First test game

This marks a milestone; at last I've played a full game through. This has been a long time coming; work commitments have meant that I've not had much time to work on the game this year.

The first play through is rather like an integration test in an IT project. Lots of different components have been developed in isolation, and it is only when you put them together that you discover where they don't match up. I was expecting the game to raise as many questions as it answered, and so it was.

Several things did work. The income system meant that players and companies could record their cash on a simple track. The map and tiles worked, and I think they just need minor tweaking as further plays reveal any lingering problems. Players had plenty of opportunity and incentive to cross-invest. The stock market was reasonably dynamic. Converting companies from 5 shares to 10 shares seemed basically right, although I need to look at the details on that.

18xx designers often say that the train roster is the hardest part of the game to get right. I certainly need to change mine about a bit. I think this is par for the course.

The biggest concern I have now is to get the company funding right. In the middle of the game, players seemed to have too much money for the shares available, while companies didn't have enough money to move the train buying along. The income from the shares was all quite similar, so it wasn't obvious which player would benefit most by making companies withhold income. This will need more experimentation. I might even try partial capitalisation, despite having argued against this in the past.

In the meantime, I have lots of small changes to make, to the rules, to the map, to the tiles, and to the stock market, and possibly to other components as well.