Manhattan Project: Energy Empire Review - JonGetsGames
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- Welcome to JonGetsGames! Here is my Manhattan Project: Energy Empire board game review.
Look below to skip to each section of the video:
Positive Review Points - 11:24
Neutral Review Points - 15:09
Negative Review Points - 28:14
Variability - 32:57
Player Count - 33:48
Conclusion - 35:23
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To avoid single color strategy you can use a house rule that give 5 or 10 poimt for set collection building. In this way you are incentivated to buy all 3 color.
One mitigation variant you can try is to allow a re-roll, but it'll cost you an energy/money. Perhaps if it's a polluting roll, it costs you two. A bit of push your luck
I see a lot of similarities with Terraforming Mars, the events like Prelude and the Nations like the Companies. Thanks for the video!
Fantastically presented review. Kudos.
For those interested, though, I think his conclusion is, um, quite different from most :). His biggest criticisms are single-color, solitaire repetitive gameplay and strategy but he doesn't recommend the game with more than 3 players? That's really odd to me! It is precisely why 4 and 5 player variants are preferred :). With more players, you interact much more and you depend on tactical flexibility much more, including non single-color engines. His concerns of down time? Also bizarre to me! What great 4 or 5 player game has less down time than this one?
Equally long or longer, off top of my head: Power Grid, Le Have, Viticulture, Amun Re, et al. Each have their down times, and I actually think Energy Empire is faster. A good 5 person game can finish in 90 minutes. We just did it this weekend, with new players.
Informative review, but the group think is right on this: 4 and 5 players is when this game shines, and refusing to play it with 5 is an unusual stance with his other critiques.
He's defended his wrong opinions for years. About 2 out of every 10 reviews he does are way subjective and very off.
Wow great review! You hit on some very good points, and I don't think you were being nit-picky. Maybe an expansion can fix that "single-color" strategy, but who knows if they'll release one anytime soon
To avoid single colour strategy, you could potentially cap # of buildings of a single color and/or only allow building more of the same type if you hold the same # of another type. e.g if the rule was imposed at 3 buildings, if you have reached 3 commerce, you can only build a 4th if you have 3 of another type as well.
Just played this last night. Some interesting comments there, though I don't fully agree with some of your neutrals or the one big negative.
I agree the nations could have been more interesting (much like they were in both Project Manhattan 1 and 2) with a more unique ability. I also agree that the Nations track could be more exciting than it is.
I thought the events offer plenty of change to warrant their inclusion in the game. And those 2-3 points over the 6 event cards do add up (that is a potential 10-12 extra points over anyone not really paying attention to that).
As for your negative? I built a multicolor building strategy and I was only 4-5 points behind the person who won, who focused largely on one building type. And I had some inefficient turns that had nothing to do with the engine I put together, but areas where I definitely could have made some better choices to make up the gap (I also had 5 achievements at the end of the game, including all 3 of the building based achievements. So if I could have purchased 1-2 more buildings, I could have overtaken the leader). I'm not sure making it harder to build more of the same colored building is necessarily a good or bad idea, but I think there are plenty of options in the game as it is.
I’m not too phased by the dice. The mitigation is getting the “clean” dice.
Great review. I really like this game - like, a lot - but I think many of your criticisms are fair. Especially around the UN - it feels like a must-play in all games so far, and on the flip side, it feels like you can only luck into synergy in achievements, so you can't build a strategy around achievements. I feel like they should be capped higher, like at 10 points, to encourage you to really go for it with achievements. Otherwise, achievements are very meh. Agree greater variability would be good too.
One thing you didn't mention - maybe you don't play it this way - you can parallelize turns by doing your tableau actions while the next player takes their board placement turn. I played a 5 player game where 4 of the players were new, and it finished in under 2 hours. It's a lot like bottom of the board parallelism with Scythe. Don't wait for each player to do their tableau. The game can play wicked fast that way.
Also, at higher player counts, the game really changes, because it's so rare for a board spot to completely clear up by your turn, other than dumb luck. Workers are always out there in some capacity. Definitely forces some harder decisions with how to spend energy (e.g. to make a stack) instead of just ramming it all into your tableau.
I think your analysis of the mono-color strategy is valid in terms of /potential/ effectiveness, but I'm not sure that it's OP - which I think is what you're claiming by calling it a negative. If you are able to get synergy within that one color, it can be powerful, but if you don't happen to whip up that synergy quickly, you can get screwed due to the inefficiency of having to play outside of your mono color to get what you need, and can't play anything in the tableau when you play off-color. I think it'll take more plays to really get a sense of whether it's OP or not.
We have tried to play buildings out of turn abit, but for some reason this often doesn't happen while we are in the game. Next time I play I will try to push this more. My points about low player interaction will certainly be less valid at higher player counts, so it could be interesting to see if I find the opportunity.
For the negative I was not trying to say that I believe the single color strategy, but instead that it FEELS like the most efficient way to go but it spirals you into a boring play style late game. I do have a suspicion that it feels more powerful than multi-color strategies, but by no means do I want to go on record saying that it is with my small dataset of 4 games played.
Sorry but I do agree with the mono color thing... We had our 6th game and we have the same issue. No one won with multi color...
I also we agree %100 percent with the repeat cycle. When you have 5 buildings of one color, put 1 worker, generate, put 1 worker, generate.
We started playing with a little modification. When you activate your buildings you can only use material you already have. Thus you can''t take the newly produced material from a building and pass it on to the other one. Making you spend more workers. May be you could try it next time you play and let us know how it feels? :)
That's a shame to hear. I was seriously considering this one after watching your playthrough. I'll have to think on it a bit more now.
We love the game too and need to play it more, but single color engines do seem better. I think the game finishes pretty quick once you get running, but yeah, it gets built and run a few times.
I think there is a great about being rote though, it's interesting.
Hi Jon! I really enjoy watching your reviews and playthroughs. They are well structured, detailed and much more informative than the most other reviews I've watched on TH-cam. I only have one question about your rubrics. why do you haven't got a rubric in which you discuss the quality of the rule book?
I hope that you will go on with your channel and I want to thank you for your good work.
greetings from Germany
Theres no huge reason as to why I don't cover the rulebook, its never really occured to me to do so. I am abit worried about how long my videos are already to add another segment in and I think you one of the first people t ask about it.
JonGetsGames
I just mentioned that because for the german reviewers it seems to be a big topic.
I don't think you have to cover it in reviews, but it wouldn't have such a big influence on the length of your videos as well.
In my opinion a bad written or structured rule book can reduce the motivation to play certain games just before your first turn :D.
But if it is a real good rule book it's perhaps worth to be mentioned in a review.
But over all I was just curious why you don't have a rubric for rulebooks.
thank you for your answer and keep going with your channel
kind regards
Here's a blast from the past...
Jon, have you played the expansion: Cold War?
Do you have an updated rating on this one with/without Cold War?
I never did play with that expansion.
@@JonGetsGames I think you owe it to yourself to give it a try. Come on over and I'll teach it to you.
bit over explained in the review but still a good review.
This review surprises me. I can't help but wonder how many times you've played. Or if you've played with diverse groups and player counts. I wonder if you experienced a bit of group-think in your play-throughs ... I'm pretty sure I've only ever played it with 5. Maybe 4 once - and loved it every time. Maybe it's better with higher player counts.
The dice are highly normalized, sure there is a slight bit of luck - but not more than most modern euros.
The criticism of the event cards just doesn't make sense to me! They drive the whole game!
The UN track is a race! IMO racing is always interesting... I think it's cool that there's a race mini-game in a well designed euro!
"Not thinking about endgame" because someone takes the spot you want and forces you to use energy (that you might be saving for an achievement) is a pretty silly thought - isn't it?! If you're not thinking about the end game then you're not trying to win, right? Especially since this game isn't especially long and end games comes up quick - you should be thinking about it from turn one!
I also agree with other commenters that a 1-color strategy is not a good idea. Best to go into two colors. The middle being pretty much essential for all players because that's were you buy more power dice ...
Really? I personally felt that Jon perfectly explained everything that I also liked, had mixed feelings about, and disliked about the game. The theme was eh, the UN track and global events were weird things that I just had to do for points, the engine-building was interesting, I liked the dice but they felt wrong for a Euro game because they're so luck-based a factor (even though you get to choose which ones you want), the nations didn't add anything special, and I kinda missed being able to mess with my opponents a little bit (knowing what was coming up on the event cards seemed to be the only way to really maybe get ahead of my opponents, but like Jon said, I ended up gaining just one or two points over everyone--nothing game-changing at all). So, I ultimately decided to pass on this game. And that was before this review came out.
I like this game a lot overall. I kind of wish the 2 achievements that didn't get picked cycled out, giving 3 total new choices to the next pick. I've mostly played 2 player so take this with a grain of salt, but I've seen games where there are 2 "bad" tiles that just sit there and clog up choices. Kind of defeats the point of having 3 choices.
I agree here. The game was fine, but other reviews made me feel like I was crazy or somehow missed the boat. I was ready to sell my original Manhattan Project with expansions, but now I'm holding on to it. Not bad,u was just underwhelmed.
Dont really see your #1 Neg as a neg. You spend the game min/maxing and then capitalize to generate points....weird complaint
I'm just going to throw this out and leave it. I literally never have a single colour engine as I noticed that when I do I consistently score lower.
What's your high score and low score range?
Richard Baker I couldn't tell you to be honest as I never record anything. when playing solo I've never lost though so over 3 figures. It's more acurate to say I win more with 2 colour engines than with 1 - my wife kicked my arse multiple times before I swapped my tactics up.
Nice review. These types of tracks like the U.N. one are something I dislike in games. If they are are well integrated great. If they are just sitting on the side/bottom of the board such as in Scythe and this game then bleh they are annoying.
I thought the event peeking was pretty useful in my one play. Otherwise I agree with your points
good stuff
The sound seems very tinny in this video
Huh, it sounds just like my previous couple videos to me. Do you detect any difference between this and say the Oracle of Delphi review? Sorry it didn't sound that great on your system, tweaking audio appears to be an endless quest.
I felt like the video was slightly in fast motion.
@@JonGetsGames I wouldn't worry about it. Everyone's a critic. There's nothing wrong with the audio or the video.