Power Grid
In this game players take on the role of managing a network of power, a power grid if you will (sorry). The board consists of a map of the USA or Germany. Cities are placed throughout the map and are connected by lines that have distance values. Players must purchase hubs on cities that will allow them to provide that city with power, which gives each player money. Only one player at the beginning can own any one city, though this changes later in the game, but the cost of buying a hub is the same for everyone.
For the players to provide power to their cities they must purchase power plants and resources in each round. Power plants have different resource needs and power output. There are 50 power plants in all and with the higher ones being resource efficient and power abundant. Resources are either coal, oil, garbage, or uranium and get replenished at various rates each round throughout the game (various rates meaning oil refreshes more at the beginning of the game then at the end).
Each round consists of these actions:
1) Determine Play Order – Sorted by number of city hubs and if tie then highest number on a players power plant. The player with the highest in these categories is the first player.
2) Auction Power Plants – A row of power plants are up for auction (how many are available differs as the game goes on) and the first player can pick a power plant to try and buy. In order each player then has a chance to raise the bid on that power plant, starting at the power plants number. Who ever wins pays for the power plant and next highest player (it may still be the first player) may try to buy a power plant. The last person left can buy whatever power plant they want for it’s base price because once a player buys a power plant in a round they may not buy another one. (Also note players can only have three power plants at a time)
3) Buy Resources – The more of a resource there are the less they cost, the game board has spots that say how much each resource costs. The LAST player gets to buy resources first not the first. Each player may buy double the amount of resources they need for their power plants (each power plant can “store” double the amount they need).
4) Build Hubs – The LAST player goes first for this action too. A player may build as many hubs as they can afford in any round. Each city has the same base cost (later in the game players can build on each others cities for a slightly higher base cost). After a player places an initial city at the beginning of the game each hub they build must be connected to another city hub they already own. Added on to the base cost of building in a city is also the connection fee which is shown on the game board where there is a connection between any two cities. Players may jump cities if they are not allow to build a hub on the city and they will just have to pay the connection cost from their currently owned city to the new city they wish to build a hub in, though they do not pay the base cost for the city they jumped over.
5) Bureaucracy (Great) – Players exhaust any resources for the power plants they wish to use. Each of these power plants then provide their power value for the players connected cities. The total number of a player’s cities that are provided with power determines how much money they receive for this round. After players receive their funds then some power plants in the auction pile are resorted determined by what step it is. (Resources are also refreshed)
There are three steps:
1) Step 1 – The beginning step, only one player on any one city and at the end of the round the highest power plant in the auction pile is put at the bottom of the draw pile. (4 power plants are available to buy with 4 more out on the table that are there to show what power plants are coming up.)
2) Step 2 – When this occurs the lowest power plant in the auction pile is removed from the game. Then it operates like step 1 except that 2 players can be on any one city and the resource refresh rates change.
3) Step 3 – The lowest power plant in the auction pile is removed and up to 6 power plants are available for auction. Up to three players can have a hub on any one city.
The game ends when a player reaches a hub count of whatever number the game sets for the number of players playing. (For 5 players its 15 city hubs.)
Why is this game fun?
Auctions, resource management and positioning are all game mechanics that are tried and true methods. When players bid for power plants they need to make sure that they have enough money to cover purchasing hubs and resources. They also need to be aware of what other power plants are already owned that use the same resources as the one they wish to bid on. Also players that are behind get the benefit of being last so they can wait to bid on higher valued power plants as the lower ones are purchased by the higher players.
When buying resources players need to understand who is going to buy what resources and how many of each resource will be refreshed each round. Since power plants can hold double their resource cost a player can buy a lot more resources then they will need in a round, thus making other users pay more for their resources. Obviously power plants that don’t need any resources, wind generally, are the best to have for a time but every player will be fighting for those. Another way to maximize a players flexibility with resources is to purchase the power plants that allow for more then one resource to be used, thus a player can buy which ever resource is cheaper.
Positioning it seems is the major factor in the game. When playing a three person game players blocking each other did have an affect on gameplay. If a player can expand quickly to encapsulate another player then it will be hard for the player to break out because connection costs are often very large. Even later on in the game when multiple hubs can be on a city, the cost of building in that city is still higher for the next player(s).
So in all these three factors are determined by player order in each round. If you have the least hubs or lowest power plant then you get a chance to get a nice power plant, first resource purchase and first building rights. What it looks like is that players must decide when to lead and when to fall behind. Falling behind may get a player a nice power plant which allows them to jump back ahead in the next round. Of getting ahead in the beginning allows a player to expand out further giving them more options in the future.
How can this game be used for digital play?
This game does bring up my favorite mechanic, shared resource pool (or I guess it’s a zero-sum resource pool). RTS games do exist that have similar mechanics. Age of Empires has the market ability where players can buy/sell their resources and affect the price for everyone else to buy/sell resources but players can still gather their resources from nodes. Company of Heroes, and other similar games, use control points that work as both resource suppliers and territory proclaim but again this is no different from mining a gold mine in that area, another player can just come up and grab it with no increasing penalty.
Really it’s that penalty that makes this mechanic, the fact that there are shared resources and the player who gets to them first receives more for less. For example in CoH if control points were easy to capture at first but then harder as time goes on or reverse it, it takes the same amount of time to get a neutral point but gets easier for the enemy to acquire the point as time goes on. However it seems it would be hard to instead of saying everyone gets X amount.
I like the sense of being able to block other players. One game that came to mind besides puzzle games, is PlanetSide which is a MMO shooter. In this game players of one of the three factions try to control island across a world. If the faction succeeds in controlling an entire island they effectively receive a hold on the island and neither of the other two factions can teleport or travel there (to the best of my knowledge). Thus their have been instances when a faction has locked down half the planet in this way. This could be used in other MMOs allowing factions to block of sections or cause another faction to put up more resources in order to get through the section. (eg. in WoW different contested zones could turn friendly towards one factions for a few hours)
One last thing to mention is that as we are playing these board games I see a lot more of a “screw you” factor that comes into play. Or to be a little more p.c. “hindering play” then I do in video games. That was a big discussion when WoW came out how when a player dies nothing really happens, they walk back to their body and you can jump back into the game. But in board games they seem to have a lot of rules that effectively allow one player to hinder another directly and deliberately. Hindering each other is what makes a game a game but the fact that when somebody does hinder a player everyone playing in a board game knows and everyone excepts it because everyone can do it. When you are in a video game you don’t have this that omnipresent view of what everyone is doing so when players are hindered by other players they may feel it is unfair (the computer allows for information to be hidden much easier, *side note Celia Pierce did some work on how information is seen in games, I believe in “The interactive Book”).
So a sense of fairness could be added to the list of things that board games provide over digital games, along with the tangible nature of a board game compared to a digital one.