I stumbled upon this truly marvellous site by mere chance while searching very hard for copies of the original game(s). Seeing how wonderful one's own game can look, I have decided to make my own. (It is also out of pure necessity, as it is nearly impossible to get hold of an affordable original.)

Since I am not going to create the full Expansion game (finding more than 7 players will be hard around here), I intend to stick to the Advanced edition, including the Western expansion map. I have amassed all information to do this, save for one thing: I don't know if there have been changes in the AST between the original and Advanced edition. Can someone please help me out? A picture would be marvellous, but a written explanation will do equally well. (I am able to borrow a good friend's copy of the original edition for a while.)

Thanks a lot in advance,
Maarten

Yes it has changed between Civ and AdvCiv. The border requirements are

Everyone starts in the Stone Age. To advance to the next age or advance within the age, you need:
Early Bronze Age - two cities
Late Bronze Age - three cities and three groups of civ cards
Early Iron Age - four cities, nine civ cards, all five groups of civ cards
Late Iron Age - five cities, point value (only civ card points are counted)

As part of a PBEM game I am in, we have this
http://www.redscape.net/community/gmand ... fAST17.gif
picture of the AST. It is partially filled in, but should give you an idea of where the borders and point values are.

I was just reading through the forum, looking at older posts I've never read before, and saw this post. I guess many civ-fans in the netherlands find it hard to get a group together. So that's why i've started a file of adressess of people in the netherlands who want to play Civilization.

Anyone in the netherlands (or belgium) interested can contact me. I organize a game of civ every now and then.

There seems to be quite the substantial group of people in Sweden that play Civ too.

the difference between sweden and the netherlands is that you all can travel from any part of of the country by car or train, and play the game, then return home, all in the same day.

I guess sweden is too big for that, isn't it?

Yes, Sweden is to big for that. Train from one end to the other takes well over 12 hours, so getting back again in the same day is hard enough, and getting to play anything in between is impossible. However, a vast majority of the population lives in the southernmost third of the nation, so the problem isn't that big in reality, but there is still no chance someone is spending 2 hours and €20 each way (what it would take me to get to Stockholm by train) is nothing you do just to play one game of Civ.

Thus we Swedes tend to get together to play only at the big conventions (of which I only regularly visit two each year). There are local groups of people playing more often, but from what I've heard, those groups usually are just four or five people, barely enough for AdvCiv, and certainly not enough for CivProject.

In fact, I'm in the process of starting such a group with my friends here in Linköping as basis. It only took me 3 years of trying to get 4 willing people in the same room at the same time.

So far we have played one game (AdvCiv, as we wasn't 5 players, the minimum for CivProject), and it was a success, but so far I haven't managed to get four people to be able to play at the same date again. I'll continue to try (if you live in Östergötland and want to join, please tell me!!!)

I've thought of setting up a forum, mailing list, or similar, for Swedish Civ-players, announcing it at conventions. Never got "tummen ur arslet" and actually do it though. Hopefully I'll get going before GothCon this Easter...

Yes, so I see it stays hard.

I wonder how that's like in Eastcoast UAS and Wescoast USA and in between.

Any other countries? How do you get people together?

By posting at this forum in september 2007 I attracted attention from a group of players in 1 hour driving. This way two groups kinda collided in interest.
We played a few games now. the first with 19 players!!!!, two other games with only 7.

finding 18 players more than once twice a year seems impossible here.
There are some conventions here too, but there is so much else to see/do, that 12 hours of gaming there isn't an option for me (a big fan) either.