Rindis.com

Well… today was meant to be a playtest of the game Metropolis (about the rise of the Greek city-states), but I haven’t received all my playtest materials yet. So, we went to Plan B: Advanced Civilization. Sadly, Zjonni has two finals to take tomorrow, and, I think, a paper to write, so he could not make it, leaving us with only 5.

The five-player game cuts off one of the four map panels (in this case the west side), and reduces the number of tokens available to each player a little. After randomly drawing for choosing priority, I took Egypt, Patch took Babylon (which he had last time), Jason took Thrace, Mark took Assyria, and Dave took Crete (the only power in play that hadn’t been last time).

The opening was pretty standard. I deliberately bounced once on the early Bronze Age so that I’d be in better shape in the longer term. I moved west into the rest of Africa, wanting to get to the available city site early, and of course north-east through the Sinai to establish a buffer zone. Relations with Patch were pretty good the entire game, my biggest problems were actually with Crete.

Things developed a bit slowly in Europe and Asia Minor. Jason used Thrace’s late AST barriers to keep a higher population early and took over Greece before Crete really got going. Assyria was perhaps a bit slow, and western Anatolia remained something of a vacuum for quite a while.

As things got going, Babylon took the brunt of the initial wave of calamities, as Patch had at least one for 4-5 turns in a row. Thrace pretty much took no damage. Considering that Jason is always a very able player, and is more practiced with Civ than the rest of us at this point, I… was not happy with the results. It’s not that I wasn’t doing well, but keeping up with him was difficult. And then I had about three to four turns of nasty calamities in a row. I took a Civil War early, with the second faction going to Dave/Crete. I eventually threw him out (except for one small little colony that I didn’t worry about much), but this was delayed by being the primary victim of an Epidemic. I finally knocked out the Cretan city that was in my territory just in time—Dave had a Flood that turn.

Finally, Crete was hit by a Civil War, and I was the beneficiary. This gave me back what was left, and gave me a city on Cyprus that I kept to the end of the game. This put me back in a good position, and I could do something about getting somewhere in the game.

We had a hard limit of 5 PM again, but we definitely got further this time around, and the game flowed more smoothly. Jason and I both broke the Early Iron Age barrier on the last turn. In fact I’d done fairly well, getting to eight cities, and trading away Epidemic to Jason (second time I drew that card!). Sadly, I caught Treachery in return (the second time he hit me with that—but there’s only so many trading partners for the high-value cards). If not for losing that city to him (which he reduced) I would have barely beat him. As it was, I was a mere 36 points behind him in second (inflating my score with the deepest discount purchases I could manage helped). I think we squeezed out two extra turns or so.

Egypt and Babylon (deservedly) get all the press for being the easiest positions, but I must say at this point that Thrace is actually very powerful. Some of it depends on just how much crowding is going on the northern side, but that’s true of any position. With any sort of real room, the late AST barriers really allow you to plan what you’re doing.

Final Scores:

We still need to work out the next meet, but we’ll probably try for Metropolis… if possible.

Had six people over for a game of Advanced Civilization today. New record for attendance (and pushing the limits of what can be hosted)! The setup was interesting as we used my Civilization set for the board and counters, and Jason’s for the cards and AST (which are the parts that get replaced in AdCiv…). Anyway, Patch and Zjonni had never played before, while the rest of us hadn’t played in years… decades even.

No one had any particular preference for a particular power, so we gave Babylon to Patch and Egypt to Zjonni, as they tend to be very forgiving powers, and then we ended up with Jason taking Africa, Dave Assyria, Mark Italy, and I took Thrace.

That last worked out very well for me, as Thrace has a forgiving AST sequence, and there was no Illyria or Crete to butt heads with. I wish the first part was intentional, I honestly hadn’t looked. The placement, of course, was very intentional.

One of the things that makes Civilization such a great game to pick up and play is the fact that despite a fair number of different things going on, the game starts very simply, and you work up to the rest of the rulebook. So you get a chance to get used to different parts of the rules at a time. Everyone had a blast, and is more than up for doing it again, soon.

For most of the game, Asia was fairly quiet with Assyria, Babylon and Egypt coming to good agreements on borders and keeping to them. Since Assyria had something of a slow start, having to muck around with figuring out what to do for city sites, this overall worked out well for Babylon, which eventually even colonized Crete (!).

Africa kept busy poking at both its borders, generally nothing decisive with Egypt, but plenty of fighting over Sicily and south Italy with the Italians, which I was happy to see. A bad combination of disasters caused trouble for the entire area, and Egypt and Africa had a hard time recovering. Italy had never managed to get very far at all.

All of this, and the generous AST gave me a good start. I rapidly moved west and then south, generating a buffer area and then colonizing Greece. The buffer held in the north-west corner for a good half the game, when I had purposely delayed some city building to maximize population. As I got to the point where I was building and supporting a good number of cities, the buffer zone collapsed and Mark was slowly forcing me back along the Danube into my primary coastal areas.

I got to 8 cities at one point (and only Babylon had beaten me to that), but then calamities kept knocking them down faster than I can rebuild them. Patch is very good at trading, and did not take too many calamities (hey, I tried!).

Since we knew we had a time-limit coming up, the last turn got strange. Egypt managed to invade Crete, knock out both Babylonian cities there, and build new Egyptian ones there (aided by the fact that Patch only had two markers in his Stock, and therefore couldn’t fight much once the cities were broken). Egypt shot up to nine cities from about five in one turn. I didn’t think enough about the fact of the last turn, or else I could have built one more city than I did.

Long-term, Babylon was in the best shape, as he had just gotten the nine cards to get into the early Iron Age and was moving forward on the AST again. I needed another turn or two to get there. Egypt had been stuck in the early Bronze Age until the last turn….

Final Scores:

We still need to work out the details, but we’re planning on the next session being in a month, and will likely be another go-round with Russian Civil War, this time with six players.