New Design - Playtest #2

So the second playtest of the game was completed on Friday.  I had made many changes since version 0.0.1, and I believe that most of them were very successful. 

The event deck certainly helped by added a surprise at various points in the game.  This kept all of us on our toes, especially since we pretty much had all of the bad events, and only 1 or 2 of the good ones. 

I made changes to the card costs in Year 1.  This was done after number crunching revealed that the average cost/worker of the Year 1 cards was much higher than the costs for the other 2 years.  This change allowed everyone to have plenty of resources available when Year 2 began, instead of half the people needing to discard the first card of the year. 

The new resource boards proved mostly successful.  The common resource board was great, but needs to be a little larger.  The individual resource boards, however, were both too small and did allow for some players to accurately show how much gold they had.

The change in how much food to feed citizens each year definitely helped at more emphasis to gathering food without making it appear too cumbersome.  I feel that this will not be changed anymore, just tweaking buildings on how much food can be purchased.

Now onto the actual playtest.  The game was 3 players (both did not play the first playtest), so a good test for how I divided the cards (since I believe the game works best with 2, 4, or 6) due to the card distributions).  Each player attempted a different strategy:
Player 1: maximize citizens and stockpile resources
Player 2: build a gold -> VP engine and run it a lot
Player 3 (Me): Have buildings that allow resource swaps prior to building to minimize having to discard cards

During the game, it became apparent that Player 1's strategy was very strong.  He was able to amass over 30 wood and use that to build most of his Year 3 buildings, which allowed him to perform more Upgrades and build the higher reward buildings as well.  He was able to cover the food expenses by having 2 buildings from Year 1 that allowed him to purchase 4 food for 1 gold.

At the end, the final score was:
Player 1: 88
Player 2: 81
Player 3: 73

Still a close game, but still some balance issues to work on.

Here's a picture of the end of game state:

End state of playtest #2

Based on this playthrough, here are my thoughts on what to do next:
1) Change some building abilities.  Specifically, only allow trade of 1 gold for 3 food to attempt to weaken the maximum citizen strategy.  Also change how much extra gold can be received due to the Gold Mill and Assay Office (there is too much gold in each player's control at the end of the game).
2) Change most of the Synergy abilities to replace the default building ability instead of adding a new ability (but only when both abilities are similar)
3) Add more clarity to the individual resource boards.  If possible, also include some common rules clarifications if space allows.
4) Tweak some of the Event cards.
5) Tweak the player boards to look more like the layout of an old west town.

Overall, I think the changes made for Version 0.0.2 were a big step in the right direction.  I really like where this is going, but am starting to worry that these 2 good plays are masking some big issue that has not been discovered yet.  But I will not let those fears stop me.  On to Version 0.0.3, hopefully to be ready for 12/14!