Zeppelin game continues

I got a chance to sit down with a friend of mine and we talked through the design and everything that has gone into this beast so far. Right now, it is literally that. It played two players in about 2 hours and change. That is not counting stopping to discuss why parts of the game work the way they do.

The market works SO MUCH better! I noticed that it can still be limited in that there are only 5 parts, 6 if you add in the trading mechanism. This was good to see. We agreed that we would only replace the bits that had been bought rather than clearing and restocking 25 parts.

The revamped zeppelins and plane worked well. I think the soldier may gain a second ability to repair, but not build. This would make them slightly more valuable and players may be more willing to build them.

What I keep noticing is that even though there are plenty of options to dump action points into in the early rounds, the later rounds have more workers and thus more action points, but far fewer choices. I realize I could complicate the game further by adding in something where the action points are spent doing something useful. However, it complicates an already complex game and provides even more time doing those extra actions. While I personally don't feel it is a bad thing, I have a concern that players may not see it the same way I do.

This game plays very much like a worker placement game, but with the workers doing multiple actions on any given turn. Worker placement games also have a total number of workers allotted for the entire game. Agricola has 5, Stone Age has 10, etc. This game has an unlimited supply of workers. Granted you can only hire 2 workers in any given round, but you can build lots of soldiers. So by contrast, there is going to be wasted action points.

What I am considering at this time is cutting the total play time by having a round limit, possibly 10 rounds. Right now, the game ends when any player either collects all 10 of their spoils and returns them to base or loses them over the ocean. The problem with this is, it can cause some anguish ferrying stuff back and forth especially with zeppelins and planes getting shot down all over the place.

The next addition to the beast is going to be the enemy cards, they are going to trigger at 5 point intervals. Such that player 1 scores 5 points and will thus be attacked at the beginning of the next round by an enemy (or not, there will be a few duds). This enemy will have to be defeated or it will do some damage and attack the next player at the beginning of their turn. This may not happen though. We'll see.