Pei-Chen and I picked Power Grid for our game night. We had 6 people. Yongjin, Pei-Chen, Fabien, Marlene, and us.
We chose Germany map since Pei-Chen and Yongjin were going to visit Freiburg for a conference. A Germany map could make them familiar with Germany geography. Totof and I spent 20 min to set up the game and explained the game rules. As mentioned in another Power Grid post, this game was quite strategic. All players needed to budget their actions well. At each turn, all player
s needed to not only think what to do for current turn, but also consider the future impact from current decision. At each turn, the beginning phase was an auction: all players bid available power plants (initially, four power plants were available. Another 4 power plants were on future market. After reached step 3, six power plants would be on the market for auction. No future market.) Then, the second phase was to buy raw materials. The third phase was to deploy cities. The fourth phase was to replenish raw materials. The fifth phase was to discard the highest number power plant from future market.We had many Ph. D people at this night. Marlene was a Postdoc. Yongjin, Pei-Chen, and Fabien were Ph. D. candidates. We had five people from Stanford. People's intelligence got revealed during the game.
Yongjin and Pei-Chen always went for auctions. Their intelligence showed on which power plants they bid. They foresaw the material costs. They preferred Garbage-based power plants (power plants could use garbage, coal, oil, uranium, wind, or water as materials. Material costs vary.) I never saw people bid many small number power plants like them before. (Each power plant had a number on the left upper side as its face value. The auction price for this power plant would be equal to or above the face value.) I gradually figured out this approach might be good in terms of power plant acquisition cost avoidance.
Yongjin tried out uranium power plant. He did not like his uranium power plant much because uranium's acquisition cost per unit was much higher than that for other materials before step 3. He switched back to trash power plant. In terms of city deployment, he experimented to put cities far away from others to avoid city competition (if someone acquired adjacent cities to your cities, then your city deployment fees would become higher.)
Pei-Chen got a very good start point in terms of city deployment. Her cities were close enough so that the pipe connection costs were low. In Power Grid map, cities connect to each other via pipes. Pipe connection fees vary. Shorter distance between cities returned lower connection fee. Longer distance between cities transformed higher connection fees. Among us, her deployment fees were the lowest.
Fabien liked to bid with others. He liked to increase the price to make others pay more. Besides, he liked to store extra raw materials when he was the first few to buy materials. Since the raw materials acquisitions were based on FIFO, the first few players could get cheaper price than the later players. Some extra storage could make the later acquisitions expensive. These two approaches were good strategies for reducing rivalry's competitive advantage.
Marlene computed a lot. Her computation amused people. She used the scientific calculator to help her optimize city acquisition costs. She pretended she was weak at the step 1. She barely bought any city at this step. She was far behind everyone else. Once the game reached step 2. Bang. She got 8 cities at one turn. She then got a very good position among all players. An astonish flip.
Thanks to Marlene, I saw the benefit of clean energy. Power plants with clean energy could save you a lot and avoid nasty material competition with other players. Marlene owned 2 clean energy power plants. One produced power for 2 cities and the other took care of 5 cities. These two power plants gave Marlene a better competitive advantage. I joined the clean energy group once I saw this advantage. I got the ultimate power plant, number 50. It was a clean energy power plant. With cost 52. A costly power plant. But it proved itself as a good one.
Totof saw the advantage of hiding behind (so you could bid power plants with lower price, acquire materials first and place your new cities in some better locations.) He then mimicked Marlene. He stop his city acquisition at one turn. Got a better turn order. And attack.
We spent more than 3 hours for Power Grid. People liked this game. Everyone got fun. We felt happy.
