I've been playing Civ and Advanced Civ for many many years. Well, OK it's more like I played many years ago, and now I can get together a game about once every other year.

But I have a question about trading commodity cards. According to the rules, in old civ you trade a minimum of 3 cards, while truthfully stating the total number of cards, the point total of the lot, and one card. Our group took that to mean that when we offer a trade, we talk it out, then make our "official declaration" which would sound something like, "3 cards, 6, Salt." We took it to mean that you had to tell your trading partner what the truthful information was.

Likewise, in Advanced Civ, the rules state that you have to truthfully tell two cards and the total number of cards. So again, our group interpreted that similarly. "3 cards with Salt and Iron."

However, the computerized version of Advanced Civ interprets this rule differently, and after playing this weekend for the first tmie in two years, I wonder if our interpretation is correct. In the computer version, you see Salt, Iron and Grain; but get Salt, Iron, and Hides. You don't see Salt Iron and a blank card.

It makes me wonder if we aren't doing the old civ wrong as well. Rather than saying "4 cards 12 with Silver" maybe we should be saying "4 cards, 12 points - it's Silver, Grain, Hides and Ochre" and then trade them 3x Ochre and a Salt.

Opinions? Are we totally in the dark about this? We've been playing this way for more than 25 years, including tournaments. But we've never had any "official" re-interpretation of these rules. What do you folks say?

Doug Curry
Houston, Texas

That's correct in both versions: you state three commodities. In Civ, one of them and the point value have to be correct, in Advanced Civ two of them just have to be correct, but you don't tell the point value. That, of course can mean that someone makes a loss when he gets a calamity instead of ivory.

I was just going over the text version of the Advanced Civ Rulebook (as I'm reformatting it for printing - my rulebook has disappeared) and came across the following passage:


That actually seems pretty straightforward that we were doing it correctly.
And my reference to the computer version neglected to mention that there is an option in the computer game that allows you to know what cards are truthful and which are not necessarily truthful. While this in no way says anything about the original Civilization I think it gives credence to the way we've interpreted the Advanced Civ rule for trading.

I think I'm going to hash this out a bit with my friends and see if anyone wants to try the "cut-throat" trading method or not. I suspect it will be not.

Doug Curry
Houston, Tx