Sid Meyer’s Civilization: The Boardgame
The latest from Fantasy Flight came out today, and I needed to acquire it, because a survey of rules revealed some pretty tight design. This one was weird because there already exists a Sid Meyer’s Civlization: The Board Game, released eight years ago, but this one seems to be handle the concept a lot better.
It works a lot like a civ game, in which you have a city that starts small and you start expanding. What this game adds is a lot of flavor from the computer game, as well as really condensed ideas to represent a lot of work. There are four different victory conditions, all of which take a while to work towards, but it’s obvious what actions will help you achieve what goals. It also simulates combat a lot better than most war games. For fights, instead of having to physically move each unit to where you want to fight, you instead have a standing army, and whenever you attack with your armies (which are represented by little flags), you draw a set number of cards from your standing army, which represents what forces showed up for the fight. The more little flags you bring, the more cards you draw. It makes the logistics feel weird, but works a lot smoother than most games like this. If only the unit cards themselves weren’t so confusing…there are four sides to each, based on how researched your armies are, and can a bit confusing to determine just how strong a given card is.
But everything else plays great. The four different victory conditions give you plenty of options for advancements and safety nets if you get suddenly cut off, as well as pittraps if you fail to hide your intentions well, or concentrate too heavily on one. The city management works great, as you transform the raw materials around your city in powerful buildings. There are resources that power special abilities on your researched tech, culture cards that provide a hidden surprise that can swamp your opponent, it just feels really complex, without being overly bogged down with rules. There are some unclear aspects, specifically around cards and abilities that cancel things, and various timing issues, but otherwise I really like it, and I want to try it with the intended four players soon.
This first game was really tense because we were just feeling out the game and didn’t know what the options were, so we worked slowly. I was the Chinese, whose special abilities emphasis spreading out and waging battle, and so I decided early on to go for a culture victory, because I got the right great people out and a lot of windfall culture. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to outrun my opponent, who spread himself out quickly, increasing his unit movement speed to dash across the map and got a third city within spitting distance of my capitol. He also smokescreened me by looking to be heading up to a tech victory, which put a noticeable timer of my victory, so I spend a lot of turns building nothing as I tried to get more culture. However, he blitzed my second city out of existence, destroying it fairly soundly because my standing army wasn’t a match for his, and on the last turn, I was one spot away from the cultural victory but was exactly one culture point short of being able to purchase it…if I had done anything differently, defended better, spent an extra turn gathering culture, even getting Monarchy out a turn earlier, I would have won, but instead, I had to watch futilily as he steamrolled his huge army against my walled capitol. With no army to defend with, he won by destroying my capitol for a military victory.
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