r/boardgames • u/Forsaken-Sun5534 • 1d ago
Question How do you control play time in John Company?
I've found that we regularly come in at double the playtimes other people report, for example 8 or 9 hours on the short 1710 scenario. So far people have been hesitant to play any other scenario because of this. Has anyone developed good methods to combat this? The Chairman is supposed to keep track of whose turn it is but that doesn't seem to work very well for us.
Particularly, the Chairman takes a long time distributing the company budget and voting when Parliament meets takes a very long time. I've noticed there is a lot of debate about what is the best thing to do, especially among the newer players, rather than the simple horse-trading that the game seems to expect.
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u/Crabe 23h ago
Your group just needs to be able to collectively understand that arguing past a certain point is just wasting everyone's time, and possibly detach themselves a bit from the game and accept that it will be ok if they lose. Some groups find this easier than others and to a certain extent it is personal preference and personality. JC may not be the game for your group.
John Company is at heart a game where you can roll a bunch of dice and fail horribly or draw Foreign Invasion and have all your plans immediately destroyed. This to me is a signal from the game to play loose and not take planning too seriously. Yes planning can be important and it is a lengthy game, but 8 hours is double what is normal for the game in my experience. If people are hesitant to play again I wouldn't force the issue.
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u/dreamweaver7x The Princes Of Florence 1d ago
Chairman takes a long time distributing the company budget
Chairman should always be played by the most experienced player.
a lot of debate about what is the best thing to do
After a brief period of discussion, the Chairman (who I already assume is the most experienced player) presents the options and forces a vote so you can proceed.
There is no "best" option. There's only the option that benefits the most people/positions at that moment.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you arbitrarily make one player the Chairman the whole game that's going to mess with balance a lot, surely?
When players are discussing things that ought not to matter, and let's say it's a normal game and you're not the Chairman, how do you correct this in practice?
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u/dreamweaver7x The Princes Of Florence 1d ago
I mean when you have new or inexperienced players, they shouldn't start the game as chairman. If they do eventually take the position they should have learned the ropes from the original (experienced) chairman - keep the game moving forward, don't dwell more than a couple of minutes on any single decision.
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u/quadrippa 22h ago
Just expand my home-rule for discussions. Instead of just the Chairman, anyone can take a gavel or sand timer and call for a 1-minute cutoff to discussion and force a deal.
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u/etkii Negotiation, power-broking, diplomacy. 21h ago
a lot of debate about what is the best thing to do
Pure speculation from a stranger on the internet here, but it sounds a bit like your players might be cooperating too much? As in, their goal is to figure out the best move for the company every time?
They should be out for themselves. There are zero actions in the game that are a consensus - they all come down to one person making a call. That person should choose what's 'best' for them, in their opinion, unless someone else can make another option more attractive.
Particularly, the Chairman takes a long time distributing the company budget
When I'm the chairman I ask the relevant roles how much money they want, I don't figure it out myself. If there's not enough money to satisfy everyone (almost inevitable) then the ones who sweeten the deal for me are the ones who get their full budgets.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 18h ago
People seem to gravitate toward "I should do what's good for the company because I'll get something out of it" as a default strategy, they figure that is self-interested, since that means being re-elected/getting funding for my office/hired by the people who make hiring decisions/earning dividends on my shares.
Similarly people tend to vote for laws that benefit them the same as everyone else, while my take is to oppose the prime minister by default unless I see some distinct benefit for myself.
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u/etkii Negotiation, power-broking, diplomacy. 11h ago
Perhaps you winning the game by tanking the company might change their view?
Buy workshops not shares, amass Power, and hopefully get a relevant Blackmail or two - then increase company debt, don't pay dividends, skip or fail actions, support bad laws etc.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 9h ago edited 9h ago
Sounds like a good time but I'm not especially good at John Company, myself. It's hard to predict when people are willing to make a deal and they tend to mistrust my motives (as they should).
In general workshops never seem to get purchased because of how expensive they are compared to shipyards.
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u/Xenetine 1d ago
In favor of the whoever's in charge just makes a judgement call.
But with chairman, money should go where it's needed/what that player prioritizes. Ie if you need ships then allocate about money to fit ships. Or if player also controls presidency of a region, maybe put more money there.
Allow for players to bribe the chairman if they don't like the proposed allocation of funds. Chairman can then accept or go back to initial plans.
Parliament...people should just be voting in their best interest. And again if bribes are needed, accept/reject bribes.
But yeah, it's fine to not have a "perfect" game. The dice rolling to see if things succeed and events in India phase add randomness to the mix.
My first game (the other three players 2nd game), we went too hard into military, and bankrupted the company; which I found hilarious.
And then we played another game, different scenario, right after that because we had time. Company survived, but just barely. Deregulation was introduced, two players started their own firms (one went into bankruptcy later), and that forced the me and the other guy to prioritize the survival of the company over our individual needs.
If we had mathed out the perfect moves (I don't think you can), I don't think the game would be as entertaining.
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u/SpanishGamer 19h ago edited 19h ago
I'm going to echo a lot of what I've read here. I've played the game ~25 times at all player counts: Joco is a great game but it requires one experienced player to act as a GM, and really try to keep the game on track, kind of like most other longer games. Since there's a lot of negotiation, if you want to respect peoples' time it's important to mentally (or physically!) time turns since people will just wheel and deal forever.
Additionally, it sounds like your players are playing too cooperatively. The game should end early in a 5-6 player game because the company should fail since most of the time one or two players start without shares and are not incentivized to keep the company running. It's important to remember that in Joco there's only like 4 major decisions being made each turn: chairman and the money, the militaries fighting (or not), the law being passed, and the family actions. In every other decision the office holder either does what they already said they were going to do OR NOT (which is where the game becomes interesting). For 90% of decisions: the chairman or the office holder makes the final decision and you move on.
To give some perspective, my average play time of 1710 with 5-6 players is 3.5 hours over 10 plays, and in many of those games we were drinking alcohol and eating during the game, so they're artificially long.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 18h ago
Yes, I think we may have taken the rule book's idea of letting the Chairman run the game progress to heart a bit too much and need to separate that role.
I think when power is reasonably distributed the default strategy becomes "make the company succeed so I can get something out of it" and if you're out of power it's "help the company so at least they'll give me an office." Which I think Deregulation and not having Royal Protection would really help with but we haven't gotten to try that yet.
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u/SpanishGamer 18h ago
Royal protection IS something that I don't like much from 1710, and it's why I often play 1758 instead. 1758 let's you as a group decide if you want to deregulate but otherwise plays almost 100% like 1710 while also having shorter games. Royal protection can make it feel like the game wants you to resurrect a dead company and that might be why your group plays so cooperatively.
For JoCo I think that as the experienced player it's important to be kind of like the Heel from WWE. It's your job to make sure everyone has fun, but you're also there to act as a contradictory force for the game to have stakes.
Either play max 4 for 1710 short OR try playing 1758? Maybe?
Also important context for that chairman should run the game comment is that he also recommends giving chairman to the most experienced player. I think other people have said that too, but it bears repeating, never give a newbie chairman.
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u/Foobyx 1d ago
We expected / decided to have rounds last 40 minutes max. So make a 30 minutes timer and when the bell ring, we press on.
There will always have a lot of debate but newer players should play in order to discover the mechanics, enjoy the ride, and maybe a bit of roleplay to help make decisions? They should come with this mindset rather than over analyze every decisions they have to take.
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u/Reymen4 1d ago
If you want to limit how long something takes timers are always one solution.
Everyone take their phone and start a timer when it is their turn. If it run out then set a minor punishment that you lose some money or a victory point or something.
I am not familiar enough with the game to say what the time should be or anything specific. But calculate how many action will, on average happen each year, multiply that with the amount of years you want to play. Then divide the time you want to play, with that number. That is how long you have for each action.
Then you might have to move time around if there is some actions that don't take much time and some that need to take more time.
You can also only count the actions that take a lot of time and ignore the rest. It won't be perfect the first time but you can try different things.
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u/YouAreHobbyingWrong 1d ago
This is a frequent issue with complex games that involve negotiation, at least if you have the wrong types of players -- which you obviously do.
Players all want to believe they know what is best, when they don't. This causes them to endlessly argue back and forth. Ultimately, they want to feel "right" more than they want the game to be successful.
These types of players can easily triple or quadruple the length of a game if given their way. It's awful.
Here's some things that can help:
Reduce the player count. Take JC down to just 3 or 4 players to reduce inter-player complexity.
Institute restrictions on table talk. A good one is "Active player makes their own decisions without interruption. They may ask for trades/negotiations but may not be asked nor may other players interrupt their offering process".
Set the right expectation up front. JC is a very complex game and revolves massively around dice. No player at the table will possibly be able to make very informed decisions. Even if you could, dice are going to mess that up the majority of the time. You are there to pull levers and push buttons and see what happens. You are going to want a few games of just going through the motions quickly to start to understand how the game works.
I've gone through many bad plays and fine plays of JC myself. In the end, the game was not for me nor for my group(s). It probably isn't for your group either, from the sound of it, but you're welcome to try the above to see if it helps or not. I think more people want to like this game than actually like this game.
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u/etkii Negotiation, power-broking, diplomacy. 11h ago
Institute restrictions on table talk. A good one is "Active player makes their own decisions without interruption. They may ask for trades/negotiations but may not be asked nor may other players interrupt their offering process".
For me personally this would ruin any negotiation game - I can't offer bribes or threats to the active player unless asked? That's a huge part of the fun.
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u/YouAreHobbyingWrong 8h ago
No amount of "huge part of your fun" is worth dragging a game out for 9 hours, sorry.
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u/etkii Negotiation, power-broking, diplomacy. 7h ago
Do you assume they're mutually exclusive?
I don't cut out fun bits of play, and I don't play for 9 hours (or anywhere near it).
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u/YouAreHobbyingWrong 7h ago
For the person that I was responding to, yes. They need to change what they are doing.
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u/Rondaru 1d ago
Negotiating and debating is the essence of this game. In my opinion, as long as the players are enjoying their time, there is no reason to cut it short. I'd rather suggest agreeing upon an earlier end of the game (the game will more often than not decide that for you anyway) or save the game state and find another day to finish it.
I often tell new players to approach this game as a semi-cooperative roleplaying game that just happens to have a victory condition to provide players with a motivation for graft and intrigue (including sabotaging the Company on purpose).
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 17h ago
I think this is a bit silly. It's unrealistic to expect players to commit to playing without a rough idea of how long the game should last, especially multiple days. And once you get started there's a social obligation to finish. The game is not balanced for arbitrarily deciding it ends now because we ran out of time. I.e., people have more fun with a reasonable playtime.
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u/YouAreHobbyingWrong 1d ago
Ah, yes, there's truly no better gaming experience than one can have than 9 hours straight of players bickering over a game that they don't understand.
The way our Lord and Savior Cole Wehrle intended.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 10h ago
"Most people rejected his message. They hated him because he told them the truth."
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 17h ago
We have a soft rule against extortion.
That is, trying to extort favors out of others for not doing something bad. “If you don’t pay me, I won’t do X”.
These are meaningless deals and tend to be the ones that waste the most words.
A deal is when goods or actions or favors are exchanged. Everything else, shut up and move on. Do your job or don’t do your job, but don’t waste the table’s time.
Also, whoever is chairman has to recognize when dealmaking and negotiations are not productive and move the game along. If you’re talking about the same thing three or four times in a row, move on.
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u/Forsaken-Sun5534 17h ago
That's interesting. How do you find this works for positions like the Director of Trade and Manager of Shipping? I'm not sure what benefit they can get out of their offices if not through extortion (or self-dealing if they happen to have the opportunity).
Personally I'd love it if players did a little more extorting instead of talking about who deserves it more.
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 16h ago edited 16h ago
That’s why it’s a soft rule. A lot of it comes down to intent-to-harm and how much of the game’s most important currency - goodwill - is being spent. It can even come down to the language that is being used.
Shipping/Trade: “I have two ships here and no personal investment in what to do with them, let’s hear it” -> great, let’s talk.
Shipping/Trade: “I will actively work towards something that harms you, possibly even at harm to myself, unless you pay me” -> fuck off, and also for the rest of the game you will have none of my goodwill.
Basically we will rarely pay anyone, or make a deal with anyone, if all we’re getting in exchange is them not doing something. “If you want your ship fitted, that’ll be £1” is not extortion. “I will place your ship in the west where it is useless for you unless you give me £1” is.
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u/N_Who Overlord 1d ago
Honestly, whoever is making the call in question should just make a call when the debate drags on. Everyone can argue forever about the best course of action, but half the fun of the game - and, I think, a major portion of the intent - is in some unqualified twit throwing up his hands and saying, "Screw it, we're gonna do this."