Well last Sat we managed to get in an 8 player game... it went well, with only a few minor rules issues. Everyone seemed pretty positive about the changes from Adv Civ to the CivProject variant - it was mostly played by people who were familiar with advanced civ - not the civproject.

A big thanks to McBeth who showed up to the Con and provided the Credit Tokens and played Parthia. I hope he'll make it back next year for the next game!

Now follows my recollection of the game summary. I'm sure McBeth will correct me if it went wrong and add any observations to the list.

The Nations were:
Babylon
Saba
Parthia
Persia
Indus
Kush
Maurya
Dravidia

Saba won the game which sort of surprised me (Saba typically is harder to play and hasn't won a game that I've seen yet). The Saba player (a friend of mine actually and was Parthia in Apollo 18) played very well, building lots of boats for mobility (an absolute must with Parthia). He took lots of advantage of his lenient AST by making sure to progress every time. Everyone was surprised when he managed to break the 200+ civ card barrier into the late Iron Age without bouncing. He was also very lucky in that he missed almost all of the non-tradable calamities and started out with (relatively) secure borders. Of course, he also missed the tradable calamities but still did VERY well in trading - so he deserved the win.

Kush did the best with card purchases and probably was the best at calculating the credit tokens values. Unfortunately he misunderstood how a few advances were purchased (a change from the old version) and we had to deduct a sizable penalty for it. We'll never know what his total really was, but the compromise at 2nd-3rd place was very generally accepted as probably accurate.

Babylon was very solid always with lots of cities. He had a few calamities, but nothing too harsh and was always in contention for winning.

I was Maurya, and I was happy with the way things turned out. It was a peaceful game and my borders were static the entire time (though, if it weren't for some calmaities I would have pushed on Kush in the last few turns). Dravidia gave me Tosoli which helped. I did get Cyclone THREE times (no one else ever got it ) and epidemic once which hurt. I also wasn't really mix-maxing my credit tokens - I tried to go strait up Civics (I had 110 Civic credits by the end of the game). I was also the only one to purchace Military - though I never really used it (it canceled out the Metalworking my neighbors had. I never really had the urge to by Agriculture, though in retrospect it would have probably helped with some of the calamities. Urbanism helped me alot. I also had Public Works for quite awhile and it was VERY helpful. Good balanced card I thought. I had Provincial Empire at the end of the game - but never really got a chance to use it .

Both Indus and Persia were hit over and over again with harsh calamities. Indus had flood two (or was it three?) times wipeing out the Indus flood plain over and over. Persia had Earthquake 3 times, Treachery 2 times and Epidemic, Tyranny & Barbarian Hordes at least once. On top of that Each of them was both the victim and the beneficiary of civil war once each. They really couldn't recover from the calamities, but they played pretty well.

Parthia (played by McBeth) likewise was hurt by calamities a lot at the end. My impression was that he was in the running until a combo of very harsh calamities hammered him. I'm sure he can chime in!

Dravidia was an odd case in that he was usually ok from calamities but never could get ahead. I think a combination of having the wrong trade cards and ceding a bit too much territory to Indus and Maurya was the main problem.

Balance:

The AST speed along quickly - probably not very usual. Usually the leader should bounce at least once. People were rushing to buy the cheapest 200+ cards to keep up with him, leaving the cards that were 240+ in cost not that attractive. Again - this was probably unusual, but I will be looking to possibly lowering the cost of the most expensive cards so it's possible to buy them on any other turn but the last two. Otherwise, I thought everyone was pretty well balanced. I have a few internal gut feelings that one might be very slightly better than he other, but not enough to want to change anything.

Advances:

Library in particular was bought very often. I think we will decrease the credit bonus given by library to a 30 point credit, rather than 50. This was not a combative game to Advance Military was not bought. Road building was bought at the end because it was just above the 200+ mark. Babylon did use it to sack an Arabian city though... (which was pretty cool). Public Works was bought by me and it proved to be very handy. It was also one of the affordable 200+ cards. Rhetoric and Cartography proved to be very popular. People seemed to like the idea of being able to buy more cards. No one bought very many religions. Perhaps those cards need an upgrade? We'll see.

Credit tokens were a hit - people really liked them. Thanks to McBeth for providing them!

We had a few mess ups with the trade stacks - and I was missing a fur but otherwise it went relatively smoothly.

The overhead chart I used for Civ Advances was popular (I'll post it here soon). This can be used by people who don't want to make up the many, many civ cards).

General Con Experience:

Overall, it was a good time. If I get enough interest, I'll probably run it again next year. That was one of the many games played at the Con. Some other games I got in on:
Die Macher
Railroad Tycoon
Leonardo di Vinci
Britannia
Sabatage
Werewolf
Silent Death
Bang with Expansions
Guns and Cash
Union Pacific
Ra
(and probably a couple I forget)

I know Jeff (McBeth) got like 4 hours of sleep the entire THREE days, so he was a good sport (I even convinced him to play werewolf and he ended up as a wolf BOTH times... shesh). I stayed up for 24+ hours on Sat-Sun and I know he had much less sleep than ME! Hell... he's probably still asleep as I type this

Work goes on

As mentioned, I played Parthia. A few ill timed mistakes knocked me down from contention, but it was still one of my better played games. I went Arts/Sciences early which saved my bacon when I drew the first Civil War with Persia as the recipient. I foolishly never found time for Medicine which would haunt me repeatedly later in the game (hi Maurya . I think Parthia's starting moves are one of the tricker ones on east map (Saba is tricker), and I still managed to get it wrong in spite of Indus and Persia being far too generous in land grants to me (Indus could afford to be generous because of Dravidia's under grabbing of land on their border). Persia actually was the player that pointed out an easy method for me to start fixing my early mistakes without Agriculture, and so provided a minimum of problems. Saba played wonderfully, and fully deserved the win. While many trade card purchases were made, they were largely the 9 cards fueled by several players buying Coinage early. I seem to recall myself being the only one that ever used Rhetoric, and Indus using the 2/7 purchaser several times. Rhetoric, while now a more expensive card really helped fuel my trade sessions. Having a second 3 card is very useful in trading and setting up new sets while finishing your previous sets (much more so IMO than a solitary 9 (especially since 9 cities is so much harder in CivProject)). Probably a must buy for my playing style. Agriculture is absolutely vital for Parthia. Persia and I were pushing for it at the same time, and while is for all intents and purposes doubled my supportable population, it was barely a blip on his.

As far as Parthia goes. I made some bad decisions near the end that brought my country closer to marginal support, and when you are barely maintaining the status quo, it is easy to start bouncing cities at every calamity and stall on the AST. I seem to get to this stage late game most of the time, so it wasn't a surprise to me, but I was so concentrating on a simultaneous three round trade disaster, that I was obsessed with trying to correct my trading style (which had been working wonderfully) rather than the more important repeated stalls on the AST. I think the importance of the AST was a surprise to everyone that hadn't played CivProject.

I hope Velusion got notes on the questions, because I can't remember a single one of them at this point (other then yet another Barbarian Hordes issue

Unnecessary description of trade stupidity:
I cleaned out my trade hand completely to get two complete sets, which left the next two rounds to be a rebuild rounds. I managed to collect a pair of 6s and 5s that round, but had also drawn Corruption, and had to toss the everything but the 5 pair, leaving me with yet another round of trying to desperately rebuild (and accepting marginal trades with Epidemics hidden inside . Had I been careful to keep a few cards around that very first time, I could have weathered the later Corruption and others with ease. But three trade rounds just can't make up for missing the AST advance for lack of cities.

Yes, there were several trade card shuffling mistakes, as we had two people taking care of it, and the one who knew what he was doing was tired Luckily there were tons of other gamers milling around that were willing to check and fix things.

The game was probably richer than one would normally expect as there were 8 players, which is the cut over to three commodities+minors. Saba did repeatedly get Minor calamities, but avoided the majors. I suspect this came a bit from previous experience as some of the other people seemed pretty hot to make marginal trades to try to clear out minor calamities.

BTW here is a PIC of us at the con taken by Jim (Dimbus AKA Saba):



I (Maurya) was the one looking tired in the black jacket and sticking up hair on the right. Jeff (McBeth - Parthia) was the one with the glasses. Robert Woodson (Kush) was in between.

Nice Pic. Yes, you DO look tired ...
You look about as tired as I do the day after a convention, when the caffeine has left my boody. Did you drink enough coffe/coke?

How did the sleved trade cards work out?
I'm thinking of sticking my next set in "magic the gathering" sleves together with some old and worthless cards, but I'd like to know how it worked out for you first.

Regarding Babylon: After my last testgame (LinCon-06) we discussed to adjust Babylon and Assyria down on the AST, perhaps even making them "bouncing nations" (only 4 turns in stone age, like Egypt and Babylon in AdvCiv), but then nothing happened. As Babylon went strong here too we should perhaps think on it again.

You said your game was rich with commodities, so I did some calculations:
1 stack, 2 sets: 114 commodities + 16 calamities = 130 trade cards
1 stack, 3 sets: 172 commodities + 24 calamities = 196 trade cards
2 stacks, 4 sets: 228 commodities + 32 calamities = 260 trade cards
2 stacks, 5 sets: 286 commodities + 48 calamities = 334 trade cards

1 stack, 2 sets: 16 calamities / 130 trade cards = 12.31% calamities
1 stack, 3 sets: 24 calamities / 196 trade cards = 12.25% calamities
2 stacks, 4 sets: 32 calamities / 260 trade cards = 12.31% calamities
2 stacks, 5 sets: 48 calamities / 334 trade cards = 14.37% calamities

So, with the exception of the 5 players game, 8 players is indeed the richest game.
So now, the question is if 16.25 cards per player is to poor. If we conclude that it isn't we should move the tipover point for three sets to 9 players. If 16.25 is considered to poor we should instead move the tipover point for 5 sets to 15 players (as the larger half of a 15 player game otherwise would be too poor).
That way the ranges (excluding the 5 players game) would be either 16.25 to 21.78 cards/player or 17.82 to 24.50 cards/player.
(With current rules it is 16.25 to 24.50 cards/player.)

I'll agree that library might be slightly too good, so 30 or 40 might be balanced (I'd perfer to move it to 40 and see how that works first).

Yea I didn't get much sleep the entire con. That night before I had gotten about 3 hours sleep.

The sleeved cards worked greet. Best thing is they are easy to fix if commodities change. I used the custom commodity cards that I submitted months ago because I didn't have time to convert anythign else to poker sized.

I sort of liked the richness of the game - it makes it likely there will only be one bounce for the leader before the game is over and means the calamities don't hit over and over again back to back. I think we should use your suggestion and instroduce the 5 sets at 15. That would put the range from 18-24.

I think we will probably have to adjust Babylon and Assyria a bit down the AST to make it tougher.

We'll lowever Library to 40.

Let me know what do you think about it.
I personally meet the authors about once a week.

Raffaele
Goblin's lair