How well can you do?
When I first started playing Age of Steam, I had to admit that I was stumped. Yes, money was obviously tight, and yes by the end of our first game, we were all making a profit, but how on earth did we get there? When should we have been issuing shares and upgrading the locomotive? And how did choosing certain actions affect our score? I wanted to find some justification for certain game plays rather than just going with the groupthink or the "intuitive" choice (which often seemed non-intuitive to me!). I was completely convinced, however, that AoS was a great, deep game that I wanted to own. And, after shovelling some cash at Germangames.com to get my own copy, I hit upon the idea of creating an excel spreadsheet to track the game and make predictions. Specifically, I wanted to see how an early action choice, a share issue, or a locomotive upgrade could ripple onwards to subsequent turns in the game.
My spreadsheet involved a column for each turn, detailing starting cash, starting income, capital positions, shares issued, etc., and calculating resulting capital, resulting obligations, total shares issued, locomotive level etc., rolling the relevant info into the next turn column. I factored in the taxation breakpoints, and allowed some default level of costs for track builds and dollars used to bid. Results also included your capital position at the end of each turn and an estimated running score and final score, depending on the number of players in the game. I'm not going to post it yet until I have it polished up for viewing (and, hey, a guy has to be allowed to keep SOME results of his labour secret!) but I will divulge several sets of results.
THE ASSUMPTIONS
1. Your bid amount paid each turn will be $1. The spreadsheet handles individual turn bid payments, but let's simplify here.
2. When you are capable of shipping a cube, you will be able to ship one for your current locomotive value, thus achieving maximum income. This is not always practical in the real world, but we are looking for maxima here.
3. When manually upgrading a locomotive in a turn, you will do so first, and then ship a cube using the new locomotive value. Again, this could be different in a game, when it might be tactically advisable to steal a cube immediately.
4. You will spend the lesser amount of cash left over from your bid and expenses, and $8 dollars. I pick this amount as a reasonable average track cost; again, the spreadsheet will handle a different amount and individual turn overrides.
5. I am assuming rough hex cost of $2.5 in order to calculate the cumulative track built and estimate points for track.
6. The spreadsheet is incapable of evaluating whether your track network can actually support the shipment links allowed by your locomotive, and this factor must be accounted for in every scenario.
7. All final scores will be reported in a format a/b/c where a = the 6 player score, b = 5 player score, and c = 4 player score.
8. Scores reported are fully integrated into the tax bracket Income Reduction mechanism on AoS, but in the interest of discussing general principles, I will not discuss trying to fiddle with arranging your income to border the break points until I start talking about advanced topics and tactics in a later article.
SOME TEST CASES
Lets look at some possible outcomes. We'll start from the minimum extreme and move upwards.
First: Issue ZERO supplementary shares in the game. NEVER upgrade the locomotive, leaving it at value 1. The result is that you only ship a cube for 1 income , and do it twice every turn. You make a steady 2 income every turn, chasing cubes around the board, and finish with an estimated 27/30/33 points. Note that you probably can't build ANY track in turn 2 or 3, so this income may even be optimistic, and you will face an unbelievable cube shortage.
Second: Issue ZERO supplementary shares in the game, Always manually upgrade your loco by 1 every turn to the max of 6. Note this means you will not be able to build any extra track on turn 2 or 3, because you have no cash. This limits your income to 2 per shipment until you make a profit and can build a link. The first turn you can take advantage of your 6 locomotive is on turn 6. Scores? An unbelievable 63/84/105.
Third: Issue ONE supplementary share every turn, including the first. Always manually upgrade your locomotive by 1 every turn to the max of 6. Now you build track every turn, so we can remove the locomotive restriction. Scores are now 63/81/93. This is a bit unreasonable, though, as you have so much income on turn 6 that one share is overkill, so modify it to only issuing one share on each of the first 5 turns, giving 65/86/101.
Fourth: Issue NO extra share on turn 1, and then issue 2 shares each on turns 2,3 and 4. Upgrade your locomotive by 1 every turn. You end up with very few track-building restrictions, as cash is usually available, but the scores are 64/85/100.
By this point one begins to notice a few trends. The first case is untenable in real life, but using it to compare to any other illustrates the value in foregoing current income in order to gain future better shipments with a better payoff later. Now let's see what happens if you delay increasing your locomotive. Let's modify the fourth case a bit.
Fifth: Issue NO extra shares on turn 1, and then issue 2 shares on turns 2,3 and 4. Begin manually upgrading your locomotive only on turn 2, and increase it up to maximum 6. Now you gain income of 2 on turn one, but also income 2 on turn 2... final scores are 36/62/83.
In a six player game this is almost as bad as issuing no shares and no locomotive upgrade for the whole game! Two factors influence this drastic score reduction. The delay in locomotive upgrade means that your max income on every turn except the first is one less than in test case 4 until you reach max locomotive power. Also, the turn on which you finally upgrade to loco 6 is one later, meaning you are foregoing a turn where you can make 2 runs of 6 links. In essence, you have decided to ship two cubes on turn one, for max income of 2, instead of 2 cubes on turn 7 for a maximum income of 12. In a 6-player game... there is no turn 7.
Now lets look at my favourite test cases, where you use the auction choice of locomotive upgrade. For simplicity we will use the parameters of test case Four again.
Sixth: Issue no extra shares on turn 1, and then issue 2 shares on each of turns 2,3,4. Upgrade your locomotive manually on turns 1 through 4 and on turn 5 use locomotive auction action. Scores are now 71/92/107. Upgrading to 6 using locomotive has given you an extra 6-link shipment.
Take that case and extend it by using ONLY the locomotive auction choice for the first 5 turns.
Seventh: Issue no extra shares on turn 1, and then issue 2 shares on each of turns 2,3,4. Upgrade the locomotive using the auction action only for the first 5 turns. Maximum scores possible are now an astronomical 90/105/120
Remember how upgrading the locomotive later hurt your maximum possible score? Let's try the following scenario.
Eighth: Issue no extra shares on turn 1, and then issue 2 shares on each of turns 2,3,4. Upgrade the locomotive manually on turn 1, AND use the locomotive auction action on turns 1,2,3 and 4. Max score possible is now 95/110/119.
Wow! This is even technically possible, given that the cash flow is good enough to build a 4-link route on turn two, although the odds of achieving it in reality are a bit low. The point, however, is that if you refuse to upgrade your locomotive early, you immediately lower the maximum score you can attain in the game.
Finally, my last test case:
Ninth: Issue no extra shares in turn 1. Issue 2 shares in turn 2, and 1 share in turn 3. Upgrade your locomotive using the auction action on turns 1 through 4, and manually upgrade your locomotive on turn 2. Maximum scores are now estimated at 105/120/129. Twice around the scoring track in a six-player game, and a grand total of 5 shares issued! Just to tease you all, this is not even the optimised max score possible, when you play around with bid amounts and shares issued.
BREAKING EVEN
The reason the sixth through ninth cases work so well, is that you break even early on in the game, and the ninth case illustrates how income can substitute for shares issued even early on.
THE ULTIMATE OPENING MOVE
This is the equivalent of the chess opening game where you mate the other player in a handful of moves. To do it, you need to be allowed to build a 2-link opening route using 3 hexes, and have 2 cubes available for shipment. You must also win the locomotive in the auction. Issue no supplementary shares. You can now ship 2 cubes for 2 income each, giving you 4 income... and since your locomotive is at 2 and shares issued is at 2, you have broken even in the first turn of the game! If your gaming group is as sharp as mine it'll never be allowed to happen, but it's nice to dream, no?
SHOULD YOU MANUALLY UPGRADE TO 6 LOCOMOTIVE?
When looking at maximum possible score, the answer is "not always". It takes time to make up for the income you lose on the one shipment, and in this case you could have been shipping for 5. You need several extra shipments using your 6 locomotive to make up the difference, not including the extra $1 obligation required on every remaining turn, and you must look at how many turns remain in the game. In a six-player game you might run out of room. Tactically, there may be a good reason, however. Sometimes the only possible shipments left to you require a 6 link, so necessity dictates the upgrade. If you can get the locomotive auction action to do this however, you don't restrict your income to get there.
SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES
- Upgrade your locomotive early. You want to forego early shipments worth 1 or two income instead of foregoing later shipments worth 5 or 6.
- The locomotive auction choice is incredibly powerful in terms of maxing out your possible score.
- Frugality of share issue really pays off in the long run.
- Always arrange to ship one cube on your turn.
- Cash used for bidding will restrict the amount of money you have to build track, and will extend the amount of turns you will need to keep issuing shares.
- Your dollars are probably even tighter than you originally believed!
Showing posts with label Age of Steam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age of Steam. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
AoS - The First Turn
AoS - The First Turn
Although this is by no means a definitive analysis of the first turn in AoS, here's one way to approach it.
WHAT TYPE OF GAME WILL IT BE?
I consider a game to be either tight or loose. This can be determined by the availability of shipments and the number of players in the game. We have discussed cube analysis on a move-by-move basis, but when you are determining whether the game will be tight or not, you also need to look at how many moves are available for all the players in the game, not just your own. If you are playing with 6 players, and you see only 4 credible first-turn 2-link shipping routes, then get ready for a tough, tough brawl. If you are in a 4-person game and there are 7 such possible routes, then the pressure on the first turn will be lessened. Another good clue is how many cubes are on cities of the same colour. These cubes cannot be shipped back to their origin city, according the rules, so the number of destinations they have available is reduced, and usually those destinations are at a significant distance.
Then look at the overall cube balance in the game. If there are few blue cubes on the board and in the production chart, then blue cities may be of lesser use throughout the game. Conversely, the ability to corner deliveries to a city with the colour of the most cubes becomes invaluable. You can't make this determination if you don't look for the opportunity, so take the time to count some cube colour totals.
WHERE ARE THE POSSIBLE FIRST MOVES?
As previously mentioned, there is only one "natural" (maximum 3 hex) route giving a 2-link shipment on the basic board, between Black 1 and Black 2. Now is the time to see if there are the correct cubes to support one or maybe even two possible shipments. What other 2-linkers would be possible using urbanization or engineer?
Look at all those possible shipments, and think about the black hole of bankruptcy. How many of those links have only one cube available for a 2-linker? Could an alternate delivery route access that cube? If someone else gets to that cube first, you could be staring financial oblivion in the face.
The best first moves have a second cube available for a 2-link delivery. Count up the number of those moves and compare them again to the number of players in the game. Rethink your initial assessment of how tight it's going to be.
DO I NEED TO ISSUE A SHARE?
First, do an objective analysis.
If the first turn will be really tight in terms of decent routes available, and you think you will have to bid, you're going to need some bidding money. Don't forget that you will have obligations of 3,4, or 5 dollars, depending on whether you upgrade your locomotive and/or issue a third share. That leaves you 7,6,11, or 10 dollars to both bid and build before receiving income. If the game is tight and shipments are risky (i.e. can be poached by someone else) then do not cut this calculation too closely... you may need that extra dollar or two. If you expect that engineer is going to be a likely option for you in the auction, you'll need at least $9 to complete a two link, and will therefore need to issue a share.
Then, as soon as share issuing begins, perform a more subjective analysis: how many shares have other people issued? If you are last, and no-one else has issued a share, you may be able to issue one and be able to take advantage of engineer, but your financial obligations will be greater than theirs, so you had better make sure you can ship, and soon! If others ahead of you have all issued 1 or more supplementary shares, and you have already determined that there are lots of opening moves available, avoid issuing another share, confident in the fact that your capital position will be better than your opponents. If you have to go first in the share issue, you have no basis for comparison with others, so you had better make sure that your evaluation of the board is correct.
There is almost never any justification for issuing 2 supplementary shares: remember, if you will have $4 left at the end of a turn, you issued one share too many. $20 is a lot of cash to try and spend in one turn of AoS, and if you need that much money for your bidding, you might consider investing in some self-restraint instead. You are still arguably better off issuing no shares, shipping no cubes, upgrading your locomotive by 1, and laying 3 simple tracks for $6, as long as you can position yourself to ship for a 3 link next turn.
THE BID
Bear in mind that when players are bidding, they FIRST define the turn order, from last player to first, and THEN get to choose the actions. The only player who knows for sure that the action they want matches the action they get is the auction winner.
Because of the AoS bidding mechanism where you may pay all, half (rounded up), or none of your bid, consider opening the bidding in even numbered amounts. If you have to start the auction, and you deem bidding to be necessary, and if you think you can afford it, try a bid of $2. It forces any overbidder to reach the relative stratosphere of $3, and if multiple people bid over you, consider your $1 payment as bonus cash - you got %50 refunded. Odd numbered bids aren’t as attractive as they have a potential refund less than %50, and make the %50 refund level obtainable by the overbidder. Basically, bid an odd number only on an overbid and only if you do not expect to be overbid; use an even bid when you want to economically pressure the other players and can afford to accept a medium turn order
Don't forget the relative position merits of each of the actions, as explained in AoS Strategy Article #2. The real key is urbanization, because it may open up potential shipment avenues for one or more players who follow. To take full advantage of someone else choosing urbanisation, though, you want to immediately follow that player, and since actions are not chosen till later, this is tough to predict.
Also, remember that the turn order applies to all phases of the turn: track laying and shipping are particularly sensitive to turn order. If you can get higher in the turn order for very little cash, you may be able to choose something other than First Build and First Ship and still snatch a great route or a choice cube.
In spite of all my enthusiastic explanations about the bid, through, I highly recommend examining the bid of "pass"... it's cheap!
CHOOSING ACTIONS
Your action choice is dependent on your position in the turn order, the actions others have already chosen, the shares issued by all players, and how tight the board is.
If you are choosing first, your goal is to guarantee yourself a 2 shipment without allowing others to poach the cubes you must have. If you do not choose urbanisation, you will never be able to benefeit from it, which may be just fine - especially if you choose engineer. If the game is loose, consider locomotive. As long as you get the route you want, consider how damaging NOT having the action you choose would be to the subsequent players... and choose the action which maximizes the damage.
All other players must evaluate which options are going to appear due to the people ahead in the turn order. If you will build just after the urbanizer, you would have to guess where he would be placing the new city. This is not as much of a stretch as one might imagine, if you scan the board for cube placement. Consider whether new opportunities to or through the newly urbanized city might be profitable.
When you choose later in the turn order, more predatory options appear. Has someone left a crucial cube vulnerable to poaching, and is Ship First still available? Does it look like an opponent requires 2 cubes to be shipped to recoup expenses, and is one of them within your reach? You may be able to drive someone out of the game... and if that someone pounded you last time in AoS, it may be the most satisfying move you make all day.
BUILDING TRACK
Finally, by this point in the turn, some of the uncertainties have been removed. You know your relative position, and the actions of the other players. However, if you are building ahead of the Urbanizer, the location of the urbanized town is still undetermined. Any town you build through might be replaced by the urbanizer's city, and even worse, that city may be a colour which blocks a cube you wanted to move.
There are some areas of the board that will block other players out. For instance, if you are using engineer and are connecting White 1 and White 2, consider using the hex to the southwest of Chicago instead of the one directly south, regardless of which town you want to go through. This will block someone else next turn from using locomotive to connect White 1 to White 4! Similar moves can reduce access from two hexsides to one into certain cities.
If you are sure that you will not be able to ship any cubes on turn one, you might also consider whether building independent spurs in different cities will guarantee your access. As long as the gap is maximum 1 hex, you cannot be blocked out providing that the appropriate complex track is still available.
MOVING CUBES
Move cubes, gain income... not exactly rocket science. However, if you have the possibilities for multiple shipments, ship the cubes that are vulnerable to being taken by other players first. This is usually both good for you and bad for them. Then choose cubes that do not have the potential to be extended to a longer track later, and leave cubes that are in cities you monopolize for that spectacular long link shipment late in the game.
EXPENSES
On any other turn, having to undergo income reduction because you cannot meet your expenses is merely horrible. It destroys your economic position, and I have never seen anyone who had income reduction win the game. However, on turn one... it's even worse. Bankruptcy. Out of the game. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Don't let yourself go bankrupt, count those dollars carefully, and plan, plan ,plan.
Most subsequent turns in AoS involve much of the same thinking, slightly revised. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader.
NEXT: How well can you do in AoS? Some number crunching.
Although this is by no means a definitive analysis of the first turn in AoS, here's one way to approach it.
WHAT TYPE OF GAME WILL IT BE?
I consider a game to be either tight or loose. This can be determined by the availability of shipments and the number of players in the game. We have discussed cube analysis on a move-by-move basis, but when you are determining whether the game will be tight or not, you also need to look at how many moves are available for all the players in the game, not just your own. If you are playing with 6 players, and you see only 4 credible first-turn 2-link shipping routes, then get ready for a tough, tough brawl. If you are in a 4-person game and there are 7 such possible routes, then the pressure on the first turn will be lessened. Another good clue is how many cubes are on cities of the same colour. These cubes cannot be shipped back to their origin city, according the rules, so the number of destinations they have available is reduced, and usually those destinations are at a significant distance.
Then look at the overall cube balance in the game. If there are few blue cubes on the board and in the production chart, then blue cities may be of lesser use throughout the game. Conversely, the ability to corner deliveries to a city with the colour of the most cubes becomes invaluable. You can't make this determination if you don't look for the opportunity, so take the time to count some cube colour totals.
WHERE ARE THE POSSIBLE FIRST MOVES?
As previously mentioned, there is only one "natural" (maximum 3 hex) route giving a 2-link shipment on the basic board, between Black 1 and Black 2. Now is the time to see if there are the correct cubes to support one or maybe even two possible shipments. What other 2-linkers would be possible using urbanization or engineer?
Look at all those possible shipments, and think about the black hole of bankruptcy. How many of those links have only one cube available for a 2-linker? Could an alternate delivery route access that cube? If someone else gets to that cube first, you could be staring financial oblivion in the face.
The best first moves have a second cube available for a 2-link delivery. Count up the number of those moves and compare them again to the number of players in the game. Rethink your initial assessment of how tight it's going to be.
DO I NEED TO ISSUE A SHARE?
First, do an objective analysis.
If the first turn will be really tight in terms of decent routes available, and you think you will have to bid, you're going to need some bidding money. Don't forget that you will have obligations of 3,4, or 5 dollars, depending on whether you upgrade your locomotive and/or issue a third share. That leaves you 7,6,11, or 10 dollars to both bid and build before receiving income. If the game is tight and shipments are risky (i.e. can be poached by someone else) then do not cut this calculation too closely... you may need that extra dollar or two. If you expect that engineer is going to be a likely option for you in the auction, you'll need at least $9 to complete a two link, and will therefore need to issue a share.
Then, as soon as share issuing begins, perform a more subjective analysis: how many shares have other people issued? If you are last, and no-one else has issued a share, you may be able to issue one and be able to take advantage of engineer, but your financial obligations will be greater than theirs, so you had better make sure you can ship, and soon! If others ahead of you have all issued 1 or more supplementary shares, and you have already determined that there are lots of opening moves available, avoid issuing another share, confident in the fact that your capital position will be better than your opponents. If you have to go first in the share issue, you have no basis for comparison with others, so you had better make sure that your evaluation of the board is correct.
There is almost never any justification for issuing 2 supplementary shares: remember, if you will have $4 left at the end of a turn, you issued one share too many. $20 is a lot of cash to try and spend in one turn of AoS, and if you need that much money for your bidding, you might consider investing in some self-restraint instead. You are still arguably better off issuing no shares, shipping no cubes, upgrading your locomotive by 1, and laying 3 simple tracks for $6, as long as you can position yourself to ship for a 3 link next turn.
THE BID
Bear in mind that when players are bidding, they FIRST define the turn order, from last player to first, and THEN get to choose the actions. The only player who knows for sure that the action they want matches the action they get is the auction winner.
Because of the AoS bidding mechanism where you may pay all, half (rounded up), or none of your bid, consider opening the bidding in even numbered amounts. If you have to start the auction, and you deem bidding to be necessary, and if you think you can afford it, try a bid of $2. It forces any overbidder to reach the relative stratosphere of $3, and if multiple people bid over you, consider your $1 payment as bonus cash - you got %50 refunded. Odd numbered bids aren’t as attractive as they have a potential refund less than %50, and make the %50 refund level obtainable by the overbidder. Basically, bid an odd number only on an overbid and only if you do not expect to be overbid; use an even bid when you want to economically pressure the other players and can afford to accept a medium turn order
Don't forget the relative position merits of each of the actions, as explained in AoS Strategy Article #2. The real key is urbanization, because it may open up potential shipment avenues for one or more players who follow. To take full advantage of someone else choosing urbanisation, though, you want to immediately follow that player, and since actions are not chosen till later, this is tough to predict.
Also, remember that the turn order applies to all phases of the turn: track laying and shipping are particularly sensitive to turn order. If you can get higher in the turn order for very little cash, you may be able to choose something other than First Build and First Ship and still snatch a great route or a choice cube.
In spite of all my enthusiastic explanations about the bid, through, I highly recommend examining the bid of "pass"... it's cheap!
CHOOSING ACTIONS
Your action choice is dependent on your position in the turn order, the actions others have already chosen, the shares issued by all players, and how tight the board is.
If you are choosing first, your goal is to guarantee yourself a 2 shipment without allowing others to poach the cubes you must have. If you do not choose urbanisation, you will never be able to benefeit from it, which may be just fine - especially if you choose engineer. If the game is loose, consider locomotive. As long as you get the route you want, consider how damaging NOT having the action you choose would be to the subsequent players... and choose the action which maximizes the damage.
All other players must evaluate which options are going to appear due to the people ahead in the turn order. If you will build just after the urbanizer, you would have to guess where he would be placing the new city. This is not as much of a stretch as one might imagine, if you scan the board for cube placement. Consider whether new opportunities to or through the newly urbanized city might be profitable.
When you choose later in the turn order, more predatory options appear. Has someone left a crucial cube vulnerable to poaching, and is Ship First still available? Does it look like an opponent requires 2 cubes to be shipped to recoup expenses, and is one of them within your reach? You may be able to drive someone out of the game... and if that someone pounded you last time in AoS, it may be the most satisfying move you make all day.
BUILDING TRACK
Finally, by this point in the turn, some of the uncertainties have been removed. You know your relative position, and the actions of the other players. However, if you are building ahead of the Urbanizer, the location of the urbanized town is still undetermined. Any town you build through might be replaced by the urbanizer's city, and even worse, that city may be a colour which blocks a cube you wanted to move.
There are some areas of the board that will block other players out. For instance, if you are using engineer and are connecting White 1 and White 2, consider using the hex to the southwest of Chicago instead of the one directly south, regardless of which town you want to go through. This will block someone else next turn from using locomotive to connect White 1 to White 4! Similar moves can reduce access from two hexsides to one into certain cities.
If you are sure that you will not be able to ship any cubes on turn one, you might also consider whether building independent spurs in different cities will guarantee your access. As long as the gap is maximum 1 hex, you cannot be blocked out providing that the appropriate complex track is still available.
MOVING CUBES
Move cubes, gain income... not exactly rocket science. However, if you have the possibilities for multiple shipments, ship the cubes that are vulnerable to being taken by other players first. This is usually both good for you and bad for them. Then choose cubes that do not have the potential to be extended to a longer track later, and leave cubes that are in cities you monopolize for that spectacular long link shipment late in the game.
EXPENSES
On any other turn, having to undergo income reduction because you cannot meet your expenses is merely horrible. It destroys your economic position, and I have never seen anyone who had income reduction win the game. However, on turn one... it's even worse. Bankruptcy. Out of the game. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Don't let yourself go bankrupt, count those dollars carefully, and plan, plan ,plan.
Most subsequent turns in AoS involve much of the same thinking, slightly revised. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader.
NEXT: How well can you do in AoS? Some number crunching.
AoS Board Analysis
AoS Board Analysis
Let’s look at the board in three different ways: with no cubes placed, with starting cubes only, and finally with the combination board and the production chart both filled.
In all three cases, here are a few things you should keep in mind:
- any city may only have one track joined to it on each hex side
- maximum normal build is 3 hexes of tracks, 4 if you have engineer
- plain hexes are $2, river hexes $3, mountain hexes $4
- town hexes cost $1 for the town + $1 for every track leading to the town.
- only designated town hexes are eligible to be urbanised into cities
- after you do a bit of analysis (trust me on this one, I'll explain in detail later) the most lucrative first move on turn one of AoS is to ship a 2-link good.
THE BOARD
The standard board for AoS can be roughly divided into three areas: West, Central-east (Central for short), and Northeast. The West, in my view, incorporates white cities 3,4,5,6. The Central area is white cities 1,2 plus black cities 1,2,4,5. The Northeast is black cities 3 and 6. All of these regions are extremely loosely defined, but the reasons I have divided them as such are the following
The West: contains no interior links to its own cities which allow a 2-link build on one turn. There is a decided lack of towns of any kind. The only two pink cities on the initial setup are located here.
The Central: has lots of towns, and most of the cities are generally close. Some river and mountain obstructionism but for the most part building is straightforward.
The Northeast: is a narrow corridor bound by the great lakes. It has two serious bottlenecks, in Detroit and south of Toronto. Like the West, there is no internal 2-link route possible on one turn.
TWO LINK CONNETIONS
Given that you are striving for a 2-link shipment on the first turn, there are only so many ways to build one. The only natural 2 linker (using max 3 hexes) is between cities Black 1 and Black 2, passing through the town to the west of Black 2. Note, however, that two people can simultaneously make this connection! The player who chooses engineer has a lot more options to create two link connections (White 4 to White 1, two ways from White 2 to White 1,two ways from White 1 to Black 1, Black 2 to Black 3, Black 2 to Black 4, and Black 5 to Black 6). Finally, Urbanization on any of the aforementioned engineer routes will allow a 2-linker to be built, and allow some additional 2-link configurations from the above. Note that there is only ONE town that you can urbanize to get a 2-link shipment which does not allow anyone else to reach the new city and create a 2-link (even with the engineer): the most northerly town on the board. Any other urbanization creates at least one other potential 2-link route for another player.
THE CHOKE POINTS
There are two methods of restricting access into a city: physical and economic. Physical restrictions can mean shutting someone out of a city by using up the open available hexsides to that city, or by taking the closest hexside and forcing someone to go to a more distant hex side, putatively putting it out of the reach of a normal 3 hex range. Economic restrictions involve building on the cheap hex sides, and leaving only river or mountain hexes, thus upping the cost to get into the city.
Only four cities are subject to physical choke points. White 3 and White 6 only have 2 hexsides as entry... and both are pink cube destinations! Black 3 and Black 6 have more hex sides, but due to the water, they are effectively subject to physical blocking.
Economic restrictions are a bit subtler. Cities Black 4 and Black 5 have only one cheap hexside each, and white city 2 has only 2.
Finally, choke points may develop as the game progresses. Keep an eye on cities that are already accessed by several players: once they have only one or two hexsides left, the competition to build to them can be fierce. Additionally, because track is usually so congested, the economic cost to lay all the complex crossing track required can be daunting.
THE STARTING BOARD
When looking at the starting board, think of two things: cube colour imbalances, and starting shipment possibilities.
Oh, how tempting it can be to try and snatch the starting position, when you see those cubes hit the board for the initial setup... but beware! It may not as tempting as you may think. Take for example, an initial setup where lady luck goes bezerk and deposits 4 blue cubes, 2 each in Black 1 and Black 2. How juicy. Looks like 4 cubes which can be shipped for an instant 1-linker ... no wait, each could be shipped for a 2 linker if you go through the nearest town! What could possibly be wrong? Well, if you plan on keeping your engine at level 1 or level 2 for the first few turns, it's pretty sweet. Unfortunately you can't win that way... you must ramp up your locomotive to maximise your final point potential. So one of those cubes, granted, is crucial to your efforts... but as soon as you ramp your locomotive up to 3, you will NOT be able to ship those cubes past the other blue city: it becomes a barrier, and the network you will need to build to move them will be a late-game development, if it happens at all. A more ideal starting deployment for those two cities would be one blue cube in each of them, plus a Red in Black 2 and a Yellow in Black 1. Those two non-blue cubes now give you a potential 3-link shipment. More importantly, this type of thinking lets you bypass the immediate euphoria of favourable adjacent cube placement, in favour of the more lucrative long-term thinking... "What cube would I need on the SUBSEQUENT turn?!" Doing a first pass analysis of the initial cube placement should give you should reveal potential shipment strings, and the holes missing from them, which leads us to :
THE STARTING BOARD PLUS THE PRODUCTION CHART
Think about the shipments you need now and the ones you will need later. Obviously the board setup must provide the cubes you need for turn 1, and can be useful for subsequent turns too. However, more goods will enter the game via the production table than are initially placed on the board. First, look at the It's a reasonable gamble to expect that the top cube in a city's production slot should enter the game in about 2 turns, and when the game is finished, most of the production will have been flushed. Therefore, the overall colour balance of the game is the sum of the cubes on the board and the cubes in the production chart. If there are a lot more purple cubes than yellow cubes, for example, you might want to make sure you are positioned for good shipping runs using purple cubes in the end game as they should be far more abundant than yellow. In addition, take a look at your proposed shipping runs: see which cubes will be coming into the cities you will have access to in a few turns, to find out whether a suitable run will be available. The further ahead the turn is, the more likely that existing cubes will be gone, so the production track becomes more crucial for seeing whether a shipment will be possible.
Analysis of the cube influx from the chart to the board before the game begins on turn one is probably the one element of AoS where improving your skills will get you the biggest payoff.
NEXT: The First Turn in AoS
Let’s look at the board in three different ways: with no cubes placed, with starting cubes only, and finally with the combination board and the production chart both filled.
In all three cases, here are a few things you should keep in mind:
- any city may only have one track joined to it on each hex side
- maximum normal build is 3 hexes of tracks, 4 if you have engineer
- plain hexes are $2, river hexes $3, mountain hexes $4
- town hexes cost $1 for the town + $1 for every track leading to the town.
- only designated town hexes are eligible to be urbanised into cities
- after you do a bit of analysis (trust me on this one, I'll explain in detail later) the most lucrative first move on turn one of AoS is to ship a 2-link good.
THE BOARD
The standard board for AoS can be roughly divided into three areas: West, Central-east (Central for short), and Northeast. The West, in my view, incorporates white cities 3,4,5,6. The Central area is white cities 1,2 plus black cities 1,2,4,5. The Northeast is black cities 3 and 6. All of these regions are extremely loosely defined, but the reasons I have divided them as such are the following
The West: contains no interior links to its own cities which allow a 2-link build on one turn. There is a decided lack of towns of any kind. The only two pink cities on the initial setup are located here.
The Central: has lots of towns, and most of the cities are generally close. Some river and mountain obstructionism but for the most part building is straightforward.
The Northeast: is a narrow corridor bound by the great lakes. It has two serious bottlenecks, in Detroit and south of Toronto. Like the West, there is no internal 2-link route possible on one turn.
TWO LINK CONNETIONS
Given that you are striving for a 2-link shipment on the first turn, there are only so many ways to build one. The only natural 2 linker (using max 3 hexes) is between cities Black 1 and Black 2, passing through the town to the west of Black 2. Note, however, that two people can simultaneously make this connection! The player who chooses engineer has a lot more options to create two link connections (White 4 to White 1, two ways from White 2 to White 1,two ways from White 1 to Black 1, Black 2 to Black 3, Black 2 to Black 4, and Black 5 to Black 6). Finally, Urbanization on any of the aforementioned engineer routes will allow a 2-linker to be built, and allow some additional 2-link configurations from the above. Note that there is only ONE town that you can urbanize to get a 2-link shipment which does not allow anyone else to reach the new city and create a 2-link (even with the engineer): the most northerly town on the board. Any other urbanization creates at least one other potential 2-link route for another player.
THE CHOKE POINTS
There are two methods of restricting access into a city: physical and economic. Physical restrictions can mean shutting someone out of a city by using up the open available hexsides to that city, or by taking the closest hexside and forcing someone to go to a more distant hex side, putatively putting it out of the reach of a normal 3 hex range. Economic restrictions involve building on the cheap hex sides, and leaving only river or mountain hexes, thus upping the cost to get into the city.
Only four cities are subject to physical choke points. White 3 and White 6 only have 2 hexsides as entry... and both are pink cube destinations! Black 3 and Black 6 have more hex sides, but due to the water, they are effectively subject to physical blocking.
Economic restrictions are a bit subtler. Cities Black 4 and Black 5 have only one cheap hexside each, and white city 2 has only 2.
Finally, choke points may develop as the game progresses. Keep an eye on cities that are already accessed by several players: once they have only one or two hexsides left, the competition to build to them can be fierce. Additionally, because track is usually so congested, the economic cost to lay all the complex crossing track required can be daunting.
THE STARTING BOARD
When looking at the starting board, think of two things: cube colour imbalances, and starting shipment possibilities.
Oh, how tempting it can be to try and snatch the starting position, when you see those cubes hit the board for the initial setup... but beware! It may not as tempting as you may think. Take for example, an initial setup where lady luck goes bezerk and deposits 4 blue cubes, 2 each in Black 1 and Black 2. How juicy. Looks like 4 cubes which can be shipped for an instant 1-linker ... no wait, each could be shipped for a 2 linker if you go through the nearest town! What could possibly be wrong? Well, if you plan on keeping your engine at level 1 or level 2 for the first few turns, it's pretty sweet. Unfortunately you can't win that way... you must ramp up your locomotive to maximise your final point potential. So one of those cubes, granted, is crucial to your efforts... but as soon as you ramp your locomotive up to 3, you will NOT be able to ship those cubes past the other blue city: it becomes a barrier, and the network you will need to build to move them will be a late-game development, if it happens at all. A more ideal starting deployment for those two cities would be one blue cube in each of them, plus a Red in Black 2 and a Yellow in Black 1. Those two non-blue cubes now give you a potential 3-link shipment. More importantly, this type of thinking lets you bypass the immediate euphoria of favourable adjacent cube placement, in favour of the more lucrative long-term thinking... "What cube would I need on the SUBSEQUENT turn?!" Doing a first pass analysis of the initial cube placement should give you should reveal potential shipment strings, and the holes missing from them, which leads us to :
THE STARTING BOARD PLUS THE PRODUCTION CHART
Think about the shipments you need now and the ones you will need later. Obviously the board setup must provide the cubes you need for turn 1, and can be useful for subsequent turns too. However, more goods will enter the game via the production table than are initially placed on the board. First, look at the It's a reasonable gamble to expect that the top cube in a city's production slot should enter the game in about 2 turns, and when the game is finished, most of the production will have been flushed. Therefore, the overall colour balance of the game is the sum of the cubes on the board and the cubes in the production chart. If there are a lot more purple cubes than yellow cubes, for example, you might want to make sure you are positioned for good shipping runs using purple cubes in the end game as they should be far more abundant than yellow. In addition, take a look at your proposed shipping runs: see which cubes will be coming into the cities you will have access to in a few turns, to find out whether a suitable run will be available. The further ahead the turn is, the more likely that existing cubes will be gone, so the production track becomes more crucial for seeing whether a shipment will be possible.
Analysis of the cube influx from the chart to the board before the game begins on turn one is probably the one element of AoS where improving your skills will get you the biggest payoff.
NEXT: The First Turn in AoS
What do the individual Actions REALLY do in AoS?
What do the individual Actions REALLY do in AoS?
OK, so you've started to play Age of Steam, and had the Auction Actions explained to you, but did you ever think about the wider possibilities and ramifications of each action? Here's a breakdown of each one and some important elements to consider.
FIRST MOVE
This one seems simple: you move goods ahead of all others, who then follow in normal turn order. This means, however, that the value of First Build depends on your current standing in the turn order! If you are already first, then it serves only as a defensive move, preventing someone else from bumping you to second, which in the early going is probably insignificant. If you are last in turn order, however, you jump the entire queue, and may be able to poach someone else's prime shipment. First move provides an advantage when you really need to upgrade your locomotive. For example, if there are 3 useful cubes in a city, and you and two other players are connected to it, but you need to manually upgrade your locomotive to use any of them, then first move guarantees that you will get the third cube. More valuable on turn one if initial setup is short on shipping opportunities, First move can swing the game in mid and end game positions by grabbing someone else's potential 6 link shipment.
FIRST BUILD
You build your track ahead of all other players, who then follow you in regular turn order. Like first move, its value varies with your standing in the turn order. There is an often-ignored downside to First Build: it means you precede the player who chooses urbanization, who often opens up more than one juicy opportunity with his new city placement. The value of First Build is greater on turn one if good shipping opportunities are rare in the initial board setup. Don't forget that your first build may be trumped by someone later connecting to your initial city or cities, and poaching cubes using First Move and/or higher turn order. Later in the game, first build allows you to grab valuable entries to city hexes when most entries are already used, so First Build can be a defensive or offensive tool guaranteeing your access and/or blocking someone else out.
ENGINEER
You have the ability to build 4 tracks instead of the normal three maximum. Don't forget you will need to pay for it all, and 4 simple tracks mean a cost of 8. If you are passing through a town the cost is 9, so engineer almost always necessitates issuing an extra share if you choose it on turn 1. Offensive use of Engineer involves identifying whether someone else really, really needs it... then winning it in the auction yourself. Note that on the regular board, engineer opens up no less than SEVEN potential two-link connections! There is another risk when choosing the engineer, besides the track cost. If you build before the urbaniser, they may urbanise any town you may have linked through already, both reducing your track value (making that $3 link you spent your hard earned cash on disappear), and potentially blocking a shipment by dropping in a city of the same colour as the cube! Engineer can be incredibly useful if you use it after the urbaniser, as you often end up with a tonne of great shipping lanes to choose from. When you are last in turn order and choose engineer on turn one, you can often connect a link that has no competition for cubes during turn one's chipping phase.
LOCOMOTIVE
The most underrated and explosively powerful action in the game, in my experience. It grants an instant boost of your locomotive up one notch (subject to the maximum level of 6) and most importantly, means you are not forced to forego one of your two cube shipments on that turn. It grants you the flexibility to actually bump up your locomotive by 2 on the same turn. This is useless in turn one as you will not be able to build track allowing a 3 link, but is immensely powerful in turns 2 through 4. Judicious use of Locomotive maximises your potential score in the game, as will be discussed later. Plan wisely, however: locomotive adds to your obligation costs. Locomotive is also the only financially sound way to raise your locomotive power to level 6 in a 5 or 6 player game because it does not forego a high value shipment.
URBANIZATION
Often viewed as the most powerful action in the game, it does come with several potential downsides. First, though, the good stuff: Urbanisation allows you to access to cities normally 4 hexes apart by urbanizing a town between them and only building 3 hexes, for a potentially low $6. Urbanization is also the weapon of choice for stomping on the leader: when urbanizing a town with many connections, if wipes out the track score of each junction (hopefully all his)! Maximum nastiness is achieved when you urbanise a town which breaks someone's network by inserting a city of the same colour as a cube your opponent was about to move for a value of 6... and cause it to be blocked, rendering it a 1 or 2 value. Now for the bad: urbanization, especially in the early going, can actually open op opportunities for the other players to make good connections. Be especially wary of this on turn one. Urbanisation is most valuable if it is chosen late in the turn order, but it rarely makes it that far.
PRODUCTION
The dark sheep action of AoS. People complain that it is underpowered, that they want the choice of cubes to place. Without any alteration, the rule as written can provide a huge margin of victory. There are some serious downsides to consider though: Production is useless on both the first and last turn of the game. On the first turn, there are no empty slots to put cubes in. On the last turn, the cubes brought onto the board will never be shipped. That being said, Production allows you to fill in crucial gaps in your early production chain, to load up a city that you have control over, and to potentially replace cubes in a city that is currently empty, which is crucial when cubes are few and far between in the endgame.
TURN ORDER
Allows you to pass once in the next auction without dropping out of the auction. Unlike First Build and First Move, this choice is most valuable when you are ahead on the turn track, as it can force other people to drop out at very little cost to you. If however you are already last in turn order on this turn, you are already in an advantageous position where other people may pass before you are forced. Turn order is capable of moving you up to position 2 for a cost of 0 in a best-case scenario.
In general, you must consider four things when choosing your action: your need, others need, your position in the turn order, and the likely outcome of actions already chosen and the actions you will leave behind. As you can see from above and as will be explained further, sometimes the attractiveness of an action depends on what the player immediately preceding you in the turn order has chosen.
NEXT: Board Analysis
OK, so you've started to play Age of Steam, and had the Auction Actions explained to you, but did you ever think about the wider possibilities and ramifications of each action? Here's a breakdown of each one and some important elements to consider.
FIRST MOVE
This one seems simple: you move goods ahead of all others, who then follow in normal turn order. This means, however, that the value of First Build depends on your current standing in the turn order! If you are already first, then it serves only as a defensive move, preventing someone else from bumping you to second, which in the early going is probably insignificant. If you are last in turn order, however, you jump the entire queue, and may be able to poach someone else's prime shipment. First move provides an advantage when you really need to upgrade your locomotive. For example, if there are 3 useful cubes in a city, and you and two other players are connected to it, but you need to manually upgrade your locomotive to use any of them, then first move guarantees that you will get the third cube. More valuable on turn one if initial setup is short on shipping opportunities, First move can swing the game in mid and end game positions by grabbing someone else's potential 6 link shipment.
FIRST BUILD
You build your track ahead of all other players, who then follow you in regular turn order. Like first move, its value varies with your standing in the turn order. There is an often-ignored downside to First Build: it means you precede the player who chooses urbanization, who often opens up more than one juicy opportunity with his new city placement. The value of First Build is greater on turn one if good shipping opportunities are rare in the initial board setup. Don't forget that your first build may be trumped by someone later connecting to your initial city or cities, and poaching cubes using First Move and/or higher turn order. Later in the game, first build allows you to grab valuable entries to city hexes when most entries are already used, so First Build can be a defensive or offensive tool guaranteeing your access and/or blocking someone else out.
ENGINEER
You have the ability to build 4 tracks instead of the normal three maximum. Don't forget you will need to pay for it all, and 4 simple tracks mean a cost of 8. If you are passing through a town the cost is 9, so engineer almost always necessitates issuing an extra share if you choose it on turn 1. Offensive use of Engineer involves identifying whether someone else really, really needs it... then winning it in the auction yourself. Note that on the regular board, engineer opens up no less than SEVEN potential two-link connections! There is another risk when choosing the engineer, besides the track cost. If you build before the urbaniser, they may urbanise any town you may have linked through already, both reducing your track value (making that $3 link you spent your hard earned cash on disappear), and potentially blocking a shipment by dropping in a city of the same colour as the cube! Engineer can be incredibly useful if you use it after the urbaniser, as you often end up with a tonne of great shipping lanes to choose from. When you are last in turn order and choose engineer on turn one, you can often connect a link that has no competition for cubes during turn one's chipping phase.
LOCOMOTIVE
The most underrated and explosively powerful action in the game, in my experience. It grants an instant boost of your locomotive up one notch (subject to the maximum level of 6) and most importantly, means you are not forced to forego one of your two cube shipments on that turn. It grants you the flexibility to actually bump up your locomotive by 2 on the same turn. This is useless in turn one as you will not be able to build track allowing a 3 link, but is immensely powerful in turns 2 through 4. Judicious use of Locomotive maximises your potential score in the game, as will be discussed later. Plan wisely, however: locomotive adds to your obligation costs. Locomotive is also the only financially sound way to raise your locomotive power to level 6 in a 5 or 6 player game because it does not forego a high value shipment.
URBANIZATION
Often viewed as the most powerful action in the game, it does come with several potential downsides. First, though, the good stuff: Urbanisation allows you to access to cities normally 4 hexes apart by urbanizing a town between them and only building 3 hexes, for a potentially low $6. Urbanization is also the weapon of choice for stomping on the leader: when urbanizing a town with many connections, if wipes out the track score of each junction (hopefully all his)! Maximum nastiness is achieved when you urbanise a town which breaks someone's network by inserting a city of the same colour as a cube your opponent was about to move for a value of 6... and cause it to be blocked, rendering it a 1 or 2 value. Now for the bad: urbanization, especially in the early going, can actually open op opportunities for the other players to make good connections. Be especially wary of this on turn one. Urbanisation is most valuable if it is chosen late in the turn order, but it rarely makes it that far.
PRODUCTION
The dark sheep action of AoS. People complain that it is underpowered, that they want the choice of cubes to place. Without any alteration, the rule as written can provide a huge margin of victory. There are some serious downsides to consider though: Production is useless on both the first and last turn of the game. On the first turn, there are no empty slots to put cubes in. On the last turn, the cubes brought onto the board will never be shipped. That being said, Production allows you to fill in crucial gaps in your early production chain, to load up a city that you have control over, and to potentially replace cubes in a city that is currently empty, which is crucial when cubes are few and far between in the endgame.
TURN ORDER
Allows you to pass once in the next auction without dropping out of the auction. Unlike First Build and First Move, this choice is most valuable when you are ahead on the turn track, as it can force other people to drop out at very little cost to you. If however you are already last in turn order on this turn, you are already in an advantageous position where other people may pass before you are forced. Turn order is capable of moving you up to position 2 for a cost of 0 in a best-case scenario.
In general, you must consider four things when choosing your action: your need, others need, your position in the turn order, and the likely outcome of actions already chosen and the actions you will leave behind. As you can see from above and as will be explained further, sometimes the attractiveness of an action depends on what the player immediately preceding you in the turn order has chosen.
NEXT: Board Analysis
Age of Steam/Steam
Thanks to Karl Rainer for the following aricles, lifted from BoardGameGeek:
The first time I played AoS I was struck by how simple the rules are, and yet how deep the game play turned out to be. Our entire game group scratched our individual heads in collective consternation... how are you supposed to play this game to win?
I immediately sat down to figure this game out. I'm still working on it a year later, and it has turned into one of my all-time favourite games. I also managed to establish a tidy winning streak, which prevented me from disseminating too much info lest my co-gamers, all 'geek readers, take too much advantage. Heh heh heh.
However, I am moving to Nanaimo BC, far away from these folks, and I believe the time has come to reveal my methods and start an Age of Steam strategy guide. I will be posting individual chapters as I get them written, dealing with several of the following topics:
- Why is money so tight?
- An analysis of the Actions
- Board analysis
- The first turn.
- Just how well is it possible to do?
- Offensive and defensive actions
- Some thoughts on expansion boards
- Advanced topics
The first time I played AoS I was struck by how simple the rules are, and yet how deep the game play turned out to be. Our entire game group scratched our individual heads in collective consternation... how are you supposed to play this game to win?
I immediately sat down to figure this game out. I'm still working on it a year later, and it has turned into one of my all-time favourite games. I also managed to establish a tidy winning streak, which prevented me from disseminating too much info lest my co-gamers, all 'geek readers, take too much advantage. Heh heh heh.
However, I am moving to Nanaimo BC, far away from these folks, and I believe the time has come to reveal my methods and start an Age of Steam strategy guide. I will be posting individual chapters as I get them written, dealing with several of the following topics:
- Why is money so tight?
- An analysis of the Actions
- Board analysis
- The first turn.
- Just how well is it possible to do?
- Offensive and defensive actions
- Some thoughts on expansion boards
- Advanced topics
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