Friday Night Gaming: Through the Ages
April 24, 2009
The entire evening was spent with one game. Since there were only four of us tonight, Merwin wanted to pull out a game that could only handle up to 4. At my request, he scanned the rules earlier in the week so that we could have them available for review. I created a two-page rules summary and made it available to the group. [I just made some fixes to it now: one important typo (changing a II to a III), one clarification, and one rule that I thought that I had missed, but actually only had forgotten to put the bullet in front of it, so it got lost.]
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This card-and-cubes game has many similarities with the Civilization computer games. Players build up their populations, farms, mines, military units, etc., discover new technology, acquire leaders, and build wonders, all based on historical people and monuments. This last bit actually annoys me. For the first part of the game, I had Moses while Brian had Julius Caesar. These were not exactly contemporary characters (assuming Moses was even a real person). Later, I built the Taj Mahal. Do you see the disconnect? If we aren't following actual Earth history, I'd rather not have actual historical Earth figures and monuments. It's a minor point and consistent with Civ and similar games, so I'll drop it.
The rules are pretty heavy. They're pretty logical when you work out all the kinks (the rule book definitely doesn't help), but it takes a first game (or more) to figure out what you're doing wrong. For example, a player's turn consists of 4 phases: A, B, C, and D. Well, that's how I numbered them, since the rules don't. [Actually, they do have reference cards which breaks it down into 6 phases (1-6), but I didn't have access to it when I made my summary.] For the first several rounds, we were playing such that we do phase A, then everyone does phase B in turn order, then phase C, then D. As it turns out, this really slows down the game and really screws the last player (me, in this case). We were supposed to each do all phases, A-D, during our turn and then let the next player go. The game works better when you play it correctly. The reason for the error is that during the first turn, you do A, skip B, then everyone does C in order, and then D.
So this was definitely a practice game. We had a few stoppages while we tried to decipher the cards and understand the mechanics (which mostly involves pushing a lot of little cubes around). As it was, the game lasted ~4 hours and we stopped after only playing 2 of the 3 ages of civilization. The final score didn't really matter, but for the record, Ian was the winner, due in large part to his strong military (strong cavalry with Ghengis Khan) which gave him bonus points. Brian and Merwin followed, and I came in last. I was winning before we counted the end-of-game bonus points. I was earning the most points per turn, so I theoretically had a better longer-term position had the game continued. The biggest problem I was having was an inability to keep out of last place in military strength, which was linked to a lack of resources and science. But I did have the happiest population, so that counts for something... just not the score.
The big question is when we're ever going to be able to pull this out again because it will clearly take more time than we typically have Friday night and it doesn't accomodate 5+ players. But we are looking forward to it.
The entire evening was spent with one game. Since there were only four of us tonight, Merwin wanted to pull out a game that could only handle up to 4. At my request, he scanned the rules earlier in the week so that we could have them available for review. I created a two-page rules summary and made it available to the group. [I just made some fixes to it now: one important typo (changing a II to a III), one clarification, and one rule that I thought that I had missed, but actually only had forgotten to put the bullet in front of it, so it got lost.]
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
This card-and-cubes game has many similarities with the Civilization computer games. Players build up their populations, farms, mines, military units, etc., discover new technology, acquire leaders, and build wonders, all based on historical people and monuments. This last bit actually annoys me. For the first part of the game, I had Moses while Brian had Julius Caesar. These were not exactly contemporary characters (assuming Moses was even a real person). Later, I built the Taj Mahal. Do you see the disconnect? If we aren't following actual Earth history, I'd rather not have actual historical Earth figures and monuments. It's a minor point and consistent with Civ and similar games, so I'll drop it.
The rules are pretty heavy. They're pretty logical when you work out all the kinks (the rule book definitely doesn't help), but it takes a first game (or more) to figure out what you're doing wrong. For example, a player's turn consists of 4 phases: A, B, C, and D. Well, that's how I numbered them, since the rules don't. [Actually, they do have reference cards which breaks it down into 6 phases (1-6), but I didn't have access to it when I made my summary.] For the first several rounds, we were playing such that we do phase A, then everyone does phase B in turn order, then phase C, then D. As it turns out, this really slows down the game and really screws the last player (me, in this case). We were supposed to each do all phases, A-D, during our turn and then let the next player go. The game works better when you play it correctly. The reason for the error is that during the first turn, you do A, skip B, then everyone does C in order, and then D.
So this was definitely a practice game. We had a few stoppages while we tried to decipher the cards and understand the mechanics (which mostly involves pushing a lot of little cubes around). As it was, the game lasted ~4 hours and we stopped after only playing 2 of the 3 ages of civilization. The final score didn't really matter, but for the record, Ian was the winner, due in large part to his strong military (strong cavalry with Ghengis Khan) which gave him bonus points. Brian and Merwin followed, and I came in last. I was winning before we counted the end-of-game bonus points. I was earning the most points per turn, so I theoretically had a better longer-term position had the game continued. The biggest problem I was having was an inability to keep out of last place in military strength, which was linked to a lack of resources and science. But I did have the happiest population, so that counts for something... just not the score.
The big question is when we're ever going to be able to pull this out again because it will clearly take more time than we typically have Friday night and it doesn't accomodate 5+ players. But we are looking forward to it.
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 7:47 AM
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