Best Laid Plans of Mice and CONAN (Imperial, Power Grid... sorta)

When speaking of analysis paralysis in boardgames, the compliment must be paid to Ouch that he is the one least frequently affected.

We have a term in our group for choosing actions/moves with a minimum of thought; to act on instinct and gut feeling rather than belaboured machinations:

The term we use is "Conan Brain" or "Conan Play".

Like the loinclothed, bulgy barbarian of Ron E. Howard's creation, Conan brain-based play is direct, straightforward and accomplished with a minimum of fuss. It is often helped by an egg-timer.

This week, Ouch (as dictator) declared that we would attempt to play two games at once with Conan brain-style play. The games he chose were Power Grid and Imperial. I'll pause a moment for all the alarmed gasps from hardcore hobby gamers to die down.

The WAGSters Code (currently unwritten) demands that we try as gamely (pun intended) as possible to follow the dictat of the dictator. So, we gamely set up both Power Grid and Imperial adjacent to each other on the same table and gave it a shot.

We abandoned the concept after one turn. Neither game lends itself well to long pauses between turns - Power Grid in particular requires player interaction from every player in every phase. Imperial is only somewhat better, given the nature of the investor card and keeping track of bonds. We decided that this concept of simultaneous play, while interesting as a thought exercise, might be better conducted in practice with games that are more suitable - games that have long periods of downtime while one player decides actions and the others are doing nothing.

The idea of simultaneous play is not without merit. Certainly it would give our brains a good work out. We should attempt it again in the future with games that are famous for downtime - Tikal, perhaps, maybe paired with multi-player wargame like Shogun or Conquest of the Empire.

In any case, we played a relatively rapid game of Imperial. I did my best to think with Conan Brain. I had originally planned to try a three power strategy of trying to get Germany, England and Russia, but somewhere along the line I lost any chance of England and ended up with a bumper crop of Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Using both nations together to split up the Balkans, Greece and Turkey guarantees a huge development base, and their position on the map allows for simple, one front wars, unlike Germany, which often gets sandwiched between France and Russia (occasionally Italy) .

I made one attempt at taking over England but was promptly slapped down, so I shrugged and gobbled up Russian and Austria-Hungarian bonds like they were hotcakes. Ouch and Shemp seemed content to steal countries from each other, so aside from a pre-emptive invasion of Northern Italy (which they both held bonds for), I did very little but build up my two empires and snatch small snacking portions (Sweden, North Sea, Baltic) from England and Germany when I could.

By the time they noticed that I had two powerhouse empires which weren't constantly attacking each other and made a play for higher bonds to wrest control from me, I had enough capital to buy 50%+ of the available bonds in both nations and cement my control. I then made threatening overtures toward Germany (I had no German bond) and Italy, which kept things hopping on my warfronts, while simultaneously taxing and building factories as often as possible.

Although I had pulled fairly far ahead in the endgame both Ouch and Shemp made a creditable effort to catch up. I think the final scores were 181 for Kozure, ~155 for Shemp and ~120 (?) for Ouch. I ended the game with Russian pegging the 25 power point x5 spot, with a lot of nations still languishing in the x2 range.

Strangely, this ended up being almost the opposite of my intended "three separated nations with a smattering of other investments strategy".

I'm liking Imperial more and more with each play. It may displace Power Grid and Tikal from my number 2 and 3 positions in my favourite Euro game rankings. I appreciate that the turn order is mutable but straightforward, and even the initial starting player is determined by bid. I also enjoy the limited wargame nature of the game combined with the economic aspect.

This also marked the first time I have destroyed a factory during an invasion of Italy. In this case, both my opponents several held bonds in Italy, while I only owned a 1 or a 2. As destruction of a factory can slow down the power point progress of a nation, it can be very useful to use against nations where you have no investment.

Imperial Ambition (Imperial)

We played Imperial again this past week. It was good with three players, a little different, mostly because you end up controlling more countries, so you have more chances to interfere with your own plans if you buy too many bonds.

Somehow I managed to get shut out of country ownership again for a few turns (far fewer than last time). Stupid. I think I bought too many high value bonds too early in too few countries. It really is quite crippling to not control a country. Anyhow... I can't remember who won - I think it was Ouch, with Shemp being very close, and I wasn't too far behind. I actually thought I was close to winning, but I peaked a little early and Ouch(?) ended the game before I recovered.

We had an interesting situation in which Ouch pumped up the power of two nations quite quickly (Germany and Austria-Hungary), effectively killing interest in their bonds for a fair portion of the game, since the possibility of increasing their power without considerable expansion or investment was difficult. That didn't stop me and the others making a last minute bid for Austria-Hungary bonds when it made a end-game factory expansion.

I enjoyed it as much or more on the second play... and it's a faster game with three.

Man Factory (Imperial)

Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with 'is wee beady eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!

"So I Married an Axe Murderer"

Imperial. Evil... eeeeevil. This game puts you in the position of everything I hate about modern capitalism; profiting from the misery of war and the machinations of power.

That said... I'm hooked. Obviously this game got a lot of press around its release and has steadily built up a fairly large and somewhat dedicated fanbase. I had actually been avoiding it, for two primary reasons: I hate the board colours (far too bright for a game from this period and of this tone) and I really dislike the underlying concept... basically playing the Krupps, Simon Camerons, Andrew J. Mays, Donald Rumsfelds, KBRs and Blackwaters of the world - war profiteers.

So, how on earth could one have fun playing someone who is essentially on the same moral level as orphanage foreclosers, ambulance-chasing lawyers and people who sell bread for $10 a loaf after a hurricane? Well, the easy answer is that you do exactly what these people do in real life - you disconnect yourself from the misery that your actions are causing. Essentially, you become evil personified... and as long as you're not actually hurting anyone, it's kinda fun to play the bad guy.

The mechanics have been described in more detail and with better effect elsewhere, but the gist of it is that you use Antike's roundel mechanic to control the timing of a number of actions including investing (which amounts to getting money), manoeuvring (moving military units around on the map), building factories, producing (factories create one unit apiece), importing (buying military units without having to produce them) and taxation (getting money and also changing the "credit" status of a nation). There is also a sort of "sub-round" when you have the investor card during the invest round, which allows the player with the card (and players without controlling interest in countries) to buy bonds.

As an overly simplified way of describing it, there is a very basic Antike/Diplomacy 1:1 combat wargame with a fairly interesting investing game overlay - you're basically investing in countries which are successful militarily or economically, with the goal of having the most "stock" (bonds in the game) in the most successful "brand" - er... country. The twist is the strategy is two-faced - you can actually intentionally sink a county you control by plundering its coffers in anticipation of it being taken over by others.

There is a deep, deep strategy in this game. I can see it taking a dozen or more plays to fully appreciate it, and the strategy would change for each number of players as well.

On the downside, there is a (well-documented) possibility of a player (or in the case of five or six players, more than one player) sitting several cycles around the roundel out. I experienced it first hand last night. I was almost actionless for about 30 minutes (not exactly bored, just not actively buying or controlling anything) and by the end I was not having as much fun as I would have liked. In addition, for optimum play, you ideally need a lot of time to make your move. Thus, Imperial is a good candidate for an egg-timer (when playing in the temporal confines of a three to four hour games night). Analysis paralysis is a near and present danger for this puppy.

Overall I quite like this one and may end up adding it to my collection if I can get a good deal.

In last night's game, France, Germany and Great Britain became the major powers, with Austria-Hungary, Russia and everyone's favourite whipping boy Italy bringing up the rear.

With Jaywozer heavily invested in Great Britain, Ouch doing his best impression of the Kaiser in Germany and Agent Easy taking a long term as the (accursed) French, it was left to Bharmer and I to pick up the scraps of Russia and Austria-Hungary. There was a fair amount of movement of ownership and not a few cases where Ouch owned two or even three different nations. I made the mistake of being ousted from Austria-Hungary in the mid-game, which left me largely without cash or options for a good part of the game. Despite this, I managed a close fourth place. Scores were, I believe, Agent Easy 118, Jaywowzer 115, Ouch 108, Kozure 93 and Bharmer 70-something.

"Evil will triumph, because good is dumb."

Spaceballs