big city

very good,  long overview
http://akapastorguy.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/game-central-station-big-city.html


I think Big City is a very nice game to play and enjoy it very much. The following tweaks have greatly improved the playing experience:

1. City hall can be placed without playing a card to any free square, which is not in the outskirts of the city.

2. Streetcar is not allowed to branch or to make a loop

3. In the beginning of the game, the initial districts are placed in anti-clockwise order. The player, who placed the last district starts the game and the game continues normally clockwise.

Why? I'll explain in more detail:

1. Placing City Hall "opens" the game and allows much more options. Typically the games where it's placed early are much more interesting than the games where it's not placed at all, or placed late as a desperate action by a player who otherwise would instantly lose the game.

If you have to waste a card to play City hall, it's almost never worth it and we saw way too many games where nobody placed it until the town was full. But if you may play the city hall without a card, it's often a decent move and you may even use it to block another player a bit while increasing the value of your own cards.

2. This might actually be in the rules. Especially in a 3-4 player game the streetcar is very chaotic if it's allowed to branch. In a skilled group you will never be able to build any really valuable buildings (shopping center or such), because the street car will be used to cut the area. Disallowing branching really opens many tactical options.

3. Without this rule, the game favors start player way too much. Even with this rule, the player who starts gets an advantage, but at least the other players will be able to create 2x1 blocks in the initial setup.

Hopefully you will find these "house rules" useful. I definitely enjoy the game much more with them.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/548200/fixing-game