Egypt, first tests

Yesterday, we travelled Egypt for the second time. My favorit players , Brice, Guillaume , Mathieu were at home for a good cause : adjust the first rules of this expansion...
My first idea is to flood the left side of the Nile in the first turn, the right side of the Nile in the second turn, the left side of the Niel in the third turn and so on...
My second idea is to pill cubes as pyramid with 14 cubes and my last idea is about the Suez canal.
The first problem is to design the Nile and to size the first map. When there is a Nile flood, we just place a blue disc on the left of the hex. 


But if i draw a river like in the other expansion, in the middle of a given hex, there will be potentially three hexes impassable....one for the river, one on the left side, and one on the right side....Too much.
For the first time in all expansions that i know , i drew a river on the edge of the hexes. In my first map, i designed the Nile quite in the right of the map and when i tested it alone, it was too desequilibrate.
The second and the third map in color !!


I designed again a new map for our real tests of Thursday.

In the delta of the Nile, i place the only yellow city which is bordered by the Nile on the left and right side.. so very difficult to deliver goods. One City will be rainbow on the left side near the mediteranean sea, and the two hexes below can only be build in the third turn for $5 each with black lines... (The Suez Canal)
In my first ideas, the Engineer allows building on flood hexes and allows to deliver cubes throught water hexes... But it was too powerfull. I split the power of the Engineer actions into two actions... 
- Engineer would be the only one who can build on the Nile Flood a
- and another action that would replaced Production and allowed a player to deliver cubes throught the Nile Flood = throught blue discs..... 

But one hour before the first tests, i thought it would be too difficult to cross the Nile : You had to choose the Enginneer to build and the other action that called Felluca to deliver goods throught blue disc... too difficult... 

So Enginneer would reduce the costs of flood hexes to $2 only. So every player can build everywhere. Desert will cost $3, plains without blue disc will cost $2, and plains with blue disc $4, but only $2 with the engineer..

Brice noticed that Felluca would be a very powerfull action before the setting of the game... He is right and we increase the power of the engineer : 4 tracks at half cost !!!, Felluca always allows a player to pass throught blue disc.



There was many comments about the Felluca action. 
Can we deliver a cube in a flood city (with a blue disc on it)? Can we pick up a cube in a city with a blue disc, in a pyramid?
We do a compromise of all these ideas : Felluca allows a player to pass throught a blue disc and to deliver a cube in a flood city, but ...never allows to pick up a cube in a pyramid and city with a blue disc on it.
Pyramid is not considered as a city and we do not build pyramids in this expansion, we just pick up cubes from the pyramid to deliver in cities. We can not pass throught a pyramid with cubes...


There are two pyramids with 14 cubes each + 13 cities (two cities with three cubes).. 28 + 28 cubes...= 56 cubes on the setting phase of the game, probably too much, but some of them can not be delivered because there is a blue disc on them.. I place the 40 remaining cubes in the production chart with only 2 cubes on each row (instead of three), no more cubes in the bag...great i have never lost one cube during our tests... ;-) incredible!!
The urbanization action is not changed...


So we begin to play after one hour of comments.... and adjusting my first rules with very experimented players (more than 50 games each...)

We had a very good time playing this map, but few things have to be changed...
Firstable, the Suez Canal is too powerfull for the player who build it with the rainbow city...
Second, the yellox city in the delta of the Nile is very difficult to link and to deliver goods
Stacking 28 cubes in two pyramids worked very very well because it is not allowed to pick up cubes from the pyramids with there is a Nile Flood.



The Enginneer action is very powerfull and contre balance very well the Locomotive action, the urbanization and the Felluca action.
In our next tests, i will colored the city in the delta in rainbow and the city in the Suez Canal in Yellow, I will probably allow the construction of the Suez Canal for many players.
Probably the green city (rainbow) will only be red, purple yellow and blue but not black!
A new idea comes at the end of the game... We have to pay to the Felluca player or to the bank to cross throught blue disc (probably $2 for each blue disc crossed)
We will test two times this new ideas on Thursday afternoon... 

Except the red player (Mathieu) we have all borrow 15 shares...

And the final turn...

We have had the proof that this map would be perfect for 3 to 5 players, 5 will be a killing game....