Well last Sat we managed to get in an 8 player game... it went well, with only a few minor rules issues. Everyone seemed pretty positive about the changes from Adv Civ to the CivProject variant - it was mostly played by people who were familiar with advanced civ - not the civproject.
A big thanks to McBeth who showed up to the Con and provided the Credit Tokens and played Parthia. I hope he'll make it back next year for the next game!
Now follows my recollection of the game summary. I'm sure McBeth will correct me if it went wrong and add any observations to the list.
The Nations were:
Babylon
Saba
Parthia
Persia
Indus
Kush
Maurya
Dravidia
Saba won the game which sort of surprised me (Saba typically is harder to play and hasn't won a game that I've seen yet). The Saba player (a friend of mine actually and was Parthia in Apollo 18) played very well, building lots of boats for mobility (an absolute must with Parthia). He took lots of advantage of his lenient AST by making sure to progress every time. Everyone was surprised when he managed to break the 200+ civ card barrier into the late Iron Age without bouncing. He was also very lucky in that he missed almost all of the non-tradable calamities and started out with (relatively) secure borders. Of course, he also missed the tradable calamities but still did VERY well in trading - so he deserved the win.
Kush did the best with card purchases and probably was the best at calculating the credit tokens values. Unfortunately he misunderstood how a few advances were purchased (a change from the old version) and we had to deduct a sizable penalty for it. We'll never know what his total really was, but the compromise at 2nd-3rd place was very generally accepted as probably accurate.
Babylon was very solid always with lots of cities. He had a few calamities, but nothing too harsh and was always in contention for winning.
I was Maurya, and I was happy with the way things turned out. It was a peaceful game and my borders were static the entire time (though, if it weren't for some calmaities I would have pushed on Kush in the last few turns). Dravidia gave me Tosoli which helped. I did get Cyclone THREE times (no one else ever got it
) and epidemic once which hurt. I also wasn't really mix-maxing my credit tokens - I tried to go strait up Civics (I had 110 Civic credits by the end of the game). I was also the only one to purchace Military - though I never really used it (it canceled out the Metalworking my neighbors had. I never really had the urge to by Agriculture, though in retrospect it would have probably helped with some of the calamities. Urbanism helped me alot. I also had Public Works for quite awhile and it was VERY helpful. Good balanced card I thought. I had Provincial Empire at the end of the game - but never really got a chance to use it .Both Indus and Persia were hit over and over again with harsh calamities. Indus had flood two (or was it three?) times wipeing out the Indus flood plain over and over. Persia had Earthquake 3 times, Treachery 2 times and Epidemic, Tyranny & Barbarian Hordes at least once. On top of that Each of them was both the victim and the beneficiary of civil war once each. They really couldn't recover from the calamities, but they played pretty well.
Parthia (played by McBeth) likewise was hurt by calamities a lot at the end. My impression was that he was in the running until a combo of very harsh calamities hammered him. I'm sure he can chime in!
Dravidia was an odd case in that he was usually ok from calamities but never could get ahead. I think a combination of having the wrong trade cards and ceding a bit too much territory to Indus and Maurya was the main problem.
Balance:
The AST speed along quickly - probably not very usual. Usually the leader should bounce at least once. People were rushing to buy the cheapest 200+ cards to keep up with him, leaving the cards that were 240+ in cost not that attractive. Again - this was probably unusual, but I will be looking to possibly lowering the cost of the most expensive cards so it's possible to buy them on any other turn but the last two. Otherwise, I thought everyone was pretty well balanced. I have a few internal gut feelings that one might be very slightly better than he other, but not enough to want to change anything.
Advances:
Library in particular was bought very often. I think we will decrease the credit bonus given by library to a 30 point credit, rather than 50. This was not a combative game to Advance Military was not bought. Road building was bought at the end because it was just above the 200+ mark. Babylon did use it to sack an Arabian city though... (which was pretty cool). Public Works was bought by me and it proved to be very handy. It was also one of the affordable 200+ cards. Rhetoric and Cartography proved to be very popular. People seemed to like the idea of being able to buy more cards. No one bought very many religions. Perhaps those cards need an upgrade? We'll see.
Credit tokens were a hit - people really liked them. Thanks to McBeth for providing them!
We had a few mess ups with the trade stacks - and I was missing a fur
but otherwise it went relatively smoothly.The overhead chart I used for Civ Advances was popular (I'll post it here soon). This can be used by people who don't want to make up the many, many civ cards).
General Con Experience:
Overall, it was a good time. If I get enough interest, I'll probably run it again next year. That was one of the many games played at the Con. Some other games I got in on:
Die Macher
Railroad Tycoon
Leonardo di Vinci
Britannia
Sabatage
Werewolf
Silent Death
Bang with Expansions
Guns and Cash
Union Pacific
Ra
(and probably a couple I forget)
I know Jeff (McBeth) got like 4 hours of sleep the entire THREE days, so he was a good sport (I even convinced him to play werewolf and he ended up as a wolf BOTH times... shesh). I stayed up for 24+ hours on Sat-Sun and I know he had much less sleep than ME! Hell... he's probably still asleep as I type this
