I, Rapebot

Posted on October 29, 2008
Filed Under Games, Not a Joke, Reviews | Leave a Comment

Robot.jpg The new Race for the Galaxy expansion’s robot player is programmed to bend you over the table.

One of the goodies that comes in the new Race for the Galaxy expansion, Gathering Storm, is a rules set for a solitaire game against a robot player. Cool beans! Or, nuts and bolts! Space is cold and merciless already. Why not play a space game against a berserk robot foe that wants to dissect you to see how you work?

The robot player gets a start world, just like you. It has a “credit track” and an “economy track.” It uses the credit track to pay for its developments and planets and uses the economy track to get victory points when it consumes.

Here’s how it works. You pick your two actions (have to play advanced game here) and then you roll two dice for the robot’s two actions.  Some of the die faces have stages, but some of them have asterisks. Those asterisks mean that the robot copies you. The final die faces have little robots on them. Those mean that the robot takes a special default action that depends upon which start world the robot is playing. New Sparta likes to settle. Ancient Race, a new start world, likes to consume/trade. Old Earth, and we’ll talk about this in a minute, likes to consume/double VPs.

You follow the little icons on the robot sheet to see what happens to the robot during the chosen stages. If the robot chose the stage, then it gets to use its top row of icons. If only you chose the stage, then the robot has to use the lesser bottom row. The robot doesn’t pay for developments and planets the way your or I do. It either pays with its credit track, or in some cases, doesn’t have to pay at all.

Here’s an example. When the robot explores, it draws a card and advances its credit track by one. If only you explore, then the robot just draws a card. When the robot settles, it draws three cards — then it mills all its cards into the discard pile until it gets to a nonmilitary planet, and if it gets to one, it plays it for free. But when you choose settle and the robot doesn’t, it only draws two, and it has to spend one credit to play a planet.

If the robot consume/trades, then it scores VPs equal to its economy, which starts at zero. No worries so far. It also advances its credit by two. If the robot produces, it advances its economy by one. If the robot consume/double VPs, then it scores VPs equal to double its economy, and also advances its economy by one.

Here’s where it gets retarded. Every time the robot consume/double VPs, it scores VPs depending on its economy track and then also advances its economy by one. Even if nobody ever produces and nobody ever settles — even if all everyone ever did was consume — the robot’s economy gets bigger and bigger just by consume/double VPing. And the economy track is what determines how many VPs consuming is worth. So how often does the robot consume/double VP? Well, if the robot is any old planet, then it does this 1/6 of the time. (That’s assuming that its not copying you. If you also consume/double VP, then the asterisk on that die can copy you.)

But if the robot is Old Earth, where rapists come from, then the default action is consume/double VP. More precisely, it switches to that mid-game. Now the robot is consume/double VPing fully 1/2 of the time. This is because of the robot “default” symbols on the die faces. And that’s not considering whether it copies you — if you’re also trying to consume/double VP, then the probability goes up again. In no time flat, the robot is consume/double VPing for 10 VPs a shot. And it doesn’t have to produce or settle windfall worlds to do this. The robot can consume/double VP several times in a row even if nobody is producing anything.

Can you grow your economy just by consume/double VPing over and over? Probably not. But Sparky can, smiling and bleeping the whole time.

There’s another neat robot trick. The robot has one or more “phantom” six-drop developments it gets to play. If you choose the easy version of the game, the robot gets one chip worth six VPs. It plays this on develop if its credit is high enough. If you play on hard, the robot gets three chips worth nine VPs each. Again, it plays them on develop when it can. We’ve seen it drop one of these second-turn with absolutely no problem. Turn one? Consume/trade, raise credit to three. Turn two, develop, play six-point development chip. Hey, I’m a robot, I have eight VPs already. You came here in a Hyundai. Stupid human.

We began playing against the robot with the random matchup, determined by drawing from the deck, of Ancient Race versus Old Earth. Lucky us, because we may have stumbled upon the most heinous exercise in galactic futility imaginable. Sure, sure, you might have illusions that you’ll play brilliantly. Here’s the thing — you only play with 24 VP chips, just as you would if you played against a human. Those 24 VP chips? The robot takes those things in seconds. And then the game is over. We’ve seen the Old Earth robot drop its six-drop development chip, take the majority of the VP chips and end the game without it playing a single planet or development. Seriously. The robot has 20-plus VPs without ever successfully developing or settling a single card.

That may be an extreme case. But we tried reversing it. We played Old Earth, and we let the robot be Ancient Race. There. Take that, stupid robot. The frakking toaster still consume/double VPed a bunch of times and still beat us with it! But barely this time.

Maybe we just suck. But the robot ends up smoking the cigarette.

Epilogue: We finally did beat it with a healthy margin, 41-30, using Separatist Colony against Ancient Race. We kept exploring, developing and settling over and over, never once producing or consuming. We’re still terrified of those robots from Earth, though.

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