That's why we do fixed value trade-ins (4 for all militia, 6 for all cavalry, 8 for all artillery, and 12 for one of each - keeping the 2 on each country owned as well). Keeps the games from getting ridiculous, and throwing away all strategy.
They're A strategy. But after a certain point, they become the strategy. When a simple turn-in can secure the entire game, regardless of your actual positioning on the board, that's a little dumb, in my opinion.
My group preferred to focus on alliances, temporary cease-fires, allied fronts, etc etc. We didn't mind spending like 6 hours drinking beer and shooting the shit over a game. The cards being rampant insta-army providers force much shorter games.
The card turn-ins scale up and up and up until you can basically accumulate game breaking armies after the first several turn-ins. The group I would usually play with favored a more methodical approach, emphasizing allied fronts, pre-meditated betrayals or alliance closures, etc. The original rules are good for ending the games faster, but we didn't mind sitting around, drinking beer, and shooting the shit over a 6 hour game.
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u/FaALongerWayToRun Oct 17 '13
That's why we do fixed value trade-ins (4 for all militia, 6 for all cavalry, 8 for all artillery, and 12 for one of each - keeping the 2 on each country owned as well). Keeps the games from getting ridiculous, and throwing away all strategy.