From: lopez@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Chris &)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: 1830
Date: 12 Aug 92 18:01:24 GMT
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

In article <1992Aug11.211615.24450@uwm.edu> (Bruno Wolff III) writes:
: We have just started playing 1830 recently and have run accross a couple
: of things we don't like.
: Bankruptcies are very annoying. This is especially true since people may not
: try to prevent bankruptcy if they aren't doing to well.

I am not going to play unless I do well.  Nice attitude.  Find some new 
players and tell the old ones where to stick it.

: The practice of buying and then selling a share of stock in company in order
: to drive the price down is time consuming and can prevent any stocks from
: becoming valuable by the end of the game.

You have to be careful about this.  If you drive the price into the yellow/
orange/brown zones you may do yourself more harm than good.  Someone will
be able to hold as much stock as you PLUS all of the worthless shares.  Those
worthless shares can still earn a ton of dividends.  

There are several other strategies which make carefully planned stock trashing 
very benificial.  I will leave these for you to figure out.  Just believe
that this rule is very important as it stands.

: I also like the suggestion made in one of The General articles to make
: corporation holdings public.
: I am thinking of using the following house rules for our games:
: 
: 1:  All holdings (money, stock, trains, tokens, private companies) are public,
:     including those of corporations.

Everything except in hand cash is public.  Knowing whether or not the other
guy can scrape up one more share to maintain his presidency is a major part
of the early game.

: 
: 2:  You may not sell stock in a corporation you have acquired (bought or
:     received for buying a private company) previously in the same stock round.

This rule can screw some perfectly innocent players.  Suppose players X and Y
both want company A.  There is a stock buying frenzy near the end of which
one of the players realizes that the other one will be able to hold the
presidency.  Rather than be a trusting major stockholder they may want to dump
all of the stock they just bought and use the proceeds to start up their 
second choice company.  (Or invest in other stocks that they think will pay
better immediate dividends)  This hurts the player who got the presidency
but they should have realized that it would be part of the cost of getting
the company once the stock war started.

(see earlier comments as well)

: 
: 3:  If a player is forced to buy a train for which he has insufficient funds
:     after selling off all his stock that can be legally sold (and would
:     normally be declared bankrupt), all of his cash is added to the funds of
:     the corporation that required the train. The corporation does not get a
:     train, but the game continues normally from this point.

Bankrupting a player who does not want to be bankrupted (any reasonable player)
should not be a common event.  When it does occur it should be due to the
careful planning of the person who bankrupted him.  This person should also
have the victory (or else why did they force themselves to lose?).  Don't
take away a viable (and extremely difficult) win strategy just because your
current players have bad attitudes.

: 
: I remember seeing a fair amount of traffic on 1830 in this group before and
: was wondering if there was an FAQ compiled somewhere?


Chris Lopez
Newsgroups: rec.games.board