Friday 31 January 2014

Demand: A Locomotive Werks/Automobile Review

The inspiration for this blog was me recently playing Locomotive Werks (Works? Warks? Whyrks?), a game that I have been meaning to play for quite a long time. As some of you might know, I am quite the fan of Automobile, a game that I am utterly terrible at but that I love to play again and again. There are many reasons why I like Automobile that I will go into as part of this dual review, but suffice to say  it's probably my favourite Wallace game out there (ranking above my other favourites, such as Perikles, Liberte and Brass). 

When people first told me of Locomotive Werks, all of my fellow economics game enthusiasts (I know at least 5, it must be a record!) all told me that it was a game fairly similar to Automobile. This sparked the initial interest that I had in the game. As well as that, since I am a 18XXer, I had a natural interest in trains, so Locomotive Werks seemed like something that I would enjoy playing. Even after playing the game, although I felt that the comparisons between the two games were relatively true, there were a few items that irked me and this is what made decide to write a review comparing the two. Although in terms of fundamental mechanisms the two games aren't as alike as some people might say, there were still points that I think were worth discussing, especially in terms of how the two games handle supply and demand, which is the topic of this particular article.

As a start, let's briefly explain the two games and why they are dissimilar to each other. Automobile is a game about building car factories, producing cars and then selling them! Locomotive Werks is a game about building locomotive factories, producing locomotives and then selling them! As I said, completely different themes and games. 

All kidding aside, let's first of all analyse Automobile in more depth. The game has a variable turn-order which is decided at the start of each round by the players picking a famous car tycoon from a bygone era (Ford, Howard etc). The car tycoons are in a set order and each have different ability, as well as providing different numbers of research cubes. Picking a tycoon is both a deliberation of what ability you want and your place in the turn order. There are advantages at being first (first pick of new factories, first to use distributors to sell cars), and there are advantages to being last (being able to see what other people are doing, getting the pick of the higher tech car factories).

After picking the turn order, each player can do a single action in each of three rounds (with the game being 4 turns in total), in which they can build factories, construct cars from factories, place distributors or even close factories. Once everyone has done their three actions, the players can sell cars, first using the special ability of Howard, then by distributors (which have a limited amount of slots that increases turn by turn) and then using demand tiles, which I will explain later. There are also executive actions which can influence how cars are sold.

The main part of the game involves the 'technology line', which shows different models of cars of three different types (budget, mid-range and luxury cars). Only a single player can build a specific model and to progress up the technology line you need to spend research cubes: 1 cube for going to the next step, 3 for skipping a step, 6 for skipping two steps, 10 for skipping three etc. The advantage of having higher tech cars is that they are always sold first during the selling phase. As well as that, older technologies can gain 'loss cubes' depending on how many models are active of the same type in front of them. Loss cubes lose the player money each round so they are something you want to avoid.

With the brief (and not very thorough) explanation above, let's now move on to Locomotive Werks. Locomotive Werks also possess a variable turn order, but instead it is decided by how much money you have, with the players with the most money going last. Unlike Automobile, being last is almost always bad and there aren't any real upsides, apart from maybe being able to access new technology. The way that the turn order is decided reminded me quite a lot powergrid, and the end-game can be reminiscent of it as well since you are in a constant struggle to make the turn order work in your favour.

Much like Automobile, Locomotive Werks also has a 'technology line'. Unlike Automobile, more than one player can produce a specific model. There are different types of trains as well, something that impacts how many factories are available for a given model and how high the demand is (with higher demand models having more factories available and vice-versa for low demand models). Building a new more advanced model immediately unlocks the next one in the chain, but since each factory costs progressively more money, the amount of funds you have becomes a limiting factor on how high the tech line you can advance.

Originally for this review I was going to post a long-winded explanation of how each game handled demand and production, but I soon realised that a) the explanation would not make a lot of sense and b) it would be extremely boring to read. The two parts above, however (the turn order and the technology line in each), are important, though, to understand the next points. 

The main point is that the demand in each game is handled in a very different way: in Automobile, the technology level matters because higher tech cars get preferential treatment when selling, but all cars, no matter the model, sell for the same. In Locomotive Werks, however, technology level only matters in terms of how much you are selling the locomotive for, with each different model having its own, separate demand.  Preferential treatment for selling is handled just by turn order, which is the crucial point of criticism that I have for Locomotive Werks: turn order plays almost TOO MUCH of an influence on how well you do turn by turn.

Another crucial difference is that in Automobile, you can usually guess a range of how many cars are likely to sell each turn: in Locomotive Werks, this is handled by rolling dice for each different model of locomotive. This can create huge swings in the game, where being later in the turn order means that you sell a fraction of what you can actually produce. This is especially notable in the end-game, where you have to play a balancing act of not having enough money to become last in the turn order, but have enough money to pass the money limit that triggers the end of the game.

It is also possible in Locomotive Werks to fall so behind the curve in terms of development that it is impossible to continue playing, since as technology advances within the game the demand for older models dries up. Contrast this to Automobile, where you only stand to lose money (and loans help you overcome this too) and can still play the game. Even if the possibility of being shut out of the game in Locomotive Werks is remote, the possibility is still there and there's no doubt that a less experienced player at some point found himself in this position, having to wait hours before his friends have finished playing what is actually a pretty lengthy game.

I think these are the fundamental points that make Automobile stand out as an exceptional game and make Locomotive Werks simply mediocre. Automobile allows you to guess at the demand and make plans based on these expectations: Locomotive Werks forces random demand on you that potentially you have no real way to deal with. In Automobile, there are advantages to being both first and last, and making this decision needs to be weighed carefully: in Locomotive Werks, the decision is a no-brainer: always be high in the turn order. Automobile, overall, just feels like a game in which the designer understood how to handle randomness, while Locomotive Werks just doesn't. Maybe in repeated plays, I may grow to like Locomotive Werks more than my initial impression, but for now, I would not hesitate to pick Automobile every single time. As well as that, I am a notorious wooden pieces fetishist and man, those little wooden cars from the Treefrog version just make my heart melt.

The scores are 5 out of 5 Angry King Philips for Automobile and 3 out of 5 for Locomotive Werks. Now only to see what the new outing from Wallace (ships) is going to be like...

My Shelf of Games

For anyone that doesn't check the SA thread, here are my boardgaming credentials in picture form:


The bottom shelf and the second from the bottom on the right are all wargames. This was the selection left to me after a lot of pruning and selling of stuff I didn't like (although there's some stuff that I still wish I could get rid of).

Saturday 18 January 2014

A Distant P(l)ain: A Story of Relationships

It's been a few months since my review of COIN games as a whole and I wanted to come back to one of those games because largely I had felt like I had really explored the full potential of the game and why I consider it the best COIN games currently available. As a warning, though, I will largely avoid talking about the historical veracity of the game because, frankly, I do not know enough about the conflict to adequately be able to assess how true to life the game is. What I will concentrate on, however, is how closely the elements of the game attempt to evoke their intended function: I will largely be approaching A Distant Plain (ADP) from a gaming perspective since my otherwise amateurish attempts at historical analysis would be otherwise rather insulting.

So, first of all, why do I consider ADP the best COIN game currently available? For a start, ADP provides the most interesting interactions between the factions in any COIN game to date. Although some of the factions present do not even represent a real, unified structure in real life, the sheer interactions that occur normally within a game of ADP more than make up for this. Since the frame-work of all COIN games are pretty much the same, it is therefore the factions that really make one game stand out from the other. 

When Andean Abyss first came out, it was already clear that it was the mix of the interactions which provided the main fun. The Government fighting the FARC with the help of the AUC, with the Cartel waiting on the side, biding their time. The eventual need for the Government to strike the AUC once it gets too powerful. The temporary alliances between the Government and FARC in order to take care of a troublesome Cartel player. These were all player-created events that really drove the game forward and allowed the players to interact with each other in novel ways. 

When Cuba Libre came out, I was originally worried that the factions were going to play too similarly to the ones in Andean Abyss (something which fortunately did not happen). On the other hand, when I first heard of ADP and saw the factions involved I wasn't immediately thrilled: for a start, I had much more of an interest in Castro's Insurgency than the war in Afghanistan. In the end, ADP became an impulse buy, since I hadn't originally intended to buy it at all. Once I got to play it, however, I was very glad to have made that decision.

So, how do the factions in ADP interact with each other? One of the most obvious interactions is, of course, the nominal alliance between the Government and the Coalition forces. This is an important interaction because I see it as the driving force of the entire game and this single interaction can largely colour the shape of the entire game. In most other COIN games, factions feel rather distinct for each other: the only other relationship in which two factions want to work largely in tandem is the Syndicate-Government relationship in Cuba Libre, but even that one quickly breaks down.

The Government-Coalition, on the other hand, are intrinsically linked with each other. The entire relationship centers around an unequal power balance in which usually Coalition will hold the advantage, but not overwhelmingly so. What really drives this relationship is the relative strength of will of one side or the other. Although largely all COIN games can be about attempting to brow-beat your opponents into aiding you, in no other game can the brow-beating be so effective as in a game of ADP. A strong Coalition player will always attempt to bend the Government to his will and attempt to dictate both the route and the tempo of COIN operations. It is therefore always important for the Coalition player to always insinuate that the actions that you are performing are for the good of both factions. Threats from the Coalition are usually along the lines of 'I'm gonna surge out if you do not do this' which can sometimes be effective.

The really interesting game, however, is when the Government player is the dominating one. In this situation, it is easy for the Coalition player to get exasperated and even have their troops held hostage with threats from the Government of withdrawing their ANA/ANP human shields.  Governing is usually the main way to piss off the Coalition, but bases prevent you from removing support for patronage, although this can be handily defeated by allowing a base to be undefended if the Coalition decided to keep their foot-print in the country too low.

I find the inter-play between these two factions endlessly fascinating. The relationship is an important point of consideration for both other players since the dynamic will largely decide who the main target for COIN operations is. 

It is therefore important for me to now describe what I consider the nominal alliances within the game. It is clear that the first (and more important one) is the one between the Government and the Coalition. Other important ones, however, are the relationship between the Taliban and the Government, the Coalition and the Warlords and the Taliban and the Warlords. Let's concentrate on the first one first.

I am not very familiar with cultural differences between the different ethnicities of Afghanistan, but I can't help but feel that the nominal alliance between the Government and Taliban is intended to portray the shared Pashtun heritage of both factions. One of the most important jobs for the Coalition is instilling within the mind of the Government that the Taliban is a major threat to the Government's aims: this however, could not be further from the truth. The Taliban and the Government have absolutely no reason to fight what-so-ever and largely can ignore each other: this is due mostly to the fact that the Taliban do not really care much about controlling regions (although they sometimes might want to in order to enact Sharia), while the Government does not really care about support/opposition beyond the ability to govern support away for patronage. 

One of the most effective tactics for the Taliban is to spread out as much as possible and cause terror: this will usually create a very low obstacle for the Government to gain control of regions where Taliban are present. It is therefore imperative for the Taliban player to constantly remind the Government player of this in order to prevent him from falling under the sway of the Coalition. A strong Taliban faction is also a handy way for the Government to keep a Coalition player in check, although this can potentially run the risk of depleting the resources of the Government rather fast. 

The second nominal alliance I mentioned was the one between the Coalition and the Warlords. This is usually not so much an alliance but more of an assurance that the two factions do not get into each other's way. The Coalition can be potentially highly damaging to the Warlords, while the Warlords can damage the Coalition by suborning away their protective meat-shields. There is, therefore, very little reason for either factions to fight each other: the rewards are too small and the risks too high. Much like the Taliban-Government relationship, a Coalition player can keep a strong Government in check by allowing the Warlords to operate freely. 

The last nominal alliance is between the two insurgent factions, the Warlords and the Taliban. This is much like the above relationship: neither of the two sides really want to get into each other's way. Taliban can actually be a boost to the Warlords since they help prevent COIN control (of course, Taliban control is just as bad but usually easier to deal with). 

These nominal alliances are what make the game striking and really make it stand out from the other two offerings in the COIN series. The strong nominal alliance between the Government and Coalition is itself split into nominal alliances to two completely different entities, which both the Government and Coalition can make use to strike each other since direct confrontation is so limited. This is why I rate ADP so highly, because this relationship is so unusual and different from any other that I have seen in any other game, war game or otherwise. It even, for my limited knowledge, smacks true to real life, with the Coalition despairing over a Government that just doesn't seem to want to toe the line.

Although I wanted to make the inter-faction relationships the focus of this review, there are a few other pieces that I have picked up while playing the game. First of all, how the Taliban factions differs from the other major insurgent factions (the FARC, the 26 July Movement) in other COIN games. What is different about the Taliban is the ease that they can move around the board, as long as they stay in Pashtun areas. In Pashtun areas, they can remain undetected, move around quickly, recruit even in areas with support. It means that largely the Taliban are almost impossible to eradicate even if support has been created, something that doesn't happen within the other COIN games. That, along with the presence of Pakistan within the game, really changes how the faction functions in comparison to other major insurgent factions (something that I wrongly claimed in my original COIN review).

The other interesting faction within the game is the Warlords. The Warlords have always felt slightly a-historical to me (although really, the Taliban are hardly a unified faction either). I have grown to appreciate, however, the attempts by the creators of the game to make them feel like they actually are a loose conglomeration of different warlords/groups. For a start, the victory condition of the faction is perfect: making sure that no one really controls Afghanistan is a perfect way to represent the fact that the faction is not perfectly unified. There are other elements present which also support this, chief among them the road-protection that the Warlord provide. Overall, they do manage to portray the growing non-Pashtun opposition to the Government and I think the isn't really a way to portray that without forcing the Warlord player to be too schizophrenic in their actions.

ADP, no matter how accurately it portrays the conflict or not, really managed to create an unprecedented level of interaction and such a unique player relationship that I find it hard that something will be able to replicate this again. I am, however, looking forward to Fire in the Lake, since I am highly curious at how a COIN games with two distinct sides will unfold. As it stands, though, ADP is the current gem of the COIN games, surpassing the slightly unpolished Andean Abyss and the fun but slightly random Cuba Libre. I hope to get many more tries at playing this wonderful game and the game rightly received 5 angry scowling King Phillips out of 5.