It's a nice take on civilisation building, considering the fact that implementing such a huge concept properly in a four-hour cardboard game is next to impossible.
(Note that this game has almost nothing whatsoever to do with Avalon Hill's Civ and AdvCiv from the 80s and 90s. Those were fine too, but they were relatively hardcore resource management games which sometimes took 16 hours to finish. Completely different mechanics, setting, map style and so on. Eagle Games' Civ from 2002 was distantly related to this new one, although it was mostly crap. I can tell about those elsewhere if anyone's interested.)
If you remember computer Civ as a slow-paced expansion game where you build dozens of cities and units all over the world, prepare for a radical change from that. In the boardgame you start with a capital, can build another city for free, and then add a third after developing a special technology. And that's it - no more. Movable units consist of two settlers and six army flags or something like that. It's not unusual to finish the game with never building more than three plastic pieces. Exploration rarely takes more than two or three turns. Thereafter the small world is complete. It's a compact way to represent the whole world and its history, but that keeps it playable in an afternoon.
In my experience, the different victory conditions go approximately like this:
- Economic victory was possibly a bit too easy in the basic game. At least it happened most often in our games when people were hesitant to engage in open war. Basically it was possible to sit in your own corner, accumulate coins on certain technology cards and win without taking any risks. Reducing the max coin tokens to three per tech felt like a good house rule for balancing. With the expansion, the situation changes.
- Culture victory was difficult in the original game. There were no powerful combinations to boost that path. However, the new nations and rules in the expansion added so many that it became almost too easy in some cases.
- Conquest victory most typically takes place when a new player gets surprised or simply overpowered by a veteran. It may also happen in the classic case of two players starting a war, spending their resources in a stalemate, and a third one sneaking in later with fresh forces. Always a possibility, both without and with the expansion.
- Tech victory is basically the time limit. OK, you don't get new tech 100% automatically, but it does build up at a regular pace if you spend any effort on it. Therefore someone will eventually get the 5th level tech after 10-15 turns, no matter what. We've found this to occur quite rarely, mostly among equally skilled players if all other (faster) strategies get trumped and no one gets beaten to the point of getting conquered.
FFG did good job in heavy axing of unnecessary details and micromanagement. Some things are very simplified but they still manage to capture the essentials of civ building. I especially enjoyed how you can customise the cities to play very different roles. Locations also matter a lot, and often there's no single, obviously best choice. Technology is varied and you can't have everything. Do you want boosts to economy or culture, faster units or more firepower? It's up to choice.
Some nations are quite heavily scripted towards certain paths with their special rules and starting tiles, but you can still improvise. Oh, and some of the nations are indeed as silly as their computer game counterparts. Catherine the Great leading the ancient Russians, of course starting as communists from day one? Lincoln and his stone age capitalist Americans? I guess during the cold war (well, end of it) when Civ I was released, this made perfect sense...
There are luck and chaos elements, but the game also rewards skills and experience. It's easy to lose slightly but critically to small mistakes in resource management. Also, it's possible to learn and apply specialised winning strategies for certain nations. It's both good and evil, the latter mostly for inexperienced players who may get confused and whacked for failing to spot some crucial rules and tricks. Try to keep the atmosphere friendly and relaxed regardless of the competitive theme. You'll have a better chance of playing again that way...
Recommended. Not exactly a one hour family game, but neither as heavy as civilisation building could easily end up if modelled too ambitiously. As usual for FFG, there's already one expansion available and probably more coming. They add plenty of nice extras. Consider buying them whenever you're getting too used to the basic game dynamics. It does have a lot of replay value, though. Different nations, players, technology paths, wonders, map tiles etc. will change it slightly every time. I haven't played two disturbingly similar games yet.
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April 19, 2011, 03:03:01 PM