Spreadsheets everywhere

Recently, I've run a couple of test games using only a spreadsheet, without the map and tiles. This has meant that I've had to guess the income of each company based on its trains and the stage of the game. Although I may have made some mistakes along the way as a result, the spreadsheet approach has several advantages.

For one thing, I have a record of each game. I can look back over the game and see how many trains were bought in each OR, or how many shares were available in each SR. Then I can experiment with a rule change, starting from a particular point in the game.

This approach allows me to concentrate on the financial flow of the game. I'm looking at when money becomes available for players to start companies and for companies to buy trains. It's an important way of thinking about the game. I'd even guess that experienced 18xx designers use this view of the game from the outset, whereas I've come to it after much work on other parts of the game.

From a practical point of view, the spreadsheet is much more convenient. Instead of needing a table to set up the map, I can carry the spreadsheet on a memory stick and play a couple of moves when I have a spare moment.

I don't claim any originality for the idea. Like many good ideas, I picked it up from the 18xx mailing list. It took a while to get the spreadsheet working the way I want it, but the effort has definitely been worthwhile.

18GB vs. Britain Under Steam

Way back when I started this project, I stated that my aim was to produce a game in the mould of 1829, 1830 et al that will be popular with euro-gamers. What I currently have is more of a traditional 18xx game. I did get rid of paper money (or poker chips) by simplifying the system for distributed income, which is a step along the right path, and the game isn't too complicated by 18xx standards, but I doubt that it will appeal to Eurogamers.

I should say at this point that I'm happy with this situation. I think the game has the potential to be a good 18xx game, if I can find more time to refine it through playtesting. The point of this post is to speculate on how I could create a new game, based on the same ideas, that really did appeal to Eurogamers.

The first thing to do would be to have companies lay their track directly on the board, rather than using tiles. Coloured train markers would be good, similar to those in Ticket To Ride. I could either let companies lay them from hex to hex, or have predefined routes on the map on which the markers could be placed. This would get rid of the tiles and all the rules about tile placement. (I note that Poseidon has already embodied a similar approach, using round markers on a hex grid).

This change would produce a rail network more akin to those of crayon rail games. These are popular and easy to understand. They also take up less space, as you don't need table space for all the different tiles of an 18xx game, and the board itself can be smaller too. The network would behave differently from 18xx games, in which companies often share track, and I might need rules to govern junctions and other details, but it should still work.

On the financial side, I'd be inclined to remove the transition from 5-share to 10-share companies. Several possibilities arise, including only having 5-share companies or only having 10-share companies. Another intriguing idea would be to have 6-share companies, funded incrementally (i.e. with share purchases paid to the company), and dividing all income by the number of shares in play. So if one player has 2 shares of company and another has 1, the first will get 2/3 of the dividend and the second 1/3. If someone else buys a fourth share, the amount paid out will drop to 1/2 and 1/4.

In other parts of the game, I'd be tempted to simplify the rules for receivership. Companies without a train or a director would receive a fixed amount into their treasury each turn (increasing by phase), rather than having to lease a train. This is an optional rule for insolvency in 1860 and is simple to use. I'd probably also simplify the rules for private railways.

All in all, this is something to think about. From now on, I will use the name 18GB for my 18xx game, and reserve Britain Under Steam for this putative new game. Unfortunately, I barely have enough time to work on one game, let alone two!

Changing Trains

My first test game, back in November, revealed that my choice of express trains did not work. I had taken the 4+4E trains from 1825, which can run any number of stations, take income from any four of those, and double it. On the 18GB map, these were more useful on relatively short routes rather than the long routes I had in mind (such as London to Aberdeen). It turned out that the ordinary 6 trains were running longer routes than the expresses.

I've got a better idea for express trains and they incorporate a mechanism I've only seen in one other 18xx game. (Typically for me, the idea comes from Mike Hutton). My 6E trains will count up to 6 stations and then add the distance between the start and end points. So running from London to Edinburgh will score more than connecting 6 cities in the North of England, because the bonus for the distance will increase the income significantly. I hope.

I'd also like to replace the ordinary 6 train, again so that the longer routes are run by the expresses. I think I can introduce a 4E to fill this slot. This has the additional effect of further encouraging five-share companies to convert to ten-share companies earlier, because only ten-share companies can own express trains.

This leaves only one problem, which is that there might not be enough trains left for five-share companies. The 4 trains will disappear when the first 6e is bought, leaving just the 5-trains. So I plan to add some 3T and 4T trains (tank engines) as well. These will replace the 3+1 and 4+1 trains. In practice they will be pretty similar to the trains they replace, except that there will be fewer of them and they will be able to run through an unlimited number of towns instead of just one.

I'll be interested to see how these work. I'm quite hopeful, although a little nervous about the 3T and 4T trains.

Sensitive initial conditions

One consequence of my simplified dividends system is that the relative worth of companies is very sensitive to small changes in income, particularly at the start of the game. If one company has an income of 100 while another is bringing in 90, the former will pay out 20/share and the latter only 10/share (assuming 5-share companies). So a small change in income can have a dramatic effect if it crosses a boundary from one level of dividends to another.

Major changes of income are fine. If a company buys a second (or third) train, then it is only right that its dividends should increase. Indeed, if one company's dividends were to increase as a result of buying a second train, while another's second train didn't quite make enough to pay higher dividends, then this would be just as much a problem.

So I've been carefully checking the potential incomes of each company at the start of the game, using various different values for different sizes of city. To make them balance, I've had to reduce the initial value of the larger cities. I'm happy to try the game with these reduced values. It could be argued that the previous incomes were too high, leading to player incomes growing too quickly.

I did notice that if I also reduced the initial value of 2-station cities, then the presence of towns on a route made an important difference, as they gave an extra income using the "+1" of a "2+1" train. The consequence is that while the sums worked for companies in most parts of the board, those in the crowded North of England lost out because there is no space to put towns between the cities. Pursuing this line of exploration further, I considered making towns worth zero, so that they are just obstacles preventing the creation of certain routes early in the game. This worked, but I don't like the "feel" of making them worse than plain hexes. I also considered adding "2H" trains, which would run for only 2 hexes but would give an additional income equivalent to a town. I think this would work and I may return to this idea in the future.

For now, I have some values that seem to work. The next step is to do more modelling of how player incomes grow at the start of the game, taking account of the cost of shares.

Bonus routes

18GB has a notion of bonus routes, in which a train’s income is increased if it links a certain pair of destinations. Examples include London to Plymouth (for the transatlantic trade), London to Scotland, and Hull to Liverpool. These encourage the building of longer routes.

One problem with this idea is that in the later game, companies have fewer trains than the routes available. So if the London-Holyhead route is worth less than (say) London-Manchester, companies will always choose to run the more profitable route and the less profitable routes will be irrelevant. This is something I would like to change.

Historically, there was intense competition to achieve the fastest journey times on these routes. In the current draft, 18GB tries to represent this by giving a bonus to the company with the shortest route at the start of each OR, regardless of whether they actually run the route.

Recently, I’ve thought of an alternative. Perhaps each bonus should be awarded only once per OR, to the first company to connect that pair of destinations. This would give a competitive element to the game and would encourage companies to claim different bonuses. In the example above, the London-Holyhead bonus could make the route worth more than London-Manchester, so the first company to run might claim it, leaving other companies no choice but to run the competing routes. I think this is worth a try.

Multiple Trains

In my first test game, I tried out a new rule for 18xx. When a company ran two trains from the same station, I counted the income from that station only once. This encouraged companies to build longer routes rather than link the same cities multiple times. It also simplified the counting of city incomes.

It did affect the train roster, in that if a company bought a second 2-train, the income it gave was much less. This can be tweaked by having a smaller number of 2-trains in the game and more 3-trains.

However, I plan to drop this for the next test. I would rather have companies make the trade-off between earlier income and longer-term routes. If they want to build dense local networks, this should be their choice; it will make the companies less able to compete for the longer routes in the later game.

In any case, the track-building in 18GB is already fairly restrictive, in the early stages, so there is already some restraint on the building of multiple short routes. This constraint from the tile mix seems sufficient to encourage the building of longer routes.

Private Railways

The private railways are the icing on the cake of an 18xx game. They add flavour, but are not the main part of the game. Their main role is actually to give the players different starting positions, with slightly different cash holdings and initial income. They may also have significant other effects, especially if they can be bought into a company.

On the other hand, the private railways are the first things that the players have to buy. Therefore the designer has to get them right. This is a lesson I learnt from my first test game. Until then, I had only a hazy idea of how the privates would work, and I had to decide on various rules in a hurry at the start of the game. In fact, I began that game with two different models for how private railways might influence the rest of the game.

The first was a minor enhancement of the 1825 rules. In this approach, privates would be owned by players, but interact with track-building. In phase 2, companies would be forbidden to lay track in a hex occupied by a private (possibly unless the owner agrees). In later phases, whenever a company does lay track in a private railway's hex, this closes the private. So some private railways occupy valuable hexes and influence early track lays; other will stay open longer and give more income over the course of the game.

The second was an 1830-like approach. Companies may buy private railways and this may give the companies special abilities. The most obvious ability is the laying of a tile in the private's hex – although for hexes in the thick of things this might be too unbalancing.

Another might be extra income for a certain town or city. Another might be a share in a particular company. This last ability probably wouldn’t work so well in 18GB, as it would be a 20% holding in the early game.

My current plan is a combination of these approaches. As in 1830, companies may buy private railways from phase 3 onwards and most privates give an extra ability to their owning railway. No company may lay a tile in a private railway's hex until the private is owned by a company (not necessarily the one laying the tile). However, in phase 4, companies may forcibly buy a private railway from a player (at face value) if they lay a tile in the private's hex. This prevents players from continuing to block important hexes. All private railways close at the start of phase 5.

As an extra thought, I’m wondering whether it would be possible/sensible to represent one or two companies as privates that give the ability to teleport a token. E.g. the SWR might become a private with the ability to lay a token in Swansea. (Although this would affect the optional grouping rules). Currently, the optional companies are the GNR in York and the GSWR in Ayr/Glasgow. The GNR could give a bonus to York and a free tile lay in any plain hex. The GSWR could give a bonus for Ayr and perhaps a free upgrade for Glasgow.