What is the town meta-game all about?

BSW consist of a virtual world of towns. Basicly the town "game" is just meant as a fun thing in addition to the boardgames. The towns also work as small comunities in BSW. Like when people shout, the shouting is done inside the town. The towns also have it's own chat window that will pop up for all town members when first person speak (if the town chat window isn't open, you can start chating by using the /ctell command. The different towns have their own game houses and from time to time the towns compete in tournaments.

When you join BSW you do by default end up as a citizen of the town called ARMfeld. This town is a bit special. It will among other things cut you off the posibility of competing in the town tournaments. 

Our goal in EnglishTown is to make BSW more accessible for the English speaking crowd. Our hope is that we can manage to make some kind of a comunity where you can always find some other english speaking people to play a game or five with. We also try to do our best in regard to making the newbies that show up in town feel at home. (When people access BSW from the BSW-homepage they are directed directly to EnglishTown if they picked english as language on the main page).

Basicly EnglishTown is a room in BSW (/room C10).
When you enter EnglishTown you can visually move around in the town room by using the blue arrows you find to the right of the town itself. By clicking the game houses you find in the town you can enter the different games (other ways of entering the games can be found on the page regarding gameplay). In addition to the game houses you will also find farm houses, town houses and landgraf houses. All for people to live in. (Basicly just a funny thing so people can see where you live :-). When reaching level 12 and Landgraf you can get your own property in town, with your own house and a garden where you can plant threes, flowers or maybe dig out a small pond. Reaching level 15 and Fürst will give you the option to get a game of your choice installed in your house.

For each game played in a town, the town will gain a sertain amount of resourses and Talers (the BSW money). The talers and resourses can be used to buy new build items (like game houses and special houses dedicated to the meta-game, or items like flowers and threes for making the town look great).

In addition, towns must provide food (50 each month) and clothing (5-20 each month, depending on level) for each resident. If a town cannot meet these demands they are subject to penalties. A food shortage causes starvation, and the residents lose 5% of their Talers/experience. A clothing shortage causes freezing, and the town is not allowed to build buildings for a month. In addition, both of these cause the town to sell all resources they may have saved.

To see how many resourses are needed you can take a look at the cloth and food requirement page. The actuall number of resourses ET are holding can be seen by all ET members in /room C10.

All current and future EnglishTown citizens can be asured that there will be no starving and lose of personal points in ET. Even if we don't like it, we might have to remove infrequent/inactive players from town now and then to be able to meet the resource requirements. We have made the rule that if someone is totaly unactive for 2 months the person is removed, and if you only play a few games a month we might also feel the need to remove you, but you will then be warned. This also mean that if you are going for a longer vacation you should make sure to let the mayor know so that you won't be removed.

More about resourses

The BSW introduction to resources can be found here.

Wood, stone, ore, wool, and food are earned by playing boardgames on BSW. When a game is played in a town, that game generates a number of resources equal to the number of players in the game minus 1. If the game has N players, the game generates M x (N - 1) resources. M represents the multiplier associated with the game. Different games have different multipliers.

We suspect the mulitpliers to be like this: Puerto Rico : 4x, RA, Meuterer : 3x, Siedler, CC, CCE, Transamerica : 2x, Lost Cities, CantStop, Tichu : 1x.  There is a 50% chance these resources will be credited to the town housing the game. There is a 50% chance that the resources will go to the town of a randomly chosen player of the game. This allows you to have a chance of earning resources for your town even if you are playing in some other town (not your own), even if the chance then is very small compared to the chance when you play in your own town. Of course, if all of the players in the game are from the town that houses the game, then there is a 100% chance that the resources will go to the town housing the game.

The distribution of resources that a town generates are decided by the  location of the town on the BSW world map

Resources may  be sold and bought in the BSW market (found in /game 0) by the ambassador (but all are free to go and have a look at the prices.  

Some facts and figures showing why it is important to play in the ET game rooms.

If an ET player plays Tichu with 3 people from other towns the chance that the town they play in gets the resources is 50%.
The chance that the town of one of the players get the resources is also 50%, with 4 players this mean that there is 12,5% chance that the town of one of the players get the resources. So, if the game is played in ET the chance is 62,5% that ET get the resources.
If the game is played outside ET there is a 12,5% chance that ET get the resources. This percent numbers will equal the amount of resources ET get from the game play in the long run. This mean that in the long run one such game of Tichu  give 0,375 resources if played outside ET, and 1,875 resources if played in ET.
 
This mean that to gain 50 resources you have to play 50/1,875 = 27 games of Tichu in a ET game room, or 50/0,375 = 134 games of Tichu in a game room outside of ET.
 
We can do the same kind of calculations for a 3 player PR where one of the players is a ET player: The chance that the town of one of the players get the resources is still 50% and with 3 players this mean that there is a 16,67% chance that the town of one of the players get the resources. So, if the game is played in ET the chance is 66,67% that ET get the resources. If the game is played outside ET there is a 16,67% chance that ET get the resources.  Since a 3 player of PR gives 8 resources this mean that one such game of PR give 1,33 resources if played outside ET, and 5,33 resources if played in ET.
 
Summa sumarum:
To gain 50 resources you have to play 50/5,33 = 10 games of PR in a ET game room, or 50/1,33 = 38 games  of PR if played in a game room outside of ET.