by Mools
meepleraptor wrote:
How long is a 3 player short game? The rules say the 2 player short game is 45 minutes, and the 3 player short game is 120 minutes, which seems like a very big jump!
I've only played 2 and 4 player and the game goes from about an hour to 2.5 hours. So for some reason the time-per-person does increase as the number of players increases. This probably goes along with how the game plays different and feels different as well.
I suspect that when playing with 2p, there is less real serious decisions to make. The game is more about meeting the rapidly increasing food demands but there is lots of ways to get food in the 2p game between fish, meat and bread. The same can be true with regard to which resources you pick...someone grabs the wood, not a big deal because you grab some food.
But in a 3p game there is more competition and fewer turns between rounds. Each action becomes more important and therefore probably adds more time to think about your action. The number of rounds MAY also increase (can't remember off hand) as well as the number of cards which may also add extra time.
As for saving time, I keep all resource chits in these circular plastic bead containers. They all screw together into a stack so when I set up the game I just unscrew the containers and put them right on the board. Makes set-up quicker as well as slightly reduces fiddliness.