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Lance & The Princes of the Renaissance
Apr. 15th, 2005 11:30 amHad a special showing by Lance at my regular review/new gaming night, yesterday. He moved up to Washington late last year, and I haven't seen him since December, but he was back down visiting relatives this week, and so asked to come by gaming.
I'd guess he hasn't really gotten to game in the last three months, because he's really out in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours out of Seattle. So I was happy to play a game that actually promised to be good, rather than whatever review copy happened to be sitting around. I gave him a list of potential five-player games, and he narrowed the list down to Princes of the Renaissance, Keythedral, or (on a second-tier) Wallenstein, as ones that really excited him. I picked Princes of the Renaissance because Keythedral really didn't thrill me in my one play (to the point where it's never gotten a full play at our new-game night yet, probably 6 months later).
Princes of the Renaissance had actually been another problem-child. When I got it I read through the rules and they made pretty much no sense. This it turned out was a combination of problems: the game omitted some entirely crucial setup instructions; there are nine (I think) types of tiles in the game, and not a single one of them is labelled by type; the rules are somewhat badly written and very badly organized; and the rules have a minimum of illustrations and examples only at the end. In any case, since I knew Lance liked other Warfrog games and since it was the top of his list of games to play I was willing to sit down and struggle through the rules, and I did, and it got easier when I figured out all the usability problems with the components and rules.
Anyway, folks starting showing up around 7pm, and we chatted for a bit. Lance looked tired; he's mostly been working on his house since he moved up to Washington. We got the rules explanation going by a bit after 7.15pm, the game going by 7.45pm and done by 10.30pm. (We had an 11pm deadline, but it was never an issue.)
There was one particularly spectacular moment at gaming when one of my dining room chairs utterly shattered under no particular duress. The occupant was mostly OK, but the chair was in 3 or 4 pieces afterward. These chairs are probably 20+ years old, and came to me, with the table, via my mom. They're poorly built with wooden pegs holding them together (which Lance says is terrible for bearing loads, and I believe him, because Lance is smart about practical things). Of the original set of six, all of the chairs without arms have fallen apart (though I still use one at my Mac, and just don't lean back), while I thought the two with arms were fine--until last night's disintegration. Chris is going to lend me some chairs from the old Consensus office, for continued Thursday night play, and I'll probably buy some new ones when we hopefully end up with some money for various house-related stuff later this year.
Anyway, the game. Princes of the Renaissance. It's a serious, dual-currency auction game with a very minor war element (which is basically a way to change the value of the city tiles which you can buy through auctions). In the end you collect VPs from a wide variety of sources, though the biggest source is those city tiles, with victory in warfare itself generating another large source of victory points.
Early in the game Lance and Chris A. started going very heavy on military, while Mike A. and I got some light military units (Mike A. just got a scattering, while I tried for a decent defensive value). Mike B. went somewhere in the middle.
I tried to play the game primarily as an economic manipulation. I purposefully forced city values lower, to decrease the value of their tiles before I bought them. I also held off seriously entering into auctions until late in each round, when more players would be light on currency, and sometimes I even started up auctions that I didn't care about to try and get the currency out. It was interesting.
Late in the first round I managed to pick up the merchant event tile which gives you VPs and more money for all merchant city tiles, and that pretty much set the focus for the rest of my game. While Chris & Lance were engaging in warfare I kept bringing up auctions for merchants.
Near the end of the game Christopher & Mike A. started putting the really expensive city tiles, which were also worth the most points, up for auction. About here I realized that I had a serious advantage on all the other players for city tiles. (I had 5, while most others had 2 or 3.) I gnashed my teeth because I realized that people buying city tiles was just cutting into any lead I had. Worse, I couldn't bid because the really expensive tiles were in colors I couldn't buy because I already had relationships with 3 different cities. On my next turn I immediately ended the game by forcing the last event auction, but it was already too late.
Final scores:
Mike A.: 22 (city tiles) + 8 (event tiles) + 1 (merchant) + 3 (pope) + 3 (money) + 1 (laurel) = 38
Chris: 18 (city tiles) + 4 (event tiles) + 4 (influence) + 6 (laurels) = 32
Me: 17 (city tiles) + 2 (event tiles) + 4 (merchants) + 6 (money) = 29
Lance: 11 (city tiles) + 6 (money) + 10 (laurels) = 27
Mike B.: 13 (city tiles) + 3 (money) + 3 (laurels) = 19
If I'd ended the game one turn earlier (and I could have) Mike A. and Chris would have had 9 less points each for city tiles, but the money would have been very different, to my disadvantage. (I think Mike A. would have come in first in money and Lance second for a final score of: Mike A. 35 / Chris 23 / Me 23 / Lance 24 / Mike B. 16, so that wouldn't have actually been that useful, though that reconstruction isn't 100% right because I'm missing who else got money from a last-war I generated instead on my last turn.)
My biggest problem was really that my plethora of city tiles were from the least valuable cities, the result of my either pushing them too low at start or else not paying enough attention to them during wars.
Anyway, an interesting game. All the auctions got a tiny bit repetitive by the end, but not terribly so because there's was lots of tactical thought to keep you going.
On the one hand it reminds me of Ra (because there's auctions for widely different items of very different valuations) but more directly it reminds me of Struggle of Empires (another Warfrog game with some very similar systems, but more of a wargamey aspect) and In the Shadow of the Emperor) (another deep game also with perhaps too much richness in choice each turn). I actually think I like those three games better, though this one is still good.
In addition, as with every Warfrog game I've played to date (this, Struggle of Empires, Age of Steam) I felt like it had too many sharp edges, and that a good outside developer could have turned it from a good game into a great game. As usual: special cases, unanswered questions, and inconsistent rules. For example, in the end game, you have two potentials for ties: on city statuses, which determine the value of city tiles; and on most gold and influence. The former are unfriendly ties, the latter friendly. This adds very little to the game and a unified system for ties would have made the game that much cleaner.
I really, really wish that a high-quality outside developer, like HiG or Alea, was working with Martin Wallace, because then I think he might be putting out a string of Puerto Rico-quality games instead of games that are almost there.
I'm going to wait for another game before I write a full review of Princes of the Renaissance.
I'd guess he hasn't really gotten to game in the last three months, because he's really out in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours out of Seattle. So I was happy to play a game that actually promised to be good, rather than whatever review copy happened to be sitting around. I gave him a list of potential five-player games, and he narrowed the list down to Princes of the Renaissance, Keythedral, or (on a second-tier) Wallenstein, as ones that really excited him. I picked Princes of the Renaissance because Keythedral really didn't thrill me in my one play (to the point where it's never gotten a full play at our new-game night yet, probably 6 months later).
Princes of the Renaissance had actually been another problem-child. When I got it I read through the rules and they made pretty much no sense. This it turned out was a combination of problems: the game omitted some entirely crucial setup instructions; there are nine (I think) types of tiles in the game, and not a single one of them is labelled by type; the rules are somewhat badly written and very badly organized; and the rules have a minimum of illustrations and examples only at the end. In any case, since I knew Lance liked other Warfrog games and since it was the top of his list of games to play I was willing to sit down and struggle through the rules, and I did, and it got easier when I figured out all the usability problems with the components and rules.
Anyway, folks starting showing up around 7pm, and we chatted for a bit. Lance looked tired; he's mostly been working on his house since he moved up to Washington. We got the rules explanation going by a bit after 7.15pm, the game going by 7.45pm and done by 10.30pm. (We had an 11pm deadline, but it was never an issue.)
There was one particularly spectacular moment at gaming when one of my dining room chairs utterly shattered under no particular duress. The occupant was mostly OK, but the chair was in 3 or 4 pieces afterward. These chairs are probably 20+ years old, and came to me, with the table, via my mom. They're poorly built with wooden pegs holding them together (which Lance says is terrible for bearing loads, and I believe him, because Lance is smart about practical things). Of the original set of six, all of the chairs without arms have fallen apart (though I still use one at my Mac, and just don't lean back), while I thought the two with arms were fine--until last night's disintegration. Chris is going to lend me some chairs from the old Consensus office, for continued Thursday night play, and I'll probably buy some new ones when we hopefully end up with some money for various house-related stuff later this year.
Anyway, the game. Princes of the Renaissance. It's a serious, dual-currency auction game with a very minor war element (which is basically a way to change the value of the city tiles which you can buy through auctions). In the end you collect VPs from a wide variety of sources, though the biggest source is those city tiles, with victory in warfare itself generating another large source of victory points.
Early in the game Lance and Chris A. started going very heavy on military, while Mike A. and I got some light military units (Mike A. just got a scattering, while I tried for a decent defensive value). Mike B. went somewhere in the middle.
I tried to play the game primarily as an economic manipulation. I purposefully forced city values lower, to decrease the value of their tiles before I bought them. I also held off seriously entering into auctions until late in each round, when more players would be light on currency, and sometimes I even started up auctions that I didn't care about to try and get the currency out. It was interesting.
Late in the first round I managed to pick up the merchant event tile which gives you VPs and more money for all merchant city tiles, and that pretty much set the focus for the rest of my game. While Chris & Lance were engaging in warfare I kept bringing up auctions for merchants.
Near the end of the game Christopher & Mike A. started putting the really expensive city tiles, which were also worth the most points, up for auction. About here I realized that I had a serious advantage on all the other players for city tiles. (I had 5, while most others had 2 or 3.) I gnashed my teeth because I realized that people buying city tiles was just cutting into any lead I had. Worse, I couldn't bid because the really expensive tiles were in colors I couldn't buy because I already had relationships with 3 different cities. On my next turn I immediately ended the game by forcing the last event auction, but it was already too late.
Final scores:
Mike A.: 22 (city tiles) + 8 (event tiles) + 1 (merchant) + 3 (pope) + 3 (money) + 1 (laurel) = 38
Chris: 18 (city tiles) + 4 (event tiles) + 4 (influence) + 6 (laurels) = 32
Me: 17 (city tiles) + 2 (event tiles) + 4 (merchants) + 6 (money) = 29
Lance: 11 (city tiles) + 6 (money) + 10 (laurels) = 27
Mike B.: 13 (city tiles) + 3 (money) + 3 (laurels) = 19
If I'd ended the game one turn earlier (and I could have) Mike A. and Chris would have had 9 less points each for city tiles, but the money would have been very different, to my disadvantage. (I think Mike A. would have come in first in money and Lance second for a final score of: Mike A. 35 / Chris 23 / Me 23 / Lance 24 / Mike B. 16, so that wouldn't have actually been that useful, though that reconstruction isn't 100% right because I'm missing who else got money from a last-war I generated instead on my last turn.)
My biggest problem was really that my plethora of city tiles were from the least valuable cities, the result of my either pushing them too low at start or else not paying enough attention to them during wars.
Anyway, an interesting game. All the auctions got a tiny bit repetitive by the end, but not terribly so because there's was lots of tactical thought to keep you going.
On the one hand it reminds me of Ra (because there's auctions for widely different items of very different valuations) but more directly it reminds me of Struggle of Empires (another Warfrog game with some very similar systems, but more of a wargamey aspect) and In the Shadow of the Emperor) (another deep game also with perhaps too much richness in choice each turn). I actually think I like those three games better, though this one is still good.
In addition, as with every Warfrog game I've played to date (this, Struggle of Empires, Age of Steam) I felt like it had too many sharp edges, and that a good outside developer could have turned it from a good game into a great game. As usual: special cases, unanswered questions, and inconsistent rules. For example, in the end game, you have two potentials for ties: on city statuses, which determine the value of city tiles; and on most gold and influence. The former are unfriendly ties, the latter friendly. This adds very little to the game and a unified system for ties would have made the game that much cleaner.
I really, really wish that a high-quality outside developer, like HiG or Alea, was working with Martin Wallace, because then I think he might be putting out a string of Puerto Rico-quality games instead of games that are almost there.
I'm going to wait for another game before I write a full review of Princes of the Renaissance.