THE BLOG IS ONLY SLEEPING (for Agent Easy)

Also, in the spirit of post-action reports now that the blog is dead, I wanted to share a few comments on Clash of Cultures (which I played with Shemp last week):

- I found it to be a really good game, better than the Sid Meier one in most ways.

- the design is cleaner and more logical than the other Civ. for these reasons, learning it is easier despite the fact that there are probably more rules in this one.

- there is a certain amount of randomness introduced through events that some might have a problem with. In the game we played it seemed like a nice addition because it forced players to react to threats that were not necessarily coming from other players (in this game, the neutral barbarians civilizations take an unusually active role)

- the tech tree, and the forms of government, work really well.

- there is a way of gaining victory points through cultural influence which is really cool. Essentially, if your city gets big enough the surrounding cities can become converted to your color and give you points in the endgame (they still belong to the original player for all other purposes)

- combat is very interesting because there are cards that can be used to give specific abilities (ambush, flanking, etc)

- objective cards and wonders provide short term/ alternative goals to players which give other reasons to players to pursue goals that are not driven by the other players.

- Shemp is a jerk for having taken over my biggest city on the last turn, giving him the win.

Downsides:

- It's slightly longer than the Sid Meier game I think, probably a full 60 min per player

- scope is reduced, as the game never goes beyond antiquity. That said, the Sid Meier one does a pretty poor job of modeling the growth of civilizations after antiquity anyway.

- there is a bit more of a generic feeling due to the lack of starting civ differentiation and the goal being VP driven instead of objective driven. Luckily, it felt to me that the technology tree and the way the world develops will allow for many different paths to victory.

All that, and a bag of chips? (Civilization, Agricola, High Society x2)

We all gathered once again to conclude our latest game of Sid Meier's Civilization. In our last session, I had managed to stay under the radar and gain a significant lead through the purchase of a large amount of technology. If I was permitted to survive until the end of the game, I would surely win. The players all agreed that they would cooperate to take me out. I fully expected to be obliterated tonight, but something else happened... the other players conceeded the game and we played Agricola instead! (Bharmer wasn't enjoying the game, and successfully stopping me meant that I would be eliminated and they would likely have to spend a fourth evening determining the new winner. My success was far from assured, but I had a real shot so we called it a game)

Agricola

Agricola is the new "it" boardgame. So much so that it has currently unseated Puerto Rico as the number 1 game on BGG, a feat no other game has yet managed to do (I have no idea if it will stay there, but I wouldn't pick either game as my favorite so whatever).

The theme here, predictably, is farming. The implementation is more literal than most, however... each player actually gets a board depicting a little plot of land and over the course of the game they have to till the land, grow crops and raise animals while trying to improve the house, raise a family and... you know... keep everyone fed.

The mechanics involve a central board depicting a plethora of available actions, each of which can only be chosen once a round. Players start with a two room house and a husband and wife team, and each of those can choose to do one of the available actions every round. As the house grows, babies can be had and they can grow up and take actions themselves. Meanwhile, gathering food becomes tougher and tougher. Predictably, not having to resort to begging is a prime motivator in the game.

In the end, the farm is scored and almost every aspect is graded: from the number of wasted plots of land, to the number of children, the amount of food on hand and the variety of livestock being raised. Because there are way more things that need doing than there is time to do them, Agricola is a capital "E" efficiency game.

Prior to this evening, I had tried the solo family game a few times. It actually works fairly well as a sort of optimisation puzzle, so that was good. Sadly, the rulebook could have been significantly better... it works as a reference but a new player will be lost for a little while. As an example, there is a simplified "family" game which is recommended as the first game. Wouldn't it be logical then to make the instructions prominent and simple to follow? Instead, the advanced rules are described first, then a paragraph explaining how to convert the rules for a family game can be found eight pages in. In other words, those the least familiar with the game are asked to first read and understand the complex rules and then to modify them according to a few paragraphs at the end. Also, on a number of occasions the rules refer to a board by name without actually ever identifying them anywhere AND they include a number of alternate boards without explanation, leaving a beginning player trying to sort out all these components fairly confused (at least, I was). Once you know what everything is, it's all fairly obvious, but new players DON"T know what everything is by definition. There is more, but you get the idea.

Luckily, the game itself is quite good, and play is pretty smooth and intuitive once things get going. The only direct interaction between players is in the action selection, but since competition for certain spaces can be fierce I don't expect anyone to start talking about "multi player solitaire". If I had a gripe, it would be that reloading the board every round gets a little tedious.

Bharmer proved he is the efficiency king by winning with a farm that was completely built up through a balanced approach that left him with five family members in a clay mansion with just about every scoring category covered. By contrast, I had four empty spaces, only three family members and several blanks in the scoring sheet. I honestly thought that my previous experience with the solo games would give me a significant advantage, but since I came in second-last I think we can forget that. Having so many other players competing for the same actions really changes the dynamics of the game... I spent the last five rounds trying to build fences, but the option was always snagged before I could. Goods rarely accumulated. etc, etc. It's very different playing an efficiency game by yourself than trying to be efficient when the thing you want to do is frequently unavailable.

I guess I can't really talk about Agricola without mentioning the huge amount of cards that can be used in the advanced game. By dealing out a hand of 14 cards to every player, each game is slightly different. We didn't play with them, however, so I can't really comment much.

I actually really like Agricola. I find myself thinking about it quite a bit afterwards, trying to think of a better way to get things done next time. I'm also really looking forward to trying out the decks of cards and seeing how they impact the game. It's not my favorite game. In fact, like Puerto Rico, I'm not sure it's in my top 10. Still, it's good and definitely worth trying out.

Bharmer and Kozure left for the evening. We finished up with two quick rounds of High Society. Shemp rocked us in both games, but at least Luch put up a fight.

All eyes on Asia (Civilization)

We played part 2 of our game of Civilization.

After I had been nearly wiped off the board by a plague last time, I laid low. Shemp and Bharmer fought a series of battles, and Kozure and Luch did the same. Unable to construct a meaningful trade or army, I did the only thing I could: I bought tech. Over the course of the evening, I bought every technology I could afford. In the end, I had acquired most of the available wonders and and many military technologies.

A couple of things:

1) Kozure rolled a 3 on a critical roll in a critical battle. Luch then rolled a 2.
2) Shemp's rolling absolutely sucked. He lost several battles he should have won.
3) Luch was a money-making engine. He chased Kozure out of the U.S., and Kozure suffered heavy losses during the battle.

As the evening came to a close, I was making a lot of money off of my investments. I also was way ahead on points (approx 35. Luch was next with 20). Unfortunately for me, I have both a large lead and a tiny army. All eyes are now on the Easylanders in Asia, and elimination is the goal. The next session should be bloody.

Civilization: The Rulings

The rules for Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame are notoriously unclear on many topics. I thought I'd spend some time trying to find "official" answers to rules issues, and failing that, provide links or background to unofficial answers. Where neither official nor unofficial answers exist, I wanted to record our own gaming group "ruling". Part of the problem with this is that the old Eagle Games forum on SMC:TB, which contained many official rulings from the designers, went down with the crash of Eagle Games. There is actually a new Eagle Games forum, but it has only a few scant questions. I'm trying to use the Wayback Machine to recover what I can. Otherwise, I'm taking cues from the Civ forums at BGG.

Issues that came up last night:

Q:Are units exhaustible?

A: No. If a player builds more units than are available in the game, find some way of marking or indicating additional units.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/314732

Q: Do you have to pay current era prices for units/improvments/techs from previous eras?

A: No, for units you pay that era's price, but you may only purchase the "best" of that era.

For improvements, you pay the price of the era it dates from.

For techs, you pay half price (and get any associated Wonders, as usual).

You get the "royalty" payment appropriate to the era it comes from.

Question found in archived Wayback Machine forums: "Q: If you go into a new Epoch are you alowed to buy old Units from old epochs? At which price? and how much licence you have to pay?

A: Yes; see p. 24 Purchasing Military Units. Players may always purchase the "best" unit, of each type (e.g. infantry) from each era. The price of the unit depends on the era it is from, as does the fee received by the owner of that technology." Source: - TFK - official Eagle Answers - culled from Wayback Machine.

Also: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/34017

Q: Can a fleet stop another fleet from moving through or unloading units into a space?

A: "Armies loaded on ships are not allowed to disembark if the fleet they are being transported on has been stopped after moving one or more spaces."* SMC:tBG Rules Version 2.0

*This is actually from the Standard (not advanced rules) but is such a standard convention in most wargames of this scale and complexity that it can be assumed that Eagle just forgot to include this rule in the Advanced section.

This actually didn't come up as an issue this time, but may next session, given the number of amphibious landings about to take place. Units which are "stopped" can be land or sea (but land or sea units cannot stop air units).

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/32471

I'm certain there were some other rules issues. Post them here as comments and I'll append them.

OTHER CRITICISM

A guy at BGG took the time to collect and organize criticisms levelled at the game. I figure if we ever bother to play this game again, we agree on a set of revisions that address the issues mentioned in this thread:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/64795

(reproduced here in part for the very lazy, but the link above has in-depth descriptions of the problems mentioned )

1) random exploration markers at start, luck factor
2) bookkeeping / tracking production
3) combat too slow, tedious, random, bad mechanic
4) shared tech tree
5) only one of each happy & production improvement
6) no vps for techs
7) takes too long to play
8) no government
9) runaway leader dynamic
10) resource trading is too complicated / confusing / time consuming
11) city improvements become obsolete
12) city improvements aren't worth their cost
13) hyperexpansion strategy
14) plague too harsh in later eras
15) tech tree problems - ancient->middle too profitable, currency not purchased

As I walk along the valley of death... (Civilization)

So, Shemp is back.

He asked that we play Civilization (the new Sid Meier version, not the game from the 80s). The last time we played it was October of 2004... but of course it took three entire evenings so I suppose it's not a huge surprise we haven't played it more often.

We setup, crossed our fingers that the starting setup wouldn't leave us with the barren world the of last game, and got going. I specifically avoided North America in order to make the game different from the last one. Remembering Luch's mantra "What the @#$@! do I care, I'm in Asia", the Easylanders set up camp there with both my units. Lucky for me, no one else did. There was:

The Bharmerons in Africa
The Shempezuelans in Australia and Europe.
The Luch in North America
The Kozurians in South America

I had a vast array of exploration tokens available to me... things were looking good.

Well, it didn't last. The first token I discovered was a plague, destroying a scout and a soldier. I then managed to explore approximately 15 tiles and only find four resources. Still, my initial draw of Reading/ Writing along with a series of similarly intellectual advancements earned me 3 wonders and a seminal discovery. I was falling behind Luch's money machine (and Kozure wasn't far behind), but things were okay. Shemp, who was having a similarly difficult time finding resources, took advantage of a weakness in Bharmer's territories and took over a key region (or two?) which wound up having a significant impact on his standing in the game.

We entered the medieval age and got about half way through before we had to stop for the day. On my last turn, I explored one of the two remaining tokens and found yet another plague. The rules state that the effect of the tile grows with each passing era, so in the medieval age it kills all units in the original region AND all surrounding regions. Sadly for me, that was where all my units were (save two soldiers and a man-at-arms). Ouch.

When we tallied the points to see how we were doing, I came out significantly ahead on the strength of my wonders, cities and the seminal discovery. With virtually no units left on the board, I expect that to change soon. My saving grace may well be that there is very little compelling reason to come take what's left of my civ, since there was never very much there!

Anyway, Sid Meier's Civilization wasn't one of my favorite games before, and it still isn't. The designers have, in my opinion, been extremely clever about reducing an almost impossibly complex video game into a boardgame. The number of components, while large by boardgame standards, is quite modest considering how much theme is captured. In fact, the growth of civilizations, the technology tree, the little improvements and new choices that pop up as different advancements are discovered and (most surprisingly), the ebb and flow of the importance of things, is all present and the system essentially works.

Even though we're only half-way through our 2nd game, we've still managed to log approximately 12 hours... Part of my problems with the game are that despite attempts at simplification, there is still too much going on. Thankfully, our group is pretty decent about avoiding ridiculous amounts of analysis paralysis, but purchasing decisions/ movement decisions/ technology choice decisions/ trading phase/ etc, leads to a lot of down time. In our four hours of play, I essentially flipped 15 tokens and purchased some units and cards. To be fair, others had a lot more going on so they were more actively trading and maneuvering than I was. Luckily, the experience of going through several ages with infant civilizations is engrossing enough that the time mostly feels like it passes quickly. Also, familiarity with the cards and rules should eliminate much of the downtime and complexity (this session felt much more fluid than our last game, for example... even though the last game was four years ago!). Therefore, although I wish something could have been done to make it better, it's not bad. Considering what it's trying to accomplish, rules elegance and little downtime are pretty hard goals to achieve.

Without a doubt, the biggest problem is the random setup. The difficulty here, though, is that it's a pretty serious dealbreaker. I understand why the designer wanted a discovery aspect. I actually like what it does for the game. But seriously, I think just about anyone could have designed a better balance of starting tiles. As much as it's a bummer to find a patch of desert instead of an oil field, or to find an ancient civilization and get run out by a barbarian, it's okay to have these types of events if they are relatively infrequent... or if drawing them blind isn't a requirement of the game. Problem is, if our two sessions are anything to go by there are a lot of bad tiles and the result of an 8 hour game is largely determined by their initial placement. The plague tile rule that wipes out adjacent regions is absolutely ridiculous for obvious reasons. There HAD to be a better way to handle this. Reading on BGG, it appears that most people who continue to play the game have decided to lay the tiles out face up at the start of the game. I think I'd probably prefer this variant, though it's kind of a shame that the exploration aspect would be lost.

For anyone reading out there, it's worth mentioning that my opinion is not really shared by the group. Most of them really like the game, I think.

Anyway, playing this type of long civilization game has it's appeal. There is a depth of interaction, of integration of theme, of STORY, which can come out of such a game which is simply lost in most short games (RPGs do this better, but who has time for those anymore?!!!). Even though I'm griping, I'm glad we're playing it again.

Let's see if the Easylanders can pull themselves out of this predicament...

Beauty and the Beast (Shogun x 1 and Phoenicia x1)

Clever Production Design vs. Poor Production Design in Games

Phoenicia and Shogun were the games of choice this week. We've tentatively adopted a new format where we play one game from the previous week each week, so as to allow a better exploration of the strategic depth and other subtleties of the game.

Phoenicia on second playing has improved in terms of speed and smoothness of play, but, for me at least, some of the initial interest has worn off. Although it seemed intriguing at first, this system seems to suffer from a marked runaway-leader aspect, a sameness of play and a inevitability of a certain winner which I can't really see any remedy to without major rules changes.

As mentioned in the previous review, the person who leads each auction is the VP leader from the previous round; in case of tied high scores the first player marker (in this case called the Overseer) is passed to the closest tied player to the left of the current Overseer. The benefits of being the auctioneer are that if you have the money, (which you often will, if you are leading in production) you can buy what you need right away without much interference from the other players. Since you control the auction until you give it up, you can conceivable buy a number of low cost items all in your turn if one or two of the other players already have bought an item or are otherwise out of cards or coins.

If you are the last player, you can often buy the one (or choose from the cards remaining) and buy it at cost. However, at that point, your selection is usually so limited as to severely limit your tech path options.

If you get the right combination early and grab the VP lead, you can more or less race to the end and leave the other players wallowing in the 18-24 point range.

Then again, maybe my two wins were a fluke… I'm not certain. I recently read a criticism of Agricola (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/307192 )which, although I cannot comment on the accuracy of it in relation to Agricola, I can apply some of the same criticism of specific feelings about the game to Phoenicia here.

To quote the review:

"There is a whole class of games where the opening setup determines the likely winner. Card games. They have a few other characteristics (at least for good ones): 1) they are short, 2) you play many hands to reduce the luck (or determine the better player). Good players will win more than their ‘fair’ share of games, but won’t win every hand.

Agricola is a single deal card game that takes 90+ minutes to resolve."

…

A good game should take as long as required to determine the winner, and no longer. Bridge (a great game) would be farcical if you spent 30 minutes playing a hand. Agricola is chess between even players where you may be randomly up a knight or down a queen, but don’t know until halfway through the game."

In Phoenicia's case, although you aren't dealt a secret hand of cards for asymmetrical player ability purposes, once one player pulls away, it seems to have a definite snowball effect. The winner seems to be determined early. Add to this the fact that attempting to block another player's strategy by purchasing the card he/she most likely wants is often either impossible or not viable as a strategy. If you did, you'd most likely torpedo your own strategic path, so the prospect of blocking another player by spending your own much-needed resources to stop her/him from getting it is the gaming equivalent of suicide bombing: you may (or may not) stop your intended target, but you'll almost certain kill yourself in the process.

Given that the only direct player interaction is the auction and everything else is player mat optimization, you're left with a game where everyone is left doing their own thing. If you buy the right card combo (often by virtue of where you're sitting for the first auction) early on, you win by snowball effect and the outcome seems pretty fixed. Though I do think I made some savvy choices early on, and shifted production strategy (from improved hunting to improved mining) at the right time to maximize my returns, it really didn't feel tense after the third or fourth round. Once I had money coming in, it wasn't much of a stretch to get more.

Specifically, getting the tracker allows improved hunting, which is a pretty cheap production path for points and production, (tools 2 vs. farming 5) and also affords reduction on the caravan, which is a great boost for points and production. I then gunned for the shipyards (and bid high), which gave me increased hand size, VPs, production and discounts on future improvements. Moving from there to Fort, Smelter, Shipping Fleet and City Walls just sealed the deal.

Easy's observation that the second and third seat players seem to have a definite disadvantage in the auction set-up also seems quite accurate.

Combined with the well-documented graphic design problems (shared VP/production track, poor iconography, low visibility for some critical icons and values) and poor rules-as-written ruleset, this makes for some very difficult obstacles for the enjoyment of the game. However, and this is a big however, it still seems worth playing again for some reason, at least one more time. Faint praise, but one feels like playing Phoenicia because it's a simple, relatively quick playing civilization game with some modicum of theme and tech development - not overlong like the sprawling Civilization or Through the Ages games, but not overly abstracted like Vinci or Tempus. At the same time, it's not a very good quick medium-lightweight civ game, it's just that there's not many successful ones out there. Even Antike, which is in my mind one of the more successful medium-weight civ games, is quite long by comparison.

Does Phoenicia just boil down to a straightforward auction game with tech tree and resource optimization? Pretty much, but it's quick. It lacks other components which (to me) are important to a successful-feeling civ game - exploration/discovery and direct competition. Plus, the art and iconography are mediocre at best, and confusing at worst.

Compared with Phoenicia's graphic layout, Shogun seems positively sparkling. Cleverly thought out balancing factors and a number of very interesting mechanics - cube tower, turn planning, bluff, hidden auction, etc. - remind one what a well thought through system can feel like by comparison to one which feels both graphically and mechanically unpolished. In Phoenicia's defence, Shogun has had one previous incarnation (as Wallenstein) to work out kinks, so it's like comparing a concept car to the fifth or sixth year version/model of a proven car design. The polish of Shogun's art and design definitely makes this the "beauty" of this pairing of beauty and beast.

Shogun balances powerbase-type strategies by awarding points for building types spread across several regions, allowing for players with scattered region cards to benefit. The cube tower also mitigates randomness in attacks and defense that might otherwise result from dice or table-based combat. Overall it is a nicely balanced game, but it still fails to engage me on some level - there isn't much "movement", if you know what I mean.

Last night's game has also underscored for me the concept that it's often better to focus taxation/rice unrest markers in one well garrisoned province rather than trying to spread your forces thin to quell potential unrest across your holdings (the old "You can't make all of the people happy all of the time," maxim). It also reminded me of the possible combination punches of getting reinforce, move and attack orders during a turn.

This game was much closer, and it was near to impossible to predict the winner. It feels like you're more in control, but there is much less movement. One minor criticism I have of this game is that it seems to end just as you're getting going - despite the fact that "getting going" has required 90 minutes already.

I like Shogun, but it remains a game that I don't really look forward to playing when it's selected. I don't dread it, or groan when it's mentioned, but it's still not something that I look forward to playing, like Railroad Tycoon or many of my other highly rated games. I did enjoy this game, as it was pretty close and required attention and careful strategy, but perhaps for the lack of dynamic movement that I previously mentioned, it's never quite as exciting as some other of my favourite games - it lacks as many highs and lows.

One day we'll find a civ game and a waro (weuro) that I like. For now, the search continues.

Clever people, those Romans.

They knew how to create an empire and hold it together.

This post will be a hopelessly inadequate report on TWO sessions spent finishing our epic, long format game of Civilization. The first session has been ably logged by Kozure here, and also by Easy, here.

Our second session began with the Medeival Age, and was very chaotic. The previous posts mention the barreness of the world that we were playing in, and it led some of the newer players to unwise military conflict. While the Shempezuelans and the Causcausians made unwise military forays (resulting in handicapping losses) the Kozurians and Tilitumblers were largely peaceful, trading with each other, expanding, and racking up a huge lead in terms of victory points. The Easylanders were hemmed in to a tight territory, geographically, and forced to pour resources into defending their land against the Shempezuelans, meaning that they couldn't get an effective expansion strategy going. The second session ended about halfway through the gunpowder age, and had Kozure and Tili well in front, with scores in the mid to high twenties, and the other three players clustered with scores in the low to mid teens.

Sometime in the two week gap between session two and three, the weak players with no resources realized that fighting amongst themselves would not work, so the third session became a game of "try to pull down the leaders", that being the only way to get any resources. Unfortunately for Kozure, Tili was more advantageously located, and he suffered the brunt of this tear-down-the-leader approach. Tili was able to end the game with a diplomatic victory, and fifty-some victory points. Shemp came second in the low thirties, so it was an extremely convincing victory for largely staying out of conflict with the other civilizations. Thanks to some highly unlucky rolling, Kozure dropped to third place (high twenties), followed by Easy (teens) and ????, with nine.

Whew. Now for comments on the gameplay.

1) The fact that Tili had a vast lead, and was able to purchase the UN card resulted in a very strange last round, where each player went all out on combat, knowing that there was little to lose. This means that the final standings didn't really reflect what would happen if Tili's lead hadn't been quite so gigantic.

2) I think all players would agree that there really needs to be some better way to distinguish the units of different ages from each other. They just look too similar at a glance, and this resulted in some (thankfully hilariously) one-sided conflicts. Coloured bases perhaps? Dots indicating age? I'm not sure what, but some improvement here would smooth out some of the rough patches of the game, for sure. The obsolesence mechanic itself is great, and allows for some real ups and downs in the course of each civilization's history. Just needs a bit of cosmetic tweaking to make things easier, in my opinion.

3) We also need to come up with some kind of chart showing which military units are current and which city improvements are available, and who should get the credit for each. Everyone had to ask the questions too many times.

4) I think that a lot of the problems players had with resource scarcity were particular to this session, and therefore not really a game mechanic problem. Playing again would be the only way to test this. I would note that Tili was the only player to place her two initial settlers on different continents from each other. It didn't work out initially, but it did give her a better shot at being near whichever lands turned out to be productive. I think that is a tactic to consider for next time.

5) This is all really just nit-picking. I loved the epic sweep of the game, and would gladly play again...in a couple of months for an interrupted game, or on a day off. Unlike some other players, I would want to stick with a four-age game, because I feel like we didn't really get to see the modern age play out. Things were truncated by the Diplomatic victory.

6) I just accquired and started to play the computer game that started it all: Civilization One! Seems OK, but not as fun as the board game, since there is no human interaction.

There you have it.

Viva Shempezuela!, and looking forward to the comments. This game deserves them.

What the **** do I care? I'm in Asia!

Truer words were rarely spoken. Last marked the debut of the monster epic crazy game, Sid Meier’s Civilization, the board game based on a video game inspired a board game. Still following? Good.

Civilization, or "Civ", as it is known to the terminally addicted, is a board game for up to 6 players. Although the back of the box says that it can be finished in 1-2 hours, that’s really only for the standard game and for experienced players at that. As we all know, standard games are for wusses! After two or three good tries at this game, I can pretty confidently say that this game will take a minimum of 6-7 hours with average players and the advanced rules.

The object of the game is no less than to create the most glorious civilization in the history of mankind, covering 6,000 years of human development, from the dawn of civilization at the end of the stone age until the first steps of man towards the colonization of another world. There are two different rulesets, standard and advanced, each using fairly different mechanics.

The game is played on a massive 36” x 47” board, using a veritable boatload of counters representing most of the military units you can imagine for a game of this scope from primitive swordsmen to modern machinegun infantry. The game plays out over four different ages – Ancient, Mediaeval, Gunpowder and Modern. Thrown in for extra spice is an array of City Improvements ranging from Ziggurats to the Internet (improves productivity my butt!), an assortment of randomized Civilization Markers (for resources and special events like plagues and barbarian hordes) and a technology tree that will be very familiar to players who wasted the better part of their young lives figuring out how to get Mechanized Infantry units faster than anyone else or how many superstructure modules to build.

To explain the rules is an epic in itself (though no so tough as many early SSI and AH games), but the general gist is that there are four phases in each turn: Purchase - where players buy new units, improve their cities and convert settlers into cities; Movement and Battles - in which players move their units about and wreak terrible miniature wars over the cardboard plains; Trade – which permits players to trade resources for special monopoly, unique resource and critical resource bonuses; and Production – allowing players to convert the hard work and sweat of their minions to gold. Technology is bought with cash during the Purchase phase, and the game moves to the next “Age” at the end of the phase in which the first technology of the new era is purchased. The advanced game has no less than four separate endgame conditions – final conquest, military victory, diplomatic victory or technological/space victory. Players receive victory points for wonders of the world constructed over the course of their civilization, populace size, and depending on the final endgame, points for military units or technologies.

Well, after a rules explanation of the advanced version at the beginning of the night and the usual lengthy set-up, we were finished eating and ready to play at 8:00 PM. We quickly discovered that ours was a resource poor world, and even things like a stretch of three wine producing regions on the west coast of North America were going to be fought over viciously. A number of factors lead to the usual situation of one player holding dominion over a particular area – in this case, Hapi in Central Asia, Tili in South Asia and Australia, Shemp in South America, Easy in North America and yours truly (Kozure) in Africa. A brief scrap in Central America lead to an ouster of Tili’s forces, leaving Shemp and Easy to scrap it out for California and the Mississippi. A few small skirmishes later, Easy’s early monetary income lead was erased. Shemp vaulted us into the Mediaeval age a few minutes before we closed up shop at 11 PM, with the game very close and all of the VP scores ranging from 10 to 15. We took digital pictures of the board so as to allow continuation next games night at Chez Kozure.

I really enjoy the epic scope and feel of this game, despite the relative complexity. The earnestness of the diplomacy and negotiations over territory and resources was remarkable, leading to Hapi’s immortal line in the title above. The combination of resource management, diplomacy and military competition make this game a real winner in my book, striking the right balance between the need for careful culture building and bold aggression. I’m looking forward to seeing how this game plays out.

What the @!?#!! do I care, I'm in Asia!

Last night, we played what has got to be the most excessive boardgame going: Civilization.
The gameboard, so huge that only the largest of tables could possibly accommodate it, sets the tone of the game. Everything is excessive. The theme (simulating the rise of civilization), the components (so many bits that it takes every player to keep track of them), the play time (+/- 8 hrs minimum).
Players take turns exploring the world, uncovering resources, founding settlements and develloping technologies and wonders of the world. Meanwhile, conflicts arise and politics emerge. Sounds complicated? It is, although probably not as much as it could have been. Clearly measures have been taken to keep the learning curve within reasonable limits, but a game for your parents this is not...
Our game last night included 5 players (Kozure, Luch and Tili had played before, while me and Shemp hadn't). At the beginning of the game, Kozure said he thought we might get through the first of four ages before the night was over, and he wound up being perfectly accurate (as the evening came to a close, we had just played our first round of the gunpowder age).
Things got off to a rocky start right away, as Shemp and I talked about truce dividing the North and South america amongts ourselves (respectively), but then immediately saw the whole thing go to hell. Shemp's first move was to expand into california, and my first move was to try to get it back so I could get a monopoly on wine. I succeeded, BUT AT WHAT COST?!!! Perceived as the leader, I had a vengeful Shemp and a deceitful Tili gunning to take me down. Many military units later, they did (boating technology "shrunk" the worlds considerably, allowing Alaska to be taken pretty easily by Tili as Shemp distracted me to the south). Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, minor skirmishes were occuring between Luch (who managed to corner most of the military market early on) and Tili and Kozure as that part of the world was slowly getting fully discovered (oh, and there is that potentially explosive build up of military might at the European/ African border... but so far peace has prevailed). As it stands, the main characteristics of this session would be: Kozure has a problem with barbarians, Tili has a problem with the plague, Shemp has a problem with me and the board has a problem producing actual resources (ours is a barren earth). Luch's game, so far, seems to be going slow and steady (in fact, when asked to comment on the state of one of the skirmishes elsewhere in the world, he replied "What the @!?#!! do I care, I'm in Asia!"... the title of this week's blog. For the evening, Kozure was ahead... with my poor self pulling up the rear.

Personal comments on the game: To me, the game is fun but feels a little like an expanded and protracted version of RISK. This may be due to the scarcity of resources in our game, forcing people to fight amongst themselves to get anything going. The game can slow down with new players, like me, trying to reference all the inventions/ wonders of the world and improvements that are available for purchase (and a couple of really long negotiations didn't help, either!). This problem will probbaly diminish with every new game, but at 8-10hrs a pop, that could take a while!

Rating: A provisional 7