Redeeming Settlers of the Stone Age

[kent_allard_jr]

Settlers of the Stone Age is one of the more disappointing boardgames on my shelf. This Settlers of Cataan variant was supposed to simulate man's exodus from Africa and colonization of the rest of the world. Unfortunately the innovations were few, and game didn't play much differently from Cataan except it was longer and sillier. So mountains supply Flint instead of Stone; hills get you Meat instead of Brick; you get Hides from forests instead of Wood, and Bones from plains instead of Sheep. This bizarre arrangement suggested that armies of skeletons marched over the plains while giant mounds of pudding oozed through the slimy hills. This was the cost breakdown:

• Explorer (roughly equivalent to a Road): 1 Hide + 1 Meat
  
• Camp (roughly equivalent to a Settlement): 1 Bone + 1 Flint + 1 Hide
  
• Moving an Explorer: 1 Meat
  
• Advancing a Progress Marker: 1 Flint (level 1); 1 Bone (level 2); 1 Flint + 1 Bone (levels 3 & 4); 1 Hide + 1 Flint + 1 Bone (level 5)
  

The game has the usual Cataan problems: There's too much chance, not enough strategy, and if you fall behind (due to some bad rolls) you're screwed for the whole game. Here are some changes I'd suggest, to better simulate the background, to make it more interesting, and to provide a little more balance among the players:

• Stone-age societies often over-exploited their resources, hunting local megafauna to extinction. Here's how I would simulate this: Create an "animal products" deck made up of 5 Bones, 5 Hides and 10 Meats. When a hex generates any one of these resources -- Bones, Hides or Meats -- any player with a settlement on that hex may "over-exploit" it. A black stone is placed on the hex, and these players draw a number of "animal product" cards equal to their Hunting Levels. If the number is rolled again, the black stone is replaced with a white stone, and the hex cannot be "over-exploited" again. But when a "7" is rolled, any hex a black stone is converted to desert.
  
• Necessity, as we all know, is often the mother of invention; people only change their ways when forced to do so. I would create an "innovation deck" made up of 5 Bones, 5 Hides and 10 Flint. If a player receives no resources on his turn, he may draw a card from the "innovation deck."
  

Thoughts?

Comments

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Isn't over-exploitation already loosely simulated by having stites be temporary? That was one of the aspects I liked. I don't have enough spare brain cells at the moment to comment on the rest.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

In the current rules, you can only abandon camps in Africa -- probably the continent with the lowest level of megafauna extinction. So this system works a little differently.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

I think I like the idea of the deck to compensate players who don't draw a resource as a generally good Katan variation.