iPhone Small World 2 (By Asmodee Digital)

Either I'm having more luck or the AI is a little easier. I'm winning more games than I used to on 2 player again the AI.

Aside those bloody Igors are a pain to play against.

 

Well, no, it's not arbitrary at all: this is a faithful digital adaptation of an existing boardgame in which that particular information is meant to be hidden as a core part of the gameplay. There's a very specific and deliberate reason for it, which makes it literally the exact opposite of arbitrary.

From the manual:

"Players keep their Victory coins stacked together, their value hidden from other players at all times; final scores are not revealed until the end of the game."

They pretty much do, actually. I don't think I've ever played a round of the physical game where people have left their coins lined up and clearly visible in front of them, rather than stacking them or scooping them up and putting them behind a screen or similar obstruction. This is mainly because, as per the above rule, this is how the game is supposed to be played.

In the physical game the victory coins also come in four different denominations, so just because a player has a stack of ten coins in front of them, that doesn't necessarily mean they only have ten points.

You're not. The game isn't based around knowing the exact score of each person at all times, which is why the hidden information remains hidden regardless of whether you're playing five games simultaneously, or just trying to remember the relative positions seven rounds into the one game you're playing.

You're not supposed to know precisely where everybody stands at all times, though, so it doesn't really matter if you can't remember exactly what everybody has scored thus far. Introducing public scores just leads to kingmaking and leader-sniping, and more to the point they're simply not part of Small World the boardgame, so introducing them now would shift the focus of the game quite dramatically.

As it stands, I've found that it isn't uncommon for people to have forgotten what people earned just two rounds ago in a real-time face-to-face game (let alone days later when playing asynchronously), and there's invariably at least one person at the end of the game who is revealed to have performed wildly above or below their own estimation, and both of these situations are intentional aspects of the whimsical and chaotic nature and design of the game.

Your best bet for now is simply to manually write down what each person earns each round in each game you're playing, but as such behaviour is considered against the spirit of the game (and is basically considered cheating when playing live), you shouldn't expect DoW to implement anything in the app itself that will help facilitate this.

 

The concept of hidden scores when points are disbursed in exact quantities publicly always comes off as stupid to me. It makes sense in something like Eclipse where the exact denomination of received tokens is unknown, but not when the exact number of points won after every turn is declared publicly. You can have a very faithful translation of a game, but there are also ways to make concessions to suit the new medium. Playdek did a great job by making hidden scores an option, leaving the user with a choice rather than a hard enforced rule that might make the game less fun for some people.

While some people might find kingmaking to be a negative influence on a game, I've always found it to be an interesting addition where you are interacting in a greater extent with your opponents rather than just playing on assumed variables. You say, having open scores will shift the focus of the game dramatically, how exactly? With hidden scores I would be trying to dethrone the assumed leader according to my memory of his/her score and increase my own score. With open scores I would try to dethrone the explicit declared leader and increase my own score. Would the focus shift that dramatically between these two situations?

 

It's not, given that it's based on the well-documented inability of the average person to accurately recall that many batches of info over such a period of time while being assailed by other external distractions. The fact that people are usually incorrect in their estimations when dealing with hidden scoring shows that the system works quite well, even though keeping a running tally of scores in your head seems like it should be a pretty simple thing to do.

Changing the rules unnecessarily isn't making concessions for a different platform, it's just changing the rules, something that DoW made very clear during the beta process they're not willing to do. There's nothing about public scoring in SW that makes it more suitable for digital play, or that has a net positive effect when the game itself is designed around hidden scoring.

You could change Bang! so that all player roles are public knowledge from the start, but that wouldn't necessarily make it a better game when hidden roles are one of its foundations.

FFG made a number of unnecessary concessions with the original release of Elder Sign: Omens, but have been slowly working to eliminate the major differences between the physical and digital versions of ES ever since.

And you're free to like those types of games. Small World isn't one of them, however, and if DoW are to be believed, it never officially will be. Word of God makes that pretty much the end of that discussion.

That should be pretty obvious, but one of the major points is that with public scoring everybody knows exactly who is in the lead and in what order the other players are positioned, whereas with hidden scoring you are pursuing the player you personally perceive to be in pole position.

In the second situation, not only may you not be correct at all, but the likelihood is that each player perceives the relative threats of the other players differently, and are all playing accordingly. You may actually be in the lead but believe somebody else to be, and subsequently make disadvantageous moves that ultimately leave you in second or third place because of your mistaken desire to knock this person down. You may overlook somebody who doesn't seem to be playing particularly well, but turns out to have flattened the opposition by a wide margin. You might try to bluff against other players who believe they've worked out the positions accurately, and have enough impact to cause one or more to doubt their own calculations and change their plans, potentially allowing you to supersede these players. These kinds of strategies and mindgames are noted quite frequently in BGG session reports for games with hidden information.

Conversely, consistently going after the lowest-scoring player in a game with public information would just make people think you're kind of a dick and not somebody they'd particularly want to play with again, because there's obviously nothing to be gained from doing so. Hidden scores also remove the all-too-common temptation for a player who can see (or thinks they can see) that they can't win to deliberately start throwing the game instead of playing their best all the way to the end.

Playing hidden-information-based boardgames for any length of time reveals that people are very often unlikely to be of a unified mind about the positions/roles of other players. In the case of an obvious runaway leader, it still remains important that every other player doesn't know exactly where they stand, especially when dealing with situations where public scoring would reveal to a player that there is no way they can win from their current position.

 

My major contention is this, it is naive to assume that score memory retention face-to-face or real-time is comparable to how scores may be remembered for async games played across multiple days. Furthermore, merely adding in open scores as an option would not vastly dilute the main product.

Also, might I recommend making more concise posts? Rebuttals don't carry more weight simply by virtue of a greater word count.

 

One more thing, I'm sure you're aware of house rules. While a digital product is obviously less conducive to house ruling, I'm sure at least one small option to house rule scoring wouldn't be too much of a request.

 

I was about to say that your best bet would be to contact Eric and/or Yann with your request, but my Spidey-Senses were tingling and I jumped over to DoW's SW2 forum to note that you've already done just that. Given how hardnosed the developers have been about keeping the app faithful to the physical game, though, I wouldn't count on it, especially as this would be an absolutely fundamental change. If open scores were an official variant, that'd be one thing, but they're not; they're simply not part of SW at all.

If you're interested in seeing how SW might play with open scoring, you might consider taking a look at Vinci, the precursor to Small World by the same developer. That game used open scoring, and the issues raised in terms of kingmaking and leader-bashing were part of the decision to have SW use hidden scoring instead.

Remembering the scores isn't a core requirement of the game; in fact, the idea that people won't remember exact positions is a deliberate part of the chaos in this game, unlike its predecessor Vinci. If players were meant to be able to check the status of all players whenever they felt like it, that'd be in the rulebook, but it isn't, because they're not. Not days later, not hours later, not minutes later.

If you want this option to be made formally available in the game, however, get in touch with Eric at DoW and tell him that you'd like it to be included in addition to the actual rules. If he says no, you have your answer.

Might I recommend either responding to the points I've raised or not responding at all? I'm well aware of your fondness for using other people's posts as springboards for your own self-absorbed arguments and sniping potshots while not actually addressing anything they've written, and I really have neither the time nor the inclination to entertain that behaviour.

Most people have no problem responding to my posts, so while your abbreviated attention span is unfortunate, it's really not an issue I need to address or cater for.

Oddly enough, if you'd actually read my posts instead of skipping over them in your rush to be disagreeable, you'd have seen that I already mentioned manually house ruling open scores, but noted that doing so is generally considered against the spirit of the game.

That said, it would actually be too much of a request, because everybody thinks their "one small option" should be the exception to the established rules. By far the single most commonly-used house rule employed in the physical game is the removal of the Diplomacy power from two-player games, and DoW haven't even included that as an option in the app. If you want to "house rule" public scoring, simply tell the other players that you plan to keep a written record of all the scores and let them know they should do the same.

Again, though, if you want to see new features added to the app, get in touch with the developers over at DoW as Tim has and make your request to them directly. Sitting here bitching at me instead of actually contacting the people capable of implementing such a feature seems decidedly counterproductive.

 

At the moment the official response is that there are ways to beat Diplomat (and the removal of the power is a house rule, not an official one), which is true, but it is also true that if you have Diplomat and the first move, you generally have a sizable advantage in terms of blocking off the map. Depending on your race's power and number of tokens, however, it is possible to be impervious to harm but not be able to conquer enough territories to stop your opponent raking in more victory coins each turn if you just try to stick with your Diplomat race.

The efficacy of the Diplomat power can vary wildly depending on the race it is paired with. For example, I flattened an opponent with Diplomat Ratmen because they simply couldn't stop the flood: it quickly reached the point where I owned the majority of the territories, and there was simply nothing they could do to earn more tokens per round than I was bringing in.

 

Hidden scores makes no sense when the territories and bonuses are plainly visible to all. Would a player with a score pad at the table be doing anything wrong? Hardly. He's just taking notes. The info would still be "hidden." This, we have two reasons why hidden scores make no sense. They're not really hidden and someone can jot them down anyway.

With an async version of the game, it makes negative sense. It's beyond hidden. Unless you are taking notes, even estimates can be off dramatically. I dislike the hidden scoring protocol intensely. I would much prefer an option to turn it off.

 

It's good to know that you consider me a troll, it helps put context to the tone of a post.

Like here, I don't take offence from your deriding my attention span now that I know your long standing opinion of me.

There's obviously a difference between not remembering exact positions and not remembering any positions at all, which is the difference between face-to-face/live play and async games.

I did read your entire reply. I was hoping that pulling out a notepad or switching out to a different app every time someone scores is something that is avoidable if the developer would find it amenable to accommodate the request for open scores. Keeping scores via notes would still be a feasible option if they were to implement a notes system like the one found in Le Havre.

It's obviously a matter of finding which exceptions are the most requested and whether implementing them would dilute the original product, not simply acceding to the whim of one customer. But obviously if user feedback is simply not valued, as you seem to indicate from the Diplomacy rule, then that's a different situation. Playdek managed to include open scores in Nightfall without completely ruining the main product. BDC also included the option to see the range of scores of an opponent in Eclipse.

Too true, though I was just discussing the idea with you since you seem to speak from a position most closely congruent with the official stand.

Small World 2 is such a huge leap from DoW that I completely forgot that this is the same developer that has stoutly rejected the addition of async to TtR iPad for years now. There's no reason to believe that they will listen to any user feedback that does not already align with their own ideas. We might not even see a change in the invite auto-accept system.

 

I would tend to subscribe to this line of thinking.

 

Sometimes the use of big words actually misdirects the reader around the intended simple meaning. Case in point, I've actually found myself dozing off.

 

I never said you were a troll, and playing the victim is another example of behaviour I'm not interested in entertaining. You've shown that you're capable of staying on track, so let's keep with that and just discuss the issues.

Not really, and again, it doesn't really matter either. Actually knowing who is in what position is not part of the design of the game, and actively mitigating leader-bashing was part of the design deliberately introduced into Small World based on lessons learned from Vinci. As anybody who has played the physical game can attest, players tend to lose track of positions within a game played in real-time, let alone across days, and the game is designed with that in mind; at absolutely no point do you need to know exactly where everybody stands score-wise.

Open scoring isn't one of the rules for Small World, and the game isn't designed around it, so there's no reason to implement it any more than there is reason to implement any other changes that aren't in the actual rules. DoW are only interested in reproducing the official rules of the game in their apps, not house rules, which makes sense given the multitude of personal variants out there. It's just not reasonable to ask them to code in every house rule, and it would just be arrogant to tell them they should implement your own personal preference and ignore the rest, something you've touched on yourself.

There's a difference between a developer taking user feedback on board and having to include everything everybody wants; just because your personal preference doesn't make it into the game, that doesn't mean they don't care about or value your input. I'm not saying it isn't occasionally frustrating when the reasons given don't seem to make sense or come across as a bit arbitrary. It is ultimately DoW's game, however, and they have every right to say "no" to suggestions, requests or demands with which they don't agree, and right now their position is "no house rules".

"Game X has optional feature Y, therefore game Z should have it too," isn't a sound argument here. DoW had a particular goal with SW2, which was to make a faithful adaptation of the physical boardgame, and they have achieved that quite impressively. There are certain framework elements I'd consider to be standard features that every digital boardgame should have (AI where applicable, an undo feature, the ability to save a game in progress to be resumed later, etc.), but the option for alternate player-created rules isn't one of these.

They listen to feedback, they just don't necessarily agree with it, which can be frustrating, certainly. I actually had a rather long, detailed and ultimately fruitless discussion with DoW CEO Eric Hautemont regarding the necessity for the now-standard "undo" function to assist with turn planning and help address mistakes or mistaps made by players in digital boardgames. His viewpoint was that a conditional undo function (limited so that moves can't be rolled back to a point beyond die rolls, etc.) would likely just frustrate and confuse players so much that not having an undo feature at all would be the more preferable design choice, and that players should simply learn to play more carefully.

I disagree with that argument quite strongly, as do most players of digital boardgames, it seems. It's also not an impossible task to implement such a feature, as we already have multiple solid examples of games that use such a conditional undo function. DoW's current position is that the game is unlikely to ever have such an undo function, however, and I accept that while totally disagreeing with it.

As for asynchronous play for TtR, we talked about that too: the primary reason you're unlikely to see that added as an option is that the developers believe that the game simply doesn't suit and isn't portrayed positively by asynchronous play, especially when it is possible for such a game to literally consist of multiple weeks in real-time where players do nothing but draw cards from the deck.

DoW back up this argument by pointing to stats that show that while TtR Pocket was downloaded by a pretty staggering number of people, almost nobody played the game asynchronously with other TtRP players, leading DoW to the conclusion that spending time and money adding that feature into all the various full-size versions would indeed be a waste of resources. If somebody was able demonstrate that people would take advantage of asynchronous play in TtR and provide solid data to that effect, DoW would probably consider it, but as yet nobody has – all we know is that people are not even playing the asynchronous TtR game they do have.

 

I can see this both ways but I don't mind knowing the score. I could see situations where the game could seem hopeless if you knew / remembered how far behind you were. It also brings an element of surprise when you do win or lose.

 

The online play management is a little bit confusing to me. I have pending async games from people who aren't listed on my buddy list. Where did these games come from? I'm reserving judgement on the update until I understand the game better but I don't understand why they didn't build off the Ticket to Ride online system which is very intuitive.

 

Just bought this and the tutorial didn't load. Had to wait for a long while before it eventually started must have been congestion. It should be part of the download. Anyway very glad I bought it. I like the way it's done like Ticket to Ride.

 

Agreed that's frustrating. However it's probably better to leave it online since it reduces the size of the App. I'm always running out of space so I appreciate the space savings.