Epidemic hits Istanbul TWICE!
The Black Plague explodes! Game over! Bio-Terrorist wins!
jdarksun - Toronto; Manila; Ho Chi Minh City CesareB - Essen; San Francisco; Paris; Chicago; Madrid; Los Angeles; Algiers SeGaTai - New York; Kolkata; Cairo; Chennai; Jakarta
yea good game guys and thanks for running it stever
Obi take your RNG inspired victory
PSN SeGaTai
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
You guys had one more turn before I exhausted the purple supply on my following turn. That's not even counting any help I might have gotten from the diseases spreading.
Gotta say that I think the BioTerrorist really detracts from the game.
Its no different from the purple mutation variant, except you have an intelligent actor making choices on infections. Additionally, plans can be messed up as shown in this game when I blew up your research station.
From my perspective, and as someone who has played every other mode of pandemic multiple times, playing as the bioterrorist was fun because I had to make choices to try and make the research team's job as hard as possible based on my experience as a researcher. So I stuck to the annoying South America area and messed around with Santiago because its one of the hardest ones to get in and out of. I spent most of my time trying to be in good position to blow up any research stations and infect as much as I could in places that would make you choose to either cure purple or spend time with the normal diseases.
I had fun and I think it would be interesting to play against a bio-terrorist as well.
Gotta say that I think the BioTerrorist really detracts from the game.
Its no different from the purple mutation variant, except you have an intelligent actor making choices on infections. Additionally, plans can be messed up as shown in this game when I blew up your research station.
What did you effect by destroying the research station in Atlanta? How did it hinder us?
IRL I could see the bio terrorist being fun. In this setting it was to hard for me to follow where they chips be and didn't seem a big enough gain to care vs normal infection draws
PSN SeGaTai
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Gotta say that I think the BioTerrorist really detracts from the game.
Its no different from the purple mutation variant, except you have an intelligent actor making choices on infections. Additionally, plans can be messed up as shown in this game when I blew up your research station.
What did you effect by destroying the research station in Atlanta? How did it hinder us?
It caused you to have to change your plans on when and how and where you were gonna cure the disease. It was an unknown effect you couldn't plan for that forced you to re-plan your strategy.
That's what the whole game is, really. It coming up with the best plan at the time, then waiting for infection and continuing on with the plan based on the cards you draw and the board situation. Epidemics happen at random times that you can't plan for. Cities come up in order that you can't plan for. Stuff happens and you plan out how to handle the situation as it develops and evolves. But its all automated. You know the deck isn't gonna re-order the cards to make the game as hard as possible.
With the bioterrorist, you know there is an entity out there actively attempting to screw with your plans and spreading a disease in a non-random, (hopefully) intelligent way. I don't see how thats a bad thing for a periodic change of pace in a normally purely automated and quarterbacky type coop like pandemic.
Carefully spreading out the purple cubes was clever, and a good use of the BioTerrorist. But blowing up the hospital in Atlanta? I can't think of a single thing that would have changed had it been there.
The thing about Pandemic is that it's solvable to a failure condition. As in, you can play a perfect game and still lose due to bad luck.
Does adding a pseudo-adversary impact that in a positive manner? I'm not sure. I don't think so, and here's why:
We couldn't have won that seed without knowing that the Epidemic/Istanbul x2 combo would be drawn on my turn.
Let's assume that the events that occurred were fixed - that we could go back and play the exact same game. Reload the random seed, as it were. So we reload to my turn, could we have avoided the loss? Sure, I could have moved to Istanbul and cured all the cubes, but only because we had already cured black and because we had the knowledge that the combo was coming.
But without that foreknowledge? We never would have cured Istanbul, it was a unlikely event to occur. We couldn't have played "better"; we got unlucky.
That's just the kind of game it is.
I wouldn't call it "automated and quarterbacky", it's supposed to be a group problem solving puzzle. The secrecy rules that many people don't follow are supposed to prevent it from becoming a one player game.
I'm not going to fault it for not being Battlestar Galactica, but I'm just not sure what the BioTerrorist brings to the table besides another opaque failure condition in a game already fairly tied to an RNG.
I think the problem, for me, is that a lot of the engagement in Pandemic comes from the discussion of plans, both for the purpose of determining a long-term plan and for making the absolute most efficient use of my moves any particular turn. Having to keep our plans to ourselves really stunted my engagement. The game was less "we are a team tackling a problem" and more "I am presented with a few options on my turn, how can I optimize?" and unfortunately with so little to actually do on any particular turn it just doesn't resonate as well.
A lot of that could have fallen on us deciding to be more secretive than we really should have. Was the balance we struck between public and private information about what happens in a physical game, or were we a little more circumspect than is usual? I would imagine, if I played again, I would advocate for more open communication just to see what kind of impact it had.
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Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
2) Move myself to CesareB (New York)
3) Move CesareB to Madrid
4) Move CesareB to Algiers
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Epidemic hits Istanbul TWICE!
The Black Plague explodes!
Game over! Bio-Terrorist wins!
jdarksun - Toronto; Manila; Ho Chi Minh City
CesareB - Essen; San Francisco; Paris; Chicago; Madrid; Los Angeles; Algiers
SeGaTai - New York; Kolkata; Cairo; Chennai; Jakarta
ObiFett - Location - Sao Paulo
Bogota; Bangkok
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Obi take your RNG inspired victory
More thoughts later when not on my phone.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
It does eliminate a bit of the "one person is just telling everyone what to do" element, though.
Its no different from the purple mutation variant, except you have an intelligent actor making choices on infections. Additionally, plans can be messed up as shown in this game when I blew up your research station.
From my perspective, and as someone who has played every other mode of pandemic multiple times, playing as the bioterrorist was fun because I had to make choices to try and make the research team's job as hard as possible based on my experience as a researcher. So I stuck to the annoying South America area and messed around with Santiago because its one of the hardest ones to get in and out of. I spent most of my time trying to be in good position to blow up any research stations and infect as much as I could in places that would make you choose to either cure purple or spend time with the normal diseases.
I had fun and I think it would be interesting to play against a bio-terrorist as well.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
It caused you to have to change your plans on when and how and where you were gonna cure the disease. It was an unknown effect you couldn't plan for that forced you to re-plan your strategy.
That's what the whole game is, really. It coming up with the best plan at the time, then waiting for infection and continuing on with the plan based on the cards you draw and the board situation. Epidemics happen at random times that you can't plan for. Cities come up in order that you can't plan for. Stuff happens and you plan out how to handle the situation as it develops and evolves. But its all automated. You know the deck isn't gonna re-order the cards to make the game as hard as possible.
With the bioterrorist, you know there is an entity out there actively attempting to screw with your plans and spreading a disease in a non-random, (hopefully) intelligent way. I don't see how thats a bad thing for a periodic change of pace in a normally purely automated and quarterbacky type coop like pandemic.
The thing about Pandemic is that it's solvable to a failure condition. As in, you can play a perfect game and still lose due to bad luck.
Does adding a pseudo-adversary impact that in a positive manner? I'm not sure. I don't think so, and here's why:
We couldn't have won that seed without knowing that the Epidemic/Istanbul x2 combo would be drawn on my turn.
Let's assume that the events that occurred were fixed - that we could go back and play the exact same game. Reload the random seed, as it were. So we reload to my turn, could we have avoided the loss? Sure, I could have moved to Istanbul and cured all the cubes, but only because we had already cured black and because we had the knowledge that the combo was coming.
But without that foreknowledge? We never would have cured Istanbul, it was a unlikely event to occur. We couldn't have played "better"; we got unlucky.
That's just the kind of game it is.
I wouldn't call it "automated and quarterbacky", it's supposed to be a group problem solving puzzle. The secrecy rules that many people don't follow are supposed to prevent it from becoming a one player game.
I'm not going to fault it for not being Battlestar Galactica, but I'm just not sure what the BioTerrorist brings to the table besides another opaque failure condition in a game already fairly tied to an RNG.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
A lot of that could have fallen on us deciding to be more secretive than we really should have. Was the balance we struck between public and private information about what happens in a physical game, or were we a little more circumspect than is usual? I would imagine, if I played again, I would advocate for more open communication just to see what kind of impact it had.
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1