Age of Steam PBEM finished
March 29th, 2004Our five-player, play-by-email game of Age of Steam finished the week before last, but I was unable to post about it due to my problems with Blosxom.
To my surprise I won, due to some early auction wins and building a ring around Lake Erie, so I could ship goods in peace. I had only played it once before and playing it PBEM and having the time to absorb the rules has led me to revaluate it. It certainly worked very well PBEM, although all the players were already very experienced.
I am very torn about AoS, as I still think that apart from Tigris and Euphrates, it is the deepest non-abstract game I have played, and that the theme richly matches the game mechanics, but the last time I played, I came sixth and spent two hours watching everything I touched turn to mud. Having said that, this viciousness is a part of the appeal. AoS is definitely the last game I would ever play with a non-gamer.
April 4th, 2004 at 05:17
Are you running this PBeM yourself, or using a mail robot? How have you standardised board placements and names?
—J C Lawrence
April 4th, 2004 at 11:25
A friend moderated the game using Cyberboard (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AoS_pbem).
It definitely helped that everyone had played AoS before. It would have been very difficult otherwise. I explained my moves using this notation: Detroit, NW, NE, NW, New City F.
In between building goes, I marked up the board image with the tracks, using an image editing program and emailed it to the other players.
April 6th, 2004 at 16:03
Ahh, thanks. I’m going to guess that I wouldn’t be alone in saying that’s really painful?
April 6th, 2004 at 16:07
Well it did require experienced players and a bit of commitment, but it wasn’t painful. :o)