After some playtesting we created some houserules which we strongly reccomend as official changes in the rules in v.2.11 . This is not my personal opinion only but our group in the Netherlands found this out. We do have some more houserule but they remain house-rules and aren;t posted here. These houserules were led from several play-tests and were set to eventually become official rules

The orange lines are approved by Velusion:

1. the problem discussed earlier about a combination of some special abilities-cards being too strong has been solved when you limit the use of special abilities to only 2 per turn (still being abled to hit one person two times)

2. Diaspora rules should change in being abled to use city-build option only when ther's a city site. (no change in hand-limit rule)
so:
-Diaspora Advance should read "During the Special Abilities Phase, you may place a city or tokens up to the population limit from stock in an empty area, provided that an unblocked path can be traced to target area."
-Diaspora Quickchart should read "During the Special Abilities Phase, a holder may place a city or tokens up to the population limit from stock in an empty area, provided that an unblocked path can be traced to target area."

3. Neither rules nor cards specify the rules clearly enough whether 'Politics' can take over a city. So we slightly changed text (no change to Barbarian Hordes-text)
Politics card should read: "During the Special Abilities Phase, you may either gain five treasury tokens from stock, or replace from treasury exactly all units in one adjacent area belonging to a player not holding Politics or Cultural Ascendancy. In case a city is annexed, it is replaced by a city from stock and exactly five treasury tokens are transferred to stock. Pirate cities and barbarian tokens may not be annexed."

Politics Quickchart should read"During the Special Abilities Phase, a holder may either gain five treasury tokens from stock, or replace from treasury exactly all units in one adjacent area belonging to a player not holding Politics or Cultural Ascendancy. In case a city is annexed, it is replaced by a city from stock and exactly five treasury tokens are transferred to stock. Pirate cities and barbarian tokens may not be annexed."

4. We keep a certain order in calamity resolution. This holds: All calamities remain blind untill called by the gamemaster. (minor calamities are resolved simultaniously f possible). When a player holds three major calamities, the one randomly thrown off, is still kept blind untill all calamities are resolved. (same for any calamity more than allowed)

5. There's going to be new artwork for 'Naval Warfare' cause the ship on it is historically wrong. Some chages in the artwork for Literacy, Engineering and Urbanism.

6. All Advancement cards now use images with a copyright mention for the illustration.


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There are some things still in playtest. Some of these playtests work really great and we see this as a good change.

at least
1. Wonder of the World - Written Record - Monument.
2. Diaspora (as described above)
3. Politics (as described above)
4. Urbanism - Engineering


optional
5. Trade Routes
6. Naval Warfare - Military - Advanced Military


The latest updates about these playtest are written in this topic: http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=515

this little box was the first mention:
--- To limit gametime without quiting at a certain point that may lead to dissapointments we are testing the following:
Every time the altering in AST is being checked an additionl 'universal AST-marker' is moving along. This marker is ALWAYS approving.
This way the game is always ending at the same number of turns, regardless of which players may approve or are held back on the AST.
Ofcourse this is an optional rule in the first place, but CAN be an official rule.
An additional optional rule is to start the 'universal AST-marker' one or more spaces ahead of the rest. Except for the first few turn we normally see a turn takes 1 hour. This way you can count out the time limit and adjust the starting position of the AST-marker and take away some time-pressure (can we play another quick turn, which most of the time runs out of time)

Another addition of this marker is to see some sort of 'ideal line' and how many times you and other were held back during the game.





We would like others to playtest the options in this topic:
http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=515. Printable cards are available

Doe we also make Diaspora cheaper?
And if the removed calamity is called by the game master, must that calamity then be revealed as discarded, or do we have to wait until the end of the calamity phase?

And if I understand Wonder of the World good, holders may purchase for free a card of higher level than his amouont of cities, but not of a level up to his amount of cities? And there is no effect anymore on taxation and city support check?

1. No, no cheper version of Diaspora. It's goos as is.

2. Our houserule is to remain silent unless you hold the calmity called. Only after all calamities are resolved the remaing tossed out calamities are revealed.

3. Indeed only a trade card level higher than you amount of cities.

4. It's not counted as an additional city.

Remeber: these are house-rules (diaspora and calamity resolution) and playtests (wonder of the World).

Here are my personal opinons:



I'm not familiar with this debate. Could you at least reference a thread?



This sounds reasonable. I'm curious to know how popular diaspora actually is...



I don't have a problem with that clarification.



No problem with this.

I'll have a comment about the Wonder of the World comment later.

That's: http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=456
Along with this there's been a lot of oral discussion while and after playing a game of civilization, and that's not been typed out on any forum.

Another option (played in the netherlands too) is no limit in the number of special abilities, but a limit in targets: You can only target a single player once each turn.

I never got the chance to play it.

One thing to change in version 2.11 is to remove every mention of 'multicolored credit tokens' in the rulebook

They have been removed totally from the new design for the advances as well as the new design for credit tokens.



I've also found a typing-error in the rulebook.

page 40 shows
'30.52 Written Record (Science & Civic) - 60)'
that should ofcourse be:
'30.52 Written Record (Science & Civic - 60)'

Mistake in 17.4.2

Should be changed to

should be:

Another addition is about the fact of Calendar and Pottery being cumulative for the secondary victim of Famine.
As concluded in this discussion:http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3749#3749
There should be added one line and changed one line in the rulebook:


Change in the rulebook:
"30.39.2 Five less unit points are lost by a primary or secondary victim of Famine (29.3.1.2)"

to make this equal to the writing at 30.7.2

add to the rulebook:
...
29.3.1.5 The effects of Calendar and Pottery are cumulative.
...

To clearify it's not 'a total of five less units points are lost by a secondary victim of Famine.'

Proposal for a specific order of calamity resolution process:

Change in the rulebook:

Old:
24.7.2 Major calamities are then revealed and resolved in ascending order,
starting with Volcanic Eruption or Earthquake and ending with Piracy.

into New:
24.7.2 All major calamities are then revealed. They are
resolved in ascending order, ..

to make sure, that first all major calamities are revealed
and then all revealed calamities are resolved.

Our Essex, UK based group has been using the blind calamities house rule for 3 years now. It is much better if players keep their calamities undisclosed until the time to resolve them as this stops players making bargains such as, If I don't famine you if you agree not to epidemic me.

to make the process fairly simple we declare all calamities off the same stack at the same time whether they be minor or major and then resolve them in order minor to major.

DG.

I do agree on this. We;ve been using this for quite a time now, and I'd suggest to change this in the rules to official.



Well, it might help some new-comers to see what happens. Just cause minors are minor in practice and don;t ineterfere much with other players or cards. ABout non-tradable and tradable I refer to the first lines. If you open a famine and superstition together you still might get that bargain you're talking about. Besides it doensn't hurt much to wait for the next calamity.

Just another slight wording thing: (http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=515)

27.1 (Remove content and use following:) After acquiring civilization cards players may retain up to eight commodity cards in their hands for the next turn. Any excess commodity cards of the player's choice must be discarded
, displayed, shuffled together with commodity cards used to acquire civilization cards and with calamities that took place in the same turn, then placed face down, at the bottom of the appropriate trade cards stack. Players may not conceal the number of commodity cards they retain.
27.1.1 Players holding Trade Routes (30.48 ) may retain one additional commodity card.
27.1.2 Players holding Diaspora (30.14) may retain one less commodity card. (removed: 'only')

27.1.3 The effects of Trade Routes and Diaspora are cummulative.

So far I'm liking everything I'm reading.

For Wonder of the World, WR and Mon:

I don't have a problem with those changes. I suppose I'm a bit leary of upping the power of benefit cards but I do remember WR not being that attractive.

One thought: How about just saying that Wonder bumps you up on the AST immediately (no matter where you are) instead of granting you a trade card or a city bonus to entering? That would certainly be interesting... but maybe too powerful.




I like this idea. What do other people think?

This has been suggested, but seemed to be too powerful. in fact this option is still very powerful. At the end of the game there's always a player about to win, stopping by cards is impossible. The only way to stop him is to destroy his cities. this option provides a very expensive defense, but it is a defense.
Giving the ability to go forward anyway takes away any possibility to stop this player.
Remember again 290 is a high price. you really want this or rather go for point in buying several cheaper cards. besides it doesn't really hurt other player where almost all other high cards do.



For the universal timemarker. I suggest to keep it as optional only. In practice we remarked that though it helps a lot, really, when you are in lack of time (when people gotta catch busses and so), but it takes away some fun as well.
Once anyone freezes on the AST, you already know that player can never eep up. Also you know exactly whether you should buy that 2nd or 3rd 200+ card or not. Once you know you cannot reach a 3rd 200+ in time, you'd better go for another strategy. WIthout this Universal Time Marker you can look at other players and freeze one turn to save for full sets.
the 3rd downside is some options become less important. Like Wonder of the World.

We also experienced that when you take away a player's option to go forward on the AST for example by destroying that 3rd city, you immediatley know for sure he's 5 points behind and he can never take that back.

So: somewhere in the rule could be made a mention:

"A regular games takes about twelve hours. If you know you are in lack of time you can choose to [..... UTM rules...]. This decreases the playing time to about ten hours. If you want to play an ever shorter game, you can start the game with the UTM spaces ahead of the first square, substracting about one hour per square. It is recommended to play the full twelve hour game, for it takes all game mechanics to its full extend."