by cmontgo2
I have yet to play England - but in the two completed games, and one still on-going game I have participated in, I find a larger complaint . . . that players don't seem to use the full range of options available to them. I suspect this is due to novice-play and not design, but I have yet to see the Armada, there has been little-to-no espionage (even in one game that went to Turn 5), the Ottomans rarely send out their expedition, the HRE and Ottomans have not engaged in any serious, long-term conflict, the Prots have not used piracy against Spain - my games so far have been what I might term "vanilla" . . .In the game I recently completed with William, the English player (not William), raised pretty much the same complaints. The victory was gained by England conquering Calais for one key, then winning two diplomatic rolls for a military (standard) automatic victory. The win felt anti-climactic to me and not nearly as nail-biting as the many hair's breadth finishes I have seen in HIS. In this game, the VP spread was pretty narrow with many powers in the 17-21 range.
I think as players become more experienced, the game will begin to gain a better narrative than the ones I have so far seen, but until then, I tend to agree with the opinion that England seems to be playing with itself - pirating, diplomatic bids for minors, and jilting. I have never seen the VQ get married, but presumably this would not occur until a theoretical Turn 6, when the VQ is no longer handing out VPs (IIRC). This creates a nice historical tendency for the game, but also pretty much straight-jackets England in that regard.
I felt that in our game, England played excellently, but also had little interaction with the table. England did bargain with the Prots a bit to help bolster Prot spaces on the map, but I was unsure what other diplomacy England engaged in.
My final "complaint" (really just my early experiences) is that the game seems to create several prisoners' dilemmas in which any one of a number of powers needs to do or not do X in order to keep another power in check. The best example is French marriages - the French need to pay for their marriages, but when three powers are vying for the hand of a Valois the tendency is to benefit France as each power is willing to take a lower "payment" for the marriage in order to make sure that they at least get something. Low supply (of Valois + VP nobles) and high-demand for them from other powers results in most of the negotiating power belonging to France, who wins out by chiseling the players down to a card, or possibly even a treasure.
These types of dilemmas do not, as far as I have seen, result in the behavior that the game design wants. France has a relatively easy time parceling off its Valois marriages cheaply to several powers - each power gains VPs along with France, but France has many more transactions and thereby benefits disproportionately.
I use the above as an example, not as a criticism. My hope is that with subsequent plays of the game and more experience, will come a more complex interweaving of the game's various mechanics.
The great thing about VQ and HIS are that they are player-balanced games. In VQ, I think that (1) it is harder to balance the game due to so many moving parts and sources of VP and (2) the prisoner's dilemmas created by the game's mechanics makes many players shy away from all but the "sure-fire" mechanics. This leads to a tendency to have lots of pirating, sermon-preaching, heresy-suppressing, marrying, and diplomacy, and little-to-no military conflict, Armada building, Ireland invading, HRE/Ottoman war-fighting, etc.
Please note that I'm NOT complaining, but instead giving my impressions after only a few plays. I still intend to play many more games of VQ and hope that the game really opens up eventually, with experience. A poster on another thread suggested that they game started getting really good for him after about six plays, when he started to be able to "see" things developing - and VQ requires a sight glass; potential winners are not clearly visible merely by looking at the VP track and the Prot-space count.
Does anyone else agree with these impressions? Anybody who's played more than six games?