Yes, but if one #$%&^ buys it, everybody is forced to do the same. Well, not everybody, if no-one follows him there isn't much harm done. But that won't happen. And if 3 or more have it, you don't have a choice anymore, not buying becomes increasingly more harmful.
If that happens late in the game, you can still choose to buy other offensive cards (trade/provincial empire), maybe even negotiating with it.
But in the early game, the effect is devastating.
The thing I like about civproject is that it's designed to enable different strategies, on/off board, offensive/defensive. But if this happens everytime, then those strategies can never develop.



I don't think this would make much difference: everybody will come to visit to be sure that they are your neighbour. And there is no protection from that, apart from cult. asc. or military (and if you can afford those, then there is no problem at all)

I'd really like to playtest this.

It wouldn't stop everyone to get one area each from you, but it would stop them from getting two, or even three, areas from you each. And some people might even consider keeping an offshore colony for a single area too expensive, and rather use their resources to hurt someone where it actually matters (such as the leader).

In combination with the slight price adjustment the rich players would also hopefully get a wider spread of abilities, and thus harder to defend them self against each other, which means that they wouldn't have to all go for the smallest player, but could go for each other instead.


If we chooses this approach, I'd include the price adjustments in the 2.10 rules, but not the one special ability per target per player rule, that would first have to be playtested in Celtic Fury (and/or other games).

I also participated in the game that prompted this discussion (reviewed here by Flo). Overall, I strongly agree with Mirjam's comments, notably:

I have to concede that this was my first game with the CivProject rules, so maybe I'll change my point of view as I gain some experience. But somehow, the course of events seemed inevitable.
I played Taiwan, and after recovering from a rather poor start, I found myself under pressure from both China (Politics) and Japan (Monotheism). I had a small buffer of less important areas to sacrifice to the Chinese, but Japan struck at the very heart of my realm, ready to consume the rim of coastal cities I had built. To stop that, and to counteract the Chinese, I also purchased Monotheism.
That's when the cascade started: Khmer (bordering me on the South) understandably bought Politics, China (who was doing very well during the entire game and scored a convincing victory) had plenty of resources to get Monotheism in addition, and before long, every player held both cards (except for the Philippines, but that story has been told).

In this poll, I have voted "by another option", but I don't have an immediate suggestion on how to tackle this. However, I do believe we need to consider these aspects of the game at a deeper level.
One of the great things about the original Civilization game was, that it provided mechanisms that benefited players who were lagging behind - notably, the ability to move last and thus respond to the moves made by other players, and the perspective of being the beneficiary of a civil war. That added balance to the game.

Along came Advanced Civilization, with Monotheism and Military. Rather expensive cards, and more likely to be purchased early by players who are already doing well than by the poorer civilizations, but Military had (and has) it's well-known disadvantages, and Theology was a viable and more peaceful alternative to Monotheism, especially because of the attractive credits from the Science cards (those credits have been removed in the CivProject rules). Anyway, most people agree that the addition of these offensive possibilities is something that the game can handle without losing too much of its inherent balance.

Now, my preliminary impression of the CivProject rules (and I emphasize the word "preliminary" - it's a one-game experience only) is, that the opportunities for the strong to get stronger are a bit too abundant. This changes the nature of the game, and it seems to assume some of the characteristics of many "ordinary" strategic boardgames, where mighty nations easily gain resources to further augment their power. And that would be a pity.

I agree totally with Paul.

First let me remind of the 'advanced civilization'-days where "Monotheism" was a powerfull card, but never overpowered. THe only problem is the total of these 3 cards.


Last saturday me and my cousin Gerart de Haan were talking about this VERY hard problem to solve. To get a right solution.

The thing he opted, and what we were discussion, came close to Jonno's idea.
But we came to a solution that combines two things.

What about: (talking about both rules together)

1. A player can only use a maximum of 2 special abilites per turn
2. A player can only target a single player once a turn.


What happens: (we think)

1. Purchasing S.A.-cards is now a thing you really choose for. You won't purcahse politics once you allready have fundamentalism and Monotheism.
When you goal for Provincial Empire, you wouldn't want to invest in Monotheism. When you goal for the diaspora-fundamentalism combo, it's a waste of tresury to also go for Politics.

2. You now know you can only be hit once by each player, which never has been a problem in "Advanced Civilization" where all players could have had Monotheism too.

The addition of these two rules, we think, will result in a lesser aggresive use of SA-cards, and therefore, less needed to defend against.




Another thing that could decrease the power (but not our first option) is to limit these cards to only target Land-borders. Just invading in an island isn't enough this way.


The first thing about this change of rules I would like to playtest is this option I think.

what?

While I, ofcourse, is all for #2, I don't like #1, just because it makes it almost worthless to buy ore than two out of seven special abilities.
Also note that "transfer up to 5 tokens from stock to his treasury" (Politics) is using a special ability...

well maybe 2 is too little, maybe max 3 is better.

Max 3 is probably better than max 2, but I'm not sure we need any max at all. I'm starting to become a bit conservative about balancing issues, so I'd like to make one change at a time, not to overcompensate.

Oh yeah, I understand what you mean. Still I'd like to playtest it.

Think I'm going to do this somewhere in april or so.

I agree with options 3, 4 and 5, but I'd like to add another option: Let each player disallow to target a player multiple times in one round. And if it doesn't slow up the game, each player can only be targeted as much as the number of cities he or she controls after resolving the calamities.

The problem with this is that it would seriously penalize the people low in the AST order (as they would have way fewer targets to pick on). It's also one more think to keep track of, which, while not necessarily disqualifying an idea, is something I'd like to avoid.

I've started a new topic. This topic is about what is to be playtested.
We're playing a game with 8-9 players in may.

http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=476

We've done another game last weekend and we really tend to a limit;


I'm not really sure. but if you want my opinion at this point I really would say

1. a player can only use a maximum number of two special abitlies per turn.
2. a single player can not be the target (victim) of more than one special ability per player per turn.


NOTE:
option 1. is not to limited in my opinion. I had Trade Empire, Monotheism and later Politics. This way too powerfull, and I wasn't even talking about fundamentalism. I could use these at the most powerful player, but in the end, these players can defend. As long as there is no defense, it makes the nr.1 player only stronger and at a point maybe not to trace.

NOTE
option 2. When there is defense the weakest player (without defense) will be sacked over and over again. Just mention, that when two players have both monotheism and politics, they can still use both, but on two different players. This way, you HAVE to perform some action to get more neighbours to make your cards stronger.


After this last game this is my opinion:
At this point these two option are no longer options but RULES in my house. If these things won't change in the official rules, (which I don't want to push, only to advice), I will still keep them as my own houserules. Agreed by almost all players I've played with. (except for some players at winning hand maybe)

We've done two new playtests last month.

Results are here:

http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3539#3539