Naturelich Games

Ticket to Ride offers two main alternative ways of scoring points. The first is to claim a single route between two cities. The second is to connect cities with multiple routes as determined by the tickets you draw.

The first scoring mechanism
Claiming routes allows players to score points easily every other turn. In my experience it's quite common that player's score frequently. Playing a single wagon card scores 1 point. Claiming a route with length a length of six scores 15 points. That's 1 point per card vs. 2.5 points per card. At first glance this spread seems to be rather high. But since collecting suitable cards is an "expensive" operation (in terms of time), the spread is justified by a diminished frequency in scoring events and an increased chance of getting blocked by someone else. Going for high points means high risk. In my gaming experience players score points with fair granularity over several turns. It is not uncommon for our gaming group (4 players) to be no more than 10 points apart before we start scoring by the means of the second mechanism.

The second scoring mechanism
Completing destination tickets allows players to score points at the end of the game by having connected the cities defined on their respective ticket cards. The more distant the cities, the higher the point value scored. I am working from my head here, but I think Vancouver-Montreal scores 22 points and Seattle - New York scores 21. (Note: It may be different, but you don't really need to care: for our discussion only the order of magnitude matters - not the exact point score). Thus, going from East Coast to West Coast seems to be more rewarding than connecting Denver with El Paso (4 pts). Wow, this sounds like a fairly unbalanced granularity, doesn't it? It gets worse. If a player cannot fulfil the 22 pointer ticket, the ticket's point value is doubled and deducted from your score. And this is exactly what we would have to call an imbalance in granularity. You can score between 4 - 13 pts during the game but potentially lose 44 at the end. Before we investigate this further, let's look at:

Additional ways of scoring points
So far, I omitted a third possibility of scoring points. This mechanism helps the player with the longest route of all players to score 10 points (flat). This also happens at the end of the game. I have not mentioned it earlier as I believe it's pretty safe to consider this mechanism to be inside the boundaries of "good granularity".

Naturelich my opinion
Now let's come back to the original point of loosing 44 points at the end of the game. Is this "uncontrolled granularity"? My personal view is: it is a higher amount of granularity than normal. Granted. But do I think the game falls apart with this high granularity? No!!! It is not uncontrolled. It is not unfair. It does not imbalance the game. In fact, it makes it interesting and challenging.

But before I continue on this line of argument, let's quickly look at the facts of our 22 point ticket. This "mission" requires Player A to connect two cities across a pretty long distance. It is not impossible, but it is risky. Please consider: it is much faster for Player B to connect Denver with El Paso (=4 points as mentioned above) and score any other route of length 6. Here are 19 points in total (=4+15) plus a decent chance to block Player A. This leaves A with -44 and B with +19. But meanwhile both Player A and B have scored points by claiming additional routes (mechanism #1) . Maybe Player A was trying to establish the long connection (even fulfilling additional tickets along the way) while Player B only went for routes with a length of 6 (at the same time trying to finish the game as quickly as possible and to block the other players). In fact, these two strategies have both been reported to be very successful (cf. references #1-5). I have also tried them myself a couple of times. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. It really depends on too many variables to be calculated properly. When playing against experienced players, you cannot tell whether your strategy of keeping (or turning down) the 22 pointer will be successful.

As a result, I would like to conclude: ekted has a point when he classifies TtR as having high granularity. But it does *not* cause the game to be unbalanced. Neither does TtR have a bad or unfair scoring system. Taking a high risk always results in a chance for big success but also a chance for big failure. By rewarding players who take high risks, this mechanism builds up tension: Will Player A be able to finish the route with the remaining 9 wagons? Will Player B be able to block him (totally)? What about the longest route and the other tickets?

After playing more and more games I have really come to appreciate the game balance in TtR. It must have taken a lot of play testing to get this right.

Maybe I share a similar opinion as voiced by Bruno Faidutti in his article A Question of Balance as published in the most recent edition of The Games Journal. I would like to quote the following section:

In physics, balance is a stable situation resulting from forces which cancel each other—a situation in which nothing changes and nothing moves. This does not really resemble the state of a game, which is essentially a dynamic system where the forces involved create a permanent motion from the starting line to the end of the game. What players call balance is more of a sense of justice (in English I prefer to use the word "fairness", which does not have a French equivalent), rather than balance. The balance of a game is thus more of a balance between players of which none must profit from an excessive advantage. That does not mean that only the initial setup should not excessively support one player or another, but that over the course of play it should not be possible for one player to easily take advantage of chance or certain tactical situations. No advantage of playing first or last. No "I win" cards. No hole too deep you cannot dig yourself out. No single strategy which always wins.

Conclusion
Now, what do we do with this? Please: we do not start a flame war or anything. If you dislike Ticket to Ride - fine. If you like the game - that's fine, too.
I like the TtR scoring mechanism, because it does not provide for a single winning strategy. If you draw two 20-pointers at the beginning, this does not automatically win the game. If you draw only short destination tickets, you are not lost. You might even have a great chance of winning when you draw the two tickets with the least points. But to accomplish this, the game needs a scoring mechanism which uses high granularity. I believe this is perfectly fine, as I like games like this. There may be other players (and *maybe* ekted is one of them?!?) who don't like this mechanism because they like different types of games.

With his article, ekted did hit the point. Granularity has not been considered enough during game reviews. He has made his points with regard to several games. I have made my points with regard to Ticket to Ride. During my discussion I may have crossed the border into a semantic discussion: granularity vs. game-balance (or tension and story-arc as Faidutti also called it):

• Is granularity important for game balance?


• Is it important for perceived fairness?


• Can a game be tense with high granularity?


• Can a game be fair with high granularity?

=> My answer to all is "yes". But:

Is granularity the only important thing for game balance, perceived fairness and tension?
=> No.

Should reviews investigate the concept of granularity further to provide hints for a certain kind (archetype?) of player?
=> Probably yes - but only if we can identify the relevant player archetypes. Who likes low granularity? Strategic players? Those of us who dislike elements of chance? Who prefers higher granularity? For me, it is too early to say.

But this should be clear:
Try to think about granularity when writing your next review. Make us aware of high (or low) granularity but also state whether the game manages to keep the balance, the tension and the story arc. Please do not introduce automatisms such as High granularity = game falls apart. That *may* just be a bit too easy.

References
1. The Great Blocking Poll
2. Blocking Poll Results
3. Diary of a Blocker
4. Claiming 5-6 car routes without regard to ticket connections
5. Turns/points as a cost/benefit ratio