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Era of Inventions
Author: Anthony Daamen
Publisher: Quined Games / Huch & Friends
Year: 2010


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Ever felt like all revolutionary inventions have already been done? Today’s flatscreen TV’s, even faster computers and iPhone 8.2’s can’t be compared to actually inventing the telephone, the car, the steam train or the airplane.
‘Era of Inventions’ is here to save the day! It transports the players back to the 19th century when all these inventions were merely drawings on a piece of paper, and where they can attempt to have a part in discovering and producing all these novelties.


Before each round several cards with inventions available to be produced are laid open on the board. Initially these are old-fashioned things like the light bulb or the pocket watch. The cards containing the telephone and the other new inventions are patiently waiting beside the board until they are invented by the players.  Also the factories which can be built these round are laid out. These factories produce raw materials (coal, wood, tools, tech or metal), money or development cogs.

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The first phase of each round is placing the action discs. Everyone has two of these available (or three in case of a three player game). One by one, the start player first, the players place an action disc on one of the action fields. Each action field has room for two discs, and the same player can never take both spots.
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When all discs are placed the players, again the start player first, one by one perform one of their actions. The interesting thing about this is that the order in which the actions are carried out doesn’t need to correspond to the order in which the discs were placed: so it is allowed to first perform the action belonging to your last placed action disc!
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These are the possible actions:

-Building factories: by paying the appropriate building costs (in any case wood, in most cases also coal) the player can build up to 3 of the available factories.

-Having the factories produce: All factories owned by the player produce the raw materials shown on the card.

-Buying raw materials: From the raw materials available in the market up to 3 batches can be bought by paying 1 money per batch

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-Doing/developing inventions or register patents: Here development cogs can be paid to do one or more inventions. The cost of an invention varies between 1 (for example the sewing machine) and 5 (the airplane) cogs. The more expensive the invention, the more victory points the inventor immediately receives.
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It is also possible to develop an invention previously done (possibly by someone else). This also costs development cogs and yields victory points. In one action the maximum amount of development cogs allowed to be spent on inventions and/or developments is 7.
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Instead of this the player who chose this action field can register patents for 1 or 2 of his previously done inventions or developments. Registering patents costs money (more money the more patents a player already has) and brings in immediate victory points.

-Producing inventions: This action field offers the possibility to produce up to 3 of the inventions that were laid out before the round. The costs are shown on the cards and usually consist of a mix of raw materials (always coal, never wood) and in a single case also money. At first only the standard starting inventions are available for production.


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But as soon as a new invention is the done the cards belonging to that invention are shuffled through the stack of available inventions, meaning they could possibly already be produced in the next round. The inventor benefits from this in that every time another player produces his invention, he gains victory points (the developer of that invention, if applicable, gets money).
The exception to this is the imitation: one of the three cards for every invention is a ‘Made in China’-edition. This one has a lower reward for the producing player, but on the other hand the production costs are more flexible and the inventor and developer can forget about their royalties! Unless of course they were sufficiently planning ahead and already patented the invention or development, in which case they receive their standard benefits.

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-Trade market: This action field offers the choice between taking a development cog or performing up to 5 trade actions: trade money for development cogs or the other way around, trade money or development cogs for victory points, trade money and/or raw materials for money and/or raw materials, or pay 2 money for a black bonus-action disc. These discs can be used after a regular action and allow an immediate extra action. This can be an action belonging to an action field where the player is not present or where there isn’t even room for an extra disc! The only downside is that the bonus-action is weaker than the regular one: only 1 factory produces (instead of all), only produce 1 invention (instead of up to 3), etcetera.
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When all players have performed all their actions the displays with factories and inventions are refilled, as is the raw materials market, and the next player in line becomes start player. After 8 to 10 rounds (depending on the number of players) the game ends. Then everyone has the opportunity to do 5 trades on the trade market in order to gain a few more victory points. Then a couple of endgame bonuses are applied: 5 victory points for the one with the highest number of registered patents, 5 victory points for the one who has spent the highest number of development cogs on inventions and developments, and 5 victory points for the one with the highest raw material production capacity in his factories. If any of these conditions are tied all tied players receive a lower amount of victory points. And afterwards the winner is known!
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Before even playing the game it is apparent that some unfortunate color choices were made with the wooden material: for money the game uses yellow (‘golden’) coins, while yellow is also a player color. At least the coins and action discs differ enough in size to tell them apart. But why, when the game uses black bonus-action discs, did they choose to make one of the player colors (deeply) dark purple? This makes it unnecessarily difficult for the purple player and his opponents to tell apart his regular and his bonus-action discs. And in the case of raw materials, one would need a brightly burning 150W bulb to tell apart the white and the blank cubes.
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‘Era of Inventions’ has many possibilities for the players, theoretically at least: build a lot of factories and use their output to produce inventions, or concentrating on doing as many inventions as possible, or anything in between. The problem in practice is that with only 2 spots the action fields are so quickly filled that in a game with 4 or especially 5 players the last player in a round should be grateful if he manages to do anything useful at all, let alone something to help along his ‘master plan’! It also doesn’t help that nearly every action has a prerequisite to optimally carry out the action.
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Produce inventions? Need raw materials! Buy raw materials then? Need money! Or shall I build factories so I can produce the raw materials myself (assuming the produce action is still available of course…)? Building factories requires wood, which you can buy with money on the market, if a player before you hasn’t already bought it all, etc. Probably the bonus-actions were meant to make up for this problem, but they are too weak and expensive to adequately do that. Taking a development cog on the ‘Trade market’ action field is a good consolation action without any prerequisites, but that also only has 2 spots! It is not necessarily a bad thing if a game gives the players a hard time, but throwing away an entire round because the only actions still available were useless to you is not something that has to happen too often.
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Yet the game does offer interesting choices: For example producing your own invention prevents giving points to others, but then you also miss out on the points you would have gotten for letting someone else produce your invention. And the tightness of the actions does not render the game unplayable (except with 5 players). But in the end the feeling remains that because of all the restrictions it imposes on the players (relatively few possible actions, only 2 spots per action field, and for a lot of actions need to have X, Y or Z already) ‘Era of Inventions’ does not realize its full potential.
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And in an era where hundreds of new games are ‘invented’ every year, unfortunately that means that it will quickly end up next to the Betamax and the CD-i on the pile of forgotten inventions.
© 2011 Ugur Donmez

Era of Inventions, Anthony Daamen, Quined Games / Huch & Friends, 2010 - 3 to 5 players, 12 years and up, 90 minutes


Frustrating game is a visual tragedy
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