Sorry for the late reply... but I had surgery yesterday. Not been online to much.
I'm not the big "euro-game" guy... my favourite is still "Caylus". I was extremely surprised by this game... because it's huge, and didn't really have the problems that other games in this genre have when they go big. If you ever played a game "the village", you'll know what I mean. That game, allows all players to create their own little engine, without anyone else really getting in the way. Now, if you become more experienced, maybe that game allows you to pester your teammates, but our experience was that people could do their own thing without ever really being challenged. And the end you have a winner, who just did it a little bit better then all the rest. 🤷♂
This game was huge, but it was really clear how to engage with other people. The "hugeness" seems to be a bit of an illusion too, because a lot of actions can't be done, without doing previous actions of the same row.
Part of the game is upgrading your resources that you earn. Resources are repsetend by blocks (think tetris) that go on your scoring sheet. You need to puzzle your way to victory points and extra income and bonus resources. The earlier you have access to the resources and income, the more you can use them (since a game takes 7 turns).
On the internet, most players advice people to play with the expansion... because it smooths some stuff out from the base game. In the base game, there are some unbalanced actions, and those have been taken out in the expansion. I've not tried both... I only played the expansion. And I liked it a lot.
I've only played it once, so I still need to figure out of my excitment is because of "novelty" or if this really is a good game. But my first experience was really fun and I developed strategies on my own that were not only focused on my own project but also by trying to keep others away from their. Which I believe, is a trademark for a good game where not everyone is playing solitaire.
