The Difference Between Sacrifices and Thresholds

Many games give players personal objectives to achieve by the end. This helps them decide what to do and encourages them to pursue different strategies. But these goals need to be balanced. A pet peeve of mine is that I often see two different types of goals that are presented as equal. Consider the following objectives:

1. Gain 10 VP if you have 12+ coins.
2. Gain 10 VP if you control 4+ cities.

Assume that coins are the game's currency, and cities are a productive asset. Achieving the former goal requires sacrificing resources. If you save your coins to achieve the goal, you aren't spending them productively. Achieving the latter goal requires doing something that is beneficial anyway. Controlling 4 cities already helps you, so you give up little to pursue it.

Sacrificial goals are not the same as threshold goals. They are much more costly to achieve, and should reward the player significantly more. This mismatch is worse when goals are private, because it gives some players an unfair advantage. In a game where goals are public, it matters less because you can simply opt not to pursue a sacrificial goal. That said, it still needs higher rewards to avoid being a trap for new players.

Another problematic situation is when goals are relative:

1. Gain 10 VP if you have the most coins.
2. Gain 10 VP if you control the most cities.

Competition over a relative goal involves varying amounts of effort. It can be difficult if all players try hard, or easy if few attempt it. Here, the coin goal carries a lot of risk because somebody else might get more coins than you. Your points are not guaranteed. By contrast, the city goal carries little risk. Even if you fail it, the cities benefit you in other ways.

It is fine to have high-risk and low-risk strategies, but they need to yield matching rewards. Sacrifice and threshold-based goals have wildly different risk levels inherent to them. If you use them together without accounting for this, you risk making your game seem unfair.