Frontierville

(continuing my review of Facebook games)
A quick word of warning about Zynga games (Mafia Wars, Farmville, Frontierville, among others). They are pretty public about how evil they are. They will sell you email to spammers, and do anything to spread to your friends and install toolbars on your browser. If you play their games (and I can't recommend any of them), make sure to use NoScript, Adblock, etc. and don't give them your email, make sure you block them from your wall and friends, etc...

So, continuing on the massive failure that is Farmville, there is now Frontierville.

The game mechanics (and engine) are basically the same - you have a set of land, on which you place buildings, crops, trees, and animals.

There are a number of changes, most of them bad: energy, wilderness, varmints.

Energy
In Farmville, you could plant your whole board in a 4 hour crop, come back in 4 hours and harvest it all (assuming you had the money). In Frontierville, every action takes 1 energy (like the energy in Mafia Wars). Of course, in Mafia Wars I have 1900 energy (at 1 energy per 5 minutes, that is 8 days). In Frontierville, I have 15 energy.

This does introduce some interesting strategy changes.

Now, you must pipeline out some crops in order to maximize experience. You can't just look at xp/hr, you must include energy as well (since all actions are 1 energy, this amounts to xp/crop). So, 3 day crops are the best, but you can't just fill the board with them. You have to stage them out, say 1 hour apart, 9 at a time (not 12, more later). This creates some interesting effects, when you start with a blank board, and want to scale up to a big harvest in 2 or 3 days (say over a long weekend). You lay down 9 of the 3 day jobs, and 9 one hour jobs (for when you come back). Then, in an hour, harvest and lay down 9 more of the 3-days. Rinse and repeat.

Wilderness
The wilderness is a huge pain. Your board is not open like in Farmville. It starts covered with all sorts of junk, which you have to expend energy to clear. Worse, the stuff grows back.

Varmints
This is probably the worst feature of all (especially when compounded with the other two). Every action has a chance to spawn a varmint (different ones for different actions). The varmint will block the 8 adjacent squares, forcing you to deal with it or pay 2 energy for actions. It takes 3 or 4 energy to remove a varmint (hence the 9 crops for a 12 energy period). If you luck out with no varmints, you need the energy for maintaining the wilderness anyway.

The game's isometric view is especially painful here. One time, I was clearing some trees, and a bear appeared. It was hidden behind a big tree, so I had to pay 2 energy times 12 to clear that tree!

Co-op Play
There is one nice new feature. In Farmville, you could visit your friends' farms. There you could get some extra xp and money by "helping out" (which actually did not help them at all). In Frontierville, you can actually help. This makes things a little better, but is not usually reliable enough to impact planning. You usually have more things than you have energy for, and friends can help there.

The game has just started, so it might get better - but probably not.