I played like a million-billion games on my Mac BITD, and I remember seeing a bot play a station twice. It doesn't appear to be a core element of their programming. Bleh, I don't like stations. Here's one more reason: they appear to be DoW's response to a lot of the "Boo, hoo! That mean person blocked me!" whining that was going on in back in the glory days of 2004 and 2005. It's never a good idea to cave in to whiners ...
Amazing app but needs: pass and play!!!!!!!! The second most important has got to be different AI difficulties. I mean come on! Thats a no-brainer. Sometimes I wish I knew what these devs were thinking when they organized their priorities. a better chat method more similar to Carcassonne's. I would like to see what the entire conversation is, not just pop-ups. Also, the chat pop-ups/bubbles are too small and cut off the conversation. It's just a horrible conversation method entirely. Needs major reworking. I dont want to sit through the man talking every time I open the app. Each UI option should be instantly available without the narrator introducing it first. Also, each option in the UI should have a label so I dont have to think about which one I need to go to More saying for the narrators because they get redundant and annoying In the Online play screen, there are a couple symbols next to each game (what seems like to be a trophy and a red minus sign?) I need an explanation for those please. Separate scores for the solo leaderboard according to the map and amount of players. Obviously, it's easier to score big when you play against only 1 person. Why should those scores be compared to games against 2, 3, or 4 players. That makes no sense. This definitely needs to be changed. I dont know if its possible, but a timer for online play. Playing against a slow person online kills me An option to slow down the speed of the AI. Noobs may have a hard time keeping up. lastly, the ability to chat after a game is finished Otherwise (hahahaha) a super fun super great app!
Thanks so much for explaining things. That really helped. I guess I did understand the tunnels, but your explanation solidified my understanding. Where I needed the station in my game was because I needed to get out of Stockholm and the southbound route was what I wanted. Even after trying the station and being confused, I ended up making a route the longer way out of Stockholm. Totally changed my strategy which is actually one of the exciting parts of the game. I can understand how stations were meant to appease those who don't want to rework their plan, but it ends up weakening the strategy. Thanks for the PDF link. With the iPad I just downloaded each file into iBooks and I now have them with me for reference.
Sorry for full quote! But in this case 100% agree! This game is not cheap ... with add on it costs the same as Carcassonne ... but the AI is a joke, it is not universal ... The game is very good, no question, but not perfect ...
Yes I would definitely like it to be universal as well. just worried about the small iphone/ipod screen and how that would transfer to this board game. carcassonne did it so i suspect days of wonder could do it too
Having perused Days of Wonder's official forums a bit I found a thread on this game: http://www.daysofwonder.com/en/thread/?frm_id=78 Where they sound like they already have a maintenance update in the wings that will address a lot of the errors in Solo Play (wrong number of tickets dealt in 1910 Mega Cities mode, wrong score calculation in Switzerland City/Country to Country tickets, etc.) They also mentioned how the $0.99 expansions was for a limited time only with them supposedly going back to $1.99 to as high as $3.99 depending on the expansion (no clue which is the cheap vs. the more expensive ones nor is there really any way to know if this is just a bluff to scare some extra sales out of folk).
Great forum over on the official site. The devs seem very responsive and lots of good information. Bookmarked it. Thanks!
The U.S. variants are my favorites, too. I'm pretty good on the Switzerland map, too, but I'm virtually useless on the Europe map. I'd say I play Europe maybe once in every 20 games. (Not that I didn't scoop it up for 99 cents, of course; I'm not that stupid ...)
Hmmm, funny. I really like Europe. Might be my favorite. I feel like it's the most game changing of the bunch. Though I haven't played too much of the 1910 Expansion yet. I played one Switzerland game so far. I was worried it would be too simple, but it actually seemed like the toughest and most challenging. I've been playing a bit on-line. I played a five player game and everyone took my route out of Calgary. Had to lose that ticket, which I think cost me the game. I ended up in 3rd or 4th. But it was still a blast and I just tried to do what I could without being able to complete that ticket. That was my first 5 player game (solor or MP).
Stuff to be aware of when playing Europe and Switzerland: Europe: -Ferrylines can take all of a single color's cars even when they player own more than are required. -Stations: While it might be a bit of a no brainer, don't try to put a station in a city that already has a station from another player or the game with crash. Switzerland: -City/Country to City/Country tickets will only credit the player for the lowest valued destinations completed on the ticket.
Thanks. It was kind of interesting reading the DOW forums and finding out about bugs I didn't know about. Glad they have an update in the works.
Yeah, it also sounds like all the NPCs will be asked to keep their mouths shut in the update. Or, at the very least, it will be in the preferences panel.
Don't think so. My experience is that they credit the player for the first destination completed, whether it is the lowest, middle or highest one. For example, if you complete both one which is worth 6 points and one which is worth 20, you will score 6 if you completed the lowest one first but 20 if you compelted the highest one first.
Thanks for supplying the link LordGek. Interesting to see that the largest thread on the (English) Days of Wonder iPad TtR forum consists of folks asking for local multiplayer (albeit with one notable <cough, cough> exception... ). http://www.daysofwonder.com/en/msg/?th=22207&start=0 Note, if you will, the thread's third post where Gerald of DoW explains the dev's initial reasons why it was not implemented in v.1 and goes on to list 3 different ways they might "handle the case"...
Is there a way to see a players karma and ranking before starting a game. I've had some really bad games with people who take several minutes a move or drop out when they know they are going to lose. I know you can see this info once the game starts(and their karma was horrible), but is there any way to see it while in the room waiting for a game to start. If not, it seems really silly to track all this info but not make it readily available to actually use. Still love this game though.
I finally played online last night and it's great, but I did run into a glitch. During one turn there was no deck for me to draw from. I could only take face up cards or claim a route. Or is that somehow correct? I don't know if the deck ran out or not, but I've never played the game where when it does, for some reason some people get no deck - we shuffle the discarded train cards and make a new deck right away. The deck did return after my turn ended. Also, the chat system pretty much sucks. Too cute and non functional. I wish it had a normal chat system instead of the cute speech bubbles. Messages only appear for a short time and then disappear into the ether. If you type more then 7 or 8 words, your message gets cut off. Etc. Moreover, after the game ends and it calculates the score, there appears to be no way to chat! The scoring card overlays the main screen and you can't tap anything on the main screen except for the back arrow which quits the game. That seems like a big oversight. I hope they change that. Still, it's otherwise a great app and was definitely fun to play online. I went 1 for 2. First game, which I lost, was 1910 Mega Game versus 3 others (I came in 3rd), and the second, which I won, was 1910 Big Cities versus 4 others. One person did drop out mid-game, which sucked, but they get replaced with a bot. However, at games end, when I looked at my stats, it said I only played one game. Did I not get credit for that win or is it just slow to update? If I don't get credit because some idiot dropped out, well then that sucks.
Crunc, that glitch, which I am pretty sure is a glitch, happens fairly often. I think it happens after the deck is shuffled. The only way to get the deck to come back is to draw a face up card. Also, you only get credit for games that are ranked. If you are playing a random match, make sure you have ranked matches clicked on. I would suggest not using the random match function though because you will be able to get matched with a group that better fits you by looking in the lobby. In the lobby ranked games have a trophy by them. I am pretty sure you get credit for games with bot replacements and your ranking data should adjust right away as far as I know.
