SpielByWeb

[Olrik]

this idea came up after playing a number of 1on1s regular tikal. the problem is that if one of the players gets the 3 or 4-treasure-tiles alot more than the other he receives an early point advantage which is very hard to overcome.

so i was wondering if its technically possible to add a 1-point-per-treasure option especially for 1on1 games. as treasures are so powerful in 1on1 i believe that they would still be worth it even without the increase.

i hope that makes sense and maybe some of the other 1on1 players can voice their opinions.

[Rebelslayer]

If they are busy taking treasures, get a temple to 9 or 10 and guard it.
The treature aspect is just one of the large luck components of this game.

(note that I have stopped playing it as luck plays far too much of a role in this game for me to enjoy it)

[ahauwi1]

The auction option seems to do quite well at mitigating the luck factor. If the treasure tile comes up, either you're gonna have to pay to get it or you make your opponent pay for it. It changes the game immensely!

[Olrik]

no offense rebelslayer but your statement kinda shows that you have very few experience with the ingame situation im adressing here.

adauwi1 your point is valid BUT the auction option also completely changes the game. basicly you open a whole new front of strategies (and prolly some rather annoying maths to calc in terms of expected point gains vs auction costs).

tikal regular 1on1 is very skill based except for those early treasures and fixing that cant be rocket science.

[Rebelslayer]

I haven't played it much, but how many times do you need to play a game to pick that luck in the first few turns decides it if the luck is uneven? I prefer to play a game where there is some luck and a really lucky player will beat a really good player if they get all of the luck but a really good player will beat a slightly lucky player. Tikal in 3-4 player mode seems to satisfy that, but even then luck plays too much of a role.

But I think this is off the point.

The game as written has matched treasures worth more. The game has already been set up to run as such and changing that would take the tech's time which I feel would be better spent getting a new game up and running.[/quote]

[Bogey]

If you were playing FtF how would you suggest a 1 v 1 game be modified?

You seem to have given the treasure tile/cost some thought, therefor you seem more than capable to calculate out the "math" associated with the auction version which I believe to be far superior to the non auction version. Then again, it does take a ton longer to play the auction version on line. (But much shorter for a 1 v 1 than 4 player.)

[Olrik]

i havent played tikal FtF yet.

my suggestion is to give 1 point per treasure and stop the increase in points (3 for 2 of a kind and 6 for 3 of a kind).

i fail to understand why rebelslayer thinks tikal 1on1 is such a luck based game. i finished 20 games so far, 17 wins, 1 draw and ... big surprise.. one of the two losses comes from the guy who shows up as #1 when you sort the ranking for tikal wining percentage. this is not meant to brag just to show that a good player does indeed have a huge edge against a bad player in tikal.

tikal with 3+ players is a completely different story as it will very often be decided by the donkey-moves of the bad players against those runing for victory as it is the case in most ffa strategy games.

stating that "the game has been written ..." is neither an argument at all nor a prouve that its better the way it is and improvements are the point of suggestions arnt they?

[smlait]

I think the treasures are fine as is. If they were only worth 1 point each, they'd be undervalued. I completely understand the frustration in grabbing three treasures that don't match while your opponent grabs three that do, but that's not a supercommon occurence (and the auction does nothing to counteract this particular element of luck in the game). If you had to revalue the treasures, I'd say make them 2 points each (same total value, but without the "set bonus") but I still think that would take a lot of the fun out of the game. Please note that I like some luck in my games to keep them fresh.

[Rebelslayer]

Its not completely luck based, but more luck based than I like.

<Rebelslayer bows out of this thread before it gets confrontational>

[Olrik]

i feel kind of misunderstood :/

changing treasures to 2 points each would make the problem even worse!

[ahauwi1]

There are any number of ways to deal with this issue in FTF games that take very little time or effort to implement. You could try:
1) your suggested fix
2) increasing the cost of digging a treasure (and/or swapping one)
3) reversing the order that the treasure tiles present (i.e. start off with the 2's and work your way up to 4's throughout the game)
4) removing the protection that the second treasure of a set provides
5) probably a whole bunch of other experiments and tweaks to the game that might turn it into the game you like - use your imagination.

I'd encourage you to try some of them out - playtest them with several opponents if possible. Maybe you'll hit on a truly cool variant (if so, please post it here and/or on BGG and no doubt some others will try it out - maybe it'll gain a following.

On a site like this, obviously it's not as simple as just coming to an agreement with your opponent before an FTF game; a change like you've proposed would probably require a nontrivial amount of development and testing before being sure it's working right and not going o break anything, and I think most of us would rather that development time be spent developing the much anticipated in-development games like La Citta and Caylus!

If you haven't yet, please try the auction variant - maybe it solves one problem but creates others for you; it just seems that the root problem you're trying to correct for is luck, and the auction is a great way to mitigate that problem, and - best of all - is an option available to you presently. Yes, there's gonna be some math involved if you want to do well, but then you're probably doing some of that anyway with your high win ratio.

Another angle to consider is how to defend against the occurrence you describe. RS suggested aggressively growing a temple. He's quite a good player - I'd listen to his advice whenever it's offered. I'm sure there are other ways to defend as well. Get your workers into position to be able to keep things as even as possible as far as treasure goes early on. When you're up against a top-rated opponent, watch how they position their workers early on and/or defend against your early treasures or even the possibility that you'll get early treasures.

[smlait]

[Olrik]

your statement about worker placement is simply false (in terms of the problem im trying to adress here; it is indeed true on the general idea of tikal 1on1).

IF you draw a 4-treasure tile you simply place it a way that it takes at least 3 action points to get there (that is almost always possible). then you move 1 worker there and take the treasure. now its your opponents turn and unless he is extremely lucky (and you messed up the placement a bit) and he is able to create a 2 action points bridge to the treasure tile which is higly unlikely he will only get one treasure. now its your turn again and you even have 4 spare points for movement and can still take 2 treasures (the same basicly works for 3-treasure tiles just that you will only creates a 2 to 1 instead of a 3 to 1 advantage).

i understand your point about techie time better being used on new games and i have no idea how long it would take to implement my suggestion.

[Gaditus]

Could you and your opponent simply agree not to take more than two treasures from any tile (maybe at least until the first scoring)? It would not be prevented by the game engine but by the integrity of the players.

[RyanMC]

Olrik I think you are WAY over stating this problem. You are suffering from group think, and are not letting some other very good players give you any alternatives. I have played a ton of 1 vs 1 Tikal. I don't think the guy who gets the treasures is at that much of an advantage. Good camp placement and good temple placement early is much more beneficial in my mind. So personally I think you are wrong, but that's not the point I want to make.

The main point is, we do not change the rules of these games just because some players think we should. We don't want to get in the habit of creating house rules. If we did that once, we would never be able to stop.

Back to my original point about you being wrong on the unbalanced aspect of treasures. Tikal has been around for a while now. It's been played 1000s of times before it ever existed on this site. The game was play tested before it was released. Perhaps you need to adjust your strategy rather than adjust the game. If the game has worked for so many people for so long why is it now 8 years after it was released that this flaw has finally come out. You dismiss the auction fix, but that does fix it. If you force someone to pay more points for the 3 or 4 treasure hex, then those points help balance out the perceived benefit. I personally don't like the auction variant anymore, I used to play it a lot, but don't see the need anymore. I think the game is balanced without it. I have played countless 2 player games of Tikal both online and face to face. Some of the people in this post have great records in 2 player games, and they like I don't see the problem. You seem to have convinced yourself of a problem, when perhaps you just need to adjust your style of play to stop this from happening.
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