Agricola has solo rules, and I decided to give it a try. You can play a solo campaign, consisting of 8 games. In each game there is a target score and you must meet this target. For every 2 points by which you exceed the target, you get 1 free food for the next game. Also for each game you can "freeze" one of your Occupations played in that game, to become a free and permanent Occupation from the next game onwards. One big difference is adults eat 3 food instead of 2 when harvests come. Also the 3 wood space only gets 2 wood every round. Other than that the rules are mostly the same as the 2-player game.
I completed one campaign. I didn't quite like it. I don't think I'll play another solo game again. Without competition, it becomes a game of micro-planning - you plan a few turns ahead when to take what goods, or when to take which actions. The 3-food requirement is tough at the earlier stages of the game, but once you build up your food engine, the game becomes too easy (or someone please point out if I played wrong). You can max out almost everything - 5 family members, stone house with 5 rooms, 5 fields, 4 vegetables, 8 grain, 8 sheep, etc etc. It becomes an exercise in squeezing out every single point you can from the game system. Reviewers of Agricola say that it is good because you can't have everything, that the game ends before you can do all that you want to do. Having played a solo campaign, I feel this deeply. When you can do almost everything, and have to do bean-counting to squeeze out that one more Minor Improvement worth 1 point, it isn't very fun or tense anymore.
The variety in the Minor Improvements and Occupations helps to make it tolerable. Having some free Occupations at the start of the game is fun and helps a lot. I had Wet Nurse from Game 2 onwards, which helped tremendously in this campaign.
I find that solo versions of games tend to be a poorer substitute for the real thing. Call me dirty-minded, but I can't help thinking about the analogy of another fun exercise that's better with a partner than by yourself (and let's not start talking about 3-player games...). Race for the Galaxy has a quite different solo game. I do play it now and then, but I definitely prefer playing against real opponents to playing against the robot. I find the Agricola solo game much less interesting than the multiplayer game. Pandemic is a pretty good solo game, maybe because it's cooperative. There is much tension in where diseases will pop up and what cards you'll draw. In Agricola's solo game, the only unknown is the order in which the round cards turn up. I rarely bother to analyse or plan around that.
I took a lot of photos of my Agricola solo campaign. I had thought it would be interesting to analyse, but after finishing the games I just couldn't be bothered. Since I have spent so much effort taking the photos, I don't want it to go to waste. Maybe someone else will find this interesting. So here they are. The photos of my 8 games will generally be in this order:
- Occupation and Minor Improvement cards that I was dealt, and starting Occupations from previous games.
- Cards that I have played by game end.
- My farm.
- The order in which the round cards appeared.
1 comment:
I haven't tried the solo game with the expectation of it being exactly like you've described. I suppose it might help improve my game against other players (for instance you've 'discovered' the Well), but I'm not competitive enough in this game to go to the trouble. Once I start consistently beat my wife at a game, she loses interest in it. For now we're on fairly equal terms - best to keep it that way! ;)
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