Hey, thanks for the video! From experience, what happens a lot of time is that the players will have a pretty good idea when they have reached the independence threshold, and after that there is a lot more intensity to the competition. Especially for the special victory point cards (which are like Longest Road in Settlers of Cataan), since taking one thing from another player can cause ownership of the special victory point card to shift. And of course, turn order is -really- important in that case. So the last couple of rounds are often where the most intense competition happens. But since there can be a chance of a volcano up to the next to last round, you will occasionally have a situation where there is a big natural disaster while players are competing, dropping them -below- the independence threshold, and they have to collectively scramble to get the game back to where -someone- can win, while at the same time trying to make sure it is not -someone else- who does. There's a lot of nuance and a combination of playing the game and playing the table.
@@JustGotPlayed Odds are pretty good the first game or two will be a loss, especially if you have a couple really bad volcanoes or events. But it does not take long for players to get a feel for the dynamics of the game. There is a fine balance between spending all your Gold to increase growth potential, and saving some to speed your recovery if there is a disaster of some sort. Volcanoes especially, since these are not "spend Gold to avoid damage". The damage - is - going to happen, it is how fast you can recover from it that matters. As a matter of game balance there can be a maximum of one Volcano event per Era, and an Era is 4 cards, so it is very unlikely you will get back-to-back Volcanoes. But it - can - happen, a Volcano as the last Event in one era and the first Event in the next Era.
Hey, thanks for the video! From experience, what happens a lot of time is that the players will have a pretty good idea when they have reached the independence threshold, and after that there is a lot more intensity to the competition. Especially for the special victory point cards (which are like Longest Road in Settlers of Cataan), since taking one thing from another player can cause ownership of the special victory point card to shift. And of course, turn order is -really- important in that case. So the last couple of rounds are often where the most intense competition happens. But since there can be a chance of a volcano up to the next to last round, you will occasionally have a situation where there is a big natural disaster while players are competing, dropping them -below- the independence threshold, and they have to collectively scramble to get the game back to where -someone- can win, while at the same time trying to make sure it is not -someone else- who does. There's a lot of nuance and a combination of playing the game and playing the table.
Yeah, that sounds pretty interesting. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out on the table!
@@JustGotPlayed Odds are pretty good the first game or two will be a loss, especially if you have a couple really bad volcanoes or events. But it does not take long for players to get a feel for the dynamics of the game. There is a fine balance between spending all your Gold to increase growth potential, and saving some to speed your recovery if there is a disaster of some sort. Volcanoes especially, since these are not "spend Gold to avoid damage". The damage - is - going to happen, it is how fast you can recover from it that matters. As a matter of game balance there can be a maximum of one Volcano event per Era, and an Era is 4 cards, so it is very unlikely you will get back-to-back Volcanoes. But it - can - happen, a Volcano as the last Event in one era and the first Event in the next Era.