[Rails-devel] 1835 playtest report - Rails 1.3

[John D. G. <jd...@di...>]

I tried a 4 player game last night.

The initial round went as expected, though it was annoying that we were
compelled to float the By to allow the game to continue (if this were not
forced, the OB would have been left unpurchased for one round because the
only one who could afford it was the LD/Sx owner.  This is usual for us).

The map error near Dusseldorf/Essen is fixed now.

The logic to limit which hexes you can lay tiles in seems correct -- except
that (1) it still offers to let the Pfalz owner place Mannheim during
yellow phase, and (2) it doesn't let you start the game by dropping a token
in Nurnberg and then build track north from there on turn 1 (which some of
us believe is legal).

But while that logic "knows" about route connections, the tile rotation
logic doesn't.  That is, you're still allowed (and sometimes offered as
first choice) the ability to place a new tile rotated so that it doesn't
connect to your route.

Also, the controls to place a tile seem annoyingly finicky -- you have to
click directly on the image of the tile you want to place, even though its
description takes up a larger space that looks like a button.

The route calculation logic seems correct when it gives an answer at all.
But in most turns it did not even guess at a revenue number for By.

I ran into a real show stopper, though, in the stock round when Ba formed.
I backed up (undid) a couple of turns to test "what ifs".  Then I found out
the hard way that when you undo the purchase of a Ba share, the share seems
to get put back on the bottom of the stack!  (That is, after two players
together bought 60% of Ba, undid two 10% purchases, and redid them, I can't
buy the seventh share -- it insists the next share I buy be 20%!)

At this point I quit.

I also tried out the "Cash Correction" mode just to see if it would help,
and found that once you select it you can't cancel it without changing
anything.  Entering zero gets you an error popup.