I ran this at the Game Days Convention in Maryland on Saturday, May 5, 2007. I let players drop out & in one case, in, so that more people could try it. At the most, there were 11 cultures in play. Abandoned pieces were left on the board, like barbarians. We played with the Eastern side of the board, leaving out the upper left portion of the map.

The major drawback of this set was that with 4 commodities of each value, it was very hard to assemble a full set of cards & therefore to buy the advances.

The countries that did not bump stayed in the lead. When we conceded at 2 turns from when the game would have ended, the point spread in advances was already 800 points. I was sandwiched between the leaders, yet while they always advanced, I went backwards once. In the end score chart, the AST is too strong. Maybe make it 3 points per space on the AST.

The limit of calamities any player could experience on a turn was helpful. It would have been better to evenly split the country starts between East & West. Following the suggested start areas for 11 players we only had 2 on the West. The Western players always got all their cards but sometimes got 4 calamities in 8 cards.

Understanding the advances & the discounts was difficult. You can't go directly off the quick chart & the dual colors confused everyone.
I think everyone enjoyed the game, although as always there was the complaint that it took too long. Most of us would play it again.