The Tao of Gaming

Glory to Rome is my enigma from last week. After a play (or less) of most games there, I had a decision, and an opinion. I'm now five plays into Glory, and I still can't decide if I like it.

Doug Orleans provided a pointer where the designer said that Glory to Rome was inspired by San Juan:

My complaint was that you had only one resource to develop — card drawing advantage — so that in two-player whoever got the lead via select buildings could press it and extend the lead.

I love San Juan, but that strikes me as true [if somewhat reductive. Card advantage is multi-dimensional in San Juan]. I've compared this to San Juan already, how does it stand on its own?

I'm going to play more, but right now Glory to Rome looks like an ambitious failure ( Update — Let's change that to "clunky success." ) Probably due to lack of development. Right now my set has errata for several cards in the rules; the cards have already been revised once or twice — and there's another revision of the rules & cards coming in a few months. For all I know the new version of the rules will address my every complaint, and I'm hoping it does — lack of development can be fixed.

A quick summary — in Glory to Rome each card has one of six colors, which determines its role (Patron, Laborer, Craftsman, Architect, Merchant, Legionary) and building material/VP value. Each card is also a building, with a specific ability you get once built. One each turn, the start player plays a role from hand and each player can follow (if they have the right card, or a wild, or three of a kind). Players who don't follow can 'think' (refill their hand, or pick up a wild if one is available). After taking the actions, all cards played as roles are put into the pool in the middle of the table. Roles let you start buildings, or add to them (buildings take 1-3 matching materials to complete, which usually takes several role selections), or move cards from the pool to your stockpile. Apart from buildings, you can also graft some building materials (moving them from stockpile to your vault via the Merchant), which provides direct VP, and a bonus 3VP for the player who steals the most of each building material.

Most of the mental complexity comes from keeping track of which roles move cards in which ways, although the summary card (your 'camp') does an admirable job of summarizing the rules. [Tom Vasel's review goes into more details]. (One significant difference I have with Tom ... I found the 45 minute time estimate accurate for first time players, I can't imagine a game taking much longer without significant slow play).

Now, the specific complaints:

The 'clientele' and Patron mechanism. If you play a Patron, then each player can take a card from the pool (discards) and place it in their clientele. Whenever that role is selected, you can draw cards and still use the role or (if you play a matching card in hand) use the role multiple times. The issue is that you are limited to having clients less than (or equal) to your influence. A few issues:

• Talk about card advantage (if you have a patron, you don't have to play a card, but get to draw cards and still take advantage). That's not a problem, by itself, but early on you are limited by cards in the pool (and two clients only, until your first building is complete). If most of the other players get Role X, and you don't, Role X will likely be called fairly often, to your detriment. And the last player (on an initial Patron opening) will have no choice. [This is an 'implicit collusion' aspect].
• You can only have a number of cards equal to your influence, which starts at two. The player who gets a first building will not only get that buildings advantage, but can often call Patron before anyone else will. Now that player will get a 3rd role where they get card advantage (or else double up on an important role). Rich get Richer.
• Several of the building roles specifically ramp up the Patron. Ludus Magna lets you treat all Merchants in your clientele as wild. Coliseum kills opponents' clients (BGG has a whole thread about this card). Another lets you treat all your cards as a craftsman as well as their own role. Any of these buildings can accelerate the leader quite quickly. [Our last game saw one player with the first building ... whenever anyone selected a role, he'd often get two actions to our one, or else just get a handful of cards and still get an action]. This let him complete buildings faster, which increased his clientele limit further.
• In fairness, everyone should rush to grab a quick building for the extra inluence (as this strategy guide recommends) but that just delays when the limit hits. So the 'rich get richer' becomes a mid-game issue ...

The 'influence' limit also applies to the vault (where you convert cards to VPs, but are limited to the 2+ the value of your completed buildings). Increasing building limit lets you add more cards to your vault, which directly helps VPs as well as helping grab the "most of a type" 3 VP chip.

I'm sure there's a rationale behind limiting vault and clientele to a player's influence, but it mainly constrains those who got off to a slow start. It feels like a compounding economy. Those are fine, but when you have limited control of role selection (and the 'patronage squeeze') a player can get behind the 8-ball.

The rules specifically give an option to have everyone just concede, which we basically did in the last game.

So many of the game issues stem from Patronage (and Clientele), and the card flow problems, that I'm wondering if axing the whole system (or at least removing the influence limit) might be better. [You'd have to modify all cards that deal with those parts, as well]. Without patronage, players would be much more likely to have similar (if not exactly equivalent) numbers of actions per round. And given my initial thought was "Too many notes," this fits as well.

The Legionary role lets you show a card from hand to make each neighboring opponent (and the pool) give you a card, which you place in your stockpile. The last player gets hit by two opponents, and can often wind up without a useful card to show (since either of those opponents may have one or more Legionary clients, as well. But last player doesn't have to do anything to set it up. Worse yet, a player not wanting (or unable) to play the Legionary from hand doesn't always benefit from thinking, because these cards will be taken away. During my first game, I asked "Can I just pass?" because there were no Wilds to take (which can only be used as roles, not as building materials, so can't be taken away). [One possible rules change is that all cards demanded are played and revealed simultaneously, but resolved in order. Then (at least) the last player can at least play the role and execute it].

Another issue — each building requires a foundation. (There are six foundation types, one of each color, the number of each foundations equals number of players). While some buildings let you mix and match foundation and building types, that means that players can get locked out of building because all their cards have run out of foundations. The foundation mechanism does trigger the game end (which I like). And you've got a nice 'chicken' mechanism going where you need to finish buildings (to get influence and special abilities) as well as start them (to get foundations), but once 3 or so foundations are gone, you can refill your hand and then find yourself unable to start anything new, simply because you've got the wrong materials. I've spent several turns "locked" in a game where three foundations were available. This can just as easily hit a trailing player as a leader (and leaders, because of expanding role selections, will often have additional actions to start their next building before a lock).

Finally, the abruptness of the endgame. The rules clearly end the game immediately on several conditions, instead of finishing the round. This allows from some trickery which I need to explore further, but it has also led to some weird situations. (Using a building that lets you take a number of build actions once upon completion, then starting or finishing a building to trigger the end of the game). I'm not sure this is a flaw, but it feels odd.

I do like the multiple ending conditions, which keep the game dynamic, even though I dislike how the foundations work (and running out of foundations is one end condition). I do like the "Forum" which provides an alternative victory condition (ignoring VPs) for the owner. That's a good idea I wish more games had. So far, Martin Wallace is the designer most noted for using this. Buildings have interesting abilities and aren't just the 'discount/rebate.' Some significantly impact timing issues, and drastically change game feel.

For all my complaints (and I do have plenty), I still find myself wanting to play again, and I want to see what the next version of development does to the cards. There are several good points reflected in the complaints above ... because of the ramp up effects, most of the buildings that require three materials are strong, as it should be. [Although I think the partition, which makes you immune to Legionarys, should cost two or more].

Judging this game against the designers intent (quoted above), I think it's successful. All the extra parts probably do provide a lot more paths to victory than San Juan, but I think that card flow still dominates.

I'm sure I'll be pulling this out for a while ... because its intriguing despite everything above. We'll see if my thoughts waver or solidify. I've got about three months.

Update (5/28/07): I've now played Glory to Rome 20 times (see post chain). So I changed 'ambitious failure' to 'clunky success' above. I should also clarify that I don't think the Patron role advantage is as big as I thought. The influence limit means that leaders will often wind up losing a step or two when they hit it, which is a good catch up mechanism. That being said, runaway wins still happen from time to time.

I've played another four games of Glory to Rome. In looking over my original thoughts, I'm going to upgrade my assessment. I've now seen a Forum victory, several games where the Catacombs get started early. In many ways, frustrating games.

In both cases, I could see the victory two rounds out. Granted, the game ended quickly. (I've played plenty of games where I know the winner 1/3rd of the way through; better to end it). But the catch is, I could see solutions. The catacombs threatens to win, but can be easily stopped. Ditto the forum. You can see these both coming.

The patron/client aspect leads to interesting teamwork/collusion issues in the framework of the game. If someone has 2 craftsman clients, then do other people get one "just to stay up" or do they resign themselves to some other path and team up.

Glory to Rome is growing on me.

OK, I've now played 20 times. I'm still waiting for the 3ed edition (and errata), but I'm coming down on the "it's got game." [And I haven't been playing with the Out of Town rules, discussed earlier]. In my original post I called it an 'ambitious failure.' Well, it's tough to justify that on a game I keep playing as my 30-45 minutes game of choice. After thinking about it a while, I called it a 'clunky success.' It could be cleaner, but it works.

I do think that perhaps the pool should start with an extra card or two (particularly with 5 players). The player who goes last can be in a real bind, and that helps. But I've seen most of the buildings work out well, and poorly. Our groupthink has evolved over the last 6 weeks, which is always a good sign.

I recommend checking this out.