SETTING UP A GAME

When setting up a new game, the rulebook says:

The way this is done, can vary.
1. You can put a token of each nation (or a plastic bag containing all tokens of a nation) in a hat and let each player take one out.
2. You can let people shout for each wanted nation. (I PLAY BABYLON. I WON'T PLAY IBERIA)
3. Create an auction.
4. Throw dice.
5. Whatever other way.

The original (Advanced) Civilization came with 9 cards contianing "first, second, third, etc. In order to make each player draw a random card and this way choosing the order of picking a nation.



PRINTABLE CARDS

Let's combine those! So:

I created a printsheet with the 18 nations, which you can use to create cards of. You can shuffle these and make each player draw a card, and continue the normal rules.


The East/West markers are just easy reminders of where on the board your starting position is.


Ofcourse this is no MUST, just a tool. (at least I'm going to use em)







THE GAMEMASTER

The "gamemaster" cards are put down to shuffle em with the regular cards whenever you have a random game-master who is not playing.
Ofcourse you can make up any division yourself of what cards you shuffle in. (I made an East, West, and Neutral version). This can decide which person shuffles each set of trade cards (E/W) or whatever tasks these persons get.



THE BACKSIDE

For the backside of the card. I created backside in the style of the cards used here. I also created a version I prefer myself. My own version tackles the problem of visible back/frontsides when double-sided printed, as the box is just as large as the boxes on the front.
Besides that, I just like the image better, but that's just my taste.









VARATIONS / HOUSE RULES

Last time we played, there were some votes of bringing back the old way. Dealing numbers, and this way deciding the order of manually choosing for one person at a time.

Whenever you like this option best (as house rule), I created two versions of those cards too.

- An East/West version. This is quicker, as each side of the board has it's own order. You only have to wait for 8 others, instead of 17.


- An 1to18 version. Each randomly picked card can mean ANY place on the board.





Ofcourse, for all options, first you gotta choose which nations are in play and which are not.




HIGH RESOLUTION FILES


I have a highres psd-files. Let me know if you're interested.
These are just jpg preview files.

Looks great! But if there is a random game master I should choose for another option: Make additional number cards equal to the number of non-playing game masters. The players now have the additional option by chosing to be a non-playing game master instead of a player. This option I think is quite useful when players likes to play only a few nations.

Most of the time zero to one.

Well, you can always shuffle one of the other cards in, and decide before drawing, what these cards mean.

Who is to be the GM is usually decided well in advance of the game...

I always use the player mats to randomly assign nations to players.

Well, everyone, has its own way of dealing.

This is only meant as a tool, It gives you another option.

The group I play with play games in a series of championships. We almost always have the same 7 players and tend to play on maps with 8 countries available using 55 tokens each.

Each championship lasts 8 games and each player must play each nation once. At the end of the 8 games, points from all games are added up, after each player drops his/her worst two scores and the player with the most points is the champion.

Championships tend to take 2 years to play.

DG.

wow

That's real cool

But I see this as a house-rule or house-way.
In practice it's not always possible to get a group together like that.

I think what's fun about the game as well is that you can play a game during a day regardless of the number of players showing up.

I think it's hard for you sometimes to get all players together each time. isn't it?

We are quite lucky, we play with the same 7 players every time. Almost every time, everyone turns up. We all take the day off work and play through the whole day from 9.30 to midnight.

You are right though, the nation picking cards are very useful for one off games.

These cards' colors will be out of date with the release of V2.11 with new colors for the player tokens.

Also the names have changed
'Kush' is now 'Kushan'
'Celts' is now 'Celt'

So I will create new set of cards for this purpose.


Nevertheless I prefer to use the numbered set.

For the same reason that creating a coloured player mat for each nation is not a great idea due to occasional colour changesrequiring reprinting. Would it not be best just to have all the cards that same colour?

ok, well, actually these colored cards were an optional addition in the first place.

It's easy to create and to print. (It takes you one double sided sheet)

Formerly I used to write the numbers on small sheets of a noteblock and threw them in a hat or something. That worked indeed. It needs no colors.

But it's easier to recognize and looks better.
(the player mats need no recognition)

The upside of using these colored cards rather than numbers is to immediately know where you sit, and the gamemaster can set the exact nations like in the scenario rulebook. Also setting up goes quicker.

The downside is that players might get to play with the same nation twice where they prefer another. We added the rule that players may trade places, but this seldom happens in practice. So actually I noticed the players prefer to pick a number and choose a civilization themselves. only the higher numbers have less choice ofcourse.

Ok,

so this is the new printsheet for the new colors.