Second pass at... Science
My science-control bud is a big gamer and he had written down all sorts of ideas for the science game. I had reviewed his notes and wasn’t sure if I liked his other auction mechanics, I was settling into just running a standard-rule auction. I had decided that whatever we decided on had to meet the following criteria:
Easy to learn
Fast to run
Fun to play
Everyone gets something
And a standard-rule auction checks most of these boxes.
However, once we sat down and he started talking about some of his other ideas, he sold me pretty easily on a different type of auction (I think from a game called Stockpile). Essentially, each lot has its own track of ascending cost values and on your turn, you bid on any lot, on any cost (providing it’s the highest bid for that lot). If you’re ever outbidded for the lot you bidded on, you get your token back and can outbid on the same lot or bid on another lot.
I love this because not only does it hit all 4 of my criteria above but I think it does 2 and 3 better than a traditional auction.
After that conversation, and knowing he’s super into it, I gave him the task to balance the lots, the amounts on each track, the number of techs you can buy, the number of prerequisite techs you need to advance a tech level and anything else applicable to the science game. Saves me a job! We’ll review in a couple of weeks and see where we get. If we can nail that down, we’re probably 90% of the way there with the science game.