Description
Losing bidders in an auction receive a lesser award in place of the lot they bid on.
Discussion
This is a meta-mechanism that can be overlaid on other mechanisms that determine the structure of bidding. It is most commonly found in all-pay auctions, in which all bidders pay their bids but only the bidder receives a prize. Designers turn to all-pay, single-bid, and multi-lot auctions because they are fast, but these auctions can lead to negative experiences or even gamethreatening imbalances. In serial auctions, the market rebalances with each auction’s resolution, which makes it easier for players to adjust their plans and predict what they will and will not be able to win. Multiple-lot auctions and the like are faster to resolve but are more likely to yield odd outcomes, like players winning no auctions, or winning mismatched lots of goods. Compensation is a tool that can help account for these potentially imbalanced outcomes. In The Artemis Project, players bid on fixed pools of resources using dice. The number on the die corresponds to the number of resources they will receive, but dice are resolved in ascending order and not in order of placement. Tus, the total resource pool can be exhausted after paying out the smaller bids leaving nothing for the larger bids. Any player who receives nothing for
their bid gets a consolation prize. The Artemis Project offers a “relief track” that shows the consolation prize. Each time the player is diverted to the relief track, they move up one space on the track. Later spaces on the track feature more valuable rewards, so players who are repeatedly left out of the auction payouts get better relief track rewards. Games with more exotic auctions are amenable to consideration through this lens. For example, Spyrium features players placing workers next to cards in a grid, such that each worker is adjacent to two cards. Following the placement phase, players may purchase a card adjacent to their worker for the base cost listed on the card, plus one pound more for every worker adjacent to the card. Alternatively, they may remove their worker without claiming a card and collect one pound for each worker adjacent to the card. The front half of this auction is akin to a Dutch or declining price auction, with the overall price of the card dropping until a player is willing to pay it. However, the twist of gaining money for removing a worker and reducing the price of the card can be considered compensation for losing the auction. In Furnace, players bid on cards to add to their tableaus. Each card has a permanent ability that can be triggered from its owner’s tableau and an action or resource that is provided to losing bidders just once, at the conclusion of the auction. The auction mechanism is constrained bids, using a set of bid markers valued 1–4. The highest bidder receives the card, while the lower bidders receive the compensation action or resource. The amount of compensation received is equal to the number on their bid marker. At first glance, this may appear straightforward, but in a turn-based auction, the puzzle begins to emerge: when a player bids a “2,” for example, are they bidding on the card or on the compensation? And once a player has bid “4” on a card, the lot is not closed and all other players are welcome to bid any smaller number afterward to collect the compensation. Auction compensation can also be implemented indirectly. In Power Grid, each player must purchase exactly one power plant per round. Once a player purchases a plant, they cannot bid on subsequent auctions in the same round. When all players but one have purchased plants, the last player may purchase any remaining power plant of their choice for the minimum cost of that plant. Tey do not have to pay any auction premium, and this can be thought of as a kind of compensation for having lost the previous auctions. Turn order auction can be seen in this light, with the second-place bidder choosing when to act in the turn order second, and so forth. There is not a lot of conceptual daylight between auction compensation, on one hand, and auctions that order players based on their bids and provide a lesser reward to
each bidder in descending order, on the other hand. For example, in A Game of Trones: The Board Game, the highest bidder on the King’s Court track will be allowed to use three of the superior, starred order tokens. The next-highest bidder will get only two starred orders, then one, then none. The key distinction between these for designers is that auction compensation mechanisms can be more dynamic and flexible than a fixed declining rewards system. The flexibility comes at a price, though, because players must evaluate compensation values afresh each time.
Sample Games
The Artemis Project (Chow and Rocchi, 2019) Furnace (Lashin, 2021) A Game of Trones: The Board Game (Petersen and Wilson, 2003) Power Grid (Friese, 2004) Spyrium (Attia, 2013)
Worker Placement ў ў Worker Placement, a type of Action Drafting (ACT-02), is often credited to designer Richard Breese and his game, Keydom, in 1998. Nonetheless, it was Caylus, by William Attia, that popularized the mechanism and inspired its name. Mechanically, Worker Placement is isomorphic to action drafting. Players select actions in turn order by placing one of their pawns, or workers, into the action space, or building. This is the core mechanical concept and thematic conceit, and the mechanism has proven so durable because of that tight theme-mechanism correspondence. It’s easy to understand why placing the worker in the sawmill will generate wood. Worker Placement can be described as action drafting, or even as a highly specialized type of auction, but while resource allocation mechanisms may share mathematical similarities and incentivize similar player behavior, the experience of these mechanisms can vary a great deal based on how they’re presented. Teir intelligibility to the player will also vary a great deal based on the setting, theme, and logical coherence of the mechanism. For Sale’s auction is readily understood by players, as it is squarely in context. An auction for property is a familiar concept, even if most players haven’t ever bought a house at an auction. The thematic scaffolding, provided by Dungeon Petz, on the other hand, falls short in terms of making its mechanism intelligible. Why is it that the largest group of workers secretly assigned to an action get to take the action first? There’s no strong connection to a real-world dynamic that helps players remember and understand the rule. The Worker Placement metaphor of placing a worker in a production building to generate a good helps players understand the structure and incentives of the underlying game system, which is one reason why it is such a popular core mechanism. DOI: 10.1201/9781003179184-9
In this chapter, we’ll talk about other implications and expectations of the mechanism, including blocking, gaining workers, adding buildings, and more, as we delve deeper into this touchstone of modern design. The term “Worker Placement” has lost some of its cohesion, and today, it is often used as a synonym for a Euro-style game, irrespective of the presence of workers or action drafting. Tus, it would not be out-of-place for Terraforming Mars or Roll for the Galaxy to be described as “Worker Placement.” We will restrict our analysis to games which use action drafting, recognize some form of blocking, and conceive thematically of some kind of worker. This narrower definition also excludes quite a few games which employ the worker metaphor but not its underlying mechanism. For example, we exclude cooperative games like Charterstone and Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, because these games lack a true drafting or blocking element. Games with workers placed onto private tableaus like Orleans and Trough the Ages: A Story of Civilization or games in which workers represent a currency or bid marker rather than a draft marker, as in Jórvík, Spyrium, and Keyflower, are also outside the scope of our definition. However, our definition is intended only to limit the scope of our analysis and not to stake a claim on how the term should be used by anybody else. Whatever words we use, we believe these elements of drafting, blocking, and thematic coherence are important distinguishers that deserve a term by which to refer to them.
描述
拍卖中的失败竞标者将获得较少的奖励来代替他们竞标的拍品。
讨论
这是一种元机制，可以覆盖在决定竞标结构的其他机制之上。它最常见于全付拍卖（all-pay auctions）中，所有竞标者都支付他们的出价，但只有一名竞标者获得奖品。设计师转向全付、单次出价和多批次拍卖是因为它们很快，但这些拍卖可能会导致负面体验甚至威胁游戏平衡。在系列拍卖中，市场随着每次拍卖的解决而重新平衡，这使玩家更容易调整他们的计划并预测他们将能够赢得什么和无法赢得什么。多批次拍卖之类的解决速度更快，但更有可能产生奇怪的结果，如玩家没有赢得任何拍卖，或赢得不匹配的商品批次。补偿是一种可以帮助解释这些潜在不平衡结果的工具。在《阿耳特弥斯计划》（The Artemis Project）中，玩家使用骰子竞标固定的资源池。骰子上的数字对应于他们将收到的资源数量，但骰子按升序解决，而不是按放置顺序解决。因此，在支付较小的出价后，总资源池可能会被耗尽，没有给较大的出价留下任何东西。任何为其出价没有收到任何东西的玩家
将获得安慰奖。《阿耳特弥斯计划》提供了一个显示安慰奖的“救济轨道”。每次玩家被转移到救济轨道时，他们都会在轨道上前进一个空间。轨道上较后的空间具有更有价值的奖励，因此经常被排除在拍卖支付之外的玩家会获得更好的救济轨道奖励。拥有更多异国情调拍卖的游戏可以通过这个视角进行考虑。例如，《Spyrium》让玩家将工人放置在网格中的卡牌旁边，这样每个工人与两张卡牌相邻。在放置阶段之后，玩家可以购买与他们的工人相邻的卡牌，价格为卡牌上列出的基本成本，加上每名与该卡牌相邻的工人一英镑。或者，他们可以移除他们的工人而不认领卡牌，并为每名与该卡牌相邻的工人收取一英镑。这次拍卖的前半部分类似于荷兰式或降价拍卖，卡牌的总价格一直在下降，直到有玩家愿意支付。然而，通过移除工人获得金钱并降低卡牌价格的转折可以被视为输掉拍卖的补偿。在《工业革命》（Furnace）中，玩家竞标卡牌以添加到他们的画面中。每张卡牌都有一个永久能力，可以从其所有者的画面中触发，以及一个仅仅提供给输掉竞标者一次的动作或资源，在拍卖结束时。拍卖机制是受限竞价，使用一组价值1-4的出价标记。最高出价者获得卡牌，而较低出价者获得补偿动作或资源。收到的补偿金额等于其出价标记上的数字。乍一看，这似乎很简单，但在回合制拍卖中，谜题开始浮现：例如，当玩家出价“2”时，他们是在竞标卡牌还是竞标补偿？而且一旦有玩家对一张卡出价“4”，该批次并未关闭，欢迎所有其他玩家随后出价任何较小的数字以收集补偿。拍卖补偿也可以间接实施。在《电力公司》（Power Grid）中，每位玩家每轮必须购买恰好一座发电厂。一旦玩家购买了一座发电厂，他们就不能在同一轮的后续拍卖中出价。当除一人以外的所有玩家都购买了发电厂时，最后一名玩家可以以该发电厂的最低成本购买任何剩余的发电厂。他们不必支付任何拍卖溢价，这可以被视为对输掉之前拍卖的一种补偿。回合顺序拍卖可以从这个角度来看，第二名竞标者选择何时在回合顺序中第二个行动，依此类推。一方面是拍卖补偿，另一方面是根据出价对玩家进行排序并向
每个竞标者按降序提供较少奖励的拍卖，两者之间在概念上没有太大的区别。例如，在《权力的游戏：版图版》中，国王法庭轨道上的最高出价者将被允许使用三个高级的、带星号的命令标记。第二高的出价者只能获得两个带星号的命令，然后是一个，然后是没有。对于设计师来说，这两者之间的关键区别在于，拍卖补偿机制比固定的奖励递减系统更具动态性和灵活性。不过，这种灵活性是有代价的，因为玩家每次都必须重新评估补偿价值。
游戏范例
The Artemis Project (Chow and Rocchi, 2019) - 《阿耳特弥斯计划》 Furnace (Lashin, 2021) - 《工业革命》 A Game of Trones: The Board Game (Petersen and Wilson, 2003) - 《权力的游戏：版图版》 Power Grid (Friese, 2004) - 《电力公司》 Spyrium (Attia, 2013) - 《Spyrium》
工人放置（Worker Placement），一种动作轮抽（Action Drafting, ACT-02），通常归功于设计师理查德·布里斯（Richard Breese）和他1998年的游戏《Keydom》。尽管如此，威廉·阿提亚（William Attia）的《凯吕斯》（Caylus）普及了这一机制并激发了它的名字。在机制上，工人放置与动作轮抽同构。玩家按回合顺序选择动作，将他们的一个棋子或工人放入动作空间或建筑物中。这是核心机制概念和主题构思，该机制之所以如此持久，是因为这种紧密的主题-机制对应关系。很容易理解为什么把工人放在锯木厂会生产木材。工人放置可以被描述为动作轮抽，甚至是一种高度专业化的拍卖类型，但虽然资源分配机制可能具有数学相似性并激励类似的玩家行为，但基于它们的呈现方式，这些机制的体验可能会有很大差异。它们对玩家的可理解性也会根据设置、主题和机制的逻辑连贯性而有很大差异。《For Sale》的拍卖很容易被玩家理解，因为它完全在上下文中。房地产拍卖是一个熟悉的概念，即使大多数玩家从未在拍卖会上买过房子。《地城宠物》（Dungeon Petz）提供的主题脚手架在使其机制易于理解方面则有所不足。为什么秘密分配给动作的最大一组工人最先采取动作？这与现实世界的动态没有紧密的联系来帮助玩家记住和理解规则。将工人放在生产建筑中生产商品的工人放置隐喻有助于玩家理解底层游戏系统的结构和激励，这也是它成为如此受欢迎的核心机制的原因之一。DOI: 10.1201/9781003179184-9
在本章中，我们将讨论该机制的其他含义和期望，包括阻挡、获得工人、增加建筑等，我们将深入探讨现代设计的这块试金石。“工人放置”一词已经失去了一些凝聚力，如今，它通常被用作欧式游戏的同义词，无论是否存在工人或动作轮抽。因此，将《火星殖民》（Terraforming Mars）或《银河竞逐》（Roll for the Galaxy）描述为“工人放置”并不会显得格格不入。我们将限制我们的分析在使用动作轮抽、承认某种形式的阻挡并在主题上构想某种工人的游戏。这个更狭义的定义也排除了相当多使用工人隐喻但不使用其底层机制的游戏。例如，我们排除了像《特许石》（Charterstone）和《鲁滨逊漂流记：诅咒岛冒险》（Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island）这样的合作游戏，因为这些游戏缺乏真正的轮抽或阻挡元素。将工人放置在私人画面上的游戏，如《奥尔良》（Orleans）和《历史巨轮》（Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization），或者工人代表货币或出价标记而不是轮抽标记的游戏，如《Jórvík》、《Spyrium》和《Keyflower》，也在我们的定义范围之外。然而，我们的定义仅旨在限制我们的分析范围，而不是声称其他人应该如何使用该术语。无论我们使用什么词，我们相信轮抽、阻挡和主题连贯性的这些元素是重要的区别特征，值得用一个术语来指代它们。