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viktor_haagLast Saturday, our bi-weekly boardgame club finally managed to get my copy of Indonesia onto the table. I enjoyed it immensely, as I think this game fits very well in with what I like in a game.
Summary
This gorgeous game has no luck and will take three to four hours to play; it will take you two to three plays to really get used to the possibilities this game has to offer, but the rules themselves are simple to learn.
Components
First, let's be plain, the game is gorgeous. The colour palette is carefully chosen, the graphics all fit -- visually, there isn't any sour note in the packaging nor the components. However, in some cases, this prettiness gets in the way. The cursive script used to label provinces on the board is quite hard to read at a glance. The lines used to delineate provinces and regions on the map are not as clear as they could be; not only is it hard to see them at a glance, but it's also difficult in many cases to see exactly which provinces are adjacent to which where they nudge up to one another at their corners.
In some games, this would be a tragic flaw (look at Siena for example), but in this game it's only an annoyance in my opinion. Practically speaking, it's only important to know what the province names when you're putting new company tiles on the map (three times during the game). Map coordinates are also given on the tiles, though, to assist placement. The "adjacent province" problem is more serious: when you claim a company, and place a production tile (or later, when you expand production) it can quite important to determine precisely which provinces are adjacent to which so you can plan your eventual expansion in your favour, squeezing out the production of other players.
Some reviewers have been harsh on this issue, and some less so -- I fall into the latter camp. The production values and art choices of this game are so effectively immersive that I was willing to put up with the slight lack of functionality. I feel that if you have a regular group that places this game on the table more than once or twice, they'll get used to the map-board while the immersive quality will remain.
The other thing that's interesting about the components is that when you review the list of stuff you get, and how you're meant to use these pieces during play, you wonder whether the components will really let you play clearly. Let me explain with an example. The only markers that players have that identify them are not used on the map-board at all! They're used to mark the player progress on the game's Research & Development track. So, when you first read the rules, you wonder, how the heck will players be able to tell which pieces on the board "belong" to which player?
The answer in actual play is: it doesn't seem to matter. Several factors during play assist players in easily remembering which clusters of pieces belong to which players: the game starts from small beginnings, so the process of actually playing helps you remember who has what because you're present to watch all the holdings grow over time; the merger system means that there's typically only two or three companies of a single type on the board at any one time, so it's not hard to remember "which of the two Rice plantations Lindsay owns". Finally, we decided that, for shipping companies, we'd use one of the boat tokens to place on top of a shipping company deed tile in front of the owning player -- that way you could glance at a player's play area to see which shipping blocks they owned on the board.
Finally, the rulebook is well written, very clear, and is just as nice to look at as the rest of the game's components. The example illustrations are clear and useful. The textual clues on each page are well chosen (the header on each page tells you what parts of the rules you can find on the page). The strategic hints section is useful and provides good advice for your group's first play.
Playing the game
Indonesia is all about making money. During the game, players own production companies, and shipping companies. Players make money by having their production shipped to cities, and by shipping that production. The profit players can make by supplying cities is highly variable: you must supply a city with products if you can, and in some cases you may have to ship things at a loss (although this doesn't seem to happen very often).
Additionally, players can merge together the companies in the game, and mergers can be used for one's own profit (i.e. merging together your Rice company with another player's Rice company) as well as for tactical ploys (snatching away companies from other players, or forcing players with liquid assets to spread the wealth around by defending their companies).
How effective you are at each facet of the game is governed by your Research & Development choices. Each turn you advance your research in one of five different capabilities (how many companies you may hold, the size of mergers you may propose, the rate at which you can expand your companies, the volume of goods your ships may carry, how effective your turn-order bids are). After one play, it seemed quite clear to me that some of these tracks are much more valuable than others (reminiscent of Age Of Steam); however, in play the R&D track works very well. Expansion is clearly the most important R&D track, and Slots the second most important. So, during play, your choices are phrased like this: "when can I afford not to choose Expansion or Slots, and instead invest in some other track?"
If you have any investment in shipping companies, you must, at some point, increase your capability to ship volumes of goods: it's the only way to make your ships really profitable, and more attractive to the other players when they want to ship their goods.
If you are heavily invested in production companies, then Slots are important because you always want to have space to acquire a new company or bid on a merger that doesn't include one of your companies. Merger research is important also: you will find that you want to be able to propose mergers among competing companies to protect your own companies from being snapped up in a merger, and you will want to propose mergers including your company when you are certain that you can bid enough to own the results of the merger.
Turn order investments are a bit of an "arms race" category; investing in turn order provides you with a multiplier factor you apply to the money you bid for turn order. At the start of the game, each player has a multiplier of x1 -- if you bid 10 rupiah during the turn order auction, your bid is worth 10. The second stage gives a multiplier of x5. That same 10 rupiah invested in turn order gives you a bid worth 50. The turn order research track offers ridiculously high multipliers. You will want to stay close to the crowd, here, and be one step ahead if possible. In the final stages of the game, if you're ahead on this track, you can effectively force others to make the painful choice of losing their initiative when it comes to choosing the destinations for their goods or paying through the nose to maintain this initiative and thus have less money for mergers.
Unlike most games where turn order auctions result in lost money, in Indonesia all turn order bids (you may bid only once, and you don't have to increase the bid) are "invested in the bank" (the money is not lost, but becomes untouchable). Your bid ranks you in the turn order relative to the other players.
Indonesia's actual rules are quite simple and the mechanical parts of the game simply interact (acquiring companies, expanding their assets, merging them together, delivering goods for profit, advancing the capabilities of your position through research). There is no appreciable luck at all in the game (the only scrap of luck is a random selection of cards that let you all determine where the cities go on the map), so it's all about managing your tempo for profit.
What research choices do you make, when? When must you go first? When can you afford not to? When can you afford not to choose Expansion research? (In fact, early in the game, there are some cases where it may be better not to choose Expansion -- in the rare case where expanding too fast may force you to lose money shipping at a loss.) When can you afford not to choose Slots if you didn't choose Expansion (again, Slots is almost always a good idea if Expansion is not).
Will you like this game?
If you really liked Giganten, you will like this game; it has similar qualities. If you like 18xx rail games, then you may also like this game. The same careful management of your tempo to make a profit is built into nearly all Francis Tresham's games, especially the 18xx games.
Sadly, the game's manufacturer (Splotter Spellen) is a small press house notorious for producing games that quickly become collectible. There are dedicated Splotter fans out there that "simply must have their next release". Also, the component quality is reasonably high, and done in small batches, this makes the base price quite high (let alone the rarity factor). Getting a copy of the game now will likely cost you a hundred US dollars. Is it worth that amount of money? Sadly, probably not. Buying a Splotter game (and this is an excellent example) seems a bit like buying a Criterion Collection DVD. Is a Criterion disc really worth the extra money?
If production values rank high on your list of desired qualities. If you like medium length (i.e. 3 to 4 hours), strategic level economic/resource management games. If you like games with nearly no random factor. If you are passionate about Tresham's games (i.e. 18xx, Civilization, Revolution). If three of these four factors are true for you, then buying a copy of Indonesia might be worth your while. At the very least, you can probably be assured that if you buy it, and don't like it, you can probably sell it for not too much of a loss at all: Splotter games seem to hold their value well because of their rarity and the cult following.
I'm very glad I added it to my collection, and I'm eagerly awaiting my chance to put Antiquity on the table, since I was able to also get a copy of that Splotter game. (Indeed, I've already put my name on a waiting list for a reprinted copy of Roads & Boats when that game gets reprinted.)
Summary
This gorgeous game has no luck and will take three to four hours to play; it will take you two to three plays to really get used to the possibilities this game has to offer, but the rules themselves are simple to learn.
Components
First, let's be plain, the game is gorgeous. The colour palette is carefully chosen, the graphics all fit -- visually, there isn't any sour note in the packaging nor the components. However, in some cases, this prettiness gets in the way. The cursive script used to label provinces on the board is quite hard to read at a glance. The lines used to delineate provinces and regions on the map are not as clear as they could be; not only is it hard to see them at a glance, but it's also difficult in many cases to see exactly which provinces are adjacent to which where they nudge up to one another at their corners.
In some games, this would be a tragic flaw (look at Siena for example), but in this game it's only an annoyance in my opinion. Practically speaking, it's only important to know what the province names when you're putting new company tiles on the map (three times during the game). Map coordinates are also given on the tiles, though, to assist placement. The "adjacent province" problem is more serious: when you claim a company, and place a production tile (or later, when you expand production) it can quite important to determine precisely which provinces are adjacent to which so you can plan your eventual expansion in your favour, squeezing out the production of other players.
Some reviewers have been harsh on this issue, and some less so -- I fall into the latter camp. The production values and art choices of this game are so effectively immersive that I was willing to put up with the slight lack of functionality. I feel that if you have a regular group that places this game on the table more than once or twice, they'll get used to the map-board while the immersive quality will remain.
The other thing that's interesting about the components is that when you review the list of stuff you get, and how you're meant to use these pieces during play, you wonder whether the components will really let you play clearly. Let me explain with an example. The only markers that players have that identify them are not used on the map-board at all! They're used to mark the player progress on the game's Research & Development track. So, when you first read the rules, you wonder, how the heck will players be able to tell which pieces on the board "belong" to which player?
The answer in actual play is: it doesn't seem to matter. Several factors during play assist players in easily remembering which clusters of pieces belong to which players: the game starts from small beginnings, so the process of actually playing helps you remember who has what because you're present to watch all the holdings grow over time; the merger system means that there's typically only two or three companies of a single type on the board at any one time, so it's not hard to remember "which of the two Rice plantations Lindsay owns". Finally, we decided that, for shipping companies, we'd use one of the boat tokens to place on top of a shipping company deed tile in front of the owning player -- that way you could glance at a player's play area to see which shipping blocks they owned on the board.
Finally, the rulebook is well written, very clear, and is just as nice to look at as the rest of the game's components. The example illustrations are clear and useful. The textual clues on each page are well chosen (the header on each page tells you what parts of the rules you can find on the page). The strategic hints section is useful and provides good advice for your group's first play.
Playing the game
Indonesia is all about making money. During the game, players own production companies, and shipping companies. Players make money by having their production shipped to cities, and by shipping that production. The profit players can make by supplying cities is highly variable: you must supply a city with products if you can, and in some cases you may have to ship things at a loss (although this doesn't seem to happen very often).
Additionally, players can merge together the companies in the game, and mergers can be used for one's own profit (i.e. merging together your Rice company with another player's Rice company) as well as for tactical ploys (snatching away companies from other players, or forcing players with liquid assets to spread the wealth around by defending their companies).
How effective you are at each facet of the game is governed by your Research & Development choices. Each turn you advance your research in one of five different capabilities (how many companies you may hold, the size of mergers you may propose, the rate at which you can expand your companies, the volume of goods your ships may carry, how effective your turn-order bids are). After one play, it seemed quite clear to me that some of these tracks are much more valuable than others (reminiscent of Age Of Steam); however, in play the R&D track works very well. Expansion is clearly the most important R&D track, and Slots the second most important. So, during play, your choices are phrased like this: "when can I afford not to choose Expansion or Slots, and instead invest in some other track?"
If you have any investment in shipping companies, you must, at some point, increase your capability to ship volumes of goods: it's the only way to make your ships really profitable, and more attractive to the other players when they want to ship their goods.
If you are heavily invested in production companies, then Slots are important because you always want to have space to acquire a new company or bid on a merger that doesn't include one of your companies. Merger research is important also: you will find that you want to be able to propose mergers among competing companies to protect your own companies from being snapped up in a merger, and you will want to propose mergers including your company when you are certain that you can bid enough to own the results of the merger.
Turn order investments are a bit of an "arms race" category; investing in turn order provides you with a multiplier factor you apply to the money you bid for turn order. At the start of the game, each player has a multiplier of x1 -- if you bid 10 rupiah during the turn order auction, your bid is worth 10. The second stage gives a multiplier of x5. That same 10 rupiah invested in turn order gives you a bid worth 50. The turn order research track offers ridiculously high multipliers. You will want to stay close to the crowd, here, and be one step ahead if possible. In the final stages of the game, if you're ahead on this track, you can effectively force others to make the painful choice of losing their initiative when it comes to choosing the destinations for their goods or paying through the nose to maintain this initiative and thus have less money for mergers.
Unlike most games where turn order auctions result in lost money, in Indonesia all turn order bids (you may bid only once, and you don't have to increase the bid) are "invested in the bank" (the money is not lost, but becomes untouchable). Your bid ranks you in the turn order relative to the other players.
Indonesia's actual rules are quite simple and the mechanical parts of the game simply interact (acquiring companies, expanding their assets, merging them together, delivering goods for profit, advancing the capabilities of your position through research). There is no appreciable luck at all in the game (the only scrap of luck is a random selection of cards that let you all determine where the cities go on the map), so it's all about managing your tempo for profit.
What research choices do you make, when? When must you go first? When can you afford not to? When can you afford not to choose Expansion research? (In fact, early in the game, there are some cases where it may be better not to choose Expansion -- in the rare case where expanding too fast may force you to lose money shipping at a loss.) When can you afford not to choose Slots if you didn't choose Expansion (again, Slots is almost always a good idea if Expansion is not).
Will you like this game?
If you really liked Giganten, you will like this game; it has similar qualities. If you like 18xx rail games, then you may also like this game. The same careful management of your tempo to make a profit is built into nearly all Francis Tresham's games, especially the 18xx games.
Sadly, the game's manufacturer (Splotter Spellen) is a small press house notorious for producing games that quickly become collectible. There are dedicated Splotter fans out there that "simply must have their next release". Also, the component quality is reasonably high, and done in small batches, this makes the base price quite high (let alone the rarity factor). Getting a copy of the game now will likely cost you a hundred US dollars. Is it worth that amount of money? Sadly, probably not. Buying a Splotter game (and this is an excellent example) seems a bit like buying a Criterion Collection DVD. Is a Criterion disc really worth the extra money?
If production values rank high on your list of desired qualities. If you like medium length (i.e. 3 to 4 hours), strategic level economic/resource management games. If you like games with nearly no random factor. If you are passionate about Tresham's games (i.e. 18xx, Civilization, Revolution). If three of these four factors are true for you, then buying a copy of Indonesia might be worth your while. At the very least, you can probably be assured that if you buy it, and don't like it, you can probably sell it for not too much of a loss at all: Splotter games seem to hold their value well because of their rarity and the cult following.
I'm very glad I added it to my collection, and I'm eagerly awaiting my chance to put Antiquity on the table, since I was able to also get a copy of that Splotter game. (Indeed, I've already put my name on a waiting list for a reprinted copy of Roads & Boats when that game gets reprinted.)
