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- <\/a>Globopolis<\/a><\/b>
![\"box](\"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/Ressourcen\/globopol_t.jpg\")
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\nThis time we had another go with “Globopolis”, the first game of Mike Lasher,
\nwhich received rather mixed reactions at our first session<\/a> four weeks ago. In the meantime we’d been in contact with
\nMike for some rule
\nclarifications<\/a> and quite to our surprise Mike asked if he could join in on our next
\nGlobopolis session. We were all too happy to accept but at the same time I was faced with
\nthe challenge to limit the number of Westpark Gamers for that evening to four. We finally
\nmanaged by arranging an Orc gaming session<\/a> the next day
\n(Halloween!) for the one’s who could not attend.<\/p>\nWhile explaining the Globopolis rules to Walter, who hadn’t played the game before
\nMike took the chance to provide details of the game design. Hence, we learnt that the
\nterritory placement on the board has been very carefully laid out to make sense not only
\nwith respect to geography but also with respect to resource locations and Guild
\nplacement. We got the impression that aspects like this had a much higher priority during
\nthe design than actual game balance…<\/p>\nThe detailed explanations by Mike provided further clarifications on a number of issues
\nwhich again led to an update of our “Globopolis Rules
\nSummary<\/a>“. So all of you who downloaded it earlier may want to get the latest
\nversion now. While writing this I remember Mike saying that he encourages everyone to
\nsuggest variants to the rules in addition to those already described in the rule book. At
\none point he even mentioned that the game can be viewed as a “game kit”
\nproviding lots of material for own creations.<\/p>\nBut let’s come to our game.<\/p>\n
After the completion of the first round Hans surprised all of us when he played his
\nMission card which allowed him to immediately receive 20 CR points if he owns four
\nterritories with point value 3 or 4, one in each quadrant. Just by chance he had received
\nfour such territories during the game setup and suddenly was 20 points ahead of everyone
\nelse after just one round. Since a game of 5 players has a victory condition of 75 points
\nand including the point values of the initial territories Hans found himself halfway to
\nvictory already without really having achieved anything. This triggered some discussions
\nabout the element of luck in Globopolis and Mike explained that they had never
\nencountered this situation before during play testing. At that time I was not willing to
\nreveal my Mission card which would make me the winner of the game if I am the first
\nplayer to reach the 50 CR point mark. If Hans would have drawn this card during his
\nsecond or third turn in addition to the Mission card which gave him 20 CR points the game
\nwould have been over in under 30 minutes without giving even the slightest chance to the
\nother players to do something against Hans’ victory. (After we had finished the
\ngame we had a look at the mission cards and found them very unbalanced, indeed. Some are
\nalmost impossible to achieve while others appear to be very simple and heavily influenced
\nby luck.<\/i>)<\/p>\nAt least one thing was clear after the first round: we had a “public enemy #1”
\n– Hans. No more favorable deals with him until we had caught up.<\/p>\nAfter a few more rounds G\u00fcnther had almost caught up with Hans with Walter in close
\npursuit. Mike and myself were still close to our initial point values with not much we
\ncould do about this. One reason was that the other three players had already acquired
\nseveral more territories while Mike had lost a territory to Hans in a very unlucky
\nbattle. I for myself was the proud owner of a Guild with plenty of food and water to sell
\nto the other players (and getting these for free myself) but on the other hand was very
\nresource constrained with respect to production units. This left me in a situation where
\nI had lots of money but no chance to spend it on economic development which would have
\nprovide additional CR points. Instead I was left with buying points whenever possible.
\nToo soon did I have to bury my victory plans of being the first to reach the 50 CR point
\nmark – in fact I only managed to get there as the fourth player.<\/p>\nWhen G\u00fcnther and Hans both came closer to the 75 CR point victory mark they had to stop
\nbuying CR points (as described in the rules) and concentrate more on territory
\ndevelopment and territory acquisition. In fact we found it to be a good tactic to first
\nspend money on CR points in addition to some basic development for defense purposes and
\ndo all the economic development possible later when it is no longer allowed to buy CR
\npoints. This way one can achieve a CR point increase of about 5 to 10 points each turn
\nalso in the later stages of the game.<\/p>\nFinally, G\u00fcnther managed to sneak past Hans and cross the 75 point victory mark when we
\nhad played just under 2 hours. Third was Walter closely followed by me while Mike was
\nstill trying to negotiate the 30 CR point mark. He obviously spent too much time on
\nexplaining the game and demonstrating the various options rather than trying to win.<\/p>\nSince the game lasted shorter than we had expected we spontaneously decided to continue
\nuntil the first player reaches the 100 CR point mark – the victory condition of the four
\nplayer game. This took us more than one additional hour as getting and keeping CR points
\ntends to be rather difficult on a board with only a few unowned territories left.
\nNevertheless, G\u00fcnther also managed to meet the extended victory condition first making
\nhim the definite winner of the evening.<\/p>\nWe spent more than an hour of game analysis thereafter – unfortunately most of the time
\nwithout Mike who had to leave early:<\/p>\nGlobopolis is not a game from gamers for gamers. There are many things that make the game
\nunbalanced and uncontrollable which will not appeal to the hardcore gamer. Also the rules
\nare too unstructured and sometimes imprecise leaving things open for interpretation –
\nserious gamers hate it when they discover during a 3 hour gameplay that some players have
\ndifferent rules interpretations than others.<\/p>\nGlobopolis is also not one of the lighter family games which is quickly explained, with
\nsome moderate elements of luck in order to give everyone a chance for winning. It has far
\ntoo many different game elements in it which make it too complex for a family game. And
\nthe playing time of 3+ hours is prohibitive for that clientele anyway.<\/p>\nSo what is Globopolis? Its much more than Monopoly – in fact I would not even compare it
\nto Monopoly as it has too many other mechanisms and elements which require a completely
\ndifferent style of playing. Neither is it Risk – the element of aggression is predominant
\nin Risk but not in Globopolis. The dice rolling rules for engagements are actually quite
\ninnovative and we were wondering what the odds of winning a battle are depending on the
\nnumber of dice used. G\u00fcnther made the effort to do some calculations for this and the
\nresults can be found in his “Globopolis Odds Table<\/a>“.<\/p>\nNor is it Settlers of Catan – there is resource management involved in Globopolis, too,
\nbut the freedom allowed by the rules with respect to trading and allocating resources
\nprovides a completely different feel. It definitely is a game with interesting mechanics
\ntaken from these three games and put together in an interesting and new way. In many
\nrespects it would have helped the game if some of the elements found in the three games
\nhad been left out in order to make it less complex (actually, Mike told us that
\nMonopoly’s “Jail\/Free Parking” field had been present in earlier prototypes
\nbut luckily was taken out in the final version).<\/p>\nGlobopolis certainly is fun to play with the right set of players. We liked it for the
\nchallenges it provides. And it can be improved by tweaking a few things to balance the
\ngameplay a little better. The rule book already provides ideas about how to reduce some
\nof the elements of luck a little and this is where the Globopolis community on www.globopolis.net<\/a> comes in and is asked
\nto develop variants.<\/p>\nWestpark Gamers Score: 6.25 (out of 10)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Game Session Report 30.10.2002 Author: Aaron at the table: Mike Lasher, G\u00fcnther, Hans, Walter, Aaron on the table: Globopolis Globopolis This time we had another go with “Globopolis”, the first game of Mike Lasher, which received rather mixed reactions at our first session four weeks ago. In the meantime we’d been in contact with Mike … Game Session Report 30.10.2002<\/span> weiterlesen