From: "gschloesser1" <gschloesser1@cox.net>
Subject: Sid Meier's Civilization - My First Playing

SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION


Played my first . and quite possibly my last . game of Eagle Games' Sid
Meier's Civilization (the board game) yesterday.  We chose to play the
'Advanced' game as it seemed to offer more possibilities and flavor.
Joining me were fellow Westbank Gamers Jerry Maus, Steven Maus and Dave
Atwood, three folks who are generally pre-disposed to enjoy this type of
game.

My first observation is that this game is long . VERY long.  We played for
right at six hours and were just completing the second era (the Medieval
era) when we prematurely ended the game due to time considerations.  Sure,
we had some rules consultations, but not an undue amount.  The game is just
long.  I can only guess that if we had played to its completion, we would
have been playing another 4 - 6 hours.  That simply is far too long for my
tastes.  If I'm going to play a game that is this long - and that is NOT
often -- I'm going to want to play one that doesn't have the numerous flaws
and drawbacks present here.

Let me state flatly that I've never played the Civilization computer game.
I'm not a fan of computer games and don't play them.  So, I really can't
make comparisons between the Civilization board and computer game.  However,
from my rudimentary knowledge of computer capabilities, I can state without
much doubt that the computer version in all likelihood handles the record
keeping and status of cities, resources, troops, trades, etc. in a far more
efficient and less cumbersome manner than the board game.  Here, the effort
to track all of this is quite bothersome and the potential for error is
considerable.

A VERY quick overview of the game is in order.  Players begin with two
villages on the board, along with a few swordsmen and settlers.  All
territories on the massive board (it barely fit on the largest game table I
own) contain a face-down chip, which is revealed when a settler ends his
turn in a territory.  These chips usually depict resources, but can also
trigger events or reveal restrictive terrain.  During the purchase phase,
players can surrender a settler and establish a new village in the territory
where he was located.  In this case, the player receives a city card that
matches the type of resource found in the territory where the village is
being established.

Most villages begin the game unhappy and can only become 'happy' with
improvements and developments to the town.  These must be purchased and only
become available once the proper technology is developed.  Technology for
each era is purchased by the players, along with additional settlers,
troops, developments and villages.  Villages can also increase in size over
time when the proper technology is discovered and the city upgrades are
purchased.

Income is derived mainly from a player's towns and cities, with towns
located in resource territories yielding more income.  Further, as a town
increases in size, the income it yields also increases.  City developments
can also substantially increase the income a city provides, but these
developments magically vanish with the passing of each era.  This is a
drawback that I'll discuss later.

Players can significantly increase their income by colleting sets of
resources -- sort of like in the Avalon Hill version of Civilization.  Thus,
there is an active trading session wherein players can temporarily trade
resources in order to collect these sets.  The trading session, however, is
also problematic and I will discuss it further a bit later.

As technologies are purchased, time marches on and the world (and game)
enters new eras.  In the game, this renders past developments and often
technologies obsolete, forcing players to continuously purchase new
technologies and developments.  The game can ultimately end in a variety of
manners, including military, diplomatic, technological or total conquest.
Jerry also mentioned that it can also end by total exhaustion!  Depending
upon how the game ends, victory points are earned from a variety of sources,
including cities and their sizes, technology cards, wonders of the world,
military units, etc.

No doubt, the game does have flavor and some interesting mechanisms.  Sadly,
it also suffers from numerous flaws and drawbacks, leading me to ponder just
how thoroughly the game was playtested with a variety of different groups.
It's one thing to play-test the game numerous times with one particular set
of individuals, and quite another to have a variety of different groups play
test it during the development stage.  Often, one group will spot problems
that another group misses.

So just what are some of these flaws and drawbacks?  Here's a brief
checklist of some of the problems we encountered with the game:

1) Trades.  This was very problematic.  Each time a player establishes a
settlement, he receives a city card that depicts the type of resource found
in the territory.  When trading in attempts to collect sets of resources,
the rules state that players should physically trade the actual resource
cards.  However, the rules never tell you just what constitutes a 'resource
card'.  We could only assume that this was intended to mean the actual 'city
card', as they are called in the rules.

Actually transferring these city cards with each trade gets confusing.
Since city cards must be oriented to the correct side to indicate the
production level of the city, one must exercise extreme care to make sure
these orientations remain correct when transferring them.  In addition, any
city development cards tied to that city are NOT transferred, and are
re-assigned to other cities.  It is easy to forget where these developments
were assigned when the city cards are returned at the end of the round.
Further, no where in the rules that I could find does it state whether the
player obtaining the card in the trade also gets the base income that these
cities yield, or does that income remain with the original owner.  If it
remains with the original owner, this would make tallying the total amount
of income a player receives extremely difficult.

Even though all four of us are reasonably experienced gamers, we all felt
that we just might be doing something incorrectly in this trading process.
It just felt too cumbersome and confusing and increased the possibility of
making errors when tallying each player's income.  It seems an easier and
more efficient method could have been devised to handle the trading
mechanism.

A final note on trading:  since all holdings are visible, there was no
tension in the trading phase.  With Avalon Hill's Civilization, you didn't
know exactly what commodities each player held so you had to do lots of
negotiation to locate the best possible trade.  Plus, there was always the
threat of receiving a calamity when executing a trade.   Since everything
here is visible, there simply isn't any mystery or danger.  That, to me,
saps most of the fun out of the trading aspect.

2) Combat.  None of us were satisfied by the combat method employed.  In
fact, Steven was visibly upset and vocal about it.  Basically, players
involved in a battle remove their units from the territory and, one at a
time, bring forward a unit of their choice, resolving battles on a
"one-on-one" basis.  Uggh.  This really was very simplistic and totally
unsatisfying.  To add to the insult, the rules state that each player should
place their military units involved in the battle behind a screen.  Sadly,
no such screen is provided, so the rules suggest utilizing the reference
chart.  Unfortunately, this doesn't stand on its own, so someone would have
to hold the screen with one hand, while choosing their combat unit with the
other.  It just didn't work.  So, we simply opted to have players place
their units in their lap and bring forward the one unit they desired.  This
really seemed out of place and very, very weak.

Further, the factors used to determine a unit's strength and the number of
dice to roll, plus any modifiers, is, well, strange.  Generally, units
receive 1 die for the era they represent.  Then, there is a very
disappointing 'rock-paper-scissors' mechanism, wherein cavalry is better
than infantry, infantry is better than artillery and artillery is better
than cavalry.  The favored unit receives a modifier to their die roll equal
to the game's current era.  So, if you have an ancient cavalry (Era 1)
versus a Modern machine gunner (Era 4), the machine gunner rolls 4 dice,
while the cavalry rolls only 1 die, but adds 4 to the die roll!  This
actually means that an inferior unit has a decent chance of defeating a unit
of a higher era . and it occurred numerous times during our game.   Although
certainly not an ideal combat procedure, I wasn't as appalled by this as
Jerry and Steven, who felt this really ruined the game.

3) City Developments.  As mentioned earlier, developments can be purchased
to make cities 'happy' or more productive.  However, these developments
cannot be purchased until the proper technology is purchased.  Often, this
takes time, as certain technologies cannot be purchased until other
prerequisite technologies have been purchased.  Thus, it is quite possible
to go many rounds without being able to purchase the proper developments to
make your cities happy or more productive.  This can suppress income, which
means players make less purchases and it takes longer to accumulate the
necessary funds to purchase those expensive technology cards.  Since the
purchase of technology cards is what triggers the advancement of the game
from era to era, this means the game will be prolonged even more.  That is
NOT a good thing.

My bigger concerns regarding city developments, however, is their expense in
relation to the increased income they generate, coupled with the fact that
they completely vanish once a new era is reached with no compensation to the
players.  For example, during the first era, developments cost $10 and
generally only affect the happiness or production level of one city.  Since
villages cannot progress beyond the first level in size during the Ancient
era, this means income from these cities is usually $2 if the city is
unhappy, and $4 if happy.  Thus, the purchase of a happiness development at
$10 increases the player's income by $2.  Financially, it will take five
full rounds before the player breaks even.  A productivity city development
will double the income, but at another cost of $10.  It still takes 5 rounds
to break even.  It is quite possible . indeed, even likely . that an era
will end before one recoups his money.  To rub salt in the wound, at the end
of an era these city development cards are lost, with no compensation to the
players.  So, investing in these developments doesn't seem to be a wise
financial decision.

4) Exploration markers.  As mentioned, at the beginning of the game, an
exploration marker is placed face-down onto each territory on the board.  A
player can only look at one of these markers when one of their settlers ends
its turn in that territory.  Most of the tokens are resources, which mean
that a city located there will generate more income and the resource can be
traded with other players in efforts to further increase your income.  Other
tokens, however, trigger events or reveal certain restrictive terrain that
limit the size of cities that can be built there . or prohibit their
construction completely.

The intent is clearly to add an 'exploration' element to the game, and that
is fine.  However, there can be a tremendous 'luck' impact here.  For
instance, when placing my two settlements at the beginning of the game, I
placed one in Africa and one in North America.  Since we played with only
four players, each of us executed similar placements so we each had room to
expand without conflict for several turns.  My opponents each seemed to find
an abundance of resources during their explorations, while I found loads of
junk.  North America was particularly bereft of resources.  In the dozen or
so territories that comprise North America, there were a total of two .
count 'em, two . resources found.  The rest were deserts, no encounters, one
minor empire (which went to an opponent) and several treasures, the latter
granting a miserly sum of $10.  Building cities in these resource-deprived
territories would yield no further income until I would be able to purchase
city developments that would improve their status to 'happy'.  I've already
described the foolhardiness of such purchases, so I opted not to construct
new villages in these areas.  This meant I was WAY behind on the number of
cities and income, which ultimately proved to be the difference in the
outcome of the game.

Again, I completely understand the idea behind the exploration counters and
tend to enjoy games that have an element of discovery.  However, when these
discoveries can have such a major impact on determining the flow of the game
and, quite likely, the ultimate victor, a better method should be devised to
insure a more equitable distribution of the markers.

Although not as severe as the ones listed above, I have even more problems
with the game, including:

1) Currency.  Money is represented by six types of coins, with denominations
of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100.  Unfortunately, all of the coins are the same
size and are only in three different colors.  Thus, the 1 and 5
denominations are both copper, the 10 and 20 denominations are both silver
and the 50 and 100 denominations are both gold.  One has to examine the
coins very carefully to ascertain the differences.  Why they didn't use six
different colors is beyond me.

2) Map.  It is huge . TOO huge.  It could have easily been condensed without
sacrificing space for the troops.  Further, there are several charts that
should have been printed directly on the board, which would have greatly
aided all players during various phases of the game.  Eliminating the
artwork along the board edges would have provided the required space to
print these charts.

Finally, it was difficult to determine which land areas were connected to
other land areas and which ones should be considered islands.  This is
important as the only way to reach islands is via ships, which are expensive
to build.  We had to make some judgments since we could not locate anything
in the rules to clarify this situation.

3) Plague.  This is an exploration chip and, if discovered in later rounds,
can prove devastating.  When uncovered by a settler, the plaque wipes out
all units in a territory and reduces the size of cities.  With each
progressive era, the impact of the plague widens, devastating territories up
to as many as three spaces away from the area where it was located.  There
is no technology in the game that can mitigate the effects of a plague
(unlike the Medicine advancement in AH's Civilization), so this is just
simply a matter of luck.  Three plagues were uncovered during our game, but
they were all discovered in the very first epoch, so the impact was minimal.
However, if they had been discovered later in the game, it could well spell
doom for the unlucky player.  It simply is too powerful.

4) Military Units.  Although I applaud the use of tons of highly detailed
miniatures, I question why they are ALL the same color.  Yes, I know this
was likely less expensive, but it does make differentiating between them
quite difficult.  For example, the horseman (Ancient era), Knight (Medieval
era) and Dragoon (Gunpowder era) all are strikingly similar and very
difficult to differentiate.  Jerry sent three units into a battle and was
distraught when he learned that they were Ancient units.  He thought he was
sending units from the Medieval era.  He lost the battle and, had he won, he
would have won the game.  The pieces from each era should have been
different colors, even if this would have added a dollar or so to the cost
of the game.

OK . that's enough.  It is obvious that I cannot give the game an
endorsement in light of the numerous flaws and problems we experienced with
it.  Most of these problems could likely be mitigated or even eliminated by
devising other methods or rules.  But, for me, it just isn't worth the time
and effort.  There simply are SO many other games out there that don't have
these myriad of problems and are much more fun to play.  I could be much
more forgiving if some of these problems were present in games that took 2 -
3 hours to play to completion.  But when a game takes 6, 8 or even 10 hours
or more to play to completion, that game had better be darned near perfect
and without a host of flaws and problems.  If I'm going to invest this much
time in playing one game, I'd much prefer to spend my time with games such
as Machiavelli, Age of Renaissance or the other version of Civilization -
Avalon Hill's.

---
Greg J. Schloesser
The Westbank Gamers:  http://www.westbankgamers.com