Root with five or six players - not desirable

[Tassadar]

I saw several people longing for DireWolf to add a five/six player mode to Root Digital Edition. While the thought of playing Root with more than four players sounds intriguing at first, I actually do not think that Root works well at these player counts. My impression is that the factions have not been balanced with such a high player count in mind - high player counts make life even more difficult for the Cats for example, while the Otters have more potential customers. And balancing aside, high player counts mean more waiting time between turns, and less rooms for strategy because the board state changes significantly between turns. I hope that DireWolf rather adds more factions than more players!

[MarleyTown]

Absolutely no harm in doing both. If people want to play with 4 they can keep doing so, but best to have the options for 5-6 player Root too.

[Gerg]

Aye let games have the option then every one gets their fun, people who like big games can play and other can limit the players

[Kimera]

Originally posted by Tassadar:

I saw several people longing for DireWolf to add a five/six player mode to Root Digital Edition. While the thought of playing Root with more than four players sounds intriguing at first, I actually do not think that Root works well at these player counts. My impression is that the factions have not been balanced with such a high player count in mind - high player counts make life even more difficult for the Cats for example, while the Otters have more potential customers. And balancing aside, high player counts mean more waiting time between turns, and less rooms for strategy because the board state changes significantly between turns. I hope that DireWolf rather adds more factions than more players!

I don't know if you know this but Root is actually a board game this is just the digital version of it. The board game, once it got the Riverfolk expansion with the Otters and Lizards, is for 6 players at max, which is probably why people want a 6 player mode. Ironically, people who play the board game from what I've head think playing with fewer than four people is where the game starts suffering. Also, If you want more factions there is two more expansions for the board games that the video game will hopefully get. Each expansion adds two new factions and the most recent one added a whole bunch of hirelings which are sort of minor npc factions!

[Razorwind]

To be blunt, i think the Otters and Lizards were meant to embrace the 5-6 player count, but the community at large felt that having 5-6 players will make the physical game way too long.

I wish they would revisit the otters and lizards to make them work better at 4P count, maybe a slightly more buffed board when the player count is lower.

[TheAbyssGazesAlso]

IMO the Otters are probably the weakest faction. It's too easy for the other players to just shut them out and not buy anything. It's fine against the AI but against humans you're going to have a bad time. I think Lizards work well at most player counts though, although to be fair I almost exclusively play 4P

[MarleyTown]

Otters work well with 4p, you either need to be a good salesman offering your services (ie 4 funds to police the Vagabond, turmoil the Eyrie etc), or reserve those precious funds for hampering your opponents, gradually saving them up for a boost at the end, or to craft when drawing the right cards.

Lizards are comparatively weak, but if everyone is policing each other and leaving them alone, they can come out very strong.

[Skeev]

Originally posted by MarleyTown:

Absolutely no harm in doing both. If people want to play with 4 they can keep doing so, but best to have the options for 5-6 player Root

Actually, this is wrong. Because investing development time there means less development time on something else.

[Sakarov]

Well i want this digital edition to integrate everything the board game offers eventually and that includes 5-6 players.

I do agree this shouldn't be very high on the priority list though (ADVANCED SETUP PLEASE WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE).

[VeeJay]

Recent tournament data, which includes the most recent expansions, suggests that the game may be more balanced at 5 players. Traditionally strong factions like the Lord of the Hundreds and Woodland Alliance are harder to get up and running, whereas traditionally weaker factions like the Marquise De Cat and Corvid Conspiracy tend to benefit from the extra turns of a prolonged game. This is all assuming Advanced Setup is in play, mind you.

[xanadu1215]

Regardless of play with 5 or 6 players, just put it in and let us decide. There are 6 of us in our weekly gaming of root and we would all like to play. Also, if the code was written correctly, it should not be a big deal to add 2 more players being a QA and Coder myself for 40 years. You can do it! I believe in you, Programmers.

[Pilgrim Jake]

I'd also like to see larger player counts - 5-6 being an option. While the Physical board game does make slower turns with greater numbers, playing this online is a LOT faster and playing an ansync game even more viable. There is presumably also a lot more room for diplomacy in longer running games this way. This allows a more interesting expression of the Root ecology to thrive! Bring it on peoples, its always about whats more fun and up to 6 players lets more variation into our games.

[MarleyTown]

Won't be long to wait now :D

[xanadu1215]

REALLY!? OhmyGoshOhmyGoshOhmyGoshOhmyGoshOhmyGosh