4 players game at 28st of juli
On monday the 28st of july the four players Mirjam, Guido, Bob and I played a 4 players game on the eastern part of
Mirjams map, playing Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan. We started at 7pm hoping we can finish the game in one evening if we play with only 4 players. Because the next day I went on holiday I hadn't time to report the game, until now.
Mirjam played Japan, Bob played Korea, Guido played China so there was no choice left for me and I played Taiwan. We played a part of the map with 28 city sites, so an average of 7 city sites a player. But we soon discovered Taiwan had a surplus of city sites, easily able to conquer 11 sites, while China had a shortage of them. So when I thought I was safe when leaving two city sites empty, Guido took his change and moved his boat and took the city sites. As a response I took two city sites from him, on each he had exactly one token. Later Guido discovered he had no tokens on the coach except for one city site so he began building cities on other places.
Now it was time to purchase the first Civilization cards. Mirjam took Astronomy to reach each other Civilization and trying to help me off from having 9 cities. Bob tried to acquire as most credit tokens as he can, and I tried a Diasopra-Monotheism combo. But with 4 players it was not easy to make complete sets of trading cards. Another effect is that it took very long until the first Civil War came. Guido was the victim and I was the Beneficiary. This lost Guido the game, because he finally got 7 cities and lost 4 of them, not having the powers (and city sites) to gain them back. Because calamities as Famine and Epidemic didn't balance the game since secundary victims couldn't be
choosed it was hard for China to recover from the Civil War, especially because the victim of Epidemic must say China looses 10 additional unit points.
So the battle would me between Mirjam, Bob and me. None of the players managed one time to reach the 9 cities. I once was able to have 18 tokens in treasury but I forget to purchase a level 9 card. That was a good choice because it would be the only level 9 card acquired. So I wasn't afraid of Regression and took Fundamentalism. I tried to get more neighbours but Bob and Mirjam were experienced enough to keep me off their borders so I only destroyed some areas from China.
The game took more time than we thought, so we ended the game at the first turn what passed 12 o'clock. It was the turn when Iconoclasm&Heresy falled. Mirjam finally traded the card to Bob and I should reduce two cities too. I had Theocracy, but as a secondary victim it didn't work: I still had to reduce 2 cities instead of chosing to discard 2 commodity cards. Then Bob got the most profit from his credits and took nearly all <100 cards on the last turn. I took nine of these cards too, but ended after Bob. Mirjam won the game because she wasn't victim of a calamity this round and ended with 8 cities (yes, she had her 16th token on a border with me, but I was in that area too so I couldn't use Fundamentalism on that square.) Bob, Guido and I ended each with 4 cities. Mirjam got 84 victory points, Bob 81, I 80 and Guido around 60.
We have discovered the following things:
- Taiwan got too many city sites, China too few. We think we have to remove 3 city sites between Taiwan and Khmer and put back the three city sites around China removed earlier.
- The 10 credit tokens from Written Record and the 20 credit tokens from Monument worked well, for so far we have used these cards.
- We haven't tested the limit of two actions a player a round, since I was the only player with special effects (only Fundamentalism.) Nor have we tested WotW and Diaspora.
- Theocracy should work against Iconoclasm&Heresy too when the holder is a secondary victim.
- The computer program associated with the expansion project worked well, but the new rules from Written Record wasn't integrated in it. We now solved this problem just by "suddenly" adding 5 credits to one chosen colour in the program. The points grapf didn't work too. We think that is because the credit calculater doen't know China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, but 18 other civilizations.
- And I think that with 4 or less players, there must be another rules about secondary victims of Famine and Epidemic, because they otherwise automatically affect all other players, or all but one player with maximum effect (if the epidemic is traded.) Weak players are kept weak by this, and the game balance is more screwed up than with more players.
We forgot to make photoos so I cannot post them.
