Saturday’s playtest of Villanostra went pretty well. We didn’t get as far as testing any of the new facility abilities, but the playtesters were engaged and gave me interesting ideas.
- Score all undamaged facilities each year, whether they employ a villager or not. Bonus points for matching values on employed villagers.
- Players called them “buildings” instead of “facilities”. While they are not all technically “buildings”, it’s a more familiar term and I should use it instead.
- Dot voting for project selection worked great. Only downside is that councilors couldn’t earn a coin by not proposing a project, so the economy is tighter. I’ll leave it as-is for a few more playtests to see if it’s too tight.
- Councilors who aren’t in play are still thematically present: they could add their influence by some easily-processed rules to help get stuff built.
Considering my own situation, it also seemed to me that unemployed villagers should gain stress. 🙁
Stress and corruption mechanisms already seem to work pretty well. End of year villager processing is a little confusing and slow, so I think streamlining that should be my focus to prep for next playtest.