by doctoryes0
It just occurred to me that those of you who don’t love the late-game steel bottleneck may not be aware of David Jones’ absolutely brilliant variant:No shipping variant
After several plays I like it every bit as much as the base game, and love how different it feels. Steel is still a good value, but only up to a point - the amount needed to make ships for their food and cash value - since excess steel can’t be utilized.
A further tweak to the variant is to allow ‘digging’ in the fourth pile - there’s still a top card which may be built by the city, but you can build any card beneath it at any time. This allows you to truly hone in on a specialization like leather furniture or sandwiches, for example.