Me? Make fun of you? I doubt it… (At least not this week!)

Dale

Val, I’m like you in that I tend to play by gut feel.  If I’m being cautious, I’ll set aside my money in advance(ie in Zepter Von Zavandor) to make sure I can pay for everything I want to do and so I don’t slow down the game.

But creating a spreadsheet and working out every eventuality is not my idea of fun when playing a game.  I get enough of that at work.

Valerie, I tend to have a similar method to yours with AoS.  Calculate in my head my expected expenses for the turn, including tracks I’ll likely build and how high I expect I’ll need to go on the auction.  Then borrow accordingly.  Be aggressive sometimes and go for a low share total, but usually when in doubt, take an extra share.  Occasionally I’ll wish I took one more or one less share, but it seems to work without too much brain strain or downtime.

Maybe I’m not quite aggressive enough, but I don’t think I’ve gone bankrupt since our learning games.  There was one game where it could have happened and ironically, this solidified my opinion of how wonderfully sound the design is.  On the first turn, due to some unexpected plays by my opponents (and what, in retrospect, was probably risky play by me) I found myself overextended.  My options for the rest of the game would have been to play conservatively and have no chance of winning (possibly inviting a death spiral) or to make a bold play on Turn 2 that had the risk of bankruptcy.  I saw no benefit in Option 1, so I took the gamble.  In fact, if one of my opponents had gone a little out of his way, he could have bankrupted me on Turn 2.  My reasoning was he wouldn’t make an inefficient move to smack down the trailing player and as it turned out, I was right.  (In the post mortum, he said he did see he could take me out and saw no reason to do it.) I trailed for most of the game, but wound up finishing second.  I probably got as much satisfaction out of that second-place finish as I have from any of my victories.  Age of Steam IS an unforgiving game, but you can still manage to recover from some mistakes.  Of course, it also helps to know the tendancies of your opponents!

Valerie! I prefer definitively your method, as well. AoS is among one of my favourite game, although it seems that I mostly sucks at it. But this is something typical for most of my favourite games… and maybe that’s why I like them best, as I can always see ways of doing something better next time. The strategic game I’ve played mostly during the last two years is The Scepter of Zavandor and I’ve only won once and had a tie another time, which is far from the probability, but I’m getting more fascinated and frustrated for every game and want to play it again.

Talking about AoS: A few weeks ago I played it with with 3 newbies on the standard map. All of them were really A/P players. They played good, but I think they could had played equally good even if they had thought less. The game took over 4 hours and mostly I’ve played it in less than 2½ hours. It was the very first time I didn’t really enjoy the game. Fortunately I rarely have extreme A/P players around me.

BTW, as this is my first post as a new member here, I must tell you that I really enjoy the work all of you put into the articles on the site. Thanks!
/Carl (from Sweden)

Carl, I must admit that€, for me, AoS is not very fun when played with slow players.  My usual Age of Steam group would likely be able to finish a 4 player base game in under 2 hours—maybe even closer to 90 minutes.

I, more or less, also play by feel—but for some reason, I need to have the money in front of me.  I like to make change so that I can put aside the money which I think I’ll have to pay to the bank at the end of the turn.  The reason I do this is just to ensure that I don’t overspend on my builds.  I don’t think that my mental calculations (on average) take that much longer than others, but I can’t say for sure—you’ll have to ask the others!

Though someone going bankrupt in our AoS games is quite rare—I must admit that the frequency should be expected to a bit higher for us—as I venture to say that in our last 15 games, we’ve probably played 10 different variant boards.  For most of these boards, the first game is usually a learning experience as you learn how the new rules changes will affect gameplay.  Therefore, as we explore the new rulesets, it doesn’t surprise me at all that unexpected things pop up in the gameplay.

Dale

Valerie, your style of play is definitely the way I like to play. However, there’s usually one or two times a game I “do the math” during the share taking process (usually while waiting for someone else to make their share decision).

I’ve gone bankrupt a few times, and have teetered on the edge several times, but that’s usually because of crazy auctioning (every four or five games we seem to have a pair of folks who get into a bidding war that takes them up into the high teens).

Some of the people I play with fill out a spreadsheet in their head, I think...which is why it takes so long for them to take their turn…

I love the Google ads popping up on this page…

LOL, Eric!

Ted,
I do usually have one or two turns where I “do the math.” I also usually take a longer turn the first round when I am deciding where to make my first build.  I should also add that Charlie’s spreadsheet method really doesn’t slow him down.  He fills in the numbers during other players turns and he “needs a moment” no more often than most other players. 
Valerie

When I play AoS, I a bit more calculating than Valerie here is, though I am not a chip stacker like Dale, I can see how it would help. Sometimes, though, I have found that overcalculating leads to telegraphing things to your opponents. Case in point:

In a recent game on the Steam Brothers NE USA map, I had 2 separate networks with a string of mountains between them. When i took a long time to calculate, and then announced that i wanted 5 shares, it announced 2 things to my opponents: I would be bidding high in the auction, and I would be taking Engineer and building across those mountains to link up my networks.

They, of course, all dropped out of the bidding quickly, and this meant I had taken out 2 shares at least a turn earlier than I needed. It was excellent play on their part as my expenses were devastating for the rest of the game, while theirs were much more manageable.

Our first turn is usually at least twice as long as most other turns.