&games

Advanced Civ session report.

The big Advanced Civilization game lasted about 9 hours. Not bad. There were 6 players. One was a newbie, another (the only female playing) had only played once and had mostly forgotten the rules. When we were choosing our civilizations she couldn't find a civilization color that agreed with her, so she just went with brown. We tried to warn her that Africa was pretty tough to play, but brown was the only color available that she could tolerate.

I probably came in 3rd, maybe 4th, but I went to lay down on the couch during the last round of commodity trading and fell asleep. They tried to wake me up, but I couldn't drag my tail off the couch, so I never made my final purchases.

That was pretty weak on my part, I know, but I had been at work the previous night and was dog-tired by the end of the game.

The game started with a major border dispute between me (Assyria) and Babylon. Babylon proposed a border that gave him the Tigris and Euphrates valley and the tier of provinces to the north. He was serious!!?? I found the proposal so preposterous that I wasn't even going to argue about it. Babylon was able to establish a border with Egypt easily enough. I pointed out that he would have 12 city sites and I would have 7, possibly 8 if Thrace and I could come to an agreement. I got a lecture on how unimportant city sites were to the overall strategy of the game. I proposed he give me a couple city sites since they were of so little value. He refused. Tempers flared. Battle lines were set.

When Babylon bought metalworking for his first civilization advance I was forced to follow suit. This totally blew my plan to follow Cavedog's card buying strategy. That really stung because I had enough points to buy both Medicine and Mysticism for my initial purchase. It really, really stung because I got hit hard with Epidemic early in the game and Medicine could have saved my bacon.

As it turned out, I was the first player to get hit with Civil War. I was never able to recover from that blow. I started falling behind, and was never able to catch up. I only had 9 cities once in the game, and I think I only had 8 cities one other time. At one point in the middle of the game I was hit with both Iconoclasm & Heresy, and Superstition. At the end of that round I had no cities and went backward on the progress chart.

Iconoclasm & Heresy and Superstition formed a pretty heavy blow, easily heavier than Civil War, from which I had only just recovered. Even though I had purchased the Architecture advance I was unable to capitalize with it. Architecture is the advance that allows you to pay 1/2 the cost of building a city out of your treasury. At the end of that round, I only had 2 tokens in my treasury. I was only able to build 3 cities on the next round, that gave me 6 more tokens in my treasury, not exactly a wellspring from which to re-build cities.

I was no threat to anyone for most of the game. As it turned out, Babylon never needed to come north of the Tigris and Euphrates valley in order to win the game. Psssssh. As if he would have needed to if I had been strong, Ha!!!

The newbie played Illyria. He was kind of timid and let Thrace dominate in that corner of the world. I was too weak to pressure Thrace from the other side. Thrace came in second place, although he only missed first place by a few points.

Africa and Illyria usually had about 4-5 cities on the board for most of the day, unless they were the beneficiary of a Civil War calamity. Neither fared too well.

Egypt was Egypt. Sat back, protected what he started with, stayed on good terms with Babylon and tried to cruise to a victory. He was too timid with trading, or he would have easily won. He was a nice guy, but too honest for Civ.

The only combat involved re-conquering cities lost to calamities. That is the main reason that the game lasted for a mere 9 hours. There's nothing like combat to lengthen a game of Civilization.

Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving, whether or not you are from a country that celebrates it,

Coldfoot