Here's our pickle:

The Pre-New Caprica Human Strategy:

Gain population through a Crisis card, or effectively gain population by using the "Preventative Policy" card (declaring population) while moving civilian ships into harm's way. Just one or two gained population will do. With little-to-no civilian ships to worry about on New Caprica, humans can literally spend just a couple turns there and jump away with practically no fallout.

Only 10% of the Crisis cards involve population loss (20% if we include decision-based crises), so the build-a-pop method is very safe. So unless the Cylon can capitalize well before New Caprica (and attacking civilian ships only helps the humans), the Cylons lose. Repeatedly. Particularly second-half Cylons.

This was already addressed by another person on the forums, so apparently we aren't the only ones playing this way.

This borders on breaking the game. It is also the most counter-intuitive, against-the-grain concept that could probably be applied. We have been trying to think of ways to adapt playing to fix the situation. We considered adding a game rule of "if all the civilian ships are destroyed, the humans lose" or adding another Galactica damage token with a population symbol on it (that could be potentially recurring, but only appear after fuel and food have been hit), or whenever the occupation forces reach the end of the track and no civilian ships remain humans lose 1 population -- we've come up with at least a dozen ideas to fix the break, but none seem quite right. This might not sound that devastating or effective, but you should really see for yourself.

The heart of the game suggests that population is the most important (as reflected in the show) -- should an additional consequence be added to losing all the civilian ships, in keeping with the spirit of the game? Or are we supposed to roleplay and make the game harder for ourselves by protecting the civilian ships? Should the game-mechanics shape our playing, or do we shape our playing around game-mechanics?

Our Cylons have their work cut out for them, sure, but how can we help them out?

I guess you've already read that thread on BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/439743 which offers several solutions. I guess that if you want a new ruling from the game designers, the best way would be to use this: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_faq.asp or just ask Corey on BGG. I think he's reading this forum too though, so maybe we'll get an answer.

From my point of view, either treating the civilian ships as a resource (so if there are no civilian ships anymore, the humans lose) or treat them as a limitation to the pop dial as explained here could work:

- There are 12 civilian ships, so population cannot be more than 12.

- If after destroying a civilian ship (and after having taken the written loss at the back of the ship into account), there are more population than ships, the population is reduced to match the number of ships.

Here are some examples:

- Pop at 12 and still 12 civilian ships. One civilian ship is destroyed and there are no loss because it is a "decoy" ship. As there are now only 11 ships, population is still reduced from 12 to 11.

- Pop at 12 and 12 civilian ships. One ship is destroyed, revealing 1 loss in population and 1 loss in rations. Population is now at 11 and there are 11 civilian ships, so there is no need to reduce population.

- Pop at 10 after some crisis and 12 civilian ships. One "decoy" civilian ship is destroyed: no loss of population as the pop number (10) is under the number of civilian ships (11).

- Pop at 9 and there are 10 civilian ships. A crisis allows to gain 1 pop. It is allowed as the pop number is not above the number of civilian ships.

That sounds like a really good house rule, [LNA]Gary.

But the problem is intentionally playing the metagame. If you were in a tournament and all bets were off, then yeah, do whatever you have to do to win. But this is a mostly co-op game, and you're playing to have fun playing! Just like intentionally driving down a resource like morale to prevent a Sympathizer from appearing. Or by not doing your best job as a Human because you might be a Cylon later. If playing this breaking the game for you, it means you're not having fun. If your group thinks this is fun and won't agree to behave, you should find new people to play with, or switch to a non-co-op or full co-op game.

There's a chance your Cylon players aren't playing right, or not adapting to how your group is playing. Perhaps reveal sooner and start landing some boarding parties or Basestar shots. Give the humans something else to deal with. Or yes, get into the game a little more and say something like "I'm a Human. If you put my people in harms way, you're a Cylon, and I'll make it my mission in life to throw you out the airlock."

It's fun academically to find ways to exploit the game, but why would you actually do any of those things?

I partly agree with you Verocit but some players will always try to find exploit to some stuff, and the "playing human not that good in the first half in case you're a Cylon afterwards" is a strategy even encouraged in the rules book of the core game.

The fun in a game is, well, obviously trying to have fun but also trying to win. If the game has a flawed mechanics somewhere allowing for something that shouldn't happen, players can fix it with house rules until a fix from a FAQ is offered.

By the way, thematically, the fact that there are more pop than ships simply means that there are civilians who have been transfered to Galactica, so I didn't mind in the base game... Except that it doesn't make a lot of sense in the NC phase where you can basically just pop up with the Galactica and then go away directly, without any civilian ships. In this case, one can wonder what is the point of the whole NC phase...

For our group this is all part of the fun. Someone will come up with a strategy that will give their side the edge for a while... then its up to the other side to devise a clever way around it. We have found that very few things are actually game breaking. For example, in our group, the cylons have decided to make hitting pop. a priority as their "one big hit" before leaving. When this strategy shows up in our games, you can bet that the hidden cylon will jump the ship at -3 pop. or will tank a population check. And it seems to us that the new caprica deck is pretty brutal in and of itself, it doesn't take long on new caprica to have other resources dwindel down to nothing. We sometimes have knee-jerk reactions when a game goes badly for one side, you know, "that was unbalanced"... but most of the time it was nothing more than a well played strategy, a strategy that can be overcome one way or another.

What about limiting Preventative Policy so that you can choose any resource other than population?

Verocit said:

Exactly. It's like the frakkin' players who would redline a dial on purpose to affect the sympathizer. Yes, there are intense gamers who'll do this. Guess what? They get to play once and then... buh-bye! I can get good players at a game session without dragging "those" people in.

"But they're just trying to win? Isn't that the point of a game?" Sure. You telling me you can't win without finding some lame exploit? Guess you're the same sort who uses cheat codes on video games on the same day you bought it.

Trump said:

So you discriminate against players who use strategies that you have arbitrarily deemed too effective?

Wow, you're a total jerk and I would be quite happy not to have you invite me to play with you.

Trump said:

Just so I don't come across as too much of a screaming jerk here:

I actually don't even think this strategy is as great as people think. Usually by the time you hit the Sleeper Phase at least one dial will be in the red on its own without you helping it along. If you push too hard for a red dial then you're probably just doing the Cylon's work for him.

However, if you are having to choose between something like discarding cards or losing food with a Food Shortage, then trying to fix which side the Sympathizer will be on is probably something worth considering. Purposefully tanking check after check from turn one just to have one less Cylon on the other hand seems like a recipe for disaster.

So I am not 100% in love with the strategy and do not think it is as effective as people think.

However, I've played with multiple groups of people who had played this game without me introducing them to it first, and all of them independently had decided to use the Sympathizer Strategy in games with a Sympathizer.

If you avoid "those" kind of players, then you are probably going to have to avoid about 99% of people who play this game.

I also think that the weird blowing up your ships strategy is probably not going to prove to be as game breaking as people think after many plays.

But anyway, my reason for calling you a jerk in my first post:

People who play games, play games for many different reasons. You apparently enjoy the game for it's thematic elements, but don't care as much about trying to find interesting ways to "beat the game" especially if they seem unthematic.

Fine, that's cool, you don't have to personally push for that strategy in games you play.

Other players however may actually get enjoyment out of trying interesting strategies or trying to find the most "effective" way to play, that is cool too.

However to shun people because they enjoy gaming for slightly different reasons than you pretty much is what makes you a jerk.

Personally I have met both kinds of gamers and I have no real problem with either playstyle. However, when people start acting like their playstyle is "superior" then I say they have really lost sight of why they are involved in this hobby.

The purpose of gaming is to play games. If you feel it is your duty to dictate to people what are the "pure" motivations for wanting to play a game, then the gaming hobby would probably be better off without you.

DCAnderson said:

OK, you’re coming off as a total idiot here. I don’t believe you actually are one, so let’s try to puzzle this all out. Your above comment shows an absolute disregard for context as well as a decent aptitude at putting words in other people’s mouths. I don’t think you even mean exactly you said, but you just didn’t think it through first.

DCAnderson said:

Too late, but I appreciate the effort to explain yourself a bit better.

DCAnderson said:

I wouldn’t even try to say that all BSG players think like I do. But apparently you would. And you’d be wrong. I have had absolutely no problem avoiding that kind of person as they aren’t nearly as numerous as you claim. I can recall only once when such a person slipped through the cracks. Guess what? Nobody in that game wants to play with him again. But wait, how is that possible? 99% of BSG players are like that and I’m a lone jerk. Right…

DCAnderson said:

Of COURSE players game for different reasons. And those reasons can change based on what you’re playing and who you’re playing with. I’m playing Puerto Rico to win. I’m playing Apples to Apples to have a good time. You’re a complete liar if you say you don’t shun players who aren’t on the same wavelength as you. There’s room for variability (who wants to play every game with their clone?), but there are those who are just too far off of your own path. Heck, you seem like you’d like to shun me because I enjoy gaming for a different reason than you. But that would make you a jerk. And you can’t be calling yourself a jerk, can you?

DCAnderson said:

Wow! I’ve been assigned a duty! I already have a lot to do so I’m not sure if I can fit this in or not. I’ll have to get back to you with this job offer.

If it´s a resource problem that keeps appearing in your games, why don´t you adjust the population downwards from the start of the game.

Just a little suggestion taken from your friendly BSG rulebook

I think you guys should calm down, from what I read on BGG, it seems that both approach ("managing" the sympatizer or not) are played and accepted, so there's no need to tell that one is forbidden and the other isn't.

If you don't tank (I think that's the correct expression?) the sympathizer, you get an additional nerfed Cylon but the humans can already be so much on the way of winning that it balances things out.

On the other hand, if you tank the sympathizer, it opens a possibility for the Cylon(s) to keep hurting the resource you got into the red.

Anyway, I think both ways of playing work and there's no reason to eliminate one of them.

Oh and I forgot: I don't play with the sympathizer anyway. ^^

Let me clarify myself a bit too.

What I heard was "Humans are using a strategy that is breaking the game, how can I fix this?"

What I was trying to suggest was, instead of finding a way to re-balance with this strategy, maybe the problem is using the strategy at all. I was hearing that the strategy was making the game less fun, but maybe that isn't true. Maybe his group is like stwerner92182's, but is just having trouble figuring out the counter to this strategy.

"So you discriminate against players who use strategies that you have arbitrarily deemed too effective? Wow, you're a total jerk and I would be quite happy not to have you invite me to play with you."

First, it's not arbitrary judgment, it's a quite specific opinion. It's not how strong a strategy is, it's how lame a strategy is. Second, you'd probably love to play with me, I lose regularly.

Why can't boxers knee eachother in the groin? Too effective? Well there are rules.

So if it's not in the rules that makes it ok? Well, yes, technically. All's fair in war and sci-fi genocide. THERE'S NO RULE ABOUT ALL CAPS BUT IT'S STILL PRETTY ANNOYING ISN'T IT? All I'm saying is that finding glitchy, mechanical, loopholes and exploits is not how I personally have a good time. Like DCAnderson already said, play however you want, but me not wanting to play your way is no different from you not wanting to play mine.

One final fictional scenario. Say me and 2 others are playing some sort of Free-for-All elimination game. We are evenly matched, so as the game unfolds it could lead to a victory for any party. The 2 others decide that their odds of winning are much better if they are one of the last two standing. They decide to ignore eachother for the time being, and work together against me. They are within the rules of the game, so I am quickly eliminated.

We play again, and since it worked so well, they use this strategy again, and again I am 3rd place.

How long would you expect me to play with these people and their totally viable, ruthlessly effective strategy?

Verocit wrote: Or by not doing your best job as a Human because you might be a Cylon later.

[LNA]Gary wrote: and the "playing human not that good in the first half in case you're a Cylon afterwards" is a strategy even encouraged in the rules book of the core game.

In my experience, it's very difficult to get players to understand this "Prepare for the Sleeper Phase" tip from the rulebook and to take it into consideration. I'm all for it; and it's the kind of tip that makes metagame strategies like this unviable. If the Cylons have not been uncovered by the Sleeper Phase, I am not going to make it so difficult for myself to win as a Cylon that *if I am a Sleeper* I feel like giving up and throwing the game so the next hour and a half are not wasted.

I play the game to win. And that means taking into account the fact that you might turn out to be a Cylon in the Sleeper Phase. You HAVE to shoot yourself in your human foot to give yourself enjoyment if your other foot turns out to be stainless steel. The challenge comes in not tipping it so far that you give the Cylons an easy victory if you stay human. All this is reliant on people playing the game so THEY PERSONALLY can win. Not just aiming for a human victory right out of the gate on turn 1.

Mordenthral said:

I think this is a silly strategy. Let's say the game has just started and no loyalty cards have been dealt out yet. The odds are AGAINST you being a Cylon. Now we hand out the cards. Let's say you're still not a Cylon. How about that upcoming Sleeper Phase? Again, the odds are AGAINST you being a Cylon. Let's go even one step further and say that a Cylon is revealed before the Sleeper phase. Your chances of becoming a Cylon have become even smaller.

OK, you say, those stats are good for odd numbers of players, but my odds are a little better with an even number, right? Yes, they are, but they still only go up to 50% and decrease if a Cylon is revealed in the first half of the game.

But what about Baltar and Boomer? THEN you may be on to something. In a game with an even number of players, they do have a little better than 50% chance of being a Cylon. If you're playing one of them, you might take the "wait and see" approach. If they're in the game and you aren't playing them though, your chances have just gone below the 50% mark.

I'd still avoid this strategy though. It's just not needed. It is far FAR easier to make the humans' situation worse than it is to make it better. If you're a human, play well, and become a Cylon, one nasty backstab can do plenty of damage. If you're a human, play crummy in case you become a Cylon, and then find out you're human for sure, what are you going to do?

Here's another take. Let's say you drag your feet at first since you think you might become a Cylon one day. Who do you think is going to be at the top of the list for current probable Cylons? Yes, YOU. That slacker strategy of yours could land you in the brig and that's not a fun place to be for either team.

Trump said:

Being in the brig is a lot more fun than watching someone metagame the humans to victory, being a Sleeper agent and feeling like you've already lost the game halfway through. If I'm not a Cylon, I'll get out eventually, and there are plenty of things for most characters to do while in the Brig. I could drag my feet even more from in there and it slows the game down skipping a possible Jump Prep every round. Whoever winds up being a Cylon can thank me later for keeping the game interesting.

The point, however, was that these game-breaking strategies are all pro-human. There's more to the game than just being a human character. Allow for the possibility that if you become a Cylon you don't want to "have your work cut out for you" and the game won't grow stale after metagaming your way to a human victory 50 times in a row; like the dude with the notepad.

In a normal group, true, this strategy is not needed. The game is skewed enough in favor of the Cylons in 5 and 6-player games. In 4-player games, this strategy keeps things interesting. Especially in a 4-player game of Pegasus. Whoever gets the Cylon card will be working against 2 humans and a sympathetic leader. That sucks if all the dials are still near the top and there are no Cylon ships on the board.

My group doesn't need this strategy. We never look with dread on becoming a Cylon. Being a Cylon is fun, and the Cylons win slightly more than the humans. But for groups that have 90% human victories and their games consist of people sighing in defeat when they get a Sleeper card, this is something to -keep in mind-. It's a tip, as presented in the rulebook.

Mordenthral said:

I've often wondered about these anomalies. The game came out and all we'd hear was how Cylons always won. Eventually, the humans figured out how to play better and started getting some wins themselves. But is there really a group out there with anything like a 90% human win rate? There was one fellow who kept notes during the game as did his friends and he wondered how the Cylons could win, but I think most of us can see how his group was EXCEPTIONALLY weird. And people sighing in defeat when they got a Sleeper card? Tthis will be the first time I've heard of a group who hates playing the Cylons. Sure, I've heard of specific people not being happy because they seem to get the Cylon card every game and they wanted to try the other side, but again, that's a special case. None of this changes that playing poorly because you might become a Cylon is a bad idea. If your entire group plays under that same philosophy, it might be a "safe" strategy, but I have to question how the same group would have a 90% human win rate. I have had one or two games when the humans just walked all over the Cylons and they didn't have a prayer of turning things around, but the stars really have to align just right for that. This game isn't simply a matter of the humans vs the Cylons. The game itself is against the humans as well.

Trump said:

Exactly my point; they won't.

Here's another way to look at it. If you always, always play optimally and have a group consensus on everything and never do anything a little bit fishy.. then one day you get a Cylon card.. what then? If you do anything the least bit out of line, the other players will be on to you immediately. Play a bit fuzzy until the Sleeper phase, which helps prevent this kind of metagaming, and it will provide you cover for when you actually are a Cylon.

And yes, I see the irony. But I feel the 'fuzzy play' metagame keeps the game fun.

Mordenthral said:

I see what you're saying, but I think the humans will be playing "fuzzy"anyway. No extra "fuzziness" required. There's not so many Executive Orders flying around. It's hard to get a consensus on actions because you can always see a Cylon angle and wonder at motive. I don't see truly optimal playing going on constantly until the second half anyway. I still say it's irrational to play suboptimally because you think you might be a Cylon later. HOWEVER, I have thought of a good argument for this strategy. Think of the even bigger picture. Sure, in any given game it's a coin toss whether or not you'll be a Cylon, but if you constantly play with essentially the same people and you consider... oh.... that you'll be playing a dozen games with them, you have a very decent chance of being a Cylon in at least one of those games. If you're the guy who's always playing perfectly, then that has to be your cover when you're a Cylon... and that's counter-productive. You'll probably have to reveal early just to stop yourself from always being the man with a plan. Either that or feign being ill or tired so less is expected of you. Again, I don't see all of this optimal human playing happening in the first half anyway. I'm just saying maybe you don't want to be the one who always steps up first with a plan.

Trump said:

Exactly. And this is all theoretical as neither of us seems to play with a group that metagames the purposeful destruction of civilian ships like this. I'm just saying, argumentatively, that I wouldn't by default go along with a strategy that leads to human victory most of the time. It's great for the humans, and I realise that percentage-wise you will be a human most of the time. However, I wouldn't want the humans to win when I turn out to be a Cylon and I don't want "not going along with the destroy ships plan" to = "I must be a Cylon".

Re: Metagaming, hardcore strategery, and the 'unfun' of optimization.

Our group is one of 'those' groups, as Trump would say. Our players very much look at the options available, and then pick the options that are mathematically best. If a decision isn't subject to a mathematical analysis, then we use subjective criteria. In terms of fun, each of us would like to win (we have fun playing, and have fun winning, losing really isn't a big deal), and we take appropriate measures to do so. If that means a set of supposedly human players 'red-dials' a resource to turn the sympathizer one way or another, it means that those players are taking measures to win, and there isn't anything wrong with that (in our eyes).

This does mean, of course, that many of our strategies favour humans. This is a consequence of game design: humans can cooperate and decide what's best for humans with impunity, because there is no disadvantage for openly being a human in the game. If a player makes an optimal move for humans, none of us will stand up and say, "A human! To the Admiral's Quarters!" or "I disagree with your move, because it advantages the humans too much!" for obvious reasons. The reverse is equally obvious, when someone uses communications to place civilian ships in the path of some raiders, that person can't really expect much sympathy when they shrug and say "I'm hedging" or "I thought I'd give the cylon player a better shot at winning, whoever the cylon is." Now, this isn't to say that we sit down and discuss how humans will win the game, but when an admiral picks Barren Planet as a location, and ticks the fuel down two and the rest of us (hypothetically) say "What are you doing?!" he can calmly reply "I'm bringing a resource into the red, so that the sympathizer will be human, making our job easier." Any objections are pretty clearly a cylon's position.

Now, we certainly aren't like the poster with the 90% win ratio for humans, whose handle was LikeTheWhirlwind. His group very much seems to break the secrecy rules and/or the cylon players have no idea how to play against such a rigid system.

On Red-dialing: It is a good strategy, the vast majority of the time if you are playing with the base game sympathizer mechanic and depending on the resource you tank. The problem with the sympathizer is that it does not actually measure how well or poorly the humans are doing, and then 'balances' the game on that poor basis. Red-dialing is exactly one of those strategies that abuses the sympathizer rules. Chiefly, our group does it through fuel, and really it's the best one to red-dial with. Morale is risky, and population is unrecoverable, food is fairly unrecoverable but less risky than morale or population. Fuel, however, is the least punishable resource and the easiest to red-dial. There are only a handful of crises that affect fuel, and most of them leave the decision to drop fuel in the admiral's hands. Any two of Barren Planet/Asteroid Field, Desolate Moon and any location, etc. can red-dial fuel. There are a ton of combinations, and there are plenty of ways to drop fuel below 5 before the sleeper phase. Red-dialing fuel in particular is a very strong strategy. Does this make it impermissible? I'd say that it is perfectly permissible. After all, how would you distinguish between a player 'red-dialing' and a player who picks Barren Planet followed by Asteroid Field, merely because those two locations were the best in their respective choices? My group has only ever seen a human loss on the fuel resource, ever.

What does this all mean for cylon players? Firstly, we can't always agree on what's optimal. Sometimes, a player will think that jumping at -3 is worth it while another wont think so. Secondly, Cylons must do subtly harmful things. Much of this involves following the suggestions on the main FFG BSG page (if that article still lives there). Sometimes, it means revealing early. Sometimes it means making excuses for failure (you can't red-dial fuel *every* game). Sometimes it means sabotaging skill checks. Make no mistake, though our metagame might favour humans, the presence of a Cylon is not invisible in our games.

That said, the proposed strategy in this thread is pretty goofy. There is no reason to purposefully destroy civilian ships when the admiral (or another player) could easily use preventative policy when leaving New Caprica, or pick the appropriate choices for crises earlier in the game. Frankly, it makes no difference if the civilian ship is destroyed near the beginning of the game, than at the end, unless there is repeated use of preventative policy.

90% win rates are only actually good if that's not the normal distribution. If your group has humans winning 90% of the time and your win percentage is also 90%, you're only a mediocre player. It's just like being able to predict a fair coin 50% of the time isn't actually an accomplishment.

Zack said:

90% win rates for one side is the sign of a broken game. I think the point is a game that has virtually guaranteed victory for one side is not really a game worth playing; it's simply not enjoyable for the person unfortunate enough to be on the losing side to face an unbeatable strategy and for their decisions or ingenuities to never matter.

None of the strategies I have ever seen on these boards have resulted in such a stilted win ratio (though, the one at the beginning of this thread bears more testing, I'm sure). Red-dialing, strategies involving card counting, strategies involving sabotage and reveal opportunities never seem to result in seriously tilted game scenarios (though, red-dialing was certainly frustrating in many games).

Sinis said:

Well, it depends. Assume a 5-player game and focus on Player A.

When Player A is human, the humans win 100% of the time. When Player A is a cylon, the cylons win 50% of the time. If Player A Is a cylon 1-in-5 games, you end up with a 90% win ratio for humans. Is that a sign of an unbalanced game? Or Player A's dominance in this particular group of players?

Justin Alexander said: