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Planet M.U.L.E.
http://www.planetmule.com/
For those of you who are not aware, M.U.L.E. is a legendary and amazing old PC game of colonization and economics. It's really more of a board game designed to take advantage of the fact that it is software. There really hasn't been anything like it since. It is also a game with a storied history, that all gamers should be aware of.
There have been many attempts to remake M.U.L.E. and bring it to a modern audience. Pretty much all of them have failed, but this new one, Planet M.U.L.E. looks promising. I'll start playing it tonight after work. Let's get some games together, and see if we can't revive this classic.
For those of you who are not aware, M.U.L.E. is a legendary and amazing old PC game of colonization and economics. It's really more of a board game designed to take advantage of the fact that it is software. There really hasn't been anything like it since. It is also a game with a storied history, that all gamers should be aware of.
There have been many attempts to remake M.U.L.E. and bring it to a modern audience. Pretty much all of them have failed, but this new one, Planet M.U.L.E. looks promising. I'll start playing it tonight after work. Let's get some games together, and see if we can't revive this classic.
Comments
1) Randomness. Too much of the game is random BS. The price of crystite is entirely random. The land grab is effectively random. The random events tend to penalize the leader and reward the losers, as in Power Grid, but are uneven in their punishment. I received severe punishments when I was in the lead, and other players did not. Randomness needs to be removed.
2) The land auction is broken. Not sure if it's a bug, but I consider it to be one. Any player can put in an enormous "bid" during a land auction. This raises the minimum bid to a point nobody will be willing to pay. Then the player can rescind the bid, taking no risk whatsoever. However, the minimum bid remains sky-high. Thus, land auctions effectively don't exist. Either all the players are stupid, and they allow someone a huge advantage by getting land for a reasonable price, nobody gets land because of it being unreasonably priced, or someone ruins their game by pissing away all their money on one plot.
3) The game is too long. It takes forever. 12 rounds is an eternity. I can almost play Die Macher in less time than a full game of M.U.L.E. it takes even longer because other players online don't hurry up. I really don't have time for more full games of this.
Here is how to fix this game and make it perfect.
1) Remove the auction mechanics of moving your guy up and down. They are cute and unique, but don't work. Instead, everyone should just choose buying or selling, type in a max price, and type in a quantity of units. Then the game will automatically resolve the market. The same goes for a land auction. Each player must type a number, secretly, then the land goes to the highest bidder. At the very least, if a player rescinds their bid in a land auction, the minimum bid should reset.
2) Remove the land grab. Instead, do this. Every turn each player selects two lands secretly. If a player is the only player to select a land, they can then purchase it for a price depending on the plot. Obviously the good farm plots, or 3 mountain plots will cost more than plains. If more than one player selects a plot, auction.
3) Reduce the game rounds to 6, or maybe 8.
4) The crystite market needs to be non-random. At the very least, players need some sort of metric they can base their crystite buying and selling decisions on. A graph of market trends and estimates will suffice.
5) For economic awesomeness, allow futures markets, hedging, and other such mechanisms. Not strictly necessary, might actually bog game down, but would still be awesome.
6) If there is going to be a random catch-up mechanism in the form of random events, at least make them even out somehow.
7) Wampus-catching can remain. It's cute, and doesn't have that much of a negative effect, even though it's stupid from a game mechanics point of view.
And that's how to turn M.U.L.E. into an amazing game that would rival Carcassonne levels of goodness.