Advanced Civilization (Board Game)
Andrew_Avril
Hey Advanced Civilization players I've got a question for you. When
ever my mates and I play a couple of us always fall behind. Now this is
part of the game but can get rather boring because its hard to come back
- the more advanced players get the military civilization cards like,
"Metalworking", "Sailmaking", "Astronomy" and "Military" and so are hard
to attack and since the trailling players always seem to have more
population they always have to move first so its almost immpossible to
successfully attack. So what can be done to keep everybody active in
the game up until the end? How about changing the order of the move to
Most Civilized to Least Civilized rather than Most Population to Least
Population. This means that at least until the leaders get "Military"
the losers will have an opurtunity to really become barbarians and
assault the the leaders cities.
What do you think?
Hobbit (OH No not another Flood)
FScottP
The group of laggers needs to bring the guys who are ahead back to the
pack.
Figure wout what they are collecting, and hold the last couple cards so
they cannot get a complete set.
Trade them calamities
Give the secondary effects of your calamaties to them.
A nation can get no calamities in one turn, but if everyone else makes him
the secondary victim of theirs it can be devastating.
In other words, you don't need to make war with armies, get tough in
trade!
Also, all those military advances like military and roadbuilding make
certain calamities more devastating. Use them.
Scott
Michael W. J. Powers
> Give the secondary effects of your calamaties to them.
> A nation can get no calamities in one turn, but if everyone else makes him
> the secondary victim of theirs it can be devastating.
This can't be understated. One turn, as Babylon, I was way out ahead
with eight stable cities, bunches of civilization cards, and a well laid
out nation that was easily defensable. I received no noticable
calamities (that is, I had something like Superstition but was nullified,
and the like). However, I was secondary victim to Famine, Flood (due to
one last Cretian city from a Civil War), Epidemic, Iconoclasm & Heresy,
and Pirates. Where's the only-two-calamity-per-turn protection?!?
Secondary effects can be more brutal than primary effects, when
compounded. I've also since learned that you won't get my at-least-one
grain card 'til you pry it from my cold, dead Pottery.
> Also, all those military advances like military and roadbuilding make
> certain calamities more devastating. Use them.
I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
Have a Board free day,
Mick Powers
Catonsville Community College www.cat.cc.md.us/~mpowers
mpo...@neors.cat.cc.md.us ab...@catmus.cat.cc.md.us
ShatRat
On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Andrew_Avril wrote:
> Hey Advanced Civilization players I've got a question for you. When
> ever my mates and I play a couple of us always fall behind. Now this is
> part of the game but can get rather boring because its hard to come back
> - the more advanced players get the military civilization cards like,
> "Metalworking", "Sailmaking", "Astronomy" and "Military" and so are hard
Aren't you using the calamities?
> to attack and since the trailling players always seem to have more
> population they always have to move first so its almost immpossible to
> successfully attack. So what can be done to keep everybody active in
> the game up until the end? How about changing the order of the move to
> Most Civilized to Least Civilized rather than Most Population to Least
> Population. This means that at least until the leaders get "Military"
> the losers will have an opurtunity to really become barbarians and
> assault the the leaders cities.
Well, you can balance the game alot more if you trade embargo the
leaders. You should also limit your board play area to coincide with the
proper number of players, as listed in the rulebook (or is it the
Expansion Map?).
> What do you think?
You can play with the calamities some. If the leaders are getting those
civilizations cards early, they why aren't the big calamities hammering
them to death?
> Hobbit (OH No not another Flood)
>
Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization is superbly balanced. I'd review
your rules and rules interpretations. I have never seen a game where, if
the leader gets a large lead, calamities have not evened out the game.
ShatRat
sha...@eden.com
Jay Rudin
Andrew_Avril wrote:
> Hey Advanced Civilization players I've got a question for you. When
> ever my mates and I play a couple of us always fall behind. Now this is
> part of the game but can get rather boring because its hard to come back
> - the more advanced players get the military civilization cards like,
> "Metalworking", "Sailmaking", "Astronomy" and "Military" and so are hard
> to attack and since the trailling players always seem to have more
> population they always have to move first so its almost immpossible to
> successfully attack. So what can be done to keep everybody active in
> the game up until the end? How about changing the order of the move to
> Most Civilized to Least Civilized rather than Most Population to Least
> Population. This means that at least until the leaders get "Military"
> the losers will have an opurtunity to really become barbarians and
> assault the the leaders cities.
> What do you think?
I think your problem is that you think this economic game is a war
game.
If only a couple of you have fallen behind, then learn to trade better
or keep track of the goals better. You're losing because you are
being out-played *economically*, and even if you "catch up", you'll
just drop back again.
Don't try catching up with attacks. It won't work; armies aren't a
big enough part of the game. Adv Civ is not won on the board. It's
won on the AST, primarily through Civ cards and making every
checkpoint, which means through trading and efficient buying.
On the other hand, if only one person gets ahead, enough so that
*everybody else* wants him stopped, just don't trade with him. The
essential fact of Civ, in any form, is this:
Nobody moves forward consistently without continuing support from the
rest of the players, in the form of trades and a reasonable
ditribution of secondary calamities.
The rest of the players can deny this support at the cost of only one
trading card per turn. This hurts you all a little, but is
devastating to the pariah. Agreeing to put all possible secondary
effects on him also does you the good of keeping them off of you.
By the way, trading that person all the calamities is a *bad thing*.
He only gets two of them that way. (Besides which, trading with him
*at all* is a bad thing.) Spread them out among yourselves so they he
can get hit by all the secondary effects.
This is (part of) what makes Civ. and Adv. Civ. the ultimate
multi-player cooperative/competitive games.
Jay Rudin
Michelle Bottorff
Michael W. J. Powers <mpo...@neors.cat.cc.md.us> wrote:
> This can't be understated. One turn, as Babylon, I was way out ahead
> with eight stable cities, bunches of civilization cards, and a well laid
> out nation that was easily defensable. I received no noticable
> calamities (that is, I had something like Superstition but was nullified,
> and the like). However, I was secondary victim to Famine, Flood (due to
> one last Cretian city from a Civil War), Epidemic, Iconoclasm & Heresy,
> and Pirates. Where's the only-two-calamity-per-turn protection?!?
Most of the other calamities reduce cities. So next turn, when your
population increases, it's usually easy to rebuild most to all of your
cities.
> I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
> itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
> down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
I think it's worth it, because then it's easier to move your people back
to rebuild cities destroyed by calamities.
Chuck Messenger
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>
> Michael W. J. Powers <mpo...@neors.cat.cc.md.us> wrote:
>
> > This can't be understated. One turn, as Babylon, I was way out ahead
> > with eight stable cities, bunches of civilization cards, and a well laid
> > out nation that was easily defensable. I received no noticable
> > calamities (that is, I had something like Superstition but was nullified,
> > and the like). However, I was secondary victim to Famine, Flood (due to
> > one last Cretian city from a Civil War), Epidemic, Iconoclasm & Heresy,
> > and Pirates. Where's the only-two-calamity-per-turn protection?!?
>
> Most of the other calamities reduce cities. So next turn, when your
> population increases, it's usually easy to rebuild most to all of your
> cities.
The problem is, it's very easy for other players to kill your wannabe
cities (e.g. plopping a couple armies on your 6 stack). Yes -- you get
alot of armies after expansion, but then you're going to be one of the
first to move, which makes it VERY hard to actually HOLD any of the
cities
you try to build. Once the leader gets "broken" this way, it's pretty
damn hard for him to recover, so long as the neighboring players keep
his feet to the fire... The only exception is if the leader has
Military,
and most others (or, more importantly, the leader's neighbors) don't.
In this case, the leader can very easily recover from lots of reduced
cities. The only remedy in this case is for everyone else to get
Military.
> > I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
> > itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
> > down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
>
> I think it's worth it, because then it's easier to move your people back
> to rebuild cities destroyed by calamities.
- Chuck Messenger
Stephane Di Cesare
>> I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
>> itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
>> down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
>
>I think it's worth it, because then it's easier to move your people back
>to rebuild cities destroyed by calamities.
Actually, for the amount Roadbuilding costs, I would rather choose a
combination of Architecture and Agriculture, which is especially
effective if your cities are hard to reach for other players.
Stephane Di Cesare
Lund University - Computational Linguistics
Sweden
Karsten Wurr
Re: AdvCiv
I would recommend to give some discounts for Civ cards which are already
owned by
other players. You may call this dissemination of knowledge. It may work
like this:
A player buying an advance gets a discount of 5 $ for each other player
who already
owned this advance during the previous turn. (Example: Egypt wants to buy
Medicine;
in the previous turn Africa, Asia and Babylon already possessed Medicine;
thus Egypt
- and anyone else buying Medicine this turn - gets 15 $ discount for this
advance.)
Another variant gives the mentioned 5 $ discount only to those advances
which do
cost less then 100 $, higher ones get a 10 $ discount.
It is also possible to restrict this discount only to the last 2 or 3
players
concerning accumulated advances.
This may work as a serious catch-up for all those backrunners.
Karsten
Benjamin Foy
On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Michelle Bottorff wrote:
> Michael W. J. Powers <mpo...@neors.cat.cc.md.us> wrote:
>
> > This can't be understated. One turn, as Babylon, I was way out ahead
> > with eight stable cities, bunches of civilization cards, and a well laid
> > out nation that was easily defensable. I received no noticable
> > calamities (that is, I had something like Superstition but was nullified,
> > and the like). However, I was secondary victim to Famine, Flood (due to
> > one last Cretian city from a Civil War), Epidemic, Iconoclasm & Heresy,
> > and Pirates. Where's the only-two-calamity-per-turn protection?!?
So you got hit by every secondary effect except Volcanic Eruption. Well
you easity could have avoided Piracy. Reduce your coastal cities first!
You might be able to avoid part of the flood loss by taking your 8 points
of Famine on the Flood plain. Decide what your worse case senario is and
how many cities you want to keep. Then work to make that come true. You
have at least 56 points of units on the board. You will lose around 35
points, maybe less. So that leaves 21+ points left. If you were close to
56 points, you probably shouldn't have built that 8th city. If you had
60+ total points then you can easily keep 1 city and 20+ pop. That means
it will take you 2 years to rebuild. But it sounds like everyone got hit
hard in that disaster round. Actually, if Assyria or Egypt had Icy, you
could reduce to 1-2 cities and threaten dire consequences if you are
knocked down to 0 cities.
> Most of the other calamities reduce cities. So next turn, when your
> population increases, it's usually easy to rebuild most to all of your
> cities.
This seems like one of those exceptions.
> > I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
> > itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
> > down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
Roadbuilding has limited uses and is usually the last thing people get.
> I think it's worth it, because then it's easier to move your people back
> to rebuild cities destroyed by calamities.
Good planning works too.
- Ben
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which one is right.
And which is an illusion???."
from Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues 1967
Edward
Michelle Bottorff wrote:
>
> Michael W. J. Powers <mpo...@neors.cat.cc.md.us> wrote:
>
> > This can't be understated. One turn, as Babylon, I was way out ahead
> > with eight stable cities, bunches of civilization cards, and a well laid
> > out nation that was easily defensable. I received no noticable
> > calamities (that is, I had something like Superstition but was nullified,
> > and the like). However, I was secondary victim to Famine, Flood (due to
> > one last Cretian city from a Civil War), Epidemic, Iconoclasm & Heresy,
> > and Pirates. Where's the only-two-calamity-per-turn protection?!?
Silly rule, anyway. Be a stoic.
>
> Most of the other calamities reduce cities. So next turn, when your
> population increases, it's usually easy to rebuild most to all of your
> cities.
Not if you're hit hard enough. That counter limit can be a problem.
>
> > I've yet to willingly chose Roadbuilding. Nullifies Medicine, which is
> > itself a lame defense to Epidemic. Over three hundred points of goods
> > down the toilet if you bother getting Roadbuilding.
I agree completely. Last card I'll buy.
>
> I think it's worth it, because then it's easier to move your people back
> to rebuild cities destroyed by calamities.
Every Epidemic, somebody hits you for at least 1 point of secondary
damage.
Which turns into 6. If you're a front-runner, this is real nasty. Most
cultures have adequate farmer mobility without Roadbuilding.
Edward
Andrew_Avril wrote:
>
> Hey Advanced Civilization players I've got a question for you. When
> ever my mates and I play a couple of us always fall behind. Now this is
> part of the game but can get rather boring because its hard to come back
> - the more advanced players get the military civilization cards like,
> "Metalworking", "Sailmaking", "Astronomy" and "Military" and so are hard
> to attack and since the trailling players always seem to have more
"always seem to". There's one problem. You need to actively manipulate
your population to be the correct size to achieve your strategic
goals for the upcoming turn. That's what makes Coinage the best card
in the game. But even without it, if you use adequate foresight, you
can arrange to be smaller than the player you intend to attack. Build
an extra city. Pack lots of farmers into big areas so they don't
breed. Throw them away on hopeless harrassing attacks against cities.
Overstack, so they starve. Whatever it takes.
> population they always have to move first so its almost immpossible to
> successfully attack. So what can be done to keep everybody active in
> the game up until the end? How about changing the order of the move to
> Most Civilized to Least Civilized rather than Most Population to Least
> Population. This means that at least until the leaders get "Military"
> the losers will have an opurtunity to really become barbarians and
> assault the the leaders cities.
>
> What do you think?
I think you're manipulating the game to compensate for unimaginative
play.
If it makes it more fun, by all means. I'd consider this a form of
handicapping. Given the style of victory points awarding in AdvCiv,
I think a direct handicap should also work well.
FScottP
>
> Most of the other calamities reduce cities. So next turn, when your
> population increases, it's usually easy to rebuild most to all of your
> cities.
Right, but Famine and Epidemic kill guys. They are and especially nasty
one-two punch. If you get hit with the first, you tend to take off the
extra guys in each area, leaving all of your farmers one deep. Then, you
get the second - and you cannot remove any farmers, because you cannot
denude an area - so you must remove cities whether you like it or not.
Or, you get the Civil War card, and have to reconquer your lost areas.
RRI1
Re: AdvCiv
>I would recommend to give some discounts for Civ cards which are already
>owned by other players. You may call this dissemination of knowledge. It
may >work like this:
>A player buying an advance gets a discount of 5 $ for each other player
>who already owned this advance during the previous turn. (Example: Egypt
>wants to buy Medicine; in the previous turn Africa, Asia and Babylon
already >possessed Medicine; thus Egypt and anyone else buying Medicine
this turn - >gets 15 $ discount for this advance.)
Not a good idea. What you're doing is reducing the cost for calamities,
making them easier to get, but not counterbalancing this with something
else--a harder AST, more deadly calamities, something. In this variant,
I'd be surprised if in most games the no one ever gets stopped on the AST
for lack of Civ cards--only the city requirements will slow or stop
someone.
Needless to say I'd never play Egypt or Babylon simply because of their
early stop on the AST--you either stop once to build enough tokens or
build 2 cities at first opportunity giving you lmost nothing for much of
the the early part of the game. Either way, you could never catch back
up. Since several people will likely get to the last space on the AST on
the same 16th turn, the winner will often be essentially by tie-break:
cities, trade cards held at the end, treasury, etc.
Also this would make the game a bit more complicated (You'd have to check
each Civ purchase for bonuses, etc.)
It is also not an original idea. There is a General article which
modified original Civ (the is was before Adv Civ was published) that used
a similar set of bonuses, except he only gave 1 or 2 pts. (not * 5 *) for
related advances and events such as being hit by an epidemic made getting
Medicine cheaper.
>Another variant gives the mentioned 5 $ discount only to those advances
>which do cost less then 100 $, higher ones get a 10 $ discount.
This is even worse. Imagine getting say Philosophy for something like 60
points: 240 - 120 (from various science advances) - 60 (for disemination
bonuses from 6 other players) or other relatively cheap advances (like
Engineering or Medicine) for free or nearly free. That's ridiculous!
>It is also possible to restrict this discount only to the last 2 or 3
>players concerning accumulated advances.
Why bother getting a lead until the end? Etc.
>This may work as a serious catch-up for all those backrunners.
Well, it would do that--but at a cost of hurting the rest of the game.
Richard Irving rr...@aol.com
Made with recycled electrons!
Robert A. Woodward
In article <19970621233...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, rr...@aol.com
(RRI1) wrote:
> Re: AdvCiv
>
<snip of disagreement with somebody else's suggestion, I want to comment
on another point>
>
> Needless to say I'd never play Egypt or Babylon simply because of their
> early stop on the AST--you either stop once to build enough tokens or
> build 2 cities at first opportunity giving you lmost nothing for much of
> the the early part of the game. Either way, you could never catch back
> up. Since several people will likely get to the last space on the AST on
> the same 16th turn, the winner will often be essentially by tie-break:
> cities, trade cards held at the end, treasury, etc.
>
In the original Civilization, being stopped one turn was fatal, unless
everybody else was stopped one turn at some point. However, in Advanced
Civilization, being stopped one turn is only a 100 pt penalty relative to
somebody who hadn't been stopped. I don't think this is necessarily a game
losing amount. There are a number of Civilization cards that are worth far
more than 100pts (and several melds of trade cards).
<renewed Snip!>
Chuck Messenger
RRI1 wrote:
>
> Re: AdvCiv
>
>> I would recommend to give some discounts for Civ cards which are already
>> owned by other players. You may call this dissemination of knowledge. It
>> may work like this:
>>
>> A player buying an advance gets a discount of 5 $ for each other player
>> who already owned this advance during the previous turn. (Example: Egypt
>> wants to buy Medicine; in the previous turn Africa, Asia and Babylon
>> already possessed Medicine; thus Egypt and anyone else buying Medicine
>> this turn - gets 15 $ discount for this advance.)
>
> Not a good idea. What you're doing is reducing the cost for calamities,
> making them easier to get, but not counterbalancing this with something
> else--a harder AST, more deadly calamities, something. In this variant,
> I'd be surprised if in most games the no one ever gets stopped on the AST
> for lack of Civ cards--only the city requirements will slow or stop
> someone.
When you say "making them easier to get", I assume you mean, the net
force
of the calamities is reduced, since the civ cards are cheaper. I agree
with this -- the charm of the game to me is the repeated cycle of
building
up a great empire, then having it crushed by calamities and other
players.
I think a better equalizer would be this: each turn, your handicap is
the
number of armies which you much destroy. So, with a handicap of 1, at
some point in the turn (say, after resolving all other calamities), you
have to remove 1 army (possibly reducing support for a city). This way,
the destructive side of the game is left intact.
- Chuck Messenger
Stephane Di Cesare
>In the original Civilization, being stopped one turn was fatal, unless
>everybody else was stopped one turn at some point. However, in Advanced
>Civilization, being stopped one turn is only a 100 pt penalty relative to
>somebody who hadn't been stopped. I don't think this is necessarily a game
>losing amount. There are a number of Civilization cards that are worth far
>more than 100pts (and several melds of trade cards).
It depends. If some players are aggressive, it is not a huge problem.
However, if most players are defensive and trade much, it is common that
several players reach the end of the AST. And then, it's better not to
be the one behind.
Michael. Schneider
> Re: AdvCiv
>
> >I would recommend to give some discounts for Civ cards which are already
> >owned by other players. You may call this dissemination of knowledge. It
> may >work like this:
>
> >A player buying an advance gets a discount of 5 $ for each other player
> >who already owned this advance during the previous turn. (Example: Egypt
> >wants to buy Medicine; in the previous turn Africa, Asia and Babylon
> already >possessed Medicine; thus Egypt and anyone else buying Medicine
> this turn - >gets 15 $ discount for this advance.)
>
> Not a good idea. What you're doing is reducing the cost for calamities,
> making them easier to get, but not counterbalancing this with something
> else--a harder AST, more deadly calamities, something. In this variant,
> I'd be surprised if in most games the no one ever gets stopped on the AST
> for lack of Civ cards--only the city requirements will slow or stop
> someone.
I disagree. Our "normal" games of Civ usually feature half the players
getting held back at some point. Maybe we're warmongers, maybe we "key" on
certain players at thresholds to hurt them, but that's the way it goes.
And $15 off for three priors isn't really that big of a deal when the
big cards are all that's left.
> Needless to say I'd never play Egypt or Babylon simply because of their
> early stop on the AST--you either stop once to build enough tokens or
> build 2 cities at first opportunity giving you lmost nothing for much of
> the the early part of the game. Either way, you could never catch back
> up.
Egypt is the only country in the game which can *easily* build to 8 (or
even 9!) cities on the second turn after building its first two. This
gives them an enormous lead in terms of acquiring high value trade cards
early. The 100 point trade off is *well* worth it. Babylon's very
defensible position makes it a good position as well (although I prefer
Egypt). Note: I like playing with the Trade Cities variant - Egypt gets a
boost with the Cloth site, but is more likely to lose East Med cities.
8 cities in three builds (with "perfect" movement & population doubling):
32 pop: build two cities, 20 pop, 27 in stock, 0 treasury.
40 pop: four taxed, build four cities, 16 pop, 27 stock, 4 treasury.
32 pop: 12 tax, build two cities, 20 pop, 16 stock, 16 treasury.
-----> buys first Civ card, spends treasury to replentish stock.
-----> (re)builds to nine cities, collects great mittful of cards before
getting hosed by calamities & secondaries; but who cares at this point?
55-token game 9-city gambit: Ideal with Trade City Variant
32 pop: build two cities, 20 pop, 35 in stock, 0 treasury.
40 pop: four taxed, build three cities, 22 pop, 29 stock, 4 treasury.
-----> at this point, unless you buy a card this turn, you will be *one*
*lousy* *fuggin* stock token short of supporting nine cities after taxes
next turn. So you must trade up to 41 points worth of cards in your hand +
4 treasury (this MUST be spent!) for your first card. You have seven trade
cards, *ideally* none calamities and two pair. Ideally, you will be
playing Trade City variant and have cities on Papyrus and Cloth, (9-city
gambit is easy with TC, very, very tough without it, unless everyone else
also went 4-6 cities right now) You will need, for instance, to spend 3
4th-level and 3 1st-level card sets for 41 card points. Of course, if you
can aquire two more Cloth (or Wine) and have a Hides left over, or six
more Ochre, or three more Grain, you're all set: Buy Mysticism for 46-49 +
1-4 & move those tokens back to stock!
---
42-44 pop: 10 tax, 5+4=9 cities, 18-20 pop, 24 stock, 10-13 treasury.
------> Now you hope for the Hat Trick: Surviving calamity round intact,
collect 18 taxes, and pick & buy two Gold cards. Live for the moment,
because you probably never see back-to-back nines again.
> Since several people will likely get to the last space on the AST on
> the same 16th turn, the winner will often be essentially by tie-break:
> cities, trade cards held at the end, treasury, etc.
In our games, usually between one and three people are at the same AST
position in the last round.
> Also this would make the game a bit more complicated (You'd have to check
> each Civ purchase for bonuses, etc.)
The game already takes four years to play. Another month won't matter. ;-)
A card check-off sheet like they have for AoR would help.
> It is also not an original idea. There is a General article which
> modified original Civ (the is was before Adv Civ was published) that used
> a similar set of bonuses, except he only gave 1 or 2 pts. (not * 5 *) for
> related advances and events such as being hit by an epidemic made getting
> Medicine cheaper.
>
> >Another variant gives the mentioned 5 $ discount only to those advances
> >which do cost less then 100 $, higher ones get a 10 $ discount.
>
> This is even worse. Imagine getting say Philosophy for something like 60
> points: 240 - 120 (from various science advances) - 60 (for disemination
> bonuses from 6 other players) or other relatively cheap advances (like
> Engineering or Medicine) for free or nearly free. That's ridiculous!
If you're buying Philosophy dead last (I presume the priors bonus is
for Civ cards bought *previous* turns) - you're getting your ass handed to
you anyway and need all the help you can get. (But I think $10 is
excessive.)
> >It is also possible to restrict this discount only to the last 2 or 3
> >players concerning accumulated advances.
>
> Why bother getting a lead until the end? Etc.
Because having Civ cards first means you are halfway immune to most
disasters before other players are. Combining Epidemic or Famine with just
about any other card will otherwise just about cripple your game for you.
> >This may work as a serious catch-up for all those backrunners.
>
> Well, it would do that--but at a cost of hurting the rest of the game.
Presumably, the "better" players will adjust their strategies to
account for the new situations, and since they are better, will tend to
win just as often. But those hosed by mid-game killer disaster combos
through no lack of skill (i.e., by drawing non-tradeables) at least have a
chance to catch up.
Adding a Civ card bonus to those behind is a bad-luck-alleviation
factor, not a low-IQ-alleviation factor.
- Mike. +--+--+
The President is a CROOK. What are *you* going to do about it?
Michael. Schneider
In article <robertaw-210...@blv-pm100-ip30.halcyon.com>,
robe...@halcyon.com (Robert A. Woodward) wrote:
> In article <19970621233...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, rr...@aol.com
> (RRI1) wrote:
>
> > Re: AdvCiv
> >
> <snip of disagreement with somebody else's suggestion, I want to comment
> on another point>
> >
> > Needless to say I'd never play Egypt or Babylon simply because of their
> > early stop on the AST--you either stop once to build enough tokens or
> > build 2 cities at first opportunity giving you lmost nothing for much of
> > the the early part of the game. Either way, you could never catch back
> > up. Since several people will likely get to the last space on the AST on
> > the same 16th turn, the winner will often be essentially by tie-break:
> > cities, trade cards held at the end, treasury, etc.
> >
>
> In the original Civilization, being stopped one turn was fatal, unless
> everybody else was stopped one turn at some point. However, in Advanced
> Civilization, being stopped one turn is only a 100 pt penalty relative to
> somebody who hadn't been stopped. I don't think this is necessarily a game
> losing amount. There are a number of Civilization cards that are worth far
> more than 100pts (and several melds of trade cards).
In Ad-Civ, Egypt and Babylon *will* LOSE *unless* they take the first
"bounce". If they build two cities with 16 guys, they have *four* crummy
peons left to (1) defend their territory and (2) with which to build
future cities. Instead of having 8 cities three turns down the road (by
taking a bounce, then 2/4/2=8), they only have *four* cities max two turns
later:
16 pop, build two cities, 4 pop
8 pop, no city builds
16 pop....(on this turn, other players will have 4 to 6 cities total with
tons of farmers left over. To catch up, you must build one city now and be
left with 10 farmers, or build nothing to have 32 pop next turn. Either
way, you're falling seriously behind. You're probably going to "bounce"
down the line because you don't have enough cities to acquire enough trade
cards to finance the necessary Civ cards to meet future deadlines). There
is *nothing* more pathetic than having a Timber as your best card when
others are trading Grain, Cloth and Bronze.
It's nothing but UGLY all the way to the end of the game. Only being
the beneficiary of Civil War twice and avoiding all primary non-tradeable
disasters will save your bacon.
If I were playing Illyria or Asia and I saw Babylon do this, or Africa
vs Egypt, I'd swarm in and CRUSH them out of their start regions entirely.
Why should I not settle their rich farmlands, if they aren't (let alone
the Cloth or Spice sites playing with Trade City variant)?
Michael. Schneider
> I think a better equalizer would be this: each turn, your handicap is
> the
> number of armies which you much destroy. So, with a handicap of 1, at
> some point in the turn (say, after resolving all other calamities), you
> have to remove 1 army (possibly reducing support for a city). This way,
> the destructive side of the game is left intact.
>
>
> - Chuck Messenger
The problem with handicaps, as opposed the benefits to hindmost players
at any given point, is that handicaps are determined and alloted *before*
the game starts.
Who really wants that kind of social stigma applied to them?
In effect, the others are saying, "You're a crappy player, so we're
going to fudge the rules just for you, so you'll have fun."
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have fun playing that game even
if I won. How could I claim the victory as won on a level playing field?
Michael. Schneider
In article <33b16c2...@news.student.lu.se>, cie9...@student2.lth.se wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jun 1997 22:16:31 -0700, robe...@halcyon.com (Robert A.
> Woodward) wrote:
>
> >In the original Civilization, being stopped one turn was fatal, unless
> >everybody else was stopped one turn at some point. However, in Advanced
> >Civilization, being stopped one turn is only a 100 pt penalty relative to
> >somebody who hadn't been stopped. I don't think this is necessarily a game
> >losing amount. There are a number of Civilization cards that are worth far
> >more than 100pts (and several melds of trade cards).
>
> It depends. If some players are aggressive, it is not a huge problem.
> However, if most players are defensive and trade much, it is common that
> several players reach the end of the AST. And then, it's better not to
> be the one behind.
>
> Stephane Di Cesare
>
> Lund University - Computational Linguistics
> Sweden
For what it's worth, in only one circumstance have I played in a game
in which a player acquired *all* the Civ cards on or before the last turn.
This means that in normal games, credit-maximization is extremely
important: by that I mean buying a less useful but more valuable card than
a more useful cheaper value card, when both are costing you the same
amount after credit subtraction.
In most games, the first and second player players often have more than
a hundred points separating them. The first player will typically have a
LOT more points in cards, and have fewer cities (as he was attacked en
masse the last round) than the second place player.
*
* *
Setting yourself up to trade in monster max-out sets next turn is much
better than "burning" your hand in order to buy one crucial card to make
it over an AST hurdle.
For example, burning four Wine and four Bronze for your first Civic to
make a hurdle would be a HUGE mistake, since picking just one more of each
next turn increases their value by 99 points. Ideally, you should be able
to trade/acquire two more of each, increasing their value by 220 points
with plenty of good "leftovers", versus having a 100pt AST position
improvement and a lousy fresh one-of-everything hand (and Fate will choose
that exact moment to curse you with four drawn disaster cards, rendering
your new hand totally worthless).
Stephane Di Cesare
> For what it's worth, in only one circumstance have I played in a game
>in which a player acquired *all* the Civ cards on or before the last turn.
>This means that in normal games, credit-maximization is extremely
>important: by that I mean buying a less useful but more valuable card than
>a more useful cheaper value card, when both are costing you the same
>amount after credit subtraction.
> In most games, the first and second player players often have more than
>a hundred points separating them. The first player will typically have a
>LOT more points in cards, and have fewer cities (as he was attacked en
>masse the last round) than the second place player.
I have played several games where there were 4 or 5 players who had
about the same number of cities, and comparable points in cards. In
these conditions, unless you count everything, you cannot know exactly
who leads, so no-one attacks.
In this kind of game, attacks are typically done thorugh calamities, so
"recovering" cards such as Agriculture and Architecture are important.
If there is much trade, it is always worth getting Mining as soon as
possible.
Still in this kind of game, it is very valuable to play Crete, because
Crete has smaller territories and always occupy much less room on the
board. A 9-city Crete definitely looks much less dangerous than a 9-city
Egypt ...
> Setting yourself up to trade in monster max-out sets next turn is much
>better than "burning" your hand in order to buy one crucial card to make
>it over an AST hurdle.
> For example, burning four Wine and four Bronze for your first Civic to
>make a hurdle would be a HUGE mistake, since picking just one more of each
>next turn increases their value by 99 points. Ideally, you should be able
>to trade/acquire two more of each, increasing their value by 220 points
>with plenty of good "leftovers", versus having a 100pt AST position
>improvement and a lousy fresh one-of-everything hand (and Fate will choose
>that exact moment to curse you with four drawn disaster cards, rendering
>your new hand totally worthless).
Of course, but if there is much trade, and there are several players who
have many cities, those will not meet any problem to advance anyway.
Michael. Schneider
> In this kind of game, attacks are typically done thorugh calamities, so
> "recovering" cards such as Agriculture and Architecture are important.
> If there is much trade, it is always worth getting Mining as soon as
> possible.
>
> Still in this kind of game, it is very valuable to play Crete, because
> Crete has smaller territories and always occupy much less room on the
> board. A 9-city Crete definitely looks much less dangerous than a 9-city
> Egypt ...
A 9-city Crete has immense difficulty staying that way. Egypt has the
luxury of not needing boats to shuffle population around to rebuild
cities, or to retake pirates.
Edward
Hmm. 9 cities is 9 cities. How can one "look much less dangerous" than
another? I'd argue that a 9 city Crete is more dangerous, in that Crete
is far more mobile, due to all those fleets. The lower AST advancement
numbers compensate for the cost of the boats, and Crete should
definitely make a virtue of the necessity by using the mobility to full
advantage. If the game is concentrating on trading over warfare, Crete
can grab a lot of farmland in the cracks between empires, as calamity
buffers.
Pirates hit the Egyptians, too. I don't recall seeing a 9 city Egypt
with no coastal cities.
Nicholas Jost
Speaking of trading sites, can the Adv. Civ. players out there give their
opinion of Age of the Renaissance? It seems like a civilization variant
that plays (according to the box) faster. Therefore it might interest my
wife more :)
Nick Jost
Steve Spisak
IN RESPONSE TO:
Michael. Schneider (mi...@nospam.visi.com) wrote:
: robe...@halcyon.com (Robert A. Woodward) wrote:
[Discussing the "bounce" effect for Egypt/Babylon vs early AST
progression]
Egypt is my FIRST choice in AdvCiv. Always. Taking the early bounce is
often helpful because you can convince people you are not winning by
pointing out you are 100 pts behind! They have the best land, and can
prevent and recover from most calamities better than any other nation,
even Flood isn't THAT bad if managed properly.
The MAIN problem is in an overly civilized game, you can get screwed out
of Civ cards because Egypt draws last if tied for number of cities.
Again, proper management solves this problem. I'd rather draw 1st w/8
cities, than draw last w/9 cities.
As far as being behind. Properly allocated secondary effects and calamity
"unloading" can insure that every nation takes a hard enough hit to stall
at the "5 colours, 9 cards" wall. And if only one player passes through,
s/he becomes a target anyways... as YOU should point out to everyone! ;)
Steve
Brent Michael Krupp
According to Nicholas Jost <ni...@earthlink.net>:
How many times in the space of one week or month can different people ask the
same question? Lots, I guess. Everyone asking questions on Usenet should learn
to use DejaNews (http://www.dejanews.com/) and look there for recent posts
which might answer their question. AoR has been described many, many times
in this newsgroup.
Brent Krupp (flet...@u.washington.edu)
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~fletcher/
"In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius."
-- Walter Bagehot
Michelle Bottorff
Nicholas Jost <ni...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Speaking of trading sites, can the Adv. Civ. players out there give their
> opinion of Age of the Renaissance? It seems like a civilization variant
> that plays (according to the box) faster. Therefore it might interest my
> wife more :)
Well, it's not a variant, although it has a similar feel. Think Civ
where you don't trade cards, and each territory has a specific
commodity. Each turn, each player gets 1+ cards that has either a
random event, assistance to getting an advance, or a payout to each
person who has the commodity the card lists. (They also get money each
turn for holding territories, as well.)
Stephane Di Cesare
On Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:39:37 -0700, Edward <edw...@largesoft.com> wrote:
>Hmm. 9 cities is 9 cities. How can one "look much less dangerous" than
>another? I'd argue that a 9 city Crete is more dangerous, in that Crete
>is far more mobile, due to all those fleets. The lower AST advancement
I meant, subjectively. Crete's territories are smaller, so even a strong
Crete doesn't eat up half of the board space, like a strong Egypt or a
strong Babylon do, because their territories are bigger.
So as Crete looks smaller than it actually is, it ends up with less
calamity secondary effects.
gov....@saipan.com
> >opinion of Age of the Renaissance? It seems like a civilization variant
> >that plays (according to the box) faster. Therefore it might interest my
> >wife more :)
>
> same question? Lots, I guess. Everyone asking questions on Usenet should learn
> to use DejaNews (http://www.dejanews.com/) and look there for recent posts
> which might answer their question. AoR has been described many, many times
> in this newsgroup.
Okay, but if it's not in the FAQ, and hasn't been asked in the last 500
posts or so, it's a legitimate question. DejaNews is useful, but not
always ideal for digging up this sort of information... sometimes you
end up excavating dozens or hundreds of posts, many of which are only
minimally relevant.
Anyway, AoR uses many of the same concepts as Civ and Advanced Civ --
cities, exponentially increasing trade, civilization advances... but it
*is* a different game. If you try to play it like Civ, you will lose,
and what's worse, you won't enjoy it.
I consider it a perfectly good game. It's not as complex as CIV, but
it's fairly challenging, and it plays a LOT faster... my gaming group
can finish a five-person game in less than five hours.
Drawbacks? 1) Price -- $55 or so, which is a damn lot for a boardgame.
2) Long-term replayability. The game is heavily influenced by a pack of
event cards, of which there are only a limited number. After a dozen or
so sessions, they get pretty familiar. This game needs an expansion kit
badly.
Overall I'm not sorry I bought it, despite the steep price tag; my
gaming group has added it to our stable of regular games, and we play it
every few weeks or so.
YMMV.
Doug Muir
gov....@saipan.com
Jay Rudin
Stephane Di Cesare responded to Edward:
Ed> Hmm. 9 cities is 9 cities. How can one "look much less
Ed> dangerous" than another? I'd argue that a 9 city Crete is more
Ed> dangerous, in that Crete is far more mobile, due to all those
Ed> fleets. The lower AST advancement
St> I meant, subjectively. Crete's territories are smaller, so even a
St> strong Crete doesn't eat up half of the board space, like a strong
St> Egypt or a strong Babylon do, because their territories are
St> bigger.
> So as Crete looks smaller than it actually is, it ends up with less
> calamity secondary effects.
The problem is that you are looking in the wrong place to see who's
ahead. You should look at the collected Civilization cards first
(with ties broken by number of trade cards held in the hand), followed
by the ACT second (the exact reverse of Basic Civ). If somebody is
four Civ cards up, with eight trade cards in his hand before the draw,
he's winning, no matter what the board looks like. This game is not
won on the board.
Also, when you finally do get a look at the board, it's easier to
judge relative positions by looking at his green card with his unused
tokens. Number and size of territories is meaningless, but the number
of cities and farmers is important.
Another valuable datum is whether he has any cities on areas that can
support 3 or 4 farmers. This has a large affect on his ability to
withstand calamities. (Reducing a city to 4 farmers costs *nothing*.
It becomes a city again immediately, on its own efforts.)
Jay Rudin
Chuck Messenger
Jay Rudin wrote:
>
> Stephane Di Cesare responded to Edward:
>
> Ed> Hmm. 9 cities is 9 cities. How can one "look much less
> Ed> dangerous" than another? I'd argue that a 9 city Crete is more
> Ed> dangerous, in that Crete is far more mobile, due to all those
> Ed> fleets. The lower AST advancement
>
> St> I meant, subjectively. Crete's territories are smaller, so even a
> St> strong Crete doesn't eat up half of the board space, like a strong
> St> Egypt or a strong Babylon do, because their territories are
> St> bigger.
>
> > So as Crete looks smaller than it actually is, it ends up with less
> > calamity secondary effects.
>
> The problem is that you are looking in the wrong place to see who's
> ahead. You should look at the collected Civilization cards first
> (with ties broken by number of trade cards held in the hand), followed
> by the ACT second (the exact reverse of Basic Civ). If somebody is
> four Civ cards up, with eight trade cards in his hand before the draw,
> he's winning, no matter what the board looks like. This game is not
> won on the board.
>
> Also, when you finally do get a look at the board, it's easier to
> judge relative positions by looking at his green card with his unused
> tokens. Number and size of territories is meaningless, but the number
> of cities and farmers is important.
I think the board position is very important -- in the games
I've played, it has been vital to move last, to avoid attacks, and
to safeguard "your" areas from encroachment by other players' cities.
So, you generally want as few armies as you need for support of your
cities, up to a point. Of course, if you go TOO low, then you're
too susceptible to calamities, and it'll take you an excessively
long time to recover. However, if you get into the position where
you're always moving first, then other players routinely trash your
would-be cities, by plopping 2 or 3 armies on your 6 or 7. Then,
next turn, you _again_ have an excess of armies, since you didn't
manage to convert them to cities on the last turn. You can easily
get stuck in a rut where you perpetually move first, with a huge
army. I'm not saying this is always the case, but just that I have
often seen this dynamic take place. So, board position is very
important, the important thing is not to have too many armies, or
too few -- it's essential to have just the right number. And, going
along with this worldview, it's essential to get Military as soon
as possible..
Going along with this, one can gain a significant advantage by
tweaking things so you always end up going last, or at least, last
among the large powers. If you can manage this, you will remain
almost immune from attack, and can go along your merry way building
your 9 cities unmolested.
> Another valuable datum is whether he has any cities on areas that can
> support 3 or 4 farmers. This has a large affect on his ability to
> withstand calamities. (Reducing a city to 4 farmers costs *nothing*.
> It becomes a city again immediately, on its own efforts.)
Agreed -- it's real important to get a couple of sites with 3 or
4 ag, and ideally, to have these sites in the middle of your
territories, so they are relatively safe from attack. On the other
hand, there's something to be said for trying to stake out the
borders of your empire with cities on 1 or 2 ags before your rivals
do, then build your inner "easy" cities later...
- Chuck Messenger
