I have the artwork figured out, but I´m unsure about the exact wording. I´ll just cut-n-paste from Photoshop, tell me what to change:

[left column]:
Treasury
Always (A.S.T. Order but may
be simultaneous)
[Treasury picture, "urns"]
Aquire Trade Card Phase Order
1. Buy 9th level card for 18T tokens
2. Acquire 3rd level card with Rhetoric (Maybe)
3. Aquire Commodity Cards normally
4. Aquire additional card with Trade Routes
5. Buy cards with Cartography (12T+ 2 Ships)

[middle column]:
[Name of Civilization]: Civilization Sequence of Play
[three subcolumns, first subcolumn named Phase and numbered from 1 - 13]
[second subcolumn, named Activity, the numbers below is for navigation only]:
1 Collect Taxation (Revolts)
2 Population Expansion
3 Census
4 Construct/Maintain Ships
(Remove surplus ships)
5 Movement
6 Conflict
7 Build cities
8 Remove Surplus Population
(Reduce unsupported cities)
9 Acquire Trade Cards (in
Phase Order)
10 Trade
11 Resolve Calamities (Reduce
unsupported cities)
12 Acquire Civilization Cards
(Return excess trade cards)
13 Alter A.S.T.
[third subcolumn, named Conditions, the numbers below is for navigation only]:
1 Only if cities exist (A.S.T.
order but may be
simultaneous)
2 Always (A.S.T. order but may
be simultaneous)
3 Always (simultaneous)
4 If desired (census order)
5 Always (census order)
6 If necessary (simultaneous)
7 If appropriate (A.S.T. order
but may be simultaneous)
8 If necessary (A.S.T. order
but may be simultaneous)
9 If cities exist (fewest cities
always draws first)
10 At least three trade cards
required (simultansous)
11 If appropriate (in ascending
order)
12 If appropriate (A.S.T. order)
13 Always

[third column]:
Stock
[Stock picture, "food"]

All player mats are colored in the appropriate color, the urns and food pictures are in a darkened version of the civ color, and the text is in black. On civs that have white text, the pics are instead somewhat lighter. Capise?

In the far future, pictures of the civilizations counters will be displayed above the food-picture in the Stock-section.

So this topic was posted about four years ago.

Currently both the colors and artwork for the player tokens are redone.

This means that the player mats discussed above are out of date once the new artwork is released with v2.11. So, simultaneously the player mats should be redone.

As for now I've almost done all the artwork for the game, I believe I can share my opinion on this as well.

I always used my own set of player mats for the game (Actually I never used the mats currently provided at this website). I use 18 copies of a single file which is in black and white.

Why?

Though I admit it's fun to create 18 different colored mats, it has a few downsides:

- Not every combination of colors is easy to read
- It takes a lot more ink to print these.
- It takes a lot more time to print 18 seperate files.
- Whenever something changes, you have to print all high on ink prints all over again.

We all know thing have been changing in time in this project.


I created an easy to print, clear to read, black and white file, 2 mats on one printsheet. I gave order to print 9 copies of this and voila!

Keeping the costs low increase the quality of this project, as it might attract more people.

This doesn't mean it doen's have to look good.




Maybe in time, some of the names have changed. For example, I used the Adv.Civ. 'Alter AST'.

What are your opinions on this?
Do you see any errors?




I once hear some players actualy use these colored mats to be randomly dealt for deciding who plays which color.

That's why I created a set of cards for this purpose.
Pleae read the appropriate topic here:
http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=472

Whilst I think that individually colouring the player mats by civilization is both tedious and unecessary, I much prefer the green player mats that came with the Avalon Hill version of the game.

When the rest of Civ Project looks so lovely it is incongruous to have ugly black and white player mats. I would recommend that all of the player mats are the same colour but that the colour be attractive.

I also think that the player mats suggested by Flo are too 'busy'. There are too many pictures on them. I would prefer something simpler.

DG.

I used to choose for black and white, because black and white printing is cheaper.
I can live with any other color than black and white. But why green?

If you'd ask me, I prefer mustard/sand/gold for that, this is in line with the other backgrounds (like the previous AST) but also the strategy explorer, new Census mat, new AST, new board, etc.




Ok, actual color might be a matter of taste. What about the content?

Rethinking about your comment I did my last playtest of this weekend with a additional 'Sequence of Play Quickchart'

On this quickchart I wrote ALL rulings for a game turn as short as possible, so it could act like 'looking it up in the rulebook' for any new player.

I do agree its very busy.

I've reconsidered this mat, in line with both advances and calamities.
I started re-designing the advances because it annoyed me that it said line like 'lessens calamity X' or 'aggravates calamity Y', where you had to flip the card for the actual words, AND sometimes had to look up the actual rule in the rulebook. Now we have the exact right wordings ON the advances, htis takes a way the need for the advances quickchart when it comes to looking up the rules for the cards you hold.

Stating only partly what a phase includes, indeed is confusing just the same way. When I played with mainly newcomers last weekend, more things like these occured to me. Any experienced player doesn't look at the wordings of the Player mat anymore, where any necomer doesn't have clue what it means. This way it misses target in both ways.

Therefore I think about removing as much information as possible, only giving the phases and the order in which they occur, but NOT giving small clues which would only partly tell the rules.

The MAIN purpose of the mat is dividing STOCK and TREASURY. Though you should flip tokens when moving them either side, it's just that not every player actually does this or even understands this, so a clear dividing line is needed. Even playing without these mats will work for an experienced player, but we HAVE TO regard any newcomers.

We need:

'Stock'
'Treasury'
'Sequence of play' (only phase names)
'Its resolution order (AST, or Census)

Creating a 'Sequence of Play Quickchart' which tell about all rules. We need only 2 or 3 copies per mapboard (not 9 copies). (Besides this goes for the calamity Quickchart as well)


Secondly, the images I used were based on Advanced Civilization, (for I created them before taking notice of this project). These might confuse. I'll think about removing them.