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Realistic city planning game - how to provide replay value?

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firstcultural
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Joined: 09/11/2014
Bay Area game

I'm working on a game on the San Francisco Bay Area housing crisis. Basically, rents are out of control here because not enough housing has been built. Not enough housing has been built because people in each of the towns oppose the change and traffic that comes with new development. The end result though is unaffordability and long commutes across the region.

The gameplay is players negotiating where to build (or not build) housing, with each player drawing cards at the beginning that give them their goals (such as keep rent below X or don't build anything in a certain area).

To make it realistic, as the game will be used by SFBARF, a local housing advocacy group, means that the starting amount of housing on each square on the board is the same in every game. What are some ways to provide good replay value despite a fixed start? I know some war games use randomness (such as dice). Any other solutions?

gilamonster
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Joined: 08/21/2015
What about doing something

What about doing something like Catan's board? You have a default board layout,
but you also have the option to play on a randomized board, and there are little counters or tiles which you can use to cover/replace some symbols/values/tiles on the board for customized start conditions. Although if the goal cards are randomly assigned from a sufficiently large deck to make repetition infrequent, it shouldn't really be necessary - like in Risk. And if the start condition doesn't vary too much between games, players will be more inclined to analyze starting strategies a bit like studying chess openings (assuming you make the game deep and compelling enough), which would probably please the advocacy group if they are aiming to make people think about the topic.

firstcultural
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Joined: 09/11/2014
Goal card randomization might

Goal card randomization might be the key here, as different combinations will lead to very different actions. I'm going to work a bit more on those and give it a few tests. Thanks!

MarkJindra
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Joined: 01/24/2014
One good way to provide

One good way to provide replay value is at the start of the game, set aside some portion of a deck that is integral to the game. The players will not know what cards were set aside so that way they don't rely on memorizing the deck.

Another way is to have a deck that you only see a few cards out of a large amount so that you will have a different experience each game.

For example ... Deck A has 50 cards, Deck B has 25 cards. In deck A there are 5 cards that draw a card from deck B. Set aside 5 cards from deck A and now you have 45 cards that the game is based on and a possibility of 0-5 additional cards from deck B. How you weight the importance of each deck would also matter in that deck A could be normal effects and deck B could be bigger shifts in things such as economy etc.

M

firstcultural
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Joined: 09/11/2014
Great idea. I'm going to add

Great idea. I'm going to add a 2nd deck that determines how the economy is doing - each turn one would be drawn. When it's good, there's a lot of housing demanded and it's possible to build taller buildings, when it's bad, demand is low, but only houses and townhouses can be built.

questccg
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Joined: 04/16/2011
In response to the TOPIC

If you want HIGH replayability, I would suggest TILES, HEXES or MATS. These three (3) options allow you to create a *dynamic* board that could be different each time you play.

Tiles and Hexes are the most flexible but will add to your game's setup phase and eat up valuable time getting the game together and ready to play. The third option (Mats) could allow interconnection and make your game FAST to setup... You just choose four (4) out of twelve (12) mats and then you put them together as required...

I think the MATS idea would be the coolest - since I don't think you want players wasting too much time setting up the board. Also it adds great depth to the game - especially in future expansions. Let's say you want to create an expansion, you could bundle four (4) NEW mats to the game as an EXTRA that your expansion offers!

Anyhow these are just some of my ideas that I thought I'd share!

Best of luck with your game.

Tataku999
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Joined: 10/20/2015
market values.

A simple way to do it would be each time you play the property values will differ, so grabbing property in one area might be cheap, but next time you play it will be way different. think about like risk. the strategy will change based on each game based on where you start, based on a random draw. This time it will be different because everyone might be fighting for the less expensive areas, or trying to figure out what will be the "booming" areas.

hope this makes sense. If not I can try to explain again.

Taku

firstcultural
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Joined: 09/11/2014
While mats might not work in

While mats might not work in keeping the geography accurate, one thing that could work is expansion boards of different cities, such as Southern California, Portland, Seattle, or New York.

I've posted the latest draft over at https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1481054/bay-area-regional-planner-city-...

One idea I'd like to bounce off folks is how decisions are made in the game. Instead of players having individual turns or action points, there is simply one big round where all players negotiate in an open ended negotiation. This is to reflect the actual public process here, as well as to maximize player interaction.

Specifically, the rules state:
1. Start each round by drawing an Economy card.
2. Players negotiate where to upzone.
- Up to 6 squares may be upzoned each round.
- A zone can only go up one level per round (i.e. from C-2 to R-3 or R-1 to R-2).
- Everyone must be in agreement for a square to be upzoned. Place the new zone and an upzoning marker on the square to indicate that it is a newly upzoned square.
- You can’t upzone any squares in Marin.
3. At the end of the round, adjust rent and commute times based on how much housing was built and where it was built.

firstcultural
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Joined: 09/11/2014
Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback! Game is now live on Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1700980409/bay-area-regional-planner

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