Hey All,

I played my first game of Adv Civ last night, we played almost to the bitter end and everyone enjoyed it. It was long, however, and the game did drag a bit. Afterwards, I was wondering if there might be ways to streamline play. Here are my ideas:

(1) Remove Tax Revolts: no one suffered from this, and it just seemed to add fiddly checks to the game.

(2) Census always involved some painful subtractions. I wish there was someway this could be streamlined. Mandating that all Stock and Treasury stacks be 5-high helped.

(3) The Resolve Conflicts / Build Cities / Surplus Population steps could pretty much go on concurrently, as long as the proper sequence was kept wherever it mattered. Maybe the thing to do is to flip over any Tokens that are to be removed / possibly-made-into-cities during the Move phase, to speed those steps. Also, resolving conflicts when no one else can enter those areas would speed things along.

(4) Calamaties: some of these are more fiddly / less uniform than they perhaps need to be. I also like the ideas of Spoilage and Cyclone that are in the Expansion Project. Sometimes we couldn't remember who had traded which Calamaty to whom without some head scratching. I'm not sure what this level of immunity adds to the game, except perhaps to avoid retribution--but that wasn't a hallmark of our game, so I might relax the "immunity" ability.

(5) Buying Civ Cards: this is where our game really bogged down.
Perceived problems:
(a) The math was horrendous:
--Figuring out how much your trade cards were worth.
--Figuring out all of the bonuses.
--Figuring out how you could maximize your buy.
(b) The amount of money available for buying seemed to geometrically multiply during the last few turns, compounding the problem. (We stopped about 2 turns early, but I was on track to acquire all of the Civ cards before the end of the game--I just had 3 left to buy.)
(c) After a while, we had so many Civ Cards, we couldn't keep up with all of our special abitilities.
(d) Everyone seemed to pause at the entrance to epoch 4. The requirement for 9 civ cards seemed excessive. Likewise, the entrance to epoch 5 caused one of our guys to stall for several turns.
(e) Moving backwards for a lack of cities didn't seem to be a necessary rule. Not being able to go forward seemed severe enough.

Some might say that more playings would make people more familiar with the Civ Cards and Calamities and would speed play. The problem is, our group meets irregularly, and its composition always varies, so it's unlikely we'll ever meet that requirement!

So, how am I thinking about addressing items (4) and (5) above during our next play?

I. I'll probably tweak the Calamities to make them more uniform, and maybe a slight less horrific.

II.a. The civ card purchasing credits were impossible to keep up with. I like the way they've been streamlined and kept track of with chits in the Expanison Project. I'll probably tweak them in a similar way.

II.b. I think the sets go up in value too exponentially, and there's probably little reason to not have sets be worth a multiple of 5. I might decrease stacks 4-6 by a sixth; and decrease stacks 7-9 by a third. (I might even up stacks 1-3 by a "tinch".)

II.c. I'll probably combine the abilities of related Civ Cards and make them more expensive. (e.g.: Cloth Making and Astronomy seem like an obvious combination. And Monothesim and Enlightenment, etc.) I know this might take some of the depth out of the game for experienced players, but I think it'd help our group.

II.d. I think I'll reduce the Civ Card entrance requirements for Epochs IV and V, but perhaps increase the required number of Cities.

Other comments: again, we really enjoyed it, the game's just too long and involved at some points for the frequency with which we'll probably play it.

Okay, so what obvious simplifying ideas have I missed? And which of the above is going to remove the heart of the game, in your opinion?

Another idea, similar to shooting the moon in Hearts, to make players think twice about trading away calamities: If a player, at the end of the trading phase, has more calamity cards than there are other players in the game (and has at least 4 calamities), then he can pass one out randomly to each of the other players, reduce two cities, and is then immune to all calamities that turn.

(This doesn't streamline play, but sounds like an interesting idea...)

Hi Bill


This takes no extra job. You are counting how much you will tax anyway, and then you try to remove it from stock to treasury. If you can't: You have a tax revolt.


Yes, this can take some time, but it is a really important component of the game (balancing issue), and can't be removed. It's not the most time consuming phase either...


The rules explicitly say that you should do exactly this: Do as much simultaneously when it doesn't really matter.


Trader is not always just immunity, and in power play (with two or three experienced players going for the win), it really does matters, and people try to hold a calamity to trade it to a specific foo in "the last trade". However, if you want to, feel free to relax it, or mandatory that if no one instantly remembers that they traded it to the victim, no one is immune.


Yes, this is why we have simplified the process greatly in the civproject. However, be warned that it is easy to screw up credits, so don't try to fix this yourself, as it could easily become unbalanced. It is however possible to use the advances and calamities from the civproject using the original map, tokens etc.


This is completely normal, the winner almost always acquire all civcards.


As you play more often, this will become easier. Also ordering th cards you hold after abilities might help (I usually keep one stack with cards doing nothing special, one stack with cards affecting calamities, and stack with "others" etc.)


This is normal and is a way to weed out the winners from the losers. Not that you can't win if you stall, but if you stall at every epoch, you are clearly not a winner...
And btw, in Adv.Civ. the hard part is usually not 9 cards, it is one of each color. I usually pass, but last time I stalled in Early Iron Age playing Adv.Civ. I did hold 11 cards, just no one of them a Civic...
BTW, in the civproject we have reworked the AST requirements, but that is mostly not to have to count civcards every turn in Late Iron Age. For early iron age the requirement is 3 cards each worth at least 100 points, and for late it is 3 cards each worth at least 200 points.


Well, perhaps, but going backwards doesn't occur unless you screw up really badly, which imho should be reflected in the game score.


Yes, you will. In my experience it's enough if a few players are experienced, and can help the others out, for the game to speed up. Being experienced yourself is only required to actually win the game when competing with other experienced players.
You'll see that your next game, even with only about half having played before, will go much faster.


Calamities should be "horrific", it's a part of the game, and is equally dangerous for everyone. If not it would be way to easy to maintain 9 cities, which would make the game more boring, as well as give more commodities to buy civcards for. As for more uniform calamities, that has been one of the goals of the expansion project, so you might want to look on how we have done it.
Imho the only calamity in the original game that is to horrific is Civil War, which in my games usually is remedied by a house rule specifying that the first time it appears it is 5 tokens less sevear, and for the second time it's your own fault if one haven't acquired Drama & Poetry or Music by that time. Also, the only calamity that is too complex imho is Barbarian Hordes, which I think we have solved nicely in the civpoject rules.


Be warned that tweaking can result in a severely unbalanced game! Believe me, I speak of personal experience!!! The early versions of the civproject credits rewrite was horrible to play with...


The multiple of five thing is twofold. Firstly a set's value is mathematically calculated (amount of cards squared times the value of a single card), and two make treasury useful as change.
Keep also in mind that the cost for new civcards also increase as game progresses! In the end game stacks 1 through 3 is mainly used as "change" and for cards to pass as third (and possibly forth) card in a trade. This is perfectly normal, and I see no reason to change it.


This is probably a bad idea. Cloth making and Astronomy is really two very different cards, that gives completely different abilities, and which one of them is more useful depends on your intent. Cloth Making is mainly a hose-keeping card used to ship tokens to your city construction sites etc, while Astronomy is either an opportunistic or offensive card, allowing you to attack wherever a weakness appears, even though it is on the other side of the Mediterranean sea.
Enlightenment and Monotheism is an even worse example. Enlightenment is a 100% defensive card, protecting against both Monotheism and some calamities. Monotheism on the other hand is a 100% offensive card, that comes with a cost of aggravated calamities. Usually only verry offensive players buy Monotheism, and when one does, everyone else (at least his neighbors) race to get Enlightenment to protect themselves. Combining them will essentially destroy the card, as well as the distinction between offensive and defensive play.
In addition it will be much harder to get one more expensive card than two cheaper one, as you can't purchase them on different turns...


Cities is a much to temporary possession to increase the requirement for AST progression. You could however look at adapting the civproject rules to your game. I'd think it would be balanced if you just reduce the required costs to 90 for early and 180 for late iron age, (due to the lesser amount and lower cost of civcards in Adv.Civ. in comparison to the civproject).


This is a common problem. I'm basically reduced to play Adv.Civ. twice a year (at large conventions), due to the lack of players and time.
Recently I have begun playing some PBEM games, which have noticeable reduced my civ withdrawals


Obvious idea #1: Learn the game
Obvious idea #2: More simultaneous resolutions. There is no problems with different players being on different phases, or early game (prior to trade) even different turns, as long as neighboring civs isn't to far away from each other.
Heart Removal #1: Combining advances
Heart Removal #2: Combining advances
Heart Removal #3: Se other comments above.

And a final word: Yes, Adv Civ. (as well as the civproject) does take some time to play, but that's good. As I and my in game neighbor Henrik joked during a game that dragged out a bit to long, if we wanted to play a shorter game, we could just toss a die to determine the winner, but that wouldn't be as fun!

Yes it does! Unfortunately some players might then actually horde calamities, and I don't think that would be good.
You should test it some time though, but perhaps not together with any other new changes to the rules.

Thanks, Jonno, for your detailed response!

Regarding Tax Revolts--it doesn't seem to add much to the game and is just one more rule, that's why I'm thinking of axing it. (The same goes for moving backwards on the AST if you drop to 0 cities.)

Regarding Census--I wasn't clear. I agree that computing the census is needed: I was just looking for a mechanic to speed it up.

Regarding Calamity Severity--I was just thinking of blunting a couple of them, like Civil War. (I like your thoughts on handling that.)

Regarding Trade Car Values--yes, set value is determined mathematically. I'm just tweaking the formula (rounding to the nearest "5" for values from 10 to 100, and to the nearest "10" for values higher than 100). This will have viritually _no effect_ on the game but will make the math so much easier.

Regarding the Civ Cards--I fully realize changes in this area can dramatically affect game balance. However, my goal is making the game simpler, which will be easier to balance (although not necessarily "easy"). My friends are spending too much time adding up bonuses, costs, etc. The game needs to be shorter (if we're going to play it), which means the "purchasing Civ Card phase" needs to be less complex.

By the way, I'm not trying to tell anyone else how they should play, just discussing my ideas for tweaking the game in case others are interested (or have some helpful insights, as you obviously have).

I have lots of practice tweaking games. I've tweaked AH's "History of the World" and "Memoir '44", for instance, and far prefer my changes. Other games I won't touch the rules, like Chess or ASL. Adv Civ, though, is simple enough (e.g., the rules are simple) and has a glaring enough problem (too long to play), that I'm driven in this direction. And it's definitely fun enough to justify the effort!

Thanks again.

Nobody suffers from tax revolts because people are careful to avoid them. I suspect the dynamics of the game would change a bit if they weren't possible. They are easy to notice, and quick to resolve. I feel the effect it has of forcing people to be more dynamic with their on board tokens is desired.

As far as the census goes, we always end up having people count what they have on their boards. It has never taken longer than the last person finishing with expansion. Have one person in charge, and people tell him what their census is when they finish expansion. It really is easy. (most of our players have stacks of 2/4 to help with the counting, but that really is a per person decision)

I tend to be grumpy lately that Civil War doesn't seem to hit the right person enough. It certainly isn't the near game ender that it is in Civilization. I really don't see any problems with the calamities. If you get hit by Epidemic without Medicine, it doesn't happen again. If you get hit with Civil War without D&P or Music, you make sure it doesn't happen again.

On purchasing Civ Cards. Copy the last page of the rule book, and make sure everyone has a copy. If they keep it up to date, scores/credits/etc are easy. If you are the computer type, I have spread sheets that compute current costs of civ cards for both AdvCiv and CivProject. I also have calculators available for those players that don't like/can't do addition in their head. People not involved in calamities are expected to begin their planning immediately upon termination of trading.

I think Civ is the ultimate tinkerers game. There are so many things one can do to play with the game and engine. Shoot, look at Tresham. He took his own game and mechanics and remixed it to a completely different game (Revolution: The Dutch Revolt). Play with it all you want.

If I were to modify something, I would put back the old Civ rule that if the defender of a city doesn't have enough tokens to defend, the attacker gets the city outright. Minor effect in the game, but something to keep track of.

For anyone interested, this is how I'm planning on modifying our next game of Adv Civ. The primary goal is decreasing playing time while maintaining flavor:

(1) I printed Trade Cards with new set values:

1 5 12 20 30 50 65 85
2 8 20 30 50 70 100 130
3 10 25 45 65 95 130 170
4 12 30 55 85 120 160 210
5 15 35 65 100 140 200 260
6 20 40 75 120 170 230 300
7 20 50 85 130 190 260 340
8 25 55 95 150 220 290 380
9 30 60 110 170 240 330 430

(2) I'm adding 2 additional cards of each commodity to the stacks (to dilute the additional calamities--see below).

(3) I added the Corruption and Cyclone calamities, and replaced Civil War with "Secession" (a variation of Tyranny). I also added "Rats", a level 1NT "fun" calamity (discard 2 Trade Cards and 2 Treasury Tokens per Epoch completed, and assign half that to a secondary victim). Note: Calamities can't reduce a player below 20 UPs.

(4) Civ Cards were modified. I included some from the Expansion Project (Urbanism, Fighting Ships, Merchants, Wonder, Monarchy, Politics and Fanaticism--some of them "tweaked"), and combined others. I have 24 in all, in 5 different fields. All Civ Cards provide 10 credits toward purchases of cards from the same field, a much simpler credit system. Also, if a card has been purchased by another player in a previous turn, there is a 10 credit. There are a few prerequisites, but no dual-field cards. Each Civ Card is worth 1 or 2 Victory Points (the Wonder being worth 4 VPs).

(5) Epoch Entry Requirements were relaxed (due to expected fewer purchases of Civ Cards) to:
II: 2 cities.
III: 3 cities + 3 cards.
IV: 4 cities + 6 cards + 3 fields.
V: 6 cities + 9 cards + 4 fields.

(6) VPs: Civ Card VPs + 1 / city + 3 VPs / AST spot.

I'm sure more tweaking will be involved. I think what is being done with the Expansion Project is great, but my goal is different: a significantly shorter game for the infrequent players in my personal group.

On civ card math: we use spreadsheets (you can do a google search and find them all over). They all allow you to put down what you own, and then it updates the prices.

Our last game 3 people purchased all of the cards, which is why we're going to add stuff from the expansion project. A few years ago wast he first time anyone got them all, so things get better as you play more.