Puzzle #1 :: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

[Gantry]

This is the first of hopefully more than one many puzzles for you!  The object is to take a look at the board and the description, assume the tile drawn is yours, where do you put it?  Why?

Hopefully these puzzles will help people learn a bit of strategy from each other, see some examples of gameplay with various expansions, and generate some discussion.  There are no right or wrong answers, when you tell us where you would play the tile, tell us your strategy why you chose that spot.  Your reasons will vary, and include things like how you play, maximizing your own score, minimizing your opponent's score, etc. 

The image is large, you'll probably have a better time of it if you save a copy to your hard drive.  Of course, since this is my first one, let me know if there's anything I could do to improve it for you.  Have fun!

Puzzle #1 :: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

[Tobias]

Hmm - tricky!

Spontanously I'd place it at B2, and not put a meeple on it. In so doing forcing my opponent to use a city and road tile - giving him/her fewer options to finish the city.

However, C46[G] would probably be what I end up doing. It's a nice little road and it adds to my cloister.

Might need to think and check in later

Good work!

[Gantry]

Well my first puzzle has been out for about a week now, and Tobias was the only one brave enough to tackle it.  Does anyone have constructive comments for me for the next version?  This first puzzle has a low complexity, do they need to be harder?  Have only 1 good answer?  etc

I have a good system now I can whip one out in about half an hour.

[Gantry]

I guess I should give it a go too   I'd be tempted to use my first suggestion of C6 [G], because it establishes my thief on a 4 point road to start with.  My opponent will likely draw and place a tile at 10 for his city, thereby adding another 4 points to my road, with a possbility of extending it to 9 - 12 points in total (ending at 19), and at some point giving me back my follower to use again elsewhere.  These are guaranteed points, vs using them to block a city which I would consider a gamble at this point in a game.

[canada steve]

C46 (G) would be my placement as it would extend the road, which I would place a Thief on and it would extend my Cloister. As It stands with one extra tile on the road it would give 6 points for the road and 9 for the cloister, if completed, so 15 points.

[likie]

Sorry - I haven't yet had a go at this - looks good, but my computer is a bit ancient (plus the pictures are always quite dark) so it doesn't quite work.  I will have a look one day at work and give an answer. 

[Gantry]

So out of all our members, heck out of even our active members, I only have 2 responses, so I should re-think the idea of this type of strategy puzzle.  No sense taking the time to create them if there isn't much response, my time can be better spent at all the other tasks adding other types of content.  Maybe you all can help me:

In a nutshell, what is wrong with the puzzle?  ie, too easy, too hard, too ambiguous, takes too long to think up an answer, just not fun, etc?

Go ahead and sock it to me, constructive criticism is welcomed!

[likie]

My computer is the problem - nothing to do with the puzzle.  I haven't been at work this week either as we had a baby on Easter Day.

[Gantry]

wow congrats likie!!!  instead of a stork, the easter bunny delivered you a young'un!

[canada steve]

Gantry, nothing wrong with the puzzle, maybe a bit to straightforward and didnt challenge anyone enough. Personally I like the idea and encourage you to keep it up, or tell me hoe to do this and I will gladly put a puzzle together each week.

[mjharper]

@likie: Congratulations!

[SteveBme]

Gantry,
I hope that you will continue with the idea. It could be a challenge to us all.
I will make the time to consider the next challenge first when it comes out.
As to the question - I would go the longer shot of C6, place a thief and hope to get a crfr tile. This road will separate the red fermer from a potential castle with tiles 4 & 12 etc. This placement also adds one to my cloister.
Thanks for the time to do puzzle one. I await the next and future puzzles.

[Gantry]

Thanks SteveBme,

I do plan to do a few more actually, been working on one but creating one is actually harder than it looks because of all the possibilities.  Kind of like setting up a chess game scenario.  Next one should be out soon.

[likie]

I looked at work, but seemed to have some trouble with the puzzle sizing - it was either so small I could barely see it or so large that I couldn't see all the tiles on the screen in one go. (Something with me and computers!!) The puzzle looked really good though.

Actually quite hard (for me anyway- and a good test really) to look at an already set out lot of tiles - much easier when you are actually in the game as you kind of build the strategy as you go.

In terms of my play I think I would go with the one that extends the road and also adds to a cloister (I wouldn't play my last meeple)   

[Gantry]

I looked at work, but seemed to have some trouble with the puzzle sizing - it was either so small I could barely see it or so large that I couldn't see all the tiles on the screen in one go. (Something with me and computers!!) The puzzle looked really good though.

I fired up my most ancient computer here, an old Pentium III with 384M of RAM and an onboard video card that's about as basic as you can get, running Win 2000 Svr.  When I opened the puzzle graphic, it opened it in a new browser window, and indeed, older IE browsers will allow you to squish it down to fit the screen (too small) or by default show it full size (too big). Performance-wise, even with an old machine I could fairly quickly scroll vertically and horizontally.

As I said in the first post though, "The image is large, you'll probably have a better time of it if you save a copy to your hard drive" still holds true.  Right-click, Save Target As and put a copy on your desktop.  Then you can open it using any other image viewing program, such as irfanview, Windows picture & fax viewer, or whatever you have installed.  Same with Mac, it will have a good image viewer. Many of them will also let you adjust the brightness with a few keystrokes so if your monitor is dark at least you can brighten it up some.

I'll make the next puzzle with few tiles so it should be a tad easier.