Bad events for player at 1st sometimes not fair!

[Keybounce]

Obscure or not, some of us smile ...

And remember a game where the big bad starts moving because you took too long, and you're following in their wake, trying to figure out the last clue, only to put it all together too late to catch them...

[zaphod77]

The only event that's a real issue is the pest attack. I've never seen lose a plot or mule goes crazy in the beginning of the game. This absolutely CRIPPLES you if it hits at the beginning.  It's the reason i stopped playing flapper in vs cpu games. it's that bad.

You get stuck without food, and are behind a round on development. and early on that really HURTS.

So here's my rules on what should be needed to make things more reasonable.

1) never let the same player lose two plots worth of production in one turn.
2) No targetted production loss events can hit you unless you own 3 plots. If this would force 3rd or 4th place to eat a bad one, a different event happens.

And, to placate the whiners a litle bit more, maybe.

3) No player ever gets the same bad event 2 turns in a row. Lost plot one turn, pest attack next is fair game.

To anyone who says this isn't going far enough, boo hoo.

[veridia]

They are unfortunate, but part of the game, I seem to regularly lose a plot of land when I am in 2nd place.  And the last time I lost a plot in second place I was already 1 plot behind everyone and just purchased the one I lost at auction for over $1000.  This was in about round 6 so at this point I lost game, the other players overtook me by leaps and bounds after that, they were able to afford more plots and by the end of the game I was down about 4 plots from them and lost by a very large margin... I never complained tho, really I didn't ;-)

2nd place should lose a land relatively rarely compared to the player in 1st place. I agree with the original game designers that 2nd place should lose a plot 20% of the time, and 1st place should get the event 80% of the time.

For stats on this see this website.

http://www.smithore.com/eventstats.php

Also note, a player should rarely if ever lose a plot of land on the 1st turn. The original game held to this principle almost always.

[veridia]

The only event that's a real issue is the pest attack. I've never seen lose a plot or mule goes crazy in the beginning of the game. This absolutely CRIPPLES you if it hits at the beginning.  It's the reason i stopped playing flapper in vs cpu games. it's that bad.

You get stuck without food, and are behind a round on development. and early on that really HURTS.

So here's my rules on what should be needed to make things more reasonable.

1) never let the same player lose two plots worth of production in one turn.
2) No targetted production loss events can hit you unless you own 3 plots. If this would force 3rd or 4th place to eat a bad one, a different event happens.

And, to placate the whiners a litle bit more, maybe.

3) No player ever gets the same bad event 2 turns in a row. Lost plot one turn, pest attack next is fair game.

To anyone who says this isn't going far enough, boo hoo.

The pest attack provided incentives for players to choose to play defensively or not. Believe it or not, you can always try to get a flatland plot next to a river and have two plots of food production. (Or go for a 2nd river plot if it hadn't been taken.

If you're in 1st/2nd place and have only one plot producing food you leave yourself vulnerable to the pest attack or a mule going crazy.

[goblin]

Actually the game would be a lot less interesting without the random events. It is already a "nice" version compared to the original: no events nor land auctions on first round. I have lost many times due to those last-round bad luck events but I didn't have to be 1st then, did I? Like rommager said, you should aim not being first before round 12. We all know about the events, they are part of the game.

Agreed, that is why I love MULE, the unexpected bad luck.   In the original the guy in first and second place would get bad luck.  Probably the worst is to get a plot taken away in the early rounds when everyone has just about the same thing in terms of money and land. 

[zaphod77]

If you're in 1st/2nd place and have only one plot producing food you leave yourself vulnerable to the pest attack or a mule going crazy.

Like production phase 1, if you failed to win a land plot in the auction?

As I said I was getting screwed by that so many times that I had to switch from flapper to another race just so the computers would get hit by the pest attack instead.