Well, that’s a real hot mess then, since I’m green in our game and playing against yellow and purple…
< bangs head on desk >
I just picked colors out of my ass, as I couldn’t look it up on my phone at the moment.
Still, I don’t know which one is you and which one is…actually I don’t know who our 3rd player is.
I can’t understand how something like that could be overlooked, but it also sounds like something that could easily be fixed.
Dammit, I posted that as a bug report on the forum…
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Yes, just put everyone’s Asmodee handle under their corporation. I can’t imagine it would be that difficult.
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I have to say that the mobile implementation has been wonderful compared to Steam.
Totally agree on the “who am I playing?” aspect of the online multiplayer.
And it would be nice to be able to see which game you have a turn in if you’re in more than one game (and also to be able to go from game to game without having to go back to the Main Menu).
Ticket to Ride can do that, so I’m not sure why this one can’t.
But I’m really impressed overall. And the online multiplayer hasn’t had the horrible missteps that plagued the Steam version. Even notifications are enabled!
If you tap the circled i to the left of the name of a game in the Resume Game list you will see the names of the players. The app even helpfully tells you which one you are …
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Is anyone else having the problem where you take your turn, then a little while later you get a notification that it is your turn, but it’s as if you you didn’t take your turn initially?
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I saw something like this during the card drafting phase, but wasn’t sure if I was looking at the same cards I just saw or just similar ones.
I’m going to track each drafting turn from now on to see if I’m getting asked twice to pick the same card.
My two cents about Terraforming Mars.
First, I want to thank @Mirefox who made me struggle on with his comment even if I felt asleep every time midway the tutorial or a game. As he said, the game isn’t that complicated as it first seams…after a while everything kicks in and the game flows well (especially last generations where you are wrapping up your strategy and you have generally always sufficient founds to do things).
Game flow is a mix between Carcassonne (competing on a board with tiles to achieve most VP) and a sort of card game both with immediate card play and some more nuanced strategies (like growing life).
While the game is really good looking and videogame-y, it is still very practical to play (planet tile laying and such). Cards art is also great.
My biggest problem with the solo game (but it’s just my personal taste) is the scoring.
You have to sum up terraforming (displayed) and VP (also displayed) PLUS the ‘mystery VP’ you get at the end (it’s not really a mystery but I hate this and I have never bothered to manually count grasslands around cities and such). I really hate this, can’t understand why this would be fun (in a digital game no less) but as I said it’s just me, many like this.
I generally hate ‘solo’ mp score chasers (I prefer direct confrontations) but the Mars land competition is sufficient for me.
Must admit that the presentation and the sci-fi theme are big factors for me, and the game delivers.
Still undecided if I like it or not.
As for multiplayer…it’s actually very well done, notifications and all BUT for some critical things.
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Forfeiting games is just too easy. It’s near the ‘main screen’ button and has the same confirmation screen (obviously I can’t read).
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You don’t know who is who, both in game and in the mp general page.
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if the game has yet to start and there are 3 or more people, you never know who’s turn is and you can take the initial selection as many times you want (probably sending the game in a infinite loop of notifications).
Overall I think they are in the right direction and it’s a huge improvement over usual Asmodee mp implementation…I’ll play some more games to decide if I really like it or not (reminds me a bit Twilight Struggle, which in the end I played just twice).
My biggest problem is that I can play (and fully enjoy) like 10 async games of Shards of Infinity while I take first 5 generations of Terraforming Mars, so Shards ruined a bit the experience of all other games for now.
Sorry not sorry.
Oh, one last thing. At least at first, I MUCH prefer the base game without drafting…it’s WAAAAAAAAAY faster.
Not sure why the default is drafting and corporate mode.
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For what it’s worth, you can see player names next to their colours in the chat box, if they chat
Yeah actually you can them even pressing the i near the game name, but in game is very annoying (especially with more than 2).
Also…GRRRRRRRRRRRR
I just completed another game against AI.
I had a over 10 points lead in VP, plus a ton of cities and grasslands, not mentioning terraforming.
In the end I lost by 2 points because didn’t realized AI had 30 points in achievements.
I still don’t get why these scores are divided and not evident…isn’t a digital version supposed to do the housekeeping?
Why are they ‘hidden’ (for lazy folks like me)?
Still…game is growing on me but I really hate this scoring thing.
Also, I still don’t understand how to move animals and microbes apparently…lost a ton of turns trying to do so.
Milestones and achievements are a pretty big deal. You should consider which milestones you might be able to grab then draft and build to them accordingly. Achievements serve a similar purpose for the later half of the game. They are easy to forget and then you get caught with your pants down. This is true in the app as well as at the table. They shouldnt be hidden on the app, they should show at the top of the screen. I admit it’s much more obvious when someone grabs one at the table, and might fly under the radar in the app.
Most animals and microbes don’t move between cards. The vast majority of these cards simply collect counters on their cards to reward you with VPs or some kind of special ability once you’ve collected enough counters. There’s also a bunch of cards that let you add animals or microbes to another card, but once they’re on there they stay on there. I think only the ants and predators cards move tokens between cards in this deck. Again, this is much more obvious at the table when you’ve got a literal stack of cubes on your tardigrades cards getting slowly devoured by someone else’s ants.
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I probably read it wrong but I had a card which was supposed to score 1 VP for each couple of ants on it.
I had another card that produced ants and could move 1 from itself to another card. I had also a third card that let me move ants from any card to another one.
So I thought I was all set with a nice VP generating engine (Race for the Galaxy style) but for the life of me I couldn’t do anything so I scored a whopping 0.
I also didn’t understand if you have first to use the VP/ant card before you can move ants on it (couldn’t select it before)…but I was under the impression you score the points when you use the card, not at the end,…so I was a bit confused.
I found similar cards with animals, birds and microbes.
I have to study a bit more (the select card where to move things isn’t really well done, because you don’t see the full card, just a icons recap).
Holy crap, how did I miss this?
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Probably because your favorite mobile gaming site has been under performing since the holidays.
We have? I better go fix that…
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Well played.
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TouchArcade is reporting that the iOS versions of Animal Crossing and Fire Emblems will be ending service in Belgium because of they way they handle in-game currency.
In related news, I have a new metric: “can this game be played in Belgium?” If no, I’ve saved myself the time of downloading.
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Oh, I’m sorry, I see how there could have been some confusion into which site I was referring to. I was actually referring to Stately Play. Let me fix it…
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