Board Game Weekend(7 Wonders & Other Games)

[lilith2013]

The site interface is really easy, it tells you which cards you can/can’t buy and physically won’t let you do things against the rules. There’s of course some strategy involved that you won’t know at first, but I also expect that each game will only take like 20 minutes so we can probably get several games in for you to learn that part!

[lilith2013]

@Auro: This is from the thread I’m running in mish mash:

Spoiler: If you've never played 7 Wonders, here's a great description from BGG

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.

In essence, 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you'll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how his choices might affect what you've already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.

Spoiler: Other useful links

Full rules
Reference sheet - quick rules/symbol list

Also here’s some strategy stuff I wrote up:

Spoiler:

There are so many types of buildings that you can get and of course your hands are randomized, so often what you intended to do in terms of strategy from the start may not work out because you can’t get the buildings you need. Therefore I tend to have in mind a couple of general overarching strategy decisions I’ll need to make based on the hands I receive, and I let my hands dictate what happens on my board. Here are a few of the strategy choices that players have to make:

1. Military vs no military: I think a lot of players tend to overvalue military (or maybe I undervalue it). In Age I, you get 1 VP for each neighbor you beat in terms of # of shields. In Age II, you get 3 VP for each neighbor you beat. And in Age III, you get 5 VP for each neighbor you beat. However, for each loss you only receive -1 VP in all Ages. This means that the downside is fairly low. Thus the max VP from a successful military strategy is 18 VP and the max loss you can get from pursuing no military strategy is -6 VP, for a total range of 24 VP (18 - -6). The big caveat here is that the military victories are in no way guaranteed because while you’re building cards that have shields, your neighbors also have the chance to build their own shields. If your neighbors are similarly minded in pursuing a military strategy, 1) they will take military cards away from the pool of cards you get to choose from, and especially since this game passes hands around, this directly impacts the hands you receive; and 2) you don’t know for certain whether you’ve achieved the military victory in each Age until the end of the last hand. Typically if I pursue military I end up spending a disproportionate number of cards and resources on beefing up my military to ensure victory and then I often lose out in the very last hand of the age anyway, rendering those cards and resources I spent useless. So my philosophy on military is generally that if my neighbors are going ham on military, I put 0 effort in. If they’re putting in no effort or a tiny bit of effort and I see an opportunity to build shields for free, I may take it for the easy VP. I’m most likely to do this in Age III when the victories award the most points. Overall, I prefer to not focus on military.

I think we can also frame this in terms of opportunity cost. If your neighbors are militarily-minded, you may end up building 2 or more military cards per Age. Let’s assume it’s 2 per Age. The easiest comparison of opportunity cost is the Civilian cards which give straight VP. Typically for Civilian cards, you can get 2-3 VP each in Age I, 3-4 VP each in Age II, and 5-7 VP each in Age III. If you had taken those 6 military cards and instead built Civilian cards with them, you could have instead received 20-28 VP and would have lost -6 VP from military losses, for a net of 14-22 VP. Compare this to the max VP you can get from military victories, which is 18. We can get a definite number of VP that is comparable to or better than the military victories by building Civilian cards, in contrast to military victories which are not definite (not decided until the end of each Age) and could take way more than 6 cards to achieve the max of 18 VP.

The opportunity cost for military strategy is actually lowest when compared to Civilian cards because they give fixed VP (and fixed VP in 7 wonders almost always means that a different, variable point strategy could do a lot better). This is like the absolute lowest range opportunity cost.

2. Building resources in your own city vs. buying them from your neighbors:
This is a pretty nuanced decision that I haven't fully mastered myself. Obviously the upside of building resources in your own city is that you don't have to buy them from your neighbors later on. In addition, if your neighbors buy your resources you gain coins from it; however, resource structures don't provide any VP. You can spend a lot of turns trying to build up these resources and that's lost opportunity cost in terms of building cards that actually give VP. That's where trading comes in. If you can manage to build a trading post (buy raw materials for 1 instead of 2 coins, but only from a specific neighbor) and a marketplace (buy manufactured goods for 1 instead of 2 coins, applies to both neighbors), and the neighbor you can buy from with the trading post has most/all of the raw materials that you don't have in your city, you can get away with building much fewer resource buildings and instead focusing your limited number of turns on building cards that provide VP. The downside to this strategy is that you need a way to keep generating money to buy those resources. There are various cards in the game that grant coins, but those also take up a turn. So it's a delicate balance between building too many resource cards and taking up all of the turns that you could have been getting VP, and not building enough resource cards and relying heavily on trade but having to sacrifice turns to get more money to trade with. I generally try to hit a sweet spot in the middle where I build resources that my neighbors are missing, hoping they will buy those from me, and I use the coins I get from that to buy their resources for myself. (This also means I do try to get both the trading post and the marketplace.) The issue of resource/VP balance can also be partially solved through a third method: chaining.

3. Chaining:
Many cards have a "construction chain" that lets you build a structure in the subsequent Age for free if you have built the prior card in the chain. Example: If you build the Apothecary in Age I, then in Age II, you can build the Stables and Dispensary cards for free if you have them in your hand because you already have the Apothecary. Then in Age III, if you have already built the Dispensary from Age II, you can build the Courthouse and Library cards for free if you have them in your hand. If you can manage to get several construction chains going, there's a possibility that you can build many of your Age II and III cards for free. This is usually difficult because the Age I cards with chains require various different resources, but it's still possible to do. There's also two chained commercial cards that are especially helpful for resource management - Caravansery (chained off Marketplace), which produces 1 raw material of your choice each turn; and the Forum (chained off any Trading Post), which produces 1 manufactured good of your choice each turn. Combined with the Marketplace and Trading Post, these cards can make up for a large portion of any missing resources from your city, particularly because the choice can change each turn; versus when you build a resource card, you're locking into that specific resource. (The downside is that your neighbors can’t buy resources from these cards, so you may miss out on trading.)

The trick is to balance building resource cards, trading cards, and chained cards so that you're able to build all of the cards and Wonder stages that you want to, but without spending a significant number of turns on building resource cards and losing out on potential VP.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be great at this game so some of the above might be horribly wrong

[Knightmare491]

A video which I found useful before playing it for the first time.

[enomis]

Updated the opening post,

Welcome Auro!

Although I am not sure if my timezone conversion is 100% accurate . Do inform me if it is wrong.

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Wow lilith. Nice write up!

I mostly play 3/4 player 7 wonders game on BGG though where military is super important. Haha, so can't really advice on 6~7 player gameplay.

[lilith2013]

I believe your countdown is correct

In general I’m just kinda meh about military and only go for easy conflicts

[Auro]

Thanks a lot for the tl;dr Lilith! I've watched a couple of rules videos and it is a little complex, I'll do a thorough read of the full rules when we play.

I'm not checking the strategy guide for now though because I love figuring these out by myself at the beginning

Can't wait! Also I miiiiiiiight not be active on voice chat this time for (rather funny) ~reasons, but I think BGA definitely has a text chat function and I'll listen in.

[Knightmare491]

I would not mind if the time was postponed by an hour. Would that be okay with everyone?

[lilith2013]

That’s fine with me since I’m a night owl, but I’m guessing it will be difficult for other EST people like farside

[Xtoxm]

im already staying up late to make this, i dont want the time pushed back

[Knightmare491]

Alright I'll try waking early on a sunday

[enomis]

Going to bed now. See you all tomorrow morning.

[Auro]

I'mma have to wake up at 7am as well and had a nice long afternoon nap so I can't sleep early now either. Grrruuuugh

[enomis]

Heya I am here!

Unfortunately, I can't go on voice-chat now, as my brother is still sleeping.(I will join abit later!)

Do just post your username in bga once you have signed up here and I will invite you to the game.

[Xtoxm]

discord.gg/6sKzP7
quarantine channel, i assume we'll use this?

[Knightmare491]

I'll join you guys in ~15 mins, username: iPatch27

[enomis]

Yeah, joined! How do we create a new channel.

Sorry, seldom use discord here.

[lilith2013]

I’m Lilith666

[Knightmare491]

I'll join discord in a bit.

[Auro]

Some personal notes on 7 Wonders (I read your Strategy notes and had similar thoughts in some places):

1. I think that from the larger perspective it's all about {final Victory points gained by an action, direct or indirect} vs the cost of the action.
2. Always valuable to begin collecting Science cards in Age I, since the return on investment is +7 directly for just one tuple, and then +3,+5,+7 so on for *each* additional one collected just from the squares.
3. Military cards in Age I seem to be somewhat wasteful; the +8 and then +12 in Ages II and III are better targets. Again, only if your opponents aren't putting in too much effort into military as well - if they aren't focusing too hard, as time goes on you could throw in a +2/+3 military card.
4. Chain cards are pretty useful and I never paid attention to them, often got stuck in Age III because of that!
5. The Commercial structures allowing me to buy for 1 gold instead of 2 were very useful.
6. I didn't factor in my neighbor's cards too much into my own decisions; I think there might have been a number of points where I took "meh" cards when I could've discarded to get +3 gold and not let my neighbor get good cards. If everyone began factoring this in it'd be more interesting.

[Knightmare491]

Military is always a secondary win con, you mostly only win either by stacking civilian or science.

The problem with going down the science route is that your neighbors know which cards you desperately need and they can easily screw you over by using the cards you need to build their wonder stages or discarding them. It also depends if other players are going down the science route or not. If they are then there is even more competition.

[Auro]

Yes -- I'm not advocating going down the science route fully, but at least forming an initial set of three and later grabbing any if you get an opportunity to.

Military's a secondary win con but also potentially a ~24 point value which seems to be around half the usual winning victory points; and sometimes all it takes is investing three or four cards! High return on investment if your neighbors aren't too focused on them.

[enomis]

Thanks for the game guys. The board games were real fun.

If we want, we can make this a monthly / bi-weekly event if there is enough interest.

I think a weekly event would be too much and just fatigue us out.(If there is enough interest, I will glady admit I am wrong.)

[Xtoxm]

1. I think that from the larger perspective it's all about {final Victory points gained by an action, direct or indirect} vs the cost of the action.

Yep!

2. Always valuable to begin collecting Science cards in Age I, since the return on investment is +7 directly for just one tuple, and then +3,+5,+7 so on for *each* additional one collected just from the squares.

I don't think I played a single science card in the games I won. One set of science is only 10 points, which is ~3.3 per card which is...awful. You really gotta get 2 sets, or a big stack. Whether I try science depends on my early hands and which wonder I got dealt. Of course, if only one player is going for science and the other players keep passing those cards to him, he's going to run up the numbers and it'll look OP.

3. Military cards in Age I seem to be somewhat wasteful; the +8 and then +12 in Ages II and III are better targets. Again, only if your opponents aren't putting in too much effort into military as well - if they aren't focusing too hard, as time goes on you could throw in a +2/+3 military card.

The other early age cards are weak too. Way I see it, if I win military on both sides with 4 military cards, that one shield was the most valuable Age I card I played. Also, just getting a head start puts off your neighbors from even joining the war, which has unseen value.

4. Chain cards are pretty useful and I never paid attention to them, often got stuck in Age III because of that!
5. The Commercial structures allowing me to buy for 1 gold instead of 2 were very useful.

Still figuring these two categories out, I tend to value the caravansary and forum very highly, but have not found the other commercials too useful yet. I try to have at least enough resources to build a few Age III building without being reliant on chain/trade. I feel like chain strategies are particularly vulnerable to being blocked by other players.

6. I didn't factor in my neighbor's cards too much into my own decisions; I think there might have been a number of points where I took "meh" cards when I could've discarded to get +3 gold and not let my neighbor get good
cards. If everyone began factoring this in it'd be more interesting.

I'm always looking at the cards the neighbor i'm passing to wants, and factoring that into my decision.

[enomis]

Some personal notes on 7 Wonders (I read your Strategy notes and had similar thoughts in some places):

1. I think that from the larger perspective it's all about {final Victory points gained by an action, direct or indirect} vs the cost of the action.
2. Always valuable to begin collecting Science cards in Age I, since the return on investment is +7 directly for just one tuple, and then +3,+5,+7 so on for *each* additional one collected just from the squares.
3. Military cards in Age I seem to be somewhat wasteful; the +8 and then +12 in Ages II and III are better targets. Again, only if your opponents aren't putting in too much effort into military as well - if they aren't focusing too hard, as time goes on you could throw in a +2/+3 military card.
4. Chain cards are pretty useful and I never paid attention to them, often got stuck in Age III because of that!
5. The Commercial structures allowing me to buy for 1 gold instead of 2 were very useful.
6. I didn't factor in my neighbor's cards too much into my own decisions; I think there might have been a number of points where I took "meh" cards when I could've discarded to get +3 gold and not let my neighbor get good cards. If everyone began factoring this in it'd be more interesting.

2) To being collecting science cards, you would need to get the gray resource. And to collect all three science cards, you would need to have access(buy or have) all three gray resource. So definitely not always valuable. I feel that it is good that in age I, you already think about if you want to splash green(1 set ,2set) or go full green(full science). Otherwise, I would just skip the science cards.
3) There is use in military cards in age 1. Imagine you have 1 military card in age 1, your opponent will need an extra military card in age 2 to win you in war. This is just not beneficial for him as age two cards are worth more points than age 1.
A good point scale expected per age is 3 for age I,5 for age II,7 for age III
6) I always factor in neighbour's cards but honestly, in a 6/7 player game, it is always best to go for your own development. Unless you see your neighbour being your direct competitor in winning.
In 3/4 player games is where factoring neighbour's card is Crucial.

[Xtoxm]

Thanks for the game guys. The board games were real fun.

If we want, we can make this a monthly / bi-weekly event if there is enough interest.

I think a weekly event would be too much and just fatigue us out.(If there is enough interest, I will glady admit I am wrong.)

Yeah, i'm down to do this regularly.
Thanks for playing, all.