1826 Private Company Variant
By David G. D. Hecht
The following variant arose from an
online discussion of initial auction variations for 18GL and other 18xx
games. David G. D. Hecht, the designer of 1826, notes that this
is "just something I ginned up on the
spur
of the moment, and there's no testing involved. For all I know it
unbalances the game horribly!" He
has kindly given permission to post this variant. David's
original comments have been combined here with a more detailed
delineation of the changes to the private companies than he gave in his
original email in the 18xx Group.
In a message in the Yahoo! 18xx Group on 16 June 2009, Danny Victor
asked:
"...If you deduct the value of the Belge and Alsace shares that go
with the privates from the cost of those privates [since those can
help form the Belge and the Alsace], you really aren't left with much
extra cash in the game. What problems might that small bit of extra
cash
cause?"
David G. D. Hecht replied:
In that game, regarding those privates, that is not an issue. What
*is* an issue is balanced development of the board. The Alsace got a
private (to go with its presidency) because otherwise the eastern
half of the board tended to be very underdeveloped. In
retrospect, it's possible it would have been better to make the Alsace
private more like the [1870 game's] Frisco private: you get to start
the company
immediately, and you never get any private income. Obviously then
it would have been better to assign it a lower price (say f.160), and
then maybe move the Paris private down to f.140 (and maybe only give it
one share of Paris). Or move the Alsatian all the way down to
f.140 and leave the Paris as is.
For the Belge, the situation was more complicated: I needed to find a
way to make the Belge startable for a single player. Perforce, I had to
inject one or more shares of it into the start packet. In point
of fact, the complaint has rarely been about the Belge per se, merely
that it is viewed as overvalued: I could have solved that problem by
giving the private company a second payout (i.e. it would close when
the Belge paid for the first time rather than when it bought its first
train), which would (in effect) have made it f.20 more valuable.
Another possibility would have been to swap it with the Algerian (the
+1 train limit guy) which always seems to draw much more bidding.
So, if you wanted to try an 1826 variant with rebalanced privates, this
is what'd I'd suggest:
P1 - Cost f.20, Revenue f.5, allows one river tile to be laid
without paying the f.40 cost (UNCHANGED)
P2 - Cost f.40, Revenue f.10, provides a +f.10 bonus token
(UNCHANGED)
P3 - Cost f.70, Revenue f.15, comes with a single share of Etat Belge
(same as old P4)
P4 - Cost f.110, Revenue f.20, allows a company to increase its
Train Limit by +1 (same as old P3)
P5 - Cost f.140, NO Revenue, IS the President's Certificate of the
Alsatian, which launches on just the Presidency (similar to Frisco
private company from 1870)
P6 - Cost f.160, Revenue f.25, comes with the President's Certificate
of the Paris (UNCHANGED except for order in the sequence [now P6 vice
P5])
By the way, you still get to set the starting value of the
Alsatian wherever you
like, so that's an instant f.80 profit if you set it at f.110 (f.220 -
f.140)!
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This page originally posted on 17 June 2009.
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