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In Teotihuacan: City of Gods, each player commands a force of worker dice, which grow in strength with every move. On your turn, you move a worker around a modular board, always choosing one of two areas of the location tile you land on: one offering you an action (and a worker upgrade), the other providing you with a powerful bonus (but without an upgrade).
abelDANGER
Love this. Fairly straight forward action selection on a rondel but the strategic planning and choices seem so deep. 3 plays in but I'm just beginning to scratch the surface on how to maximize my limited turns. Great components. Amazing art. Really solid.
Alan Stern
I'm... curious about this one. (And a wee bit hesitant.) I like the concept. I like a number of the mechanisms. The flavor, too - that's good. But I *really* dislike how the beginner game *REALLY* forces you into pyramid building. In that specific setup, no pyramid building = red hot death. (And I mean red hot!) Why would you do this? Why would you make the introductory version so stilted? It looks, and is, oh so woefully unbalanced in that iteration. It really left a bad taste in our mouths. Then I read the forums. And I see that there is depth yet unplumbed. And I am curious. Is there a meaningful game in there? Is there variety? Are there multiple paths to victory? ...or is it that in any given setup there is ONE good path and, if you are the one to recognize this and use it best, you win? Because that last option, that's not good enough. That's not a point salad or a game of different paths, that's just a game of recognizing the ONE BEST path for THIS GAME SETUP and you win. (Why bother playing after that?) Hrrrmmmm. We shall see. Rating (currently a 7) is extremely provisional - it could go up or down. ADDENDUM: I played a 4p game. Same board layout (beginner game) with two changes. First, we did the starting resources draft (which really doesn't change much). Second, I requested that the pyramid power be replaced (the one that says treat it as +1 worker and 1 resource discount). We replaced it with a power that said any time you power up a worker as part of a main action, you could pay 1 cocoa to get another power up. This had the comparative impact of slightly slowing down the pyramid construction (albeit not by that much - the game ended with all but 3-4 tiles of the pyramid built) but speeding up the game (since the white/day marker advances once whenever a worker ascends/reaches 6 and resets). I snagged the two critical powers as my first two actions (the power up power first, then the extra resources second). No one else did that nearly as fast if at all. I proceeded to do a bit of lots of things - temple construction, peaked on the green track, almost halfway up the red track, no masks, a number of decorations, step 8 on the avenue of the dead (mostly through ascensions, though I built 2-3 houses or so). I crushed. I was way ahead (like +30-40) after the first eclipse, slightly closer after the second (like +20), and ended with a decent differential (+17) over the mask collector (who closed up the scoring a lot during the third eclipse, with 2 end game temple bonuses, though those *still* only came out a little ahead of my one, well-played temple end game bonus). It was a good game, but I definitely felt like I was in the lead - I was the one to beat (and no one did). I agree that location placement will probably mix things up. However, I still fear that the game comes down to spotting the best technology & temple scoring synergy, claiming it asap, and abusing it. I feel like any given setup will have a single "best" way forward and all other strategies will be subservient for that setup. This really bugs me. In a perfect world, it means we set up the game, spot the winning strategy, see who can execute it best, call them the winner and put the game away. I know that second-to-last step isn't quite so crystal clear, but I would love to know how often, and from what differential, someone has come back from NOT being in the lead during the first eclipse to winning the game. I have an inkling it's a very low percentage. So yeah, I like the concept but I feel like a lot of the options are illusory - they're just not quite equivalent to the "best" strategy for that setup. Which means there actually aren't alternate paths to victory. Which, for me, is a problem... ADDENDUM 2: Another 4p game. My friend cautioned against a mask strategy &/or using the default mask scoring. So what did I do? MASKS! In fact, I did little else apart from masks, locking my workers to climb 1+0.5+0.5 temple tracks and technologies (which also tied into my temple scoring bonus). I was behind on the first and second epoch, but the continual mask scoring (10 pts in the first epoch, then one set of 6 for 21 then a set of 2 for 3 more = 24 in the third epoch) plus my temple scoring pushed me ahead. I won by 4 points. The technologies were key. I got more of them earlier, used them decently well, then received a number of surcharges (3 pts each) when other players later picked them up. I did build a few temple tiles and 1 or 2 decorations, but I only ascended 2 workers because I was focused on locking them. A strange game, but it worked! This play did nothing to assuage my criticisms. I think the techs are key - spot the good ones, snag them asap, abuse them. The green temple tracks is *huge* because of the cocoa. The other two tracks are merely nice. Not my favorite game. I'm glad I sold it.
ABigOleBoat
As is traditional for this line, just zero theme at all in this game - the chunky tiles are nice to play with, but it could be about absolutely anything at all. I don't mind drier euros too much - I'm a big Feld fan - but I need some kind of interesting gameplay to make up for the lack of theme, and this doesn't have it. The first and biggest issue with the game is that it is way too long, considering how it works. With experienced/skilled players, you generally know who has a big lead by the halfway mark - and you still have a ton of game to go. The completely fixed setup/scoring mechanics just drain all the tension from the game - you can look at your opponents board and know what they're going to do for the next 4-5 turns, and you simply don't care, because you can't change it, and it doesn't effect you in any sense. The tracks you compete on don't offer enough incentive to actually compete - it's nearly entirely a single player optimization problem. There's not nearly enough player interaction to justify the downtime in the 3-4 player game - and the game doesn't scale well to two. The physical production is decent - the temple tiles are the standout and nice to play with - but it's nothing exceptional considering the MSRP. Iconography is clear enough on the board, in my experience. The rulebook isn't great, but isn't terrible - just average. Obviously this game has a high rating, and a lot of people enjoy it, so I encourage everyone to try it, since there's probably a lot here I'm not seeing. But to me it is serviceable at best. It isn't actively unenjoyable - but there are dozens of Euros that deliver better theme, more interesting mechanics, and tighter playtimes.