Military advantage = win (Through the Ages)

Life's become real busy lately, so writing this blog is tougher than it used to be. Sorry if things are getting sporadic.

Last week we played Through the Ages, a game I like some aspects of but which ultimately is not one of my favorites. One of the reasons is because I dislike the aggression system, and another is related to the first: In my experience, the player who gets the lead in military strength wins and the player who is in last has a really rough road ahead of them.

Now, I should add that in the games I've played, we have often truncated the game for lack of time. It's entirely possible that something in the third age balances out trying an idea strategy or a culture strategy against the advantage of going military in the first two ages. Maybe those strategies require longer to mature, for example.

Anyway, I was the lucky beneficiary of a winning military strength strategy. I started with Homer and tried to focus on always being in the lead for strength and also having solid culture generation. I built the railroads and discovered professional sports and enlisted James Cook to give me massive culture through the many colonies I had controlled (using the aforementioned military advantage). Shemp got beat up on a few times. Sorry about that buddy.

Kozure did mention when we wrapped up that his engine was just starting to ramp up and he would have benefited greatly from playing out the third age. Who knows?

Forever, and a day (Through the Ages)

The pick this week was Through the Ages.

Shemp hadn't yet played. Kozure and Luch had played 3-4 times each. My mind must have been eslewhere, because I had a downright awful time trying to recall the rules from my single previous session. Granted, it's not the most intuitive game, but I was really struggling for the first little while. I did eventually get it, thankfully (and then, of course, it seems simple). Oh well.

I was skeptical last time regarding certain aspects of the game, and now my opinion is solidifying somewhat: It's an interesting resource management game, but the military aspect is (in my opinion, of course) fundamentally broken.

There was a very interesting snippet of conversation that occurred halfway thorugh the game where Shemp mentioned that this was superior to the Sid Meier Civilization boardgame because the feeling of civ. growth wasn't bogged down by endless fiddling with purchasing, deploying and managing various military units. Kozure then replied that for many people, that fiddling about is the highlight of the game. I feel somewhat differently than both of them: Fiddling with military unit purchasing and movement is normally the main source of downtime in a world domination/ civilization game, and that is a problem that few games of this type have managed to solve (RISK suffers least due to the simplicity of the system, but even Antike suffers from this problem despite having elegantly streamlined most of the typical civilization game timewasters). On the other hand, if you abstract this part of the equation entirely, as Through the Ages tries to do, you have to somehow maintain the logic of why/how conflicts happen. In a typical game that involves conflict (of any sort, not just war), a player needs to size up a situation and ask themself what they hope to gain.
Are they trying to pry away a resource from the other player? Do they feel vulnerable to a possible future attack and wish to preempt it? Can they satisfy a pertinent goal by conquering a specific territory? Further, where goals do not determine an exact path of action, frequently geography does. Who is adjacent to who? Is one unassailable due to superior positioning? etc.

Unfortunately, ALL of this is lost in Throught he Ages. The system features a series of mecanisms that all boil down to allowing the strongest to benefit at the expense of the weakest, regardless of goals/ positioning/ etc. Raids, conquering the territories that come up, the future events, Wars, etc, all revolve around two players... the strongest and the weakest. The effects can be quite punishing on the losing player as well.

Given the terribly punishing nature of falling behind on military, it's unfortunate that keeping up with military is so highly dependent on the luck of the draw. The mecanism for developing you civ, the card track, is quite interesting because of the way it forces each player to stay on their toes and grow their civ based as much on opportunity of available cards as planned long term strategy. I like that part a fair bit. You might be behind on ideas, ahead on culture production, doing ok in food, catching up on ore, etc. Each civ is different and the it's up to the player to address the areas they are deficient in in time. However, orchastrating the aquisition of the right leader/ wonders/ military technologies/ military units/ and tactics cards requires a fair amount of luck of the draw for something this critical. If someone happens to hit you when you are catching up, you can end up nosediving as you then become the easy target for all future aggression. I can't see a way out of it if the other players really take advantage of the situation. I think that an experienced player going strong on military probably wins most games, as long as that player is willing to use the power at his/her disposal (I make that comment mostly because it feels so cheap to use military might that I'm convinced many players often won't because it's distasteful).

Anyway, other that the significant length, I like the rest of the game. It's fiddly, but most of the things going on seem to be there for good reason. Too bad about the military.

We didn't complete the full game, ending after the second era. Shemp read a few strategy article prior to starting and went hard on military just as I had last game. I tried to go strong on a culture engine, but was severly hampered by lack of food early, too much food late, and very few ideas. Shemp destroyed my Eiffel Tower after I had sunk many turns constructing the first two thirds, which was a big blow. Luch ended up being the real wipping boy, however... after leading most of the game, he sunk his military too low and we all decended like vultures. I succesfully waged a war against him and there were a number of aggression. Sorry, man.

Kozure won, though it was quite a tight game scoring wise. I am convinced I made significant errors in the beginning which distorted my score somewhat (I think my score should have been lower). Practice makes perfect, I guess.

Forever, Again (Through the Ages)

Kozure made a liar out of me and suggested we play Through the Ages this week. Shemp wasn't around, but Bharmer/ Luch/ Kozure and I still made a foursome.

I have to admit, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this one. It has a reputation for being long and fiddly, two things I'm not particularly fond of in eurogames. On the other hand, Kozure liked it enough to buy a copy and it's designed by the designer of Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert (Vlaada Chvatil), so those were definite plusses.

It *is* long. We played the "advanced game", which is shorter than the the "full" but longer than the "simple" game. Including rules explanation, it took a little over 4 hours. Like every other game by this designer, there are many components and many moving parts to the rules. The basics are simple enough once you get the turn order down. but there are issues in the art direction of the boards and cards which makes things a little harder than they need to be, and the sheer number of phases in a player's turn makes keeping an eye on the player's reference mandatory. Of course, all these things can be forgiven if it's a good game... so did I like it?

Yeah, more or less. However, even more than for most games, one game is not enough to really know. It's definitely clever and original, but at first blush there seems to be a few problems (in addition to the length issue).

I'm going to gloss over a hell of a lot of detail here, but here's a brief overview of the game mechanics:

Each player has a board which describes the state of their civilization. A central board keeps track of each player's score, relative army strength and relative ingenuity. The central board also holds two different decks of cards, one to determine future events and the other to be drafted from by players as they develop their civilization.

On a turn, a player starts by doing one political action, which may involve starting a battle or seeding the deck which will ultimately become future events. After that, he/ she gets a number of civil and military actions based on the government of their civilization (everyone starts with despotism, which grants 4 civil and 2 military actions). Examples of civil actions would include drawing from the worker pool, building a building, drawing a card from the available selection on the central board, etc. Military actions would be training or upgrading military units. The fun in the game is mostly in customizing your civ based on the cards drafted from the board. Here, you can recruit famous leaders, build wonders of the world, discover an invention, or grab a helpful event. On the way, player need to balance military might, invention, happiness, corruption, revolts, food and cultural development. Sounds like a lot? It is, but it's mostly abstracted into a series of interdependent mechanics (of which quite a few of them are fairly clever). One example: Resource tokens are used to represent everything from coal, to iron, to food. As more of this pool make it onto the player's mat as goods, board spaces are revealed which identify how corrupt the society is. More goods in circulation= more corruption. It's simple and it works, and it makes sense thematically. There are perhaps to many of these clever rules, however, and not all are so successful. The happiness meter is a good example of a rule that is hard to internalize... as the worker pool diminishes, it follows that population is increasing. As population increases, players need to ensure that the happiness track below it keeps up, or else a revolt can happen. It sounds easy, but the execution is confusing because the happiness track works backwards from most tracks, and the results of an unhappy civilization are not immediately obvious. I don't know, it just felt fiddly to me.

Overall, there is a sense of development of your civ. Leaders come and go, events happen, production increases with knowledge and invention. The mechanics themselves have a definite relation to those of Phoenicia, though without the auction. I'm not entirely sold on the card draft, because the cards move so quickly that it would be hard to actually plan on getting any particular card... you just have to hope there is something you can use when our turn comes up. Still, there is enough available that I didn't really feel that "lack of options" was ever a problem. Quite the contrary. I always wanted far more actions than I had.

The main issue I have right off the bat is with the military system. I had read that it was critical not to fall behind on military. I therefore concentrated on being very strong in this regard. We discovered soon enough that when a player is very strong, the system REALLY encourages that player to beat on the weakest player, and there is little that can be done about it. The weak player just gets weaker. Not much fun for him. In most games, players would be encouraged to beat up on the leader, or for the leader to beat up on his nearest competitor, or two players to beat each other up in the hopes of taking a specific objective. Here, there is no possibility for any of these things to occur, which is kind of a shame. It seems vital to ensure that all players remain roughly neck and neck with military. If this can be managed, then the conflict system is essentially neutralized due to the risk of attacking a similarly powered opponent. This begs the question, however, why introduce a system that only works when it's neutralized? Worse, if the luck of the card draft dictates who is strong in military vs who is strong in ideas (for example), then it's pretty bad. I'm sounding pretty harsh here, and to be fair it may be over nothing. Only time will tell.

As I alluded to earlier, I went strong on military. I started with Alexander the Great, the Colossus and a strong army with a good tactics card. I later expanded with a few churches, Joan of Arc and the Great Wall of China. I was far and away the military leader... only Kozure approached me, and not for very long.

I suspected that going strong on military would be very powerful at first, but that those who concentrated on ideas would pull ahead as the game wore on. If this session is any indication, there may not be enough time in the "advanced" game for this to happen (it's only two ages instead of three). I pulled ahead early and stayed in front throughout. The others were clearly producing more ideas than I was by the end, but they weren't translating to points fast enough. By the end, my cultural points production was a little behind, but my lead was large enough to stay ahead. I may have played well, the cards might have gone my way, or the system might genuinely be biased towards a military strategy in a short game. I hope that it's balanced even in two ages, though, because I'm not sure how much I would want to play this game for 6 hours just for the sake of multiple viable paths to victory.

The overall experience is an interesting exercise in civilization development that feels like a euro spinning slightly out of control. The scope is extremely ambitious, and it succeeds in many aspects, particularly the science/ invention/buildings and leaders parts. The military aspect might be a problem, but more play will be required to figure that out for sure.

They played Forever (Through the Ages)

Last week, the group played Through the Ages. I couldn't make it due to a trip to Ottawa, but apparently it was well liked (enough for Kozure to go out and pick up a copy, anyway). Maybe I'll get a chance to play at some point, but considering the long playtime, it's definitely not a given!

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.