Weighted Card Draw

[Mikecoup]

For me, I find games less fun when the cards fall in my lap or someone else's. Unless someone manages to defy the odds, I might remember the match more — as being less enjoyable.

I want difficult choices, like, "Is it better to go for a colony, a stability building, a military upgrade, a good advisor, or a good wonder first this round?" If the cards offer a bunch of one thing and one of another, then I buy the one, without the enjoyment of evaluating the possibilities.

At least in asynchronous tournaments with multiple matches per round, the variance gets averaged out some and the more-skilled players end up advancing most of the time. However, I prefer to not have any one match that's just a complete bust for any player.

For me, one of the reasons I prefer Nations over Through the Ages is that Through the Ages has card draw each turn. I dislike one player having access to cards that the previous player didn't. I like being able to read out a round in Nations once the event is revealed. Another is that Through the Ages has a take-that mechanic where you have to decide who to target when you attack, but that's less relevant to this discussion.

For me, I think the large decks create enough card-draw variance to keep things interesting due to the variance within each type of card. My goal is to rein in the variance that leads to heavily favoring one player or creating uninteresting turns.

I agree 100%. Well said!

[Logitude]

This change is now live!

New matches using the card draw house rule will use weighted card draw instead of card draw limits. Matches already created will continue to function with the old limits.

viewtopic.php?t=74

[Logitude]

Personaly I think that game should stay as it is.

Done. Rules as written is supported and always will be. When you create a match, be sure to uncheck and zero out everything under "Optional House Rules:". When joining matches, avoid joining ones with parentheses in the description of the "type".

What I have implemented is a variant in the rule book.

I'm aware that variants fragment gaming communities. However, if I didn't have optional variants, I would have non-optional variants to my liking, since this is my code. Then everyone who didn't enjoy my changes as much would either not play or play begrudgingly.

Life is not always fair. Sometimes you do everything right, but result is bad. It is un-predictable.

Agreed.

So it is the game of nations.

Agreed. But life also includes the need to take a dump every once in a while. That doesn't mean defecation needs to be a mechanic in Nations.

Even with this official variant enabled, you can get progress boards filled with just a few types of cards. It's still possible for your plans to go awry. This just helps counteract what happens when you add more cards to a deck, which is a greater and greater possibility of clumping.

Personally, I know I will enjoy Nations more with this variant enabled.

Only thing regulated could be (by my opinion) that order for drawing cards and order who begins the play is distrubuted amoung players fairly..

I'm not quite sure what you mean, so I'm not sure whether this addresses what you're saying, but I am planning to add a way to specify player order for the first round. Drafting nations will continue to be in reverse player order.