science of board games

We've been playing a few more board games around here lately, so I should start having more to write about.

One game we've played a couple of times recently is Wealth of Nations. First off, I quite like this game: it seems like a beefed up version of Settlers of Catan. Also, there is pretty much no luck in the game other than the who is the first player and the seating arrangement. (BGG gives it about a 7, ranked currently at 680.)

One of the games more innovative features is how money works. Basically, money happens in a few ways: everyone gets a small amount of money in the beginning. You can also sell goods you produce, and a particular tile you can build and power, a bank, will generate money. Other than that, the only way to introduce money into the economy is by taking out promissory notes. You can take out as many as you want whenever you want.

Each promissory note is worth −3 victory points at the end of the game, or it costs $25 to pay it off and get rid of. Your first promissory note gives you $20, the second you take gives you $19, and so forth, until they are only worth $1. You can still keep taking them out forever for $1 each, but they still cost $25 to put back. Most players end up taking at least one, usually several, and sometimes up to 7 or 8. Players can also barter with promissory notes, though this seems to be rare (we will explore this more in a minute.)

Now, at the end, money translates into victory points: $10 per 1 victory point. So obviously, it is sound advice to always pay off your promissory notes at the end of the game, since you essentially get a +3 to your victory points at a cost of $25 (whereas $25 only has 2.5 victory points intrinsically).

The numbers get confusing kind of easily, so let's get them straight.

Your first promissory note gives you $20 (+2 victory points), but you will eventually have to pay it back at $25 (−2.5 victory points), giving you a net gain of −0.5 victory points. That's not too bad: you can't lose by half a victory point. However, half the time (theoretically), this $5 loss might cost you a whole victory point in the end, depending on how much money you have. Even so, the game doesn't seem to run quite that close, so there is almost no reason not to take out that first promissory note.

From there it gets worse. For each additional promissory note, you net $1 less, but still have to pay back the full amount. This is when you really start chucking out the victory points, with net gains of −0.6, −0.7, and so on. After your fifth, you start losing whole points and worse. You really need to start thinking about how getting those extra few dollars will earn you at least one victory point, cause otherwise you are going to start making it a lot harder on yourself.

Part 2 and 3 will be posted in the next few days.