the victory points mechanism

When I try to summarise a game within a few sentences, often I find myself saying, "... and whoever has the most points wins the game." So many games use this victory points concept that we don't really think about it anymore. When we sit down to play a new game, we just ask, "so what do I do to score points?" Sometimes it is difficult for me to get excited about a new game, when I see it as yet another game where you try to score the most points. 

The victory points mechanism is a convenient one. In complex games where the designer wants to reward you for various different good actions, giving you victory points is a simple solution. Otherwise it might be impossible to unify the many different actions or aspects of a complex game. Your success is measured in one consistent currency. Bad actions get no points, or even cause  points to be deducted. Good actions earn points. It is a little like how society generally defines success by wealth. Money is victory points. Straight-forward, quantifiable, unambiguous. I'm not making any political, sociological or philosophical statement. I certainly do not believe our goal in life is to chase money. It's just that money is easier to measure than happiness. Maybe. 

Wingspan

Many of my favourite games use victory points. Through the Ages, Race for the Galaxy, Food Chain Magnate, Carcassonne. Many popular games use it - Terraforming Mars, Wingspan, Terra Mystica, 7 Wonders. Victory points is not a problem per se. I just wish there were more games which use other ways to determine victory. There are many such games. Many war games determine victory based on area control, e.g. capturing the opponent capital in Axis & Allies. In Chess you win by cornering the opponent king. In Mahjong, there are many different game-winning combinations you can aim for. There are race games where you try to cross the finish line first. In head-to-head battle games you try to reduce your opponent's health to zero. It's arguable that this is just another way to present victory points. Your victory points is how far you have reduced your opponent's health. 

Through the Ages

Cooperative games tend to use victory points less, and are objective-based instead. In Pandemic you need to cure four diseases. In Samurai Spirit you need to protect the village. You don't need to compare whether one player is doing better than another, so you don't need victory points to measure the success level of any player. 

Samurai Spirit

Games which use victory points apply different granularity. I find that those with fine granularity feel more distant from their theme. Building a monument gives you 20VP. Leftover money is 1VP per $3. First player to pass in a round gets 3VP. The VP starts to feel more and more like just a number you manipulate. In a game with coarse granularity, you think about the VP less and more about the action you need to perform. In The Settlers of Catan you only need 10VP to win. The contest for that 2VP for longest road feels more real than just one out of ten ways to score points in other point salad games. To take it to an extreme, in Chess you need to score 1VP to win, and trapping your opponent king is the only way to score 1VP. 

The Settlers of Catan

The number of different ways to score points affects how real the victory points feel. In Russian Railroads there are many ways to score points, even for not being start player of a round. Victory points become just an abstract measure of success. Many different accomplishments in the game give you victory points. It is almost like whatever you do, you'll be praised. You just try to get praised more efficiently than others. If a game only has a handful of ways or just one way to score points, the corresponding actions will feel more real. In Power Grid, your victory points is the number of cities you can power. There is much you need to do to power cities - buy resources, buy power plants, build your network. You think in terms of powering cities instead of scoring victory points. 

Russian Railroads

Power Grid

I am tinkering with game design now, and one thing I try to do is to not use victory points. I want people to slay dragons, and not increase the dragon kill count by 1. Victory points is a useful tool. It's just that sometimes it takes away some immersion. We already have so many victory point games. Let's explore more different and fun ideas. 

Urban Sprawl

Plays: 2Px1 (with rule mistake)

Boardgame designer Chad Jensen's claim to fame is a wargame series - Combat Commander. His first venture into Eurogames, Dominant Species (2010), was a great success. Urban Sprawl is his next Euro-style boardgame, so naturally there are high expectations.

The Game

In Urban Sprawl, players together develop a city, from humble beginnings to a sprawling metropolis. The board shows a 6x6 grid, and only has a handful of small buildings at the start of the game. Each row and column has one victory point (VP) or money marker, and more may be added during the game. As players construct buildings, they compete for majority in every column and every row. Whenever a card with a payout icon matching the marker in a row (or column) appears, there will be payouts to players with buildings in that row. The more buildings you have, the higher the payout, which is in the form of VP or money. This aspect of the game is an ongoing contest throughout the game, allowing players to earn money to fuel their ongoing construction activities and to score VP's.

On your turn, you get 6 action points to claim cards from the board. There are 5 permit cards and up to 8 building cards to pick from. Cards that have been on the board longer cost fewer action points (Through the Ages style). Each permit card has 1 to 4 permits, and can be used for 1 to 4 types of buildings. A building card depicts a specific building of a specific type, size (1 to 4) and special ability. To construct a building, you pick a building card, pay permits depending on building size, pay money depending on location, and place a building tile of the appropriate type (colour) and size onto the board. The building monetary cost is the total value of the VP and money markers in the row and column the plot of land is in. Land plot costs can change when markers are added or moved. You use the special ability of the building immediately. A building once placed onto the board is only useful for majority competition. The building special abilities are single-use, the building card is removed from the game once the building is constructed on the board.

The early game. The round markers in red and yellow on the western and southern edges of the city are the payout markers. These are pre-printed on the board. There are spaces on the northern and eastern edges for more payout markers. The cards on the left are the permit cards, and those on the right are building cards. There are three decks of building cards, and splitting them into three decks creates a story flow.

To build in the lot with the single red building near the centre of the board now would cost $25, because the relevant markers are 1VP, $8, $10 and $6. 1 + 8 + 10 + 6 = 25.

Build permits. The card on the left can be used for any building type, but the one on the right can only be used for purple (residential) buildings. The election icon at the bottom centre means an election will be done for one office. The round yellow icon means payout for the $12 marker (if it is already on the board).

The lower row are the building cards. The border colour is the building type, the pieces of paper is the number of permits required. The red circles on some of them mean a payout for the specific valued marker is to be done when the card is revealed.

Building special abilities vary greatly. Some give VP's, some give money. Some impact the owner, some impact other players too. The effects often depend on the board situation and who constructs the building. One building that is very useful to one player may only give a small benefit to another. One that is disastrous to one player may only impose a small penalty on another.

Some buildings give vocation tiles, which in turn give VP's and money. Every time another vocation tile of the same type comes into play, everyone who already has such tiles gains VP's or money. So vocation tiles can be a good long-term investment. One tricky thing is in every game only about half the cards will be used, so you won't know exactly what combination of cards will be in play. There will be variations from game to game.

There are six offices in the game, which are basically special powers that players can hold on to as long as they still hold the office. The mayor is the player who has the most vocation tiles, the contractor is the player with the fewest VP's, and the other four offices go to those who own the most buildings of the four types. Benefits of the offices include things like getting 8 instead of 6 action points, and getting payments from other players every round. These offices are another aspect the players compete in. Most offices only enter play mid-game, and elections for specific offices only occur when specific cards with election icons are revealed.

The small squares are the vocation tiles. The big squares are the offices.

The contractor is an interesting "office". It is a catch-up mechanism to help the trailing player. The contractor gets to demolish others' buildings to build his own over the plot of land they occupied. This can greatly alter the majority situation on the board, especially if a few small buildings are demolished at the same time to make way for one big building. Many early-game buildings are small and can easily get built over later in the game. Another privilege of the contractor is his own buildings can't be demolished by the Urban Renewal cards, which are a type of permit card.

Much scoring is done during the course of the game. At game end, there is a payout for every VP marker, bonuses for leftover money, and bonuses for the various offices (e.g. the mayor scores for each of his buildings next to a park). The player with the most VP's wins.

The money is nice and thick.

The Play

Allen and I did a two-player game. The game felt a little tactical, because on your turn what you can do very much depends on what cards are on the board. However there are ways to mitigate this. You have one slot for keeping a building card, i.e. you don't need to build it immediately. This can be very helpful when you desperately need a building, be it to avoid disaster or to claim a windfall, but don't have the means to construct it yet. It is also possible to hoard some permit cards, so that you have flexibility. Many aspects of the game still need a long term view - which building types to focus on, which rows and columns to compete in, which vocation tiles to collect. These all need to be factored in when making your choices turn to turn.

Allen and I remained quite close in VP's in the early game. However one crucial moment completely changed that. There was one building which if built by me would allow me take 24VP from Allen. We both saw it coming. I couldn't build it or claim it into my temporary card slot. However when Allen's turn came, he was distracted by another lucrative building, and forgot to construct this building in order to deny me its special ability. So on my next turn, I constructed it, and robbed 24VP from him. That effectively created a 48VP gap! Allen never managed to catch up.

As the trailing player, he did enjoy the contractor office for most of the late game though. He demolished many of my buildings and steadily sapped my strength. One strange thing that I noticed was the Urban Renewal cards became quite useless in the late game. These cards are supposed to be very powerful because they allow you to demolish others' buildings. However in a 2-player game, once the contractor office comes in play, these cards become useless. The contractor doesn't need them to demolish his opponent's buildings. His opponent can't demolish his buildings in the first place, so Urban Renewal cards are useless. I wonder whether I'm missing something.

We made one big mistake in our game. When payout icons appeared, the payout should be in the form of either VP or money. We had misunderstood that we could choose any combination of VP and money. This benefited me more, because I was better positioned for most of the big money payouts, and many times I collected VP instead of money. I would not have been able to maintain such a big lead if we had played correctly. However, that also meant Allen might not have monopolised the contractor role for so long. Our game really shouldn't count. My impression of the game is not fully accurate.

Late game. The city is still not very full yet. Now there are a few parks around (green tiles).

The Thoughts

It seems many people feel there is too much randomness in Urban Sprawl. I don't think it has much more randomness than Dominant Species. Although there is randomness in which building cards will be in play and what order they will turn up, the players can make long-term plans, e.g. which building types to focus on, which rows and columns to compete in, which offices to fight for, and which vocation tiles to collect. If you go in with a plan and you stick to it, you can mitigate some luck. Having a strong foundation in a few areas will help to protect you when bad events related to such areas come up, and will also set you up when good effects or good buildings related to such areas come up. Despite the ever changing nature of the pool of available cards on the board, I feel that players do have much control in this game. I would say this is a game of controlling chaos and not letting it control your fate, at least not too much.

Allen quite liked the game. I think it's because of the variety of the building special abilities. There are many interesting effects, and it is often interesting trying to figure out how to make the most out of a particular situation. I am quite lukewarm towards the game, not unlike my reaction to Dominant Species. I don't think I can articulate well why. I think one reason is I don't like the area majority mechanism. Another possible reason is the game feels rather "mathematical" to me. Most games are just their settings being converted into a manageable, mathematical form, with rules governing the mechanisms and providing a framework for players to compete in. Urban Sprawl has many thematic elements, e.g. how land prices increase and fluctuate, how old buildings are demolished to make way for new ones, and how certain buildings contribute to certain industries (the vocations). However when I played the game, I keep seeing the mathy mechanisms instead of the story of a developing city. I keep getting reminded about it being real life converted to a simplified, mathematical form, instead of being able to immerse in the setting. Somehow I don't quite click with Chad Jensen's designs, and I'm quite sure I'm in the minority.

Urban Sprawl is a game where players need a long-term strategy, but their immediate actions are restricted by what cards are available on their turns. The long-term strategy will often steer the immediate actions, but sometimes where feasible you may want to adjust your strategy. There are many different aspects for the players to compete in, and most are inter-related.

One thing that got me thinking is the contractor role. It is a catch-up mechanism for the sake of balancing the game. Helping the trailing player is good because it helps to keep everyone in the competition. If everyone still has hopes of winning, everyone will remain interested and the tension can be maintained till game end. However, having played a number of Splotter games recently, it gives me second thoughts about catch-up mechanisms. The Splotter guys don't put catch-up mechanisms in their games. Their games are unforgiving. If you make a bad move in the early game, you can be as good as eliminated (yikes... "player elimination" is often frowned upon by Eurogamers). However, if it is your poor play that got you into trouble, then perhaps you deserve to suffer. Why should the leading player's good play be diminished? Catch-up mechanisms can feel artificial, existing for the sake of making scores close in order to maintain excitement. Chess doesn't have any catch-up mechanism. You can handicap yourself when playing against a weaker player, but once a game starts, you just play your best to beat the opponent.

I'm going a bit off tangent, but I think this can be an interesting debate.

Friday

Plays: 1Px16.

It is rare that I get this many plays in before I write about a new-to-me game. I am usually reluctant to call what I write "reviews", because I often only play a game once before I write about it. I'm more comfortable with "first impressions". In the case of Friday, it just so happened that I had a backlog of games to write about (allowing me more time), and the game is a solo game (making it easier to arrange to play).

One thing that I struggle with is how to write about it. This is a solo game, so a big part of playing it is discovering the strategies yourself. I don't want to spoil this aspect for those who plan to play it. What I'll do is I'll restrict spoiler-like content to a clearly marked section. If you plan to try this game yourself, I recommend skipping that section. I won't share strategies directly in that section, but I will write about my thought processes during the game.

The Game

Friday is a deck-building game. You play the role of Friday, the native Robinson Crusoe met on a Friday. Robinson Crusoe is initially quite clueless about surviving on the island, and you need to guide him through facing various hazards and help him learn various fighting and survival skills, so that when he eventually faces the pirates he can defeat them and leave the island.

How this translates to game mechanisms is you start with a deck of fighting cards representing Robinson Crusoe. Most cards are weak or downright bad (values of 0 and -1). There is a deck of hazard cards. Every turn you need to draw two hazard cards, and pick one to fight. A hazard card has two parts - the hazard part and the ability part. If you beat the hazard, you add that card to your discard pile, and it becomes a new fighting card, i.e. using the ability part of it. The next time you reshuffle your deck, this new card will become available.

A hazard card specifies a number you need to achieve, and a number of cards you can draw for free from your deck to try to beat it. If the total value of the cards drawn matches or exceeds the hazard value, you beat the hazard. If it doesn't, you can spend life points to draw more cards, or you can concede defeat by paying in life points the difference between hazard value and total card value. If you concede, naturally you don't gain the hazard card (to become a new fighting card), however the life points paid due to the defeat can be used to discard bad or unwanted fighting cards involved in the current fight. You need to go through the hazard deck three times, and in each subsequent iteration the hazard values becomes higher.

Game in progress. Three three decks of cards (from left to right) are: the aging cards, the Robinson deck and the hazard deck. I put discards below their respective decks, out of the way. I use the area above the three decks as the main play area. For the current hazard, I have drawn two free cards. The yellow card on the left indicates that I'm on the second cycle through the hazard deck (it goes from green to yellow to red). The two pirates are on the top right. The green grain wooden pieces are life points.

Only look at the upper half of the cards. The card on the right is a hazard. The value I need to reach is 5, because I'm in the yellow stage now. I am allowed to draw 3 cards for free. I have drawn two, but it is already enough to defeat this hazard, because one of the cards can double the value of the other. My total fighting value is 6.

If you survive three cycles of the hazard deck, i.e. you have not come to a point where you need to spend life points but have none left, you get to fight the two pirates, one after the other. The pirate cards are like special hazards, except you can't concede defeat. You win or you die (like when you're playing the game of thrones...). There is a hazard value you need to achieve, and you are allowed to draw a certain number of cards for free. The two pirate cards are randomly drawn at the start of the game and turned face-up, so you know what to expect and can plan your strategy accordingly. Some pirate cards have special rules, which gives some variety.

One of the pirate cards. You need to achieve 35, and you get to draw 9 free cards. You can pay life points to draw more, or use special abilities of some cards to draw more.

The central mechanism of the game is, of course, deck-building. You start with a mostly lousy deck. You need to both remove bad cards (by intentionally failing to beat some hazards or using the Destroy ability of some cards) and gain good cards (by beating hazards). Keeping your deck lean and mean is not that simple though. Every time you exhaust your deck and need to reshuffle, you need to add an aging card to it, representing Robinson Crusoe getting old. Aging cards are bad and also harder to get rid of. You don't really want your deck to become too lean, because that means you need to shuffle more often, and thus need to add aging cards more often.

Some of the aging cards. All are bad. The two grain icons on the top right corner of a card means it costs two life points to permanently remove an aging card from your deck. When you fail to defeat a hazard and need to pay at least two life points, these two life points can be used for getting rid of an aging card which is involved in the fight.

There are all sorts of card abilities, in addition to the numbers on them. Some let you gain life points, some let you remove cards from your deck ("Destroy"), some let you peek at and sort the next 3 cards, some let you discard drawn cards and draw new ones to replace them. It is important to make good use of them, and to make good combinations of them.

If you beat both pirates without getting yourself killed, you win the game. There is a way to count points, if you want to do so and see whether you improve from game to game. There are 4 levels of difficulty to play at, and even after you beat Level 4 consistently, you can further increase the difficulty level by adjusting the life points you start with.

The Play

The first time I won was on my fourth game. I have played deck-building games before (Dominion, Ascension, Resident Evil, Nightfall, A Few Acres of Snow, Mage Knight) so I know about removing inefficient cards and keeping your deck lean and mean. The pirates seem daunting at first, with values as high as 40 when the highest valued fighting card in the game is 4, but once you learn to improve your deck quality and learn to conserve your life points better, they won't seem so impossible anymore.

I think this was my first victory, this being the second pirate I needed to defeat. Pirate value was 40. Cards on the left of the pirate are those I drew for free. Cards on the right were drawn by paying life points or using special abilities. My total card face value was 31, but I had two Double cards and one Copy card. I Copied the Double ability, and then applied these three Double abilities to three different cards - 4, 4 and 3. The final fighting value was 42.

The game can feel a lot like a numbers game. Every hazard and pirate is just a number you need to achieve. It can feel like you are justing summing numbers, counting cards and estimating probabilities. It made me feel a little uncomfortable when I looked at it that way, but in the end I see that the game does present many interesting decisions, and the randomness of the card draw still often presents some surprises (good and bad). You are presented with various types of problems, and you need to decide how to try to resolve them, e.g. which card powers to use first, whether to spend life points to draw more cards etc.

SPOILERS START

There are quite a number of key decision points and considerations in the game. Picking a hazard from two sounds simple, but there are many considerations behind it. Can your deck beat the hazard? Do you want to beat it in the first place? You can try to intentionally lose in order to trim your deck. Would it be too costly in life points? Do you fight the tougher card so that in the next cycle through the hazard deck you'll have an easier time? Which card ability is more useful to you? During a fight there are many considerations too. Even if you have already decided to try to beat the hazard, sometimes things go bad and you need to decide whether to fight on (pay a life point to draw another fighting card) or to concede (pay life points to escape, possibly removing some bad or unwanted fighting cards). There are many different types of card powers and thus many possible combinations. Sometimes using them in a different order can yield different results.

How you spend your life points is a crucial aspect of the game. You know you will need to spend them on getting rid of bad cards (by conceding to some hazards). How much can you afford to spend to draw extra cards to try to beat certain hazards? When do you want to push your luck a little? When do you concede early?

One thing that I discovered is that sometimes tougher hazards can be easier to deal with, because they allow more free cards. More free cards mean less reliance on the good luck of drawing a high numbered card. It also means you have a better chance of drawing useful combinations of card abilities that can eventually help you beat the hazard. My gut feel is sometimes tougher hazards let you beat them without spending as many life points as when trying to beat easier hazards. Also the card abilities of tougher hazards are better, and thus will likely be more helpful later on.

SPOILERS END

Now that I have a better grasp of the techniques to efficiently build a good deck, I find that by mid game I will have a good estimation of whether I will win the game. I get a sense of how well I have been doing and based on that I can make a fairly good guess of whether I'll eventually win. I played quite many Level 1 games before progressing to Level 2, but I didn't play as many before progressing to Level 3. I find that now that I have a fairly good grasp of the game, the difference in difficulty level from Level 1 to 3 isn't all that big. If I am still optimistic by mid game, then I usually will beat the pirates comfortably. I have not reached the difficulty level where I keep hovering near the edge of losing, where the final battles against the pirates come right down to the wire. I plan to play a few more Level 3 games and then move on to Level 4. I wonder whether I will meet my match there, or beyond.

Now I am fine-tuning my skills and I'm not learning anything very new. I know the general principles well now, and I can almost play on auto-pilot. I am now trying to identify small ways of further improving my play. I start to count cards, check the discard deck, check removed cards etc, making use of every bit of information that I have before making any important decision. This may sound boring and tedious, but it's satisfying to find ways to push further to improve.

Card abilities can only be used once. If I have used a card ability, I tilt it by 90 degrees to remind myself.

The Thoughts

Friday is a decent solo-game. I would say the whole game is about deck-building. It's not deck-building plus some other mechanisms. In A Few Acres of Snow, deck-building is a tool. It is an engine that drives the game, but my attention is on the board, and I feel I am immersed in the French and Indian War. In Friday I am often reminded that I'm just revamping and then fine-tuning a deck of cards. I am supposed to imagine myself ridding Robinson Crusoe of his bad habits and weaknesses, and training him up to kick pirate buttocks. The theme is there, but I think it's not much better than Dominion. If I were to rank the deck-building games (and games with a significant deck-building element) I have played, I'll probably rank them this way:

1. A Few Acres of Snow - Among these games, I am only certain I like this more than the rest. Other than Resident Evil, the others in the middle are very close. I really don't have any strong preference of one over another. I'd be willing to play any of them. In A Few Acres of Snow, I find that the deck-building mechanism matches the setting very well.
2. Mage Knight - This is also quite immersive. It's an adventure game, but it's not about playing with your heart or rolling lots of dice. You play with your brain, planning ahead a lot, calculating a lot, optimising a lot. You're a sword-wielding accountant putting together the supporting documents to slay the dragon of the unbalanced balance sheet! There is a rich world for you to explore and create your own story. It is satisfying to get your cards to work well together, killing monsters and such.
3. Friday - One good thing is it is an honest solitaire game, as opposed to some deck-building games which may sometimes feel like multiplayer solitaire. Also it has meaningful decisions all the time, not just when buying cards. Sometimes deck-building games feel like they are all about shopping, and the action phase of actually using cards is mostly auto-pilot, having either no choices to be made, or the best choice being obvious.
4. Dominion - I have not played face-to-face Dominion for a long while. I'm quite rusty now. I have seen the many clever tricks and interesting combinations of cards in Dominion. I need no convincing that it's a great design.
5. Ascension - The iPhone version is so slick and enjoyable that it makes me suspect that the physical game won't be as good. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm being silly making such an inference, but my gut feel is Ascension is very well suited as an asynchronous mode game, and that is why I enjoy playing it so much. I own the iOS version, but I have no urge to buy the physical version.
6. Nightfall - Doesn't give me a very strong deck-building game feeling. It feels more like a multiplayer fighting game where you also need to manipulate your opponents through negotiations and diplomacy. This aspect seems to be more important than how well you've built your deck. The chaining mechanism is different, but I don't have strong feelings about it.
7. Resident Evil - Not that it's bad, just that it didn't feel very different from Dominion, so I lost interest quickly.

On the whole I quite like Friday. It's convenient when you don't have any opponent handy, and it's challenging enough to be interesting, even after I've passed the "I've-figured-it-out" stage. I've already played 16 games, and plan to continue to play at higher difficulty levels. Now that's value for money.