From: "gschloesser1" 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