by scooter630
I know that this is far from the first 'review' of Agricola. And this very topic may have been discussed before, but something interesting happened, and I was wondering what your thoughts were.First off, for me: I have played a few games of Caylus, and really enjoyed the worker placement mechanic. I like the removal of random chance, I like how you are passive aggressive-ly in competition with your opponents (this can be debated...), and I like how it can change the tension of the game very drastically. So I inevitably heard about Agricola -two years ago- and decided to finally give it a deeper look. Surprise, surprise it looked awesome.
Now, like many, I find my most common gaming buddy is my significant other. To be specific, for me this would be my girlfriend: Gwyn. It has been a long process, but we have been working her up from thinking that Bananagrams was an intense board game, to her now getting really excited when she sees the winning combo in Pandemic. Also... she dominates at Dominion.
So when I am thinking about adding a board game to our collection, Gwyn's reaction to the game is a very strong motivator. And more importantly, if she will enjoy it enough to play again. Gwyn had never played a worker placement game before, but I knew she loved farming (or at least she played Farmville a lot).
So went out to my local game shop and picked up (a rather hefty) copy of Agricola.
Now, here is what I want to talk about: Gwyn's experience of the game was very different than mine. I found it fascinating that the things that bothered her were not even things I though about (I know... story of any relationship... but lets keep on topic with the game).
So her perspective: In Gwyn's heart, she wants to be complete. She wants to do everything, and make sure no stone is un-turned. She likes the complete nature of Carcassonne, she will play tiles in the middle of the board, with no value, just to make it look right. The first game of Agricola was fine, but then it all went down from there. The multitude of choices before her just got in the way of having what she wanted (a full game board). Because she knew more about the mechanics, she saw more choices, and had a hard time paring down the choices that, I would argue, are designed to make you compromise. I am sure there are plenty of opinions, but it seems like Agricola is designed to make you choose between a large stone house, or pastures of animals, or fields full of grain, and very rarely a combination of the above.
This brings me to my opinion. This idea of a well balanced farm is the very reason I love the game. I really enjoy the fact that if your opponent hogs the wood, you can dominate the fields. The multitude of choices, and the realization that you will never get a 'perfect' score, makes the strategy, for me, very fluid. In one game you may see a route to lots and lots of animals, in the other you are going to have a huge house. I think that the trade offs and balance in victory conditions compliment the worker placement mechanic very well.
But again, back to Gwyn, this is the reason she is hesitant about the game, there are too many choices, and none of them lead (very easily at least) to an undefined 'complete farm'.
Gwyn also has a hard time planning ahead with the worker placement. When I look at the board, I am counting the exact actions I am going to need to take to get a certain goal. The game is deterministic, you can tell exactly what is going to happen, the only variables being your opponent's actions and the stage's action order (both can be predicted to a certain degree). This practice of looking forward is hard for Gwyn, for those CS people out there, I perform a dynamic depth first search, where Gwyn performs a two or three layer breadth first search.
Don't worry we started out with the 'family' game, and are just moving in to using the occupations and minor improvements. I feel this gives your strategy even more direction and focus, Gwyn just freaks out over the increase in choice.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had a similar experience and/or for people who are looking in to getting the game.