usage.org

Questions

Do you have questions that this document doesn’t answer? A good place to ask is the PBF moderator help / questions thread on BGG. There are a lot people who know how to use the moderator, so there’s a good chance you’ll get an answer faster than by contacting me directly.

For questions about the tournament, check the FAQ on the tournament website first and with the tournament admin only if your question isn’t answered there.

Bug Reports

Is something not working correctly, or in the way you expect? Please let me know by email at [email protected]. There is almost no chance of bugs getting fixed if I don’t hear about them. Please include the following information with the report:

• Your username
• Name of the game (if the bug appears on the game page)

Before you’re reporting a bug, please make sure it’s not one of the following cases:

• “My town isn’t being recognized. It has sufficient power, 3 buildings, and I have built a Sanctuary”. Many people overlook the rule that the Sanctuary only applies to the town it is in, not globally.
• “I am playing the Cultists, and did not get any reward at all for building / upgrading next to other players”. Many people overlook the rule that the Cultist special power only applies if there’s at least one player who could receive power. Opponents who are already at full power can’t leech power, and thus don’t count.
• “I am playing the Alchemists and have an SH. I did not get my 2 power per spade from the SH special power”. You almost certainly did get the power, and are just misinterpreting the ledger. Ignore the power delta in the ledger, and look at the exact token distribution before and after the move, and you’ll see that the the results are correct. Note that for spades received from the cult tracks, the power income from the spade will be grouped together with the other income from that turn.

Playing the Game

<<join-game>>

Joining a Game

To join an open public game, go to list of open games, and click the “join” button. Please be considerate to the other players: if the description section lists any special requirements, only join the game if you can fulfill the requirements. If no suitable games are open, just create a new one.

Playing a Game

The game page consists of several sections, from top to bottom:

• Map: The game map and cult tracks.
• Status display: Whose turn is it, and what should they be doing?
• Entry: Enter your moves, future plans, chat messages etc. here
• Faction information: The individual player boards. Your board will always show up topmost for convenience.
• Resource pool: Shows the unclaimed shared resources, such as power actions and various kinds of tiles
• Ledger: A detailed game history

Most of these sections should be self-explanatary. The less obvious parts are explained in more detail below.

Abbreviations

The game uses the following abbreviations for resources, building types and iconography. The capitalization doesn’t matter, and is simply a matter of convention:

• c: Coin
• w: Worker
• pw: Power
• p: Priest
• vp: Victory point
• D: Dwelling
• TP: Trading House
• TE: Temple
• SH: Stronghold
• SA: Sanctuary
• pass-vp: Victory points gained when passing
• >>: Victory points gained during the round
• spd, spade: A spade
• +: Gained during the income phase
• cult: A step on any cult track

Entry

The entry section contains 4 tabs:

Moves

For entering your moves. On the left-hand side is a text-box into which you can enter the commands corresponding to your moves. On the right is a UI for entering commands more conveniently than by typing them.

After you’ve entered your moves, click on Preview to see the effect of the commands. If the moves were valid and you’re happy with then, click Save to advance the game to the next player.

Note that you can’t Save if you still need to enter more moves. If you want to wait for a reaction from some other player, use the wait command.

Planning

For leaving notes for yourself, or to plan your coming moves using the same input format as for normal play. View the effects of the plan with Show result or save the plan / notes for later with Save plan.

Recent Moves

Shows a summary of what happened since your last move.

Chat

The in-game chat.

Faction Information

The faction information section shows the following information for each faction. On the left:

• Current resource levels. (For power interpret 7/5/0 as 7 power in bowl I, 5 power in bowl II, and none in bowl III). You can click on the vp resource to see a breakdown of where that factions victory points have come from.
• The current and maximum levels of the digging and shipping tracks (for factions where that’s applicable). For Dwarves and Fakirs the current tunneling / carpet flight range is shown instead.
• The current and maximum amounts of each building type. If you’re at the maximum number of dwellings or trading houses, the number will be highlighted in red. Click on the + icon to show build / upgrade costs for each building type, as well as the income that the new building generates. (Note, the income lost due to the upgrade is not shown).
• The expected income of the 4 most important resources in the next income phase. Click on + to see a breakdown of where the income comes from.
• On the final round the income is replaced with a VP projection instead. Click on + to see a breakdown of where the additional VPs are coming from.

On the right:

• The terrain wheel of the faction
• The special actions available for this faction
• The tiles the faction owns

Ledger

The ledger shows a detailed full history of the game. There are two kinds of rows in the table. Comments are shown in a bold font. The other rows correspond to individual player turns. These rows have the following elements in this order:

• The faction who did the action
• The change in resources (and final value) caused by the move. The change is shown in black, the final value in light gray. The resources are, in order, victory points, coins, workers, priests, power in the 3 bowls, and steps on the 4 cult tracks.
• The power leeching opportunities given to other players by this move
• The commands corresponding to the turn

Click on show history to switch the game view to what it was during that point in the game.

<<gameplay-commands>>

Gameplay Commands

The following commands are available during gameplay. They can be entered either one per line, or on the same line separated by dots.

When entering the through the admin interface, prefix the command with the name of the faction doing the command.

pass tile

Example: pass bon2

Pass, return current bonus tile, and replace it with Bon2. When passing on the last turn, leave out the bonus tile name.

leech amount from faction

Example: Leech 2.

Trade 1 vp for 2 power

Example: Leech 1 from fakirs

Trade no vps for 1 power, using the opportunity provided by the Fakirs rather than some other faction (in case there are multiple opportunities available).

decline amount from faction

Example: decline.

Decline all outstanding trades of vp to power

Example: decline 1 from cultists

Decline just the offer of 1 power from the cultists.

action label

Example: action act5

Take the power action 5 (or stronghold, bonus tile, or favor special action).

dig amount

Example: dig 1.

Trade workers / priests to shovels at the appropriate exchange rate. The shovels need to be spent by commands later on the same line.

build location

Example: build F5

Terraform the hex F5 into the correct terrain type, and build a dwelling there.

upgrade location to building

Example: upgrade F5 to TP

Replace the dwelling in F5 with a trading post (TE for temples, SH for strongholds, SA for sanctuaries).

send P to cult for amount

Example: Send P to Fire

Send a priest to the first free spot on the fire cult track.

By default the best available slot on the track is used. The optional “for X” part of the command can be used to use a different slot, or no slot at all.

Example: Send P to Water for 1

Send a priest to the water cult, taking just one level of advancement (even if 2 or 3 slots are still remaining).

transform location to color

Example: transform F5 to black

Terraform F5 to black, but don’t build anything there. The color to transform to is optional, you can also do just:

Example: transform F5

In this case the hex is transformed either to your home color, or as close to it as possible given the available spades.

convert amount resource to amount resource

Example: convert 3pw to 1w

Convert between resources.

burn amount

Example: burn 2

Remove 2 power from bowl 2, and move 2 power from bowl 2 to 3.

+ amount resource or - amount resource

Example: +FAV11

Take the Favor tile #11. (TW3 for Town tile 3, you shouldn’t take Bonus tiles with +, but use the Pass command).

Example: -4w

Return 4 workers from the treasury to the pool.

bridge location:location

Example: Bridge E9:D6

Build a bridge from E9 to D6.

advance track

Example: advance ship

Advance 1 step on the shipping track. “Advance dig” for improving the shovel track.

wait

Example:

Wait

Wait for other players to react. Useful for example if you’re the last player who hasn’t passed, and want to see whether another player accepts power between two of your moves.

done

Example:

Done

Finish your turn. Useful mostly when you’re the only player who hasn’t passed, and want to break the chain of actions at a specific place. For example when using Dwarves or Fakirs to first tunnel to a space to terraform it, and right afterwards tunnel to the same space to build a dwelling.

resign

Example:

resign

Immediately drop out from the game. Please see the section on dropping out from a game for the exact effects. You can’t currently resign during faction selection.

setup faction for player

Example:

setup Nomads for Alice

Add this faction to the game. The player name is optional, you also do just setup Nomads.

#

Example:

# This text is ignored

Ignore the remainder of the line. Useful mostly in the planning tool – you can use comments to interleave notes to yourself and actual commands.

<<planning-commands>>

Planning commands

Planning commands are used to control the behavior of the planning tool. They always start with an exclamation mark (!), and must be the only command on that row.

!plan faction

Switch to another faction. All later commands in the plan will be executed by this faction, until the next !plan is encountered and switches the faction again.

!if value, !elsif value, !endif

Selectively execute the commands between the !if and the matching !endif, depending on whether value is true or false. The contents of a !elsif or !else will not be executed if one of the earlier sibling !if or !elsif commands was true.

Example:

!if false
  this will not be executed
  (value was false)
!elsif true
  this will be executed
  (value was true)
!else
  this will not be executed
  (already executed an earlier block).
!endif

!if blocks can also be nested:

!if true
  this will be executed
  !if false
    this will not be executed
  !else
    this will be executed
  !endif
  this will be executed
!else
  this will not be executed
!endif

Running Games

Making a New Game

To create a new game, you’ll need to be logged in. After that, you’ll be able to create a game from the New Game page. The system supports two types of games, public and private. Additionally you can select which options to include in the game.

• In private games all the players are specified up front when creating a game. The preferred method of doing this is by the username of the players. It’s good etiquette to not anyone to a private game unless they’re expecting it.
• Public games are games that anyone can join. The game starts as soon as enough people have joined it. Email notifications must always be turned on for public games.

Administrating the Game

The creator of the game has administrator rights to the game, and can edit the history arbitrarily. You can find the admin view of the games you run under the “Games you Administrate” section on the home page.

The admin view is useful for example in the following circumstances:

• A player misenters an order and would like to undo it. It’s up to the game creator to decide under which circumstances a rollback is reasonable.
• You wish to stop the game prematurely. This can be done using the abort / restart buttons under the “Status” section.

Note that the administrator rights only apply to the game itself. Most importantly the admin can’t read the planning notes of other players.

<<admin-commands>>

Administrative commands

The following commands are available for changing the state of the game.

<<options>>

option option

Example:

option errata-cultist-power

Set a game variant or option. Should be done before randomization or faction selection. The following options are available:

• mini-expansion-1: First mini-expansion, 4 town tiles
• shipping-bonus: Additional bonus tile from Spielbox 6/2013, http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1843355/terra-mystica-navigation-round-bonus-tile
• temple-scoring-tile: Additional round scoring tile, producing points for building temples.
• variable-turn-order: The order in which players pass determines the turn order for the next round.
• fire-and-ice-final-scoring: One more final scoring category will be randomly selected from the 4 alternatives included in the Fire & Ice expansion.
• fire-and-ice-faction/xxx: Where xxx is one of “ice”, “variable” or “volcano”. Makes the two factions of that type from the Fire & Ice expansion available

in the game.

• email-notify: Automatically send email notifications after moves (players can configure exactly which emails they want to see). Can’t be used in games with unregistered players.
• maintain-player-order: Don’t randomize the player order, but use the order in which players were added to the game. Can only be used for private games.

Timeouts

All games will be automatically aborted after 2 weeks of inactivity. Changes made in the admin view don’t extend the lifespan of the game, only moves made directly by players.

<<drop>>

Players who become inactive are dropped from the game after a timeout specified during game creation (from 12 hours to two weeks). They can also drop out voluntarily using the “resign” command. Dropping out has the following effects on the faction:

• They will take no actions
• They will leech no power (for the purposes of the cultists they can’t leech power, rather than decline it)
• They will not have any effect on the turn order (except if they’ve already passed on the round they’re dropped).
• Their current bonus tile is immediately returned to the pool. The rest of the game will be played with an extra bonus tile available.
• Their buildings will still give discounts for TP upgrades of other players
• They still affect the end game scorings (network, cult tracks)

Notes on specific factions

Mermaids

The mermaid special town founding ability can’t be used automatically, but must be triggered manually. Use the connect command to mark hexes that should be considered adjacent for this purpose. For example if the mermaids declare the river hex between F2 and E4 as the one they want to skip, use the command connect F2:E4). If there are multiple valid river hexes, the tracker will pick an arbitrary one. If you want to specify the river hex exactly, specify 3 land hexes: connect G2:H4:I6.

Darklings

To use the power of the Darkling Stronghold, use a command like convert 3w to 3p. Note that this special exchange rate is only valid for the duration of the turn.

Dwarves / Fakirs

The system will automatically detect if the Dwarves / Fakirs may use their special tunneling or carpet flight, and handles the resource costs and VP gains without any additional input.

See the done command for splitting up transforming and building into separate actions.

Giants

It’s possible for Giants to receive a single spade from a cult scoring bonus, and be unable to spend it (due to always needing exactly two spades for any transforming). To advance, throw away the spade with -SPADE.

Known issues and workarounds

TW5 tile

Problem: When taking the TW5 tile, a player who is on the 9 spot on multiple tracks can’t choose which cult track to advance to 10 on. Instead the game will advance him to 10 on an arbitrary track.

Solution: Before taking the town tile, move the player down a step on the cult tracks he doesn’t want to advance to 10 on (for example -WATER). Note that you should do this adjustment first, doing it after taking the town tile will unjustly award 3 power to the player.

Planner

The planning tool mostly enforces the rules as the normal game. There are two major exceptions:

• Mixing BON4 (temporary shipping) and spades received as cult income in phase III. BON4 only has an effect in phase II. The planner does not enforce use of the spade already in the cult income phase, and instead delays it phase II of the following round. As a result, plans that try to use the extra shipping range to transform an otherwise unreachable hex will work in the planner but fail in reality.
• The payment for Acolyte volcanos is not enforced in the planner.

<<keyboard-shortcuts>>

Keyboard shortcuts

The application has a small number of keyboard shortcuts defined for navigating the interface. To trigger the shortcut, you need to combine it with a browser-dependent modifier key, for example “Alt” on Chrome or “Alt-Shift” on Firefox. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_key for information on which modifier key is used by your browser and operating system.

The following shortcuts are defined on most views, such as the game view and the game list:

• h (home): Return to the home page / list of games.
• n (next game): Refresh game information. Go to next game where it’s your turn to move.

The following additional keyboard shortcuts are defined only in the game view:

• m (moves): Switch to the moves tab
• p (planning): Switch to the planning / notes tab
• r (recent): Switch to the recent moves tab
• c (chat): Switch to the chat tab

Frequently asked questions

Crawling the site

Please don’t use any kind of automated process to fetch the data of each game one by one. It’s possible that doing this will trigger an automatic IP ban. Instead use one of the following sources for game or result information:

• Just the results for a specific month or day: https://terra.snellman.net/app/results/v2/yyyy/mm or https://terra.snellman.net/app/results/v2/yyyy/mm/dd (replace yyyy/mm/dd with the actual year/month/day you want results for).
• More detailed per-game data, grouped by month: https://terra.snellman.net/data/events/ with a format that’s described here https://terra.snellman.net/data/events/README
• Latest player / faction ratings: https://terra.snellman.net/data/ratings.json

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