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Got the gang over for gaming yesterday. Had a full house—6 people! Went for the group’s fifth game of Advanced Civilization, which is always appreciated.

I had considered taking Babylon, as I haven’t played that position yet and Patch has been doing well there. But I drew fourth for pick order, and it went to Jason. The northwest was unoccupied, pushing me towards Thrace, Illyria or Italy. I took Illyria to grant Africa (Patch) some room, while making Italy untenable, while they might show up if I took Thrace. Mark took Assyria and Zjonni (running slightly late) took Crete; Dave had taken Egypt first thing.

I went my usual grow to maximum potential and delay the initial cities style, which is aided by the late Early Bronze Age barrier for Thrace and Illyria. I headed south into Italy, and east to the Black Sea early, expansion into Greece took a while longer. Crete split its attentions between Cyprus, Asia Minor, the Levant, and Greece, so that worked out well for me. Jason ran Babylon on a dense, small model that stalled territorial expansion and left a lot of area up for grabs. Africa sailed north and took Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, while we battled for control of the southern half of Italy for much of the game.

I was the first target of calamities, drawing Volcanic Eruption first, and then getting hit by it again a few turns later, where it killed Rome a second time, and Patch got in to build on the site for the third try, which stayed there for the rest of the game.

I was free of the big disasters after that, though I was the primary on Famine twice and Epidemic once. I got up to eight cities early on, and then stabilized at seven for most of the game, getting back to a fairly stable eight right at the end. This was just behind Egypt, which built up well, and was stable at nine cities for a good number of turns. Seeing Dave as the primary threat, I picked on him with disasters for a couple turns, which weakened him nicely. Then he drew Flood which kept him down for the rest of the available time.

The previous Flood hit Babylon, which was still centered on the starting flood plain, and this knocked him down enough that he never recovered fully. Everyone else did okay, mostly staying at around six cities. I did fairly well by trade, and was one of the first into the Late Bronze Age, despite a relatively late barrier for it. At the end, I was starting to turn up the discount machine, having gotten Engineering and had really good bonuses in orange and green to power my way to nine cards. I still needed to get a red Civ card though. Zjonni bought Architecture, which we haven’t payed much attention to, and was showing the value of building cities from out of the treasury.

In all, most things went my way, no real major fighting (good, because I was in the half of the table that didn’t have Metalworking), and none of the civ-destroying calamities came down on me. For once the emergencies more-or-less stayed with my ability to keep on top of them. Dave was doing even better in that department for most of the game until the three turns of disasters, ending with the Flood caught up with him. Assyria, Africa and Crete were all in a tight little pack, with none of them able to get a true advantage going.

Final Scores:

Dave’s been on a good streak lately. He often worries about not being as good as the rest of us, but he won in Blackbeard last month, and put in a very solid performance for second as Egypt this month. I’m happy because I finally got a win after four straight seconds. Now I don’t care if I fall on my face next time, I’ve got my win. ^_^

We hope to get another game in in a month, before school starts up again for Zjonni. No real idea what we’ll play yet though.