Royal Concerns Regarding Balance Issues

[MAjesty]

Rum, Potato, and Tobacco are overpowered cards in relation to the overall balance of the game.

now bask ye in my brilliant logical explanation.

all 3 cards are common, which means there is a significant probability of gathering these cards in a 20 credit card pack, among the other in game possibilities.

there is one card which checks back this effect, Official List of Demands, it is a rare, and it can be blocked by defense, unlike the party cards which go through, and also without guessing which port the enemy is storing stuff in. one rare hostile card vs 3 common friendly cards is a clear balance issue.

more power to the people who were smart enough to abuse this mechanic since the cards were released, however.

all 3 of these cards are worth more then one credit per card at auction, and there's still these gems on the auction block for the Only Card Which Counters This Effect:

2013-09-30 18:33:35 4 cards 1 credits
2013-09-23 05:14:13 6 cards 2 credits
2013-09-22 15:36:21 8 cards 2 credits

easy solution, just off the top of my head, all 3 of the party cards become rare, and official list of demands becomes common. now that's off the top of my head. the only part here im sticking to for sure is OLD should be a common, or get buff-d like crazy.

the party cards are worth more at auction the half of the rares... clearly they shouldn't be commons. OLD should either get much easier to come by, or get much more powerful. or there could be an awesome rare card which costs 50 turns which removes 400 cargo space from target players port warehouse.

because balance.... that's why.

[Xanadu]

He does have a point here. These cards are useful for for traders starting out as a way of gaining gold to build up their fleets in the beginning of the game, and to learn how to move goods from one warehouse to another. The power of the card increases greatly with the number of ships you have to move goods. If you are fortunate enough to have a level 100 warehouse in Tortuga for example and filled it with food from Newland then cast potato party on Tortuga you would generate a huge amount of cash in a hurry. I'm sure that it is not a secret that this comes in handy when paying for captains at 1.8 mil apiece or for plunking down a bit of influence in a port. I'm not sure what the limits of food consumption are in a port. One case per person, or more? Maybe these cards could have a hard limit of 1 mil gold for example. This could cut the cards power for big traders while allowing smaller fleets to still gain the benefits of casting the card. Critique is welcome, Please poke holes in my ideas so we can try to come up with something that can improve the game for all. These are one of the better spells a newbie can use to get their feet on firm financial ground and build ships. This in turn keeps people interested in the game. Much better than waiting an hour from port to port to scrape up a little cash each pass.

[Xanadu]

P.S. I hope that Hippo wasn't one from The Herd...

[Captain dungeness]

I disagree with the assumption that Official List of Demands is a counter to the party cards. Official List of Demands removes a % of stored goods in a port so it's a good way to reduce your enemy's ship-building capabilities. It can also reduce someone's party goods if you guess the right port at the right time. I just think the card is more similar to Favorable Winds or any of the India cards because it improves your trade profits if you have the card and take the time to use it well. Of course the card can be very profitable if you invest into a huge warehouse but that's not easy and can take tens or hundreds of millions of gold to do so.

I don't see why a highly desirable common card is a bad thing. It seems like a good thing to have a wide variety of value to common/uncommon/rare cards. It's good to consider all cards and not only value them because they are rare.

[MAjesty]

actually that was kind of the point... there IS no balancing card to counter this effect. with only one card which affects a targets warehouse, the ability to triple your money on every unit of food is a limitless upward spiral, it is benign for a lower tier player, but for a player to be able to triple their money so long as they are able to get a common card, makes warehouse upgrade costs, and even captain costs negligible by comparison

without a card which balances this effect out, it's just overpowered.


btw
it's a straw man argument to misconstrue my argument as that i was criticizing a highly desirable common card. fav winds, buried treasure, hostile natives, black death, time spiral, spy network (and conceivably a few others as well) are all very desirable commons, but they are all checked back by other features in the game... since the party cards have no check back feature for the party cards it creates a balance issue.

this is why the cards ought to be tweaked either through nerfing, or inserting a new card which can balance them out.

[Captain dungeness]

Again I have to disagree. I don't see why there needs to be a particular "balancing card" that is also common. Party cards allow smart traders to get better trade profits just like all the India cards. I always recommend to our new guildmembers to use their party cards to jumpstart their ship building and trading. The new players are only able to do this because the party cards are common and buying 1 or 2 packs has a good chance of giving them at least 1 party card. If you want to limit how much profit can be gained from party cards you can cast Black Death (common card) on the port to reduce the population and therefore reduce the goods consumption.