Editing CastlesInTheAir

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..and feathered canyons everywhere...

The name of the EnglishLanguage translation of the [[AMV]] OnYourMark, by StudioGhibli. It's very pretty.

CategoryAnime

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Also the name of a BoardGame designed by AlexChurchill. The players pilot zeppelins into the clouds, to explore the mysterious CastlesInTheAir and claim their treasures. A game of exploration, trading and tactics, high above the world below.

$$CONTENTS
== Rules ==
'''''Castles in the Air'''''
''A game of exploration, trading and tactics, ''
''in mystical castles high above the world below...''

You are each explorers who have discovered the fabled Floating City of the Ancients: an archipelago of towers and dreaming spires, literally floating in the clouds. Forming a loose agreement to explore them together and bring their treasures back to land, you fly up in your zeppelins. But each of you knows that the most glory will go to the one who can collect the best hoard of treasures for the admiration of your peers. Will you be the most daring explorer?
http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/SampleTiles.png

=== Setup ===
Shuffle the castle tiles and place them in a stack face down. Place the starting empty sky in the centre of the table.
Each player takes a zeppelin piece and an explorer piece of the same colour. They place the zeppelin piece in the starting space of empty sky.
Randomly choose one player to be the first player, and give them the Chief Explorer token. This is used to ensure each player gets the same number of turns, and has no other function.
Shuffle the stack of castle tiles, and deal out a deck of tiles with 7 tiles for each player in it, into one large stack of face-down tiles. Remove the rest from the game. (For 3 players, create a stack of 21 tiles and remove the rest; for 4 players, take 28 tiles; for 5 players, 35 tiles.)
From the stack of face-down castle tiles, turn as many tiles face up as there are players in the game.

=== Each Turn ===
Players take turns, starting with the first player and going clockwise. Players have six moves to spend on their turn. You do not have to use all six of your moves.
Available actions on your turn are:

'''For two moves: Add a tile to the Floating City''' 
* Take one of the face-up tiles and place it in the City such that it is connected by at least one edge to a tile that was already there. The edges must link up: so if your tile has a castle passage at the top, you cannot place it directly below a tile with sky at its bottom, or vice versa. You can not choose a tile which can not be connected to the currently revealed area of the Floating City.
** Note: Cloud edges and sky-ladders are ''optional'' connections.  They ''may'' connect to a castle floor, but do not have to - they can instead end in empty sky.  A castle floor ''must'' connect to either a cloud floor or a castle floor.  All edges of a newly placed tile must match.
* Once you've placed a tile, put the treasures, keys and locks on it. For each gem symbol, put a treasure of that colour on it; for each black or white key symbol, put a key of that colour on it; and for each door or treasure chest with a black or white lock, put a lock of that colour on it. Once the items are collected or the chest or door unlocked during gameplay, the symbols serve as nothing more than a reminder of what used to be there.
* Then reveal a new tile from the stack of face-down castle tiles.
'''For one move: Fly your zeppelin up to two spaces'''
Fly your zeppelin to any area of blue sky up to two tiles away horizontally, vertically or diagonally from where the zeppelin currently is. The new space must be able to be reached by two steps, going only through currently-visible regions of the Floating City.
Zeppelins are able to fly to a piece of open sky even if castle walls in between seem to block the way: they are considered able to fly around it. However, you may not fly a zeppelin to or through a region where a tile has not yet been placed. So the moves shown in the picture with green arrows are permitted, but not the moves shown with a red arrow.
http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/MovesExplanation.png

'''For one move: Get in or out of your zeppelin'''
*You can get out of your zeppelin, if it is landed on pink-coloured clouds. Replace your zeppelin with your explorer piece.
*You can call your zeppelin to the piece of pink-coloured cloud on which your explorer is standing. Replace your explorer with your zeppelin piece.
'''For free: Walk any distance left or right'''
In between any number of your moves (or before or after them), you can (for free) walk your explorer any distance to the left or right on the same floor or clouds. This can include collecting items, but not opening any locks.

'''For free: Move your zeppelin within a tile'''
You can fly your zeppelin anywhere inside the same tile it's currently in for free.

'''For one move: Go up or down a ladder'''
*Climb up or down one floor's worth of a ladder. You must stop where the next floor is (where your explorer could stop). Climbing multiple floors costs multiple moves.
http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/LaddersExample.png

'''For one move: Open a lock'''
*Open a locked door, which uses up a key of the same colour as the lock on the door (black or white). The door remains open for the rest of the game. 
*Open a locked treasure chest, which again uses up a key of the same colour as the lock on the chest (black or white). When you open a chest, roll two dice. If both are key colours, roll again until you get at least one treasure colour. Then you get an item corresponding to each die. (For example, if you rolled red and black, you get a red treasure and a black key.)
'''For two moves: Use a Teleport Door'''
If your explorer is standing at a Teleport Door, at a cost of two moves, you may teleport that explorer to anywhere on the entire board where an explorer is capable of standing. If you teleport behind a locked door, you may be stuck unless you have the right key (or can trade for it)!

=== Trading ===
Each round (from a player's turn to their next turn), players may agree to trade up to two of their cubes (treasures or keys) for up to two of another player's cubes. Players may agree trades of items and/or make agreements for how they move or place tiles. No player is ever forced to trade.

E.g. you could use your first move to go down a ladder and walk up to a treasure chest with a black lock; trade with other players to get a black key; use your second move to open the chest which uses up the black key; then take your remaining four moves.

You can also trade keys with the bank, if you really need a key of the other colour to the ones you've got. At any time you can exchange two white keys for a black key, or two black keys for a white key.

=== Bonuses from Treasures ===
Accumulating certain combinations of treasures can give you special bonuses during gameplay:

'''3 red treasures''' let you change the colour of one item you put on the tile you place, when you take the action to place a tile. At that moment, you can place a white lock instead of a black lock, or vice versa; a white key instead of a black key, or vice versa; or replace one coloured treasure with a treasure of a different colour. Six red treasures allow you to change the colours of up to two items on each tile you place. No further recolourings are available for red treasures beyond six.

'''3 yellow treasures''' let you take an extra move per turn. After you finish your six moves, if you have three yellow treasures, you may take a seventh. If at the end of your seventh move you have six yellow treasures you may take an eighth move. No further moves are available for yellow treasures beyond six.

'''3 green treasures''' let you trade treasures 2:1 with the bank. Once per turn, at any time, if you have three green treasures, you may exchange two of your treasures (in any combination of colours) for one new treasure of your choice from the supply. You can trade away some of your green treasures in this way if you wish, but you won't be able to do any more 2:1 trades (in future rounds) unless you still have three green treasures afterwards. If you have six green treasures, the rate becomes 1:1: you may exchange any one treasure for any other treasure. No bonus trading is available for green treasures beyond six.

'''3 blue treasures''' let you exchange a black key for a white key, or vice versa, at any time. You may use this new key straight away, keep it, or trade it to another player. If you have six blue treasures, you may open doors or treasure chests without the need for any key at all, although it still costs one move.

'''One treasure of each colour''' lets you place an extra zeppelin/explorer on the board. If you have an assortment of one treasure of each colour, and only have one piece (zeppelin or explorer) on the board, you may at any point place another piece of the same kind in the same place as your current piece. In future, when moving, you may choose to move either piece, including replacing the second zeppelin with an explorer or vice versa. If you ever no longer have a complete assortment, your most recently placed piece becomes immobile until you have the requirements once again. If you have two assortments (two treasures of each colour), you may place a third explorer or zeppelin where either of your pieces are, and so on.

=== The End of the Game ===
When the last tile is revealed from the face-down stack into the five face-up tiles available for placement, that means the current round will be the last one. Players continue taking their turns until the first player would get a turn. Then the game ends. Each player calculates their score as described below.

=== Scoring ===
At the end of the game, keys are worth nothing. Each player may choose to score their collection of treasures ''either'' as a Specialty Collector ''or'' as a Variety Collector.

Specialty Collectors consider each of the four colours in turn:
*One unmatched treasure = no points
*Matching set of 2 the same colour = 3 points
*Matching set of 3 the same colour = 6 points
*Matching set of 4 the same colour = 10 points
*Matching set of 5 or more of the same colour = 15 points plus 5 for each additional. (15 points for 5, 20 points for 6, etc.)
The Specialty Collector's final score is the sum of their scores for the four different colours of treasure. 
Their tie-breaker points are the number of unmatched single treasures they have, plus the number of unused keys they have.

Variety Collectors score 11 points for each assortment of a red, a yellow, a green and a blue treasure.
Their tie-breaker points are the number of treasures not forming complete assortments, plus the number of unused keys they have.

For example, suppose you have 4 red, 2 green, 2 yellow and 2 blue treasures. As a Specialty Collector, this would score 10+3+3+3 = 19 points in matching sets (with no tie-breaker points); as a Variety Collector, this would score 22 points for two complete assortments of red+yellow+green+blue (in which case the two extra reds only count as tie-breaker points).

At the end of the game, the player who has acquired the most glorious collection of treasures (the highest score) is the winner!

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== Notes from playtest 1, Tue 17/8/05 (5 players, 20 tiles) ==
* Tiles need to be larger (or counters smaller).
* It was sometimes hard to tell which areas connect to which others. But having them larger and coloured should address this.
* Horizontal movement felt like a tax, taking up lots of moves for very little obvious return. Also it was hard to arbitrate when two things were "close enough" to need horizontal movement between them and when they weren't. Solution? Make it free. Everyone thought this a good idea, so rules have been changed accordingly. This will mean that what you can do in 5 moves now would have taken 6-7 before. I may need to reduce move allowance per turn to 4 from 5, but I won't do that yet.
* Players wanted to keep playing for a bit after the final tile was placed. This was partly because there weren't enough tiles. Any other contributing factors?
* It was surprisingly much fun to keep playing after the tiles ran out. It certainly felt like things moved faster. 
* It did feel to me like the tile placing section of each round took quite some time. Do other playtesters agree?
* This suggested to me the following alternate round structure. Thoughts?
## At any time there are as many tiles turned up as there are number of players.
## Chief Explorer places a tile on the board, then turns up a new face-up one.
## Everyone gets *just two* moves, from CE on round to the left.
## Player on CE's left becomes new CE.
* Changing between zeppelin and human is superb fun, and led to all sorts of comments about transforming, were-zeppelins, and so on.
Anyone comments from anyone else? --AC
* It was felt that some form of Key Transmutation, enabling multiple keys of one colour to be exchanged for keys of the other colour, was necessary or at least likely to be helpful, to counter the situation that emerged in the playtest with great masses of white keys and black locks. --SF
::Whoops, yes, I forgot that bit - thanks! Added to the rules under Trading. --AC

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Colour tiles look something [http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/SampleTile.png like] [http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/SampleTile2.png this]. Each star is planned to be 1cm wide. What do people think?
:Wow, they look pretty damn cool! --[[qqzm]]

:Do 6 green allow 1:1 or would that be too powerful? Would 6 blue let you open locks without using up keys? --DR
::Hmm. Nice questions. I think that's actually reasonable in both cases, because acquiring 6 of the same colour is an extremely tough task anyway (although 3 green would make it a little easier). We could try both, and if they seem overpowered remove them. Althernatively, I could disallow them, partly because it's simpler as it is. One risk I can see is that the treasures can all be traded around freely anyway, so we could see someone come up to a lock and say "If I give you this red will you lend me your six blue for a moment?" I don't know whether that would be a bad thing or not. Let's discuss it at GE and see what people think. --AC

::Discussion concluded the 6 blue would be balanced. 1:1 trades is too strong even for six green, as that makes every other treasure worth 5 points to them at endgame. 3:2 would be fine. I think it would complicate the rules to add these, though, and I'm not convinced the extra complication is worth it. --AC

== Notes from playtest 2, Tue 30/8/05 (4 players, 30 tiles) ==
* Horizontal movement being free works. Horizontal movement across tile boundaries should be free too: it's fiddly and impedes the flavour having it cost.
* Bonuses from groups of treasures seems like a good idea. It didn't come into effect much. One player got one of each and got an extra zeppelin with a few turns to go, and got good use out of it. People used the 2:1 treasure trade a little, and nearly used the catburglar effect of three blue. 
* DR reckoned it's risky allowing free unlimited trading. He thinks it could be broken somewhere. I think I can see why he says that, but I'm inclined to allow people to have a go at breaking it before I change it.
* Trades got proposed quite a bit, but it was very rare for them to go ahead. Often it was because people didn't have anything they were willing to part with one way or the other. Perhaps people could benefit from tradable items at a smaller resolution than treasures.  How about getting a counter worth 1 point every time you enter a new tile? Or just starting with 5 such counters?
* Several points about the rules wanted clarification. I've made those amendments above.
* It's struck me both games that it's hard to place tiles especially strategically when you can't see what colours the treasures in them are until they arrive. It would be nice to roll for them before placing, but really fiddly to try to move them around keeping the treasures where they are. There are other ways to deal with this. One that occurred to me is to make all tiles have the same number of treasures, and have some little cards depicting two colours of treasures, and let people choose the set of colours to go with their tile when they place it. I'm not sure whether it'd be worth it. It would be more fiddly bits, although it would eliminate the dice rolling.
* I don't think the stepping back to 4 moves from 5 was necessary. Let's try it with 5.
* The comment was made that the large-scale geography of the Floating City doesn't affect gameplay much after the first turn or two, as it takes so long to travel between tiles and leaves you only caring about the tiles near to your explorer. I think I agree. I have two possible ideas to counteract this, of which we could add either, neither, or perhaps even both:
** Each player starts with an exploration team of 2 zeppelins. (Or 3.) A move involves moving one or other of them.
** Make zeppelin movement much cheaper. 1 move flies a zeppelin to anywhere within two squares' distance, including diagonals. Or even go to physically anywhere (that's on a blue sky background). Why stop at half measures?!
:Out of the two, I think I prefer making zeppelin movement cheaper. What do people think? --AlexChurchill
::(PeterTaylor) Agreed. Having 2 Zeppelins will slow down exploration, increasing the number of squares that are never visited.
::(DouglasReay) Agrees.  How about free horizontal zeppelin movement, so you could cross any number of squares horizonally, but still had to pay to go up or down a square?  That would tie in with the free in castle explorer movement horizontally (including across boundaries). (Or would it be more interesting geographically to make zepplins free vertical and pay horizontal?)

(PeterTaylor) We discussed the fact that the effect of having 3 blues is of being able to trade keys with the bank at 1:1. Perhaps it should be worded thus in the rules, for greater uniformity.
:Oh, but it's not. This way, the flavour is that the blues grant you a stealth ability. It could still be a similar flavour if you can convert keys 1:1, I guess. But I specifically stated that it wasn't trading keys 1:1, because that would have a different effect on gameplay - specifically, people could perform this service for others ("I'll turn your white key to a black key in exchange for a treasure"). I guess that's better, though, and encourages player interaction. So maybe I will make that change. But it is definitely a change. --AC
(PeterTaylor) As a further suggestion, perhaps the effects of having 6 green or 6 blue should be to allow trading of keys for treasures or v.v. (Treasures for keys is probably not that powerful. Keys for treasures is moderately powerful, but I'm not sure that it's too powerful, particularly if it's at 2:1. Most consistent with current setup would be that 6 green allows trading 2 treasures for 1 key, and 6 blue allows trading 2 keys for one treasure).
:Hmm. I like. (I'd probably allow treasures -> keys 1:1, and even then it's not that strong.) An intriguing alternative: I'll bear it in mind. --AC

== Notes from playtest 3 and 4, early September, 2 and 3 players, 30 tiles ==
* The platform-game-y feel keeps getting positive comments. This is really cool.
* These were both played with rolling for the tiles as soon as they're turned up, before they're chosen and placed. This was excellent. I'll need to provide colours either on the tiles or on separate guides to make this less fiddly, but the effect was good.
* They were also both played with zeppelin movement costing 1 to fly anywhere in the City. This was broadly good, but it did make the location of new disconnected tiles entirely irrelevant. Maybe I should have some extra zeppelin movement charge, but the original of 1 move/turn definitely feels too expensive. 
* With 2 players, multiple yellows is by far the most powerful treasure bonus. This is broadly as expected. With 3 and more, the amounts are distributed sufficiently that it's not overpowered, although still definitely useful: but 3 green, 3 blue and 1-of-each are all also useful. 3 red feels a bit underpowered and will need some thought: it's not actually that much of an advantage to get to place an extra tile after everyone else's. I'll try making the extra tiles be included in the ones turned face up, so you just get to take two at once.
* In the two player game, we played with 6 blues let you open locks without a key (still costing a move). This was good and I liked it.
* In the three player game, at the end of each of the first 3 or 4 rounds, all the treasures outside of chests had been collected. This is probably not a problem but does indicate that I can't really let movement get any cheaper with the current tile designs.
* Balance between the two scoring methods seems about right. It may slightly favour assortments a bit too much.
* Trades happened in 3 player about 3 or 4 times: mostly key-for-key or treasure-for-key, but in one case red-and-green for yellow (via player B's triple-green trading, to get player A his third yellow = sixth move). This was cool. Trading in 2 player was nonexistent but that's not surprising.
Any further comments from those who played, or anyone else? --AC

([[AL]]) I reckon Zeppelin movement should cost according to the distance travelled, so that the large scale geography matters (thus helping to make the three-red-treasure bonus more worthwhile). Lots of possibilities: free within a tile, but 1 between tiles; 1 per 2 tiles traversed; or, maybe get rid of / reduce the embark/disembark cost (thus, short journeys become much cheaper, medium ones stay the same, longer journeys become more expensive?).

Regarding the red treasure bonus once again: if the idea is to give the player some kind of extra control over the tiles (s)he places, how about letting the player reroll some/all of the treasures/chests/doors on a tile - before/after the player places it, I'm not sure....? Or, there is an extra tile for that player, which they can pick on their turn (but they don't have to), and then they play whatever's left over at the end?
:[[DR]] thinks that allowing rerolls would slow the game down.  If you want to make red more powerful, how about making it effect zepplin movement instead of letting you get an extra tile?
::Now that zeppelin movement costs, the location of tiles has more strategic significance, so I think I'll leave this as it is for another game or two. --AC

Also I found the Zeppelin spawning a little confusing/awkward. Giving the player an extra Zeppelin which always appears at the original start point would seem simplest and most obvious, but is this naive and does it not work well, or has it not been tried?
:As mentioned f2f: the idea is your exploration team is over by your piece, and so that's where a new member of the team can step into the newly formed zeppelin. --AC
All in all, though, very cool game :-)

Oh, one more thing - if you're trying to have many more tiles, with prerolled treasures etc. - might it work to have much smaller tiles somehow (and thus more of them and so many more combinations)? Or, more radically, how about something like, new tiles are (attempted to be?) placed whenever explorers hit the edges of existing ones, with the chief explorer somehow having more say as to what tile??? Ah - I see you've suggested at least one alternative turn structure above, which I missed on first reading. Think this sort of thing is worth experimenting with...

== Notes from playtest 5, Tue 7th September, 4 players, 30 tiles ==
A bunch of new blood played 4-player at GamesEvening and gave plenty of feedback:
* At the end, everyone ended up scoring their treasures as assortments. I think the assortments score may need to come down a little relative to sets.
* TheInquisitor pointed out that the way things are at the moment, zeppelins are generally used to move around and explorers to pick things up. It would be better if the tiles were structured so that there were more passageway connections, particularly left-to-right connections all the way through the tile, so that explorer mode could be used to get around more.
* He also said the game felt a round or two too short, and people don't get long enough to get use out of their special powers. This is obviously dependent on the number of rounds (crrently 30/number of players), but something to bear in mind when I make 120 tiles and I need to decide some other factor as a game-end condition.
* He also felt free unlimited trading is too risky. I don't think trading between players has been demonstrated to be a problem yet, but allowing unlimited three-green trading does lead to players converting all their treasures to greens at the end. I think I'll make three-green trades of treasures with the bank 2:1 be limited to once per round (per player). That way you can still trade away useless reds to get your third yellow, or to get the one colour you're missing (etc), but to do anything more far-reaching than that you'll have to plan ahead and do it in stages. With this once per round restriction, I could probably let the six-green bonus allow you to do a 1:1 trade instead. 
* It was also suggested that zeppelin movement inside one tile should be free, because you'll always need to spend a move changing to explorer mode before and after.
* The first couple of rounds saw all the treasures from the available tiles get collected the round they appeared. I think I might like to make the starting space have a castle opening or two on it.
Any further notes from the players, or anyone else?
--AC

== Notes from playtest 6, Tue 14th September, 4 players, 35 tiles ==
The first game with treasure colours printed onto the tiles went well. Removing the die-rolling is definitely a good step. I was originally planning to duplicate each tile 4 or 6 times and cycle the colours on each one, but I'm not sure now. I'd have to come up with a new end condition and there aren't any especially obvious ones, and the stack running out is simple and intuitive. The supposed drawback is that repeat players could learn the positions of the treasures. Anyone else have an opinion?
:(PeterTaylor) One approach, which is probably too fiddly, would be to have the colours on wheels which can be rotated to give different arrangements. Another would be to have multiples, shuffle everything, and deal out a certain number to form the stack.

Other thoughts:
* The scoring for assortments is problematic. It seems it's too weak at 10 and too strong at 12. A non-linear scale like the sets was suggested, and might be a good idea. Something like 1=8, 2=8+10=18, 3=8+10+12=30, 4=44 etc? Or just 11 per?
* Zeppelin movement speed feels right now.
* The bonus from three red is still not especially good. I keep toying with allowing a 3R player to change the colour of one item on a tile as it's attached to the City, but fear that's too strong.
* [[qqzm]] nearly managed to exploit the extra-zeppelin rules by getting one explorer stuck and then trading away a colour so that the stuck guy disappeared, then getting it back so he could place him somewhere more useful. Although it feels a little degenerate I don't mind this being an emergent consequence of the rules (and it would be quite hard to fix). But it feels like it would need spelling out in an FAQ or rulings list somewhere. 
* Anything else?

I find that with [[Carcassonne]] (as nearest tile-laying analgoue I can think of), players tend to learn the tiles after a while. This generally leads to slower games, as people start counting the number of tile type X they have seen, and trying to figure out stupidly exact probabilities about the remaining tiles in the stack. I am not convinced if this is a good or a bad thing, but it certainly changes the game, and is worth bearing in mind for fixed tiles. Consider maybe creating more tiles than needed for a game, and randomly selecting the ones that will be used at the beginning. --Snapdragon

== Notes on 20th August 2007 ==
OK, I've been looking for some time for an ability of red treasures that would be any use. There have been several tried, including placing extra tiles, having extra tiles in a hand available to place, or getting more choice in the tiles placed. None of them have worked very well, except for the one game we tried without a placement phase at all, where new tiles were only placed when someone walks off the edge into unexplored territory. 
So I've decided to try a new ability for reds that I've been considering for some time. I'm not sure if it'll be too powerful: playtesting will have to see. The power for six reds could become a ''lot'' more powerful (something like "place an extra treasure on the tile you place"), but hopefully that shouldn't be necessary. I'd be up for playtesting this at one of the GamesEvening""s in the next couple of weeks. --AC

== Notes from GamesAfternoon playtest with [[Angoel]] on 29th March 2008 ==
We played 5-player Castles under the traditional ruleset (with 3 reds recoloring an item as placed), but with two starting zeppelins each. We found the most dominant effect was going first: scores, clockwise from first player, were 30, 22, 16, 12, 8 (or something similar). A long discussion ensued, and a ruleset without a placement phase was proposed, with 5 tiles visible at all times, tiles costing 2 moves to place, instantly replaced.

We played this new version, and it was Good. The one drawback was that the game went on a little bit too long (although it was still shorter than most games with a separate tile placement phase), and that two starting zeppelins was too many. So the rules above have been updated. --AC

:After playing the second game, the current area where I think that tweaking would give game improvements is in the scoring system.  This currently feels somewhat more complicated than it needs to be.  Even if you preserving the existing structure, the following scoring system is functionally equivalent in 95% of the cases: 'sets: ignore the first two of each colour, each remaining gem scores one; accumulation: sets of different coloured gems score two'. --Angoel
::Agreed, the score system is pretty complicated.  How about going with "Your score is the number of cubes in your shortest stack"?  That would mix things up a lot.  --Vitenka (who likes that mechanic.)
:::I'd rather like to keep the choice between specialisation and complete assortments. I do like the "score = smallest of your different colour scores" mechanic too, but I don't think this is the game for it. I'd be up for trying it with "sets: score one for each treasure of a colour after the first two; assortments: each assortment scores two". --AC

:Another thought which would require a bit more reworking of the score system is that players don't get abilities simply thorough gaining X gems, but must give up gems to purchase them.  (The abilities could come with score to stop players losing out by ill advised ability choice).  This could result in more interaction as players compete to be the player to get one of the limited number of extra move, etc. --Angoel
::It's pretty rare that players have enough treasures available to get the in-demand powers (right now that's yellow, maybe blue) more than a few times between them - which encourages trading.  If you had to give up a gem to purchase them, I'd expect to only ever purchase yellow.  --Vitenka
::I don't understand what you mean, Angoel. The number of people who can get 3 yellow is the same whether or not you keep them or give them up, so I don't see why that increases interaction. I'm certainly willing to consider the purchase model, in theory, but I can't see an advantage to it at the moment. --AC

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== Inspirations ==
AlexChurchill has always loved the concept of Castles in the Air (or islands floating in the air). A number of very evocative settings feature similar ideas - for example:
* The [WikiPedia:Kingdom_of_Zeal Kingdom of Zeal] from ChronoTrigger
* The StudioGhibli AMV mentioned at the top of this page
* [[Laputa]], another StudioGhibli production, and the first piece of [[anime]] AlexChurchill ever saw
::''Also the first anime [[Edwin]] saw, by a margin of about ten years.''
* The upside-down castle in IllusionOfGaia. This is notable for not just being a castle floating in the sky, but also being actually upside-down: gravity is locally reversed, and looking over the edge of platforms reveals just the sky above.
* [http://home.mchsi.com/~landale77/hack/places.htm Dun Loireag], the Root Town of &theta; Server, a region of the DotHack universe
Other references to the same idea that I wasn't aware of when designing this game:
* The MagicTheGathering card MTG:Oboro,+Palace+in+the+Clouds (see the [http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/863 art in hi-res])
* [http://www.spbairislands.com/download.php#PCWallpapers SPB AirIslands], a game for WindowsMobile that AC recently became aware of. Civilisation management combined with floating islands - sounds like a winner!

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Quick clarification: Moving up or down ladder - does that cost 1 for as far as you need to travel to be able to next step off the ladder, or is it 1 to go the distance that separates two floors regardless of whether said floors are actually present? --CH
:The latter, I believe. --Rachael
:If I understand him correctly, it's the former: the presence of a possible exit from the ladder increases the number of moves required, but just length of a ladder doesn't. Hopefully this image clarifies. Note the effect of the niche with the green treasure in it, compared to the same ladder on the other side. --AC
http://toothycat.net/~hologram/Castles/LaddersExample.png
:Yep, that makes it nice and clear (and it is what I was trying to imply by my former). --CH
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A thought.  Since trading is now limited - perhaps one of the treasures (green?  Whichever is currently least powered) could have the effect of increasing that limit?  --Vitenka
:Not sure that's a good idea. If I make a subset of players (those with three green) the only ones able to swap their three yellows back and forth to abusively get an extra move for both of them, that seems even worse than allowing anyone to do it. --AC
::Oooh yes, I'd not spotted that.  How about giving the player with six greens veto over (other people's) trades?  --Vitenka
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CategoryGames

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Editing revision 51, which is the newest. This change is a minor edit.
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