I have totally lost track of the numbering.....

And since I'm writing this on a train back from Bristol I've no easy way to check. So let's just talk about 'the latest version'. Which after sitting on the shelf for ages finally got a play test.

Interesting play test - the return of (weaker) big men was successful - adding a bit more tactics to play. However the game got broken - and broken badly.

I don't feel bad - that's what he does to games - commits to extreme plans to see what happens. The plan in this case being ignoring vps - and building an empire and bursting for vps at the end. And to my embarrassment it worked. We went from 'he's to far behind to ever win' to 'there is nothing we can do to stop him winning' in a single turn...

This is despite the fact that one change I introduced in this version was increasing costs to building stone heads in a single turn to encourage stone head building over the entire game. It was also the case that due to that players decision to lurk at the back he massively gained from the bonus renown - which was intended as a catch up mechanic but he was never really behind in ways that mattered.

It's also clear that the RongoRongo cards which were intended as a method to reward attacking just don't work. There not strong enough - so they are always what you choose to discard.....

I have to be rather careful here because the actual strategy is fine - its just a matter of a) the ammount it worked and b) people lack of ability to do anything about it that really mattered.

After sleeping on this I might change the bonus renown so that a you steal renown for attacking some ody with more renown. Which will mean that no extra enters the economy - and you won't be able to gain to much from it because the situation will soon reverse as the attacker ends up with more. It's still a catch up becuase the person going last will benefit most - and that's generally the person with the least vps.....

Which moves us to RongoRongo cards -these need to be more powerful and I think they need to be able to steal vps off other players when used against some key with more vps then you have..... Here I need to be careful that gsh remain the central vp generating factor otherwise were back to games where people simply don't make stone heads. Which inna game about Easter island is a problem.