be able to trade and benefit from the traded goods in both build phases?
EDIT: Oh no, you are right, it was removed entirely. 2:1 trades only, I guess.
I would still like to see more of the game rather than quit, it took quite a while to get here and I don’t want my second game to run afoul of having no experience aiming for a win condition. If given a “do-over”, I would probably do almost exactly the same thing again, because I still don’t know whether it works.
I do understand that this is an entirely selfish desire though, and if pillbox quits we can quit the game (apparently the other issue with this Antiquity implementation is that it doesn’t handle resignations well).
@pillbox is up.
According to the FAQ resignation might work or not, in the latter case the person who runs the site might be able to help. So, we either could keep going, or pillbox tries to quit and Benkyo and I (hopefully) keep playing. In that case we could give this another go as two-player, if you’re still up for it, pillbox. Given the fiddliness of the current implementation that might be the most sensible player count after all.
I’m fine either way.
Looks like I may have been dropped from turn order? I’ll be reading up on the rules for the next game
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First impressions are that this is an odd game.
I can’t remember ever playing a game that demanded such a complex long-form build queue from its players.
It seems to me that the early game is almost entirely about optimising your build queue as efficiently as possible, taking into account an almost (but not actually) overwhelming amount of information on the board, and making adjustments based on the results of exploration (maybe by yourself and maybe by other players). I’m talking about micromanagement down to include the level of which turn each of your harvesting workers needs to finish harvesting, and optionally how to avoid any need for storage.
Once you have mastered that skill, you can start playing the real game of anticipating your opponent’s actions and further optimising based on those predictions.
Is that satisfying though? I can’t tell yet. mr.ister, you have certainly got to the point where you can play without requiring storage, which seems to me like a baseline level of experience to properly engage with the game. How many plays did that take? Did you dry run or sketch out build queues?
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I can relate to your impression of the game and I wouldn’t contest your view of the game as an exercise in optimization. There is quite a lot going on and if you want to you can figure out the optimal path to your goal given the circumstances you’ve been presented with.
I learned Antiquity at the table together with my partner using the beginner variant just to get familiar with the game. We took our time exploring and experimenting before we really started to play competitively. For me, this was the right way to approach this game because I see it more as a sandbox than as an optimization puzzle. Obviously you need to plan well, because you’re going to starve or drown in pollution otherwise, but that just came with playing the game and getting to know the systems. However, we’ve played this game five times now, so I’m nowhere near an expert. I don’t sketch out entire build queues but usually when I know what my goal is I got a pretty good idea of what I need to do to get there.
So while this is a game where you can get lost in building queues, for me that is not where the game shines. I enjoy looking at the map, figuring out which saint to go for this time and making the rest up as I go.
Also, @Benkyo you’re up!
I think for me, ultimately, my ADHD worked against me and I was unable to keep track of the entire game state with the interface presented in order to understand the impact and gravity of my actions.
People complain about other Splotter games having similar “learning curves cliffs” but because I’ve had tactile experience with Roads & Boats, I’m not intimidated by the fact that you can eliminate yourself in the first turn if you aren’t careful.
Perhaps if I were sitting at a table with Antiquity in front of me, I wouldn’t have made such a bad early blunder. Perhaps not… who knows. ADHD is a hell of a thing.
Also: this and other experiences with playing computerized editions of boardgames has confirmed that I am, definitely, a tactile learner.
I just found a Java implementation of the game. It’s a bit odd, having no save feature, no undo, and no way to play online, but it is very good for “playing with the pieces”, as pillbox describes. If you want to get a feel for the game without going straight into the rigid boardgamecore system I can recommend it.
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/32820/antiquity-java-v10-hot-seat-no-ai-no-networking
There’s also a Tabletop Simulator module, which works for the same purpose.
I might throw together a Vassal module, just a placeholder until I figure out how to deal with complex automation like placing all the resource tokens around a worker.
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@Benkyo to pollute.
I think it’s time for congratulations, Benkyo! Very well played!
I made some pretty dumb mistakes during the entire game which cost me at least one round (such as forgetting to man my storage right now). But even with an extra round I’m not sure that I would have been able to achieve my victory condition (I was going for San Giorgio). I found it very hard to stay focused on the game due to the asynchronous play, playing on my phone on the go, so I’m not sure if this is something I want to do again. But it was a lot of fun to get this game played again!
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Cheers!
I was surprised at how it all came together, to be honest. I was sure you were going to do something tricksy, and at one point I was scared you were going to somehow deny me gold and make a Christofori win very slow indeed.
Aw, that’s a shame. I really am going to make a Vassal module for this, and asynchronous play is the only way I can play anything these days.
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