Caylus: Prestige or Favours?
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When thinking about Dan Rosewater's expansion cards for Caylus, I wondered how to decide if a card should bring extra prestige points or rather royal favours?
Reviewing the official cards in Caylus, I came to the following conclusion:
- You get prestige when you do something that increases your rank in the social hierarchy, when other people in city notice you more, maybe respect you more. In other words, you get prestige when you make yourself look good in the eyes of the others. This can be achieved by expanding the city and the castle of course, but also by making donations to the church, or wearing expensive cloth (made by the tailor) or jewellery (made by the jeweller, if you use this extension card).
- You get a royal favour when you do something that makes you look good in the eyes of the King, such as promoting education (e.g., building the university), arts and culture (building the theater, the monument), providing entertainment(fighting in the joust field), or flattering the King (building the statue – because I'm pretty sure the statue is a statue of the King).
Then about Dan's cards:
- The Guild of Thieves: I love the idea, but I think that the card should allow players to trade prestige points in exchange for deniers or resources (how many of them remains yet to be decided). This would be consistent with what I wrote above, i.e., when you do something bad such as using the services of a thief, you loose some amount of prestige. Moreover, those should not be stolen from other players, but taken from the “bank”, i.e., stolen from someone in general. Resource/Denier exchange between players is not a part of the game mechanics, and maybe it should remain so. Finally, it should maybe cost more than one or two prestige points to build, I think. And it also could give its owner a denier e.g., as a tax taken by the guild from its members, when used by another player.
- The Hospital: I love the idea too, but I think that it should not provide a royal favour to the players, but rather be used for trading any resource or deniers for prestige points. In other words, when you make a donation to the hospital, you get to look good in the eyes of the people in the city. Maybe the hospital would be worth getting a favour when built, though.
- The Royal Luxury Taylor: this one I hate, because there is already a taylor, and getting prestige for nothing is not in the spirit of the game.
- The Trader: I somehow like it, but again not really. There are already trader-like buildings in the game, such as at the market, the peddler, the alchemist and the bank. Otherwise, it acts as a resource providing building mixed with the comptoir, providing both resources and deniers, which is something new. I have to think more about it.
[ Posted on July 10th, 2007 at 11:19 | no comment | permanent link ]
