The action economy in games
We booked our flights, hotels and games at GenCon 2013! This, plus playing many new boardgames with friends recently, has gotten me thinking quite a bit about how games work. +Chris Parsons recently introduced me to both Hansa Teutonica and Agricola, both of which were lots of fun to play (winning helped I'm sure...). Both enable you to gain more actions as the game progresses (in Agricola you grow your family, in Hansa you unlock actions directly) but the way they limit the power difference that comes from being able to act more often than everyone else is different. In Agricola, there's a cost to having more actions. You need to feed your family and since everyone is taking turns sequentially, later purchased actions are less valuable than early actions (everyone's taken the best things!). Thus, someone who has four actions is barely ahead of someone with three actions but someone with five actions is way ahead of someone with only two. On top of that, gaining new ac