We played on Saturday from 10:00 until 23:00 with 9 players
on a west map. The game was finished without even someone
stepping to the later iron age due to the late time that evening.

1. Diaspora for adjacent areas up to the limit
-> no one bought it, as the game was ended due to time and
only 2 cards > 200 were bought at all.
The only cards bought were Wonder of the World and Mining.
So no results for that. We propose (like Flo said before) to have
a playtest for the >200cards with the starting packages of Velusion.

2. Road Building (through first area if no conflict)
-> same as Diaspora -> no results

but one more thought: "no conflict" must be defined
moving each token seperately through one area,
there will be no conflict in this for 10 tokens each at its own time
what happens if i want to move 1 token from area A through area B
to area C (with B being a 2 area having 1 enemy token in it)
and in the same turn from area D also 1 token through B to E (or even D)

3. Agriculture (only 0,1,2 areas)
I would like to state a success. The card was still simple to use, we never
had problems on this. It was bought only 4 or 5 times out of 9 players.
As I was playing Egypt and had very strict borders without going to total
war a was thinking about taking it all the time, but it never happened.
With the old card, I am sure I would have bought it earlier in the game.
positive tested

4. Wilderness Cities on 0 areas after Buying agriculture
We allow to build wasteland cities on 0 areas for players having
agriculture. It allowed Carthage and the Celts to build these cities
and we came eventually to 6-7 cities for all players (with one 5 and
one 8 city civilization)
positive tested

5. AST: Egypt being one step longer in the StoneAge
I played myself Egypt. I think it doesn't make any difference as the
main border for Egypt seems to be the three cards and not the two
cities. From my point of view the old requirements would have given
the same gameplay. -> no change necessary

6. New AST order
That's a quite tough question. As for our game the AST order was ONLY
strictly used for the movement phase and almost all other phases were
played simultanously (with only very few players having single points
in time with stating that they want the correct order), there was only
the beginning of the game with AST used for movement. But there are
only up to 16 tokens. After that the order was mainly decided by census
and that was independently of AST. So the new order is nice for only a
few phases, the change is not bad, but not strictly necessary.
If there are very experienced players, looking for the others in all phases
there should be the new AST order.
somewhat positive for inexperienced groups, positive for experienced groups

7. 3 new vulcanos
As Babylon did not show up, we had only the 3 old vulcanos.
-> no result

8. Short Rules on Calamity Cards
One player asked to have a single short line on the calamity cards
stating what happens. Our problem was to play with german trade
cards, german table language, but english quickcharts and an english
rulebook. No one wanted to check the calamity quickchart to reveal
to have a calamity. Maybe a short line would be helpful: e.g. Cyclone:
Reduce up to three Coastal Cities

9. Barbarians
The barbarians hit twice without hitting at all
It was unclear if they still invade a border area or 0-area and stay there
or if they do not show up at all. Hatti and Hellas had this calamity, but
did not see any black tokens at all
It the same like cyclone: If you don't have coastal cities -> no cyclone.
But there is a line on that in the rulebook.

10. Congratulations to Rome
Rome did win, due to a
a) we love each other agreement with the Celt (after being archenemies in our last game)
b) Iberia having a three front war with Celt, Rome and Carthage
c) Carthage without interest in Sicilia
d) very weak Minoa, giving a lot of space to Hellas, so Rome had enough
space to all sides

still: Congratulations to him.
maybe I can influence him to write a game report of the ingame history

great short report

to me , overall good results on playtest.

I think some should surely be considered for change.

I think in general, we should consider to change something to make the games shorter.

No group will play over 13 hours on a single day, so this should be the maximum, not the average. Otherwise the game misses target.

I think creating some more room, to allow players having more cities does reduce need for conflict bu also creates a little more wealth, which indirectly result in more purchases on the higher cards. Which in return both brings in more fun and make players meet the AST requirements.

I see Minoa having trouble just like in our game. Maybe this is something to take a closer look to.

Now my opinion on your points:

- Diaspora
Indeed, let's playtest Velusions scenario soon anyway.
- Roadbuilding
The rulebook says:



Maybe a little addition to the rulebook will help:



and:

17.3.1 Players holding Roadbuilding ... (add:) Each single token is considered to move independantly from other tokens rather than group-wise.

Let's continue this in the appropriate topic.

- Agriculture
Two positive playtests, one negative on another option. Let's continue any doubt in the appropriate topic, but to me, this new approach will go for official change.

- Wilderness city on a '0' after agriculture
To me this seems in line with adjusting the map to increase room. again: let's go to that topic.

- Change of AST for Egypt.
AS long as it isn;t nessecary, I suggest to change it anyway, as is doesn't hurt. I see no need for only Egypt to have this one step earlier. But after all, we have to do a 'movement'-playtest for AST purposes anyway.

- New AST order:
In our game we often had players with equal census count. At least this mapboard switching is a good change to me. this can also be something for the movement playtest as described.

- Short description on calamity cards.
I'm not so fond of this. One calamity is shorter to describe than another. Players taking a lot of time reading has the same effect as looking at the quick chart. In the end, the more experienced players also win because of poker faces and knowing the rules by heart.

- Barbarians
I like ALL calamities to be described better. this is something we discussed earlier.

- Good to see Rome won. I was afraid by our last game, Rome might be to hard to play. Your game shows it isn't. Iberia might have fought on several fronts, normally that's the same for Rome, Hellas, Minoa




Ok, like I said before, Let's continue discussions on the result in any of the appropriate topics, just to keep things together.

I can describe all calamities in a short line:

(Minor calamity): Not much damage.
Volcanic Eruption/Earthquake: Lose a city.
Treachery: Give a city to the trader.
Famine: Lose 10 unit points.
Superstition: Reduce three cities.
Civil War: Give away all but 35 unit points.
Slave revolt: Support cities without 15 tokens.
Flood: Lose 17 unit points on a Flood plain.
Barbarian Hordes: 15 Barbarian tokens invades.
Cyclone: Reduce three coastal cities.
Epidemic: Lose 16 unit points.
Corruption: Discard 10 face value of cards.
Civil disorder: Reduce all but three cities.
Tyranny: Give away 2 unit points for each city.
Iconoclasm & Heresy: Reduce 4 cities.
Regression: Go one space back on A.S.T.
Piracy: Give two coastal cities to pirates.

Do you really want 'not much damage' to be printed on minor calamity cards? You must be kidding.

I can make the lines even shorter:

Minor calamities "Not much damage"
Major calamties "Some more damage"
Iconoclasm and Heresy: "Trade this card away"

Still this isn't true. Some minor calamities may be even harder to deal with than some majors, or in some cases. The word 'minor' does not cover the subject. (I'm thinking 'minor uprising' or 'Banditry' for example)

Next, If you want to put things this way, at least use the right wordings. For example, you don't 'give' cities to pirates. Also it's not "Loose a city" but "One city is destroyed". And it's not YOU but your A.S.T. marker that is moved back one space. All calamities are written passive. Also numbers are written in words rather than digits.

When it comes to card lay-out and design, which is mainly my thing for now, one of the first things I wanted to change is this language-error on all cards (like on the advances).

Next I actually removed lines like "Aggravates civil war' to be replaced by the exact wording "A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed". This was the main reason why I started re-designing the cards in the first place. Only secondly for the illustrations.

To be in line with these rules at least should be something like this:

Squandered Wealth Ten treasury tokens are transfered from treasury to stock.
Volcanic Eruption/Earthquake: One city is destroyed.
Treachery: One city is annexed by the trader.
Tempest: All ships are destroyed and five treasury tokens are transfered from treasury to stock.
Famine: Ten unit points are destroyed.
Superstition: Three cities are destroyed.
City in Flames: One city is eliminated.
Civil War: All but thirty five of your unit points are annexed by the player with most unit in stock.
Slave revolt: Fifteen tokens cannot be used for city support.
City Riots One city is reduced and five treasury tokens are transferred from treasury to stock.
Flood: Seventeen unit points on a flood plain are destroyed.
Barbarian Hordes: Fifteen Barbarian tokens invade.
Coastal Migration: All ships and five unit points from coastal areas are destroyed.
Cyclone: Three coastal cities are reduced and all ships are destroyed adjacent to one open sea area.
Epidemic: Sixteen unit points are destroyed.
Tribal Conflict: All of your tokens from two adjacent areas are destroyed .
Corruption: Ten points of trade cards (face value) are discarded.
Civil disorder: All but three cities are reduced.
Minor uprising: Two unit points per city are destroyed.
Tyranny: Two unit points per city are annexed by the trader.
Iconoclasm & Heresy: Four cities are reduced.
Banditry: Trade cards worth one point per city (face value) are given to the trader.
Regression: Your A.S.T. marker is moved back one space on the A.S.T.
Piracy: Two coastal cities are annexed by pirates.


This comes close to the shortest way of stating each calamity, keeping in mind the right use of words (so all calamities are passive)

Still you don't mention the side effects to secondary victims, which may be serious. You don't tell for example, you can transfer treasury tokens from treasury to stock to lessen 'City in Flames', or how you lessen 'minor uprising'. And if you want my opinion, IF you'd use words on the calamity cards at all, you should include this information as well. Also to be in line with this system.

But I think a player should just know these things, or at least nearly know these things. This has always been so for Advanced Civilization, and to me, this is the main part of the fun of the trading. This is where the better players can be divided from the weaker. People want to trade away any calamity, but the better players know when to wait, or when to take advantage of a certain calamity rather than disadvantage.

Also, the trade cards are small. I'd put as little information on the cards as nessecary. When designing the cards I tried to enlarge the image to as large as possible. Fact is, that people remind and understand information quicker by reminding images, rather than reading words over and over again.

Still anyone who needs these descriptions, and doesn't want to look at the CQC, can write this on the cards or paste stickers on the cards conaining these lines. I regard this as an optional thing, like I use magnetics for AST, which is not to be included here. But I'm not considering to change the lay-out of the calamities this way for this reason.

I prefer the shorter version of Johannes.
(with some changes regarding your message about errors and
being specific about stating "reducing or destroying" exactly)

It should not be a perfect description what goes on.
It should give a tendence. If I see that I have to loose
all but 3 cities this should be ok. I don't care about civ advances
which will help or not.

We had a player playing for the first time 3 days ago. He had 3 cities,
and got a level 7 calamity traded. He never knew that this "damn thing"
even existed... An information like "reduce all but 3 cities" would have
been really helpful for him.

Let's try to find the main idea of a calamity in 1 sentence.
What's wrong with "10 treasury tokens lost"??
It's not necessary to know that they are "transfered to stock"

I understand flo's reticence to add descriptive text to cards. It is difficult to accurately and consistently summarize the nature of a calamity in one sentence. Also if we accept that we cannot include details of the advances that mitigate the damage then this information could be misleading. For instance if I am holding epidemic which states I have to lose 16 unit points then I might desperately try to trade this depsite the fact I hold medicine and anatomy.

Also the proposed single line for Flood is misleading as if I have no units on a flood plain I may keep this card only to unexpectedly lose a coastal city during resolution.

I do understand the desirability of adding text expaining what calamities do, especially as I always get confused about what iconoclasm and heresy does myself during the heat of trading. But I don't think a single line of text is the answer.

DG.

only a short response:



But in that case I had bought BEFORE that calamity the two advances
medicine and anatomy. My purpose was to inform a player on something
he had not seen before.

For a detailed information I have only two possibilities:
a) read the rules and remember everything
b) look at the quickcharts (and hope that nobody recognizes that)

Both is hard for beginners... we should give them an option to get a clue whats going on

"- Wilderness city on a '0' after agriculture
To me this seems in line with adjusting the map to increase room. again: let's go to that topic."

This is the only gameplay change I really don't like. It's just way to easy to build a wilderness city in the himylays or arabia. The 0 areas were initally conceived as natural "dead" areas that limited the spread of population. Later we allowed agriculture to allow a token on there - allowing cities to be built there is a very big change.

I'm up for increasing some Pop in other areas - or splitting some apart... but I don't like being able to build cities areas that were designed to be inhospitable areas.

LOL

I think I'm with DG and Flo on the summaries.

With no descripter we force the player to use the calamity quick chart. By adding on limited descripters you invite people to start complaining about incomplete desciptions. I can see it now:

"WTF?! It doesn't say I lose a costal city!" or
"Damn - if the card would have mentioned "X" I wouldn't have made that bad deal...."

The inconvinence of looking at the quickchart is less than a player making incorrect assumptions based on limited information.