Clash of Cultures VASSAL game?

I believe the second interpretation is correct since the text says the advance is "bought" which makes me think you're still spending an action to buy the advance. And it still goes with the Science tracks theme of spending more actions to save resources, you're just now saving even more resources.

Edit: Also, I'd totally be down for a live VASSAL game at some point. This is probably my favorite board game to come out in a good while. Just busy this weekend with my birthday and all that.

Still having a rules question with priesthood I outlined, but I'm leaning more and more toward the second interpretation. I think you're right, Ufe. We played it the other way but it didn't really shift the game too much since we both did it.

I was going to revive the long dead dedicated Clash thread (RULES ONLINE!) but I may as well just post here about strategy.

Anyway, game discussion wise I've been thinking about taxation-democracy synergy. It's very strong. I used it last night. I was trying to think about how I would counter it running a different strategy.

The thing that ultimately makes it so powerful is that the cost of taxation (a mood token) is reasonably low, and moreover the natural progression to democracy supplies all of them you need. Critically, it is *not* a "collect" action, so it synergizes perfectly with economic liberty---you get resources before your turn for free, then you can tax without paying the stiff 2 mood penalty you get for collecting a 2nd time with economic liberty, so you basically aren't penalized by economic liberty at all. And you're getting your tax windfall in the most flexible resource of all, gold. The pieces:

1) Taxation costs one mood for a gold for every city
2) Economic liberty->an idea if you have an academy in your town every turn with no action (w/Public Education)
3) Any advance you buy will therefore grab you potentially 1 happiness for a yellow advance, and an additional 1 happiness since you almost always also have Free Education and have spent an idea (from Public Education) or gold (previous Taxation) to buy the advance. So this supplies your Taxation engine without any real trouble---as long as you're occassionally advancing, you're going to be reaping plenty of happiness to keep your taxes going. It isn't even a close run thing. You can stay WAY ahead on happiness and never worry about the tax cost.

So what are the counters? The main one is to threaten your opponents small shitty cities early. You need to disuade him/her from making the throwaway cities that make Taxation profitable by invading and razing them if a size 1 city with no guard or 1 guard is created. But then it's frustrating, because they get a settler back! But at least they have to waste move and build actions. If you keep their city # low, the number of gold reaped every turn is reasonably low---once you're bringing in 5-6 gold every turn from a taxation your opponents are up a creek.

I just realized how utterly thematic those dry as rules and strats are, btw!

Unfortunately, there's no real way in the game to make your opponents cities unhappy or to reduce the number of mood tokens the opponent has. That would be the natural response to this strat for an opponent, work to starve them of any mood tokens they need to tax.

I would love to hear anyone else's ideas...

I'm pretty sure it's that second interpretation of Priesthood as well.

If I recall, the wording is "gain a Science advance without paying". Advance is an action. I don't see anything that changes that basic game mechanic. To me, you just don't pay the food cost.

Contrast that with the "Great Whatever" event cards that combine an advance and a city growth. They specify a to take an advance, and then say you may build "without activating". So they call out when you get to skip part of the process.

The wording is exactly what I put in bold in my previous post. You hit the key point, though, it doesn't appear to be modifying any actions. I wish it referenced the advance activity instead of just advance noun, though.

I still think it's a free action.

First, the AAA clause is all over the advance board, but not used there. It would basically have to have been a misprint or something no playtester caught (and I know from reading the BGG forums on the game that it was pretty heavily playtested.)

Second, the science advances don't DO anything in and of themselves, they just make other techs cheaper. Now granted, you get a culture token and half a victory point, but I don't think that necessarily makes up for losing an action when the action you would otherwise take to research them could be spent on collecting and getting more than 2 food/ideas (the cost of the free tech.)

(And yes I realize metallurgy throws the math off a bit here)

I spent a bunch of time looking at the advances board last night after our game, Gary, and I just can't see myself going down the science track without priesthood unless it was the very end of the game and I was just trying to get myself the extra half VPs and maybe some culture tokens to make a push for some cultural attacks.

I ALSO don't think the Mysticism track is balanced vs the other two Pre-Government tracks if you don't read Priesthood as free actions.

I suspect Christan will be by to smack me back down in a few minutes. Heh.

Regardless. Awesome game, I hope we can do it again soon and I hope we can have a few more people.

Gary Sax wrote: The wording is exactly what I put in bold in my previous post. You hit the key point, though, it doesn't appear to be modifying any actions. I wish it referenced the advance activity instead of just advance noun, though.

My mistake, I was posting that from my phone so I didn't look back far enough or cross-check.

What's interesting now that I have my actual computer and game shelf is that the Vassal version (which I've been staring at more than the game) says something different.

My 1st edition player board says what you have in your post:

"Science" advances can be bought at no Food cost (once per turn)

This is the same phrasing as the actual Science advances.

The Vassal version advances board says:

Get a "Science" advance without paying any Food (once per turn)

I'm not sure if that changes between editions in the physical game, or where that wording comes from.

The first phrasing I think is less ambiguous (but probably not perfect). How are advances bought? By using an Advance action, and paying two food. So, "advances may be bought at no Food cost" to me still implies they're an action. The second phrasing is a bit different, but I think it means the same.

The "AAA" mark is all over the advances board, but only to mark things that aren't otherwise actions.

The ones I see are (paraphrased for length):
* (Engineering) Activate a city to build a Wonder (which is only unusual in that it's a Wonder. Activate to build is normal, and an action).
* (Cartography) Get 1 Culture and 1 Idea from regions with ships
* (Bartering) Exchange resources for Gold/Culture
* (Taxation) Pay Mood for Gold
* (Civil Liberties) Get 3 Mood tokens

Other than Engineering, they're all things you can't do at all without the advance, so they're marked as actions. Also look at "Monuments", "Art & Sculptures", "Voting", and "Economic Liberty" where things that are normally actions are spelled out as "at no action cost".

I looked on BGG, and it's amazing to me that I didn't find six rules threads on it. They're usually both pedantic and thick about asking questions that aren't even vague. I'd imagine Christian will be along eventually. I can see the argument for free action (especially in the "without paying" wording), but I don't think it holds up looking across the rest of board. I can't see anyone else's physical copy, so I'm interested in what they say in various versions.

I have a 2nd ed, I'll go check it out in a few minutes.

2nd ed:

"Science" advances can be bought at no Food cost (once per turn)"

I don't' know where the VASSAL wording comes from, then.

That's fucking bizarre, to say the least, cause I assume the Vassal board is just a scan of an actual board. I'm not really in the mood to pull my copy back out right now (so many steps!) but I'm sure I have a first edition copy, as I got it in 2012 when it first came out. Wonder where that wording could possibly have come from? An old illustrator file maybe?

The wording as printed on the actual boards supports Gary's interpretation and I don't even think it's all that debatable.

Mine is definitely first edition as well, having been store-bought before the reprint existed (if your cubes are wood and the dice are red it's 1st edition). I was very surprised this afternoon to see they were different.

I am also quite confused about the Vassal board, I can only think it's a pre-production digital copy or something. That image itself is a single jpeg in the module file.

I'll have to see if I can carve out sometime for an online game. Looks like it was pretty fun, even if you guys were eating advances like bon-bons.

If it's only a strange difference in the VASSAL mod, it would explain the lack of questions on BGG.

There's a new version of the VASSAL mod that makes the tile size of the exploration tiles into just the size of the tile, instead of a giant box around the tile. Should solve some of the annoyances of placing tiles, having them invisibly sit above things on adjacent tiles, etc.