Hi to all!

First, I am new to this board, so let me introduce myself. My name is Andreas, 44 years old and living in Bern, Switzerland. I play Avalon Hills "Civilization" and "Advanced Civilization" since about 20 years, on a loosely "one per year" frequency. I also organized once a 10-player civ (using the western extension map) and wrote (a buggy) bonus-calculator for advances. After our last game in January 2005 a friend pointed me towards your website, and since then the temptation never went away

Now we actually have a date fixed and reserved a room, so we are commited.

We hope to have more than 12 players, and are going for a "play test" of 8 hours (10:00 - 19:00) with one hour for lunch.

If you got tips and hints of how to conduct such a day it would be very appreciated.

I am now in the process of "building" the physical game, and of course I have some questions, mostly concerning trade and calamities. I'll will ask them in the respective boards.

Again thanks for your great work, and maybe I will be able to give you back a german translation of the rulebook.

andi

Hello Andy.
I am Raffaele and live about one thousand kilometers south of you in Rome.
This is what in this forum could be called "near" .

I hope we can someway meet and play.
I often organize Adv Civ Parties at home, but my table is not big enough for the expansion project.

I am actually into two civexp games. One is "A Dos Metros" hosted on http://www.redscape.com and mastered by Jeff "McBeth".
Another is done to playtest the cyberboard gamebox and is mastered by Jon G.

Welcome in the Civilization heart of the net.

Raffaele
Goblin's lair

Incidentally, there isn't any need to put quotes around my last name

Best of luck on the play test. If you need a bonus-calculator for advances, I have one for AdvCiv and the current CivProject rules. It is in OpenOffice, but I can convert it to Excel if you want.

ROFL. I thought McBeth was a nickname. And what a nice one!



I installed OpenOffice.Org because of:
a) You
b) It's better
c) It's free.

Raffaele
Goblin's lair

Well I think that to suppose to get an entire game in with 12 players is being overly optimistic. I think 10-12 hours would be more accurate if you run the game tightly. I think a will organized group of 18 could get in a full game if they took all day 9am-10pm.

Somethings that will help:

A) Give your expereinced players roles (somoene handles the AST, someone else announced civcard purchaces).
B) Have an experienced outgoing player run the game. He is change of moving the game along and telling players when they can move together. He will also announce moving into a new phase etc.
C) I've seen players print up large ASTs and having it on a board that everyone can see. Thats something you can consider if you have the time.
D) Time the trading rounds of course!
E) A room where people can move around in easily helps speed things up.
F) Go over the rules before the game officially starts if you can with the new players.
G) you might want to put a time limit to resolve some calamities - that and trade card purchaces should be the most time consumeing processes.
H) make sure and use the credit system token system. I would give use a timer giving everyone 7-10 mintues to decide what they want to buy and then have them call it out in AST order quickly with one person updating a master tech chart and another person assinged to verify they can afford it. Some people will min/max analyse purchaces to death.

Hope that helps!

Hi,

Thanks to all for the warm welcome and for the tips how to get organized. I just glued the board together this evening (so I hope there will be no big changes until February .

I certainly thought about crowning "kings" of west and east with the task to keep things rolling. I also know that 8 hours of play won't let us finish the game. The whole setup is meant both as a test of interest (a two-day event would scare some interested players away), we want to find out if we can muster enough players, and as a test of feasabiliy. If all goes well, then we probably will organise a 2-day event.

While reading the trade-rules for a game with both east and west stacks of trade-cards but no shared commodities I was asking myself if the added value for commdities from the other stack is a big enough incentive to get east-west trade? I would not like to have just to big Civ-games going on accidentally in the same room with almost no connection inbetween...?

Greetings

andi

No major changes is planed, but we do some minor fixing all the time.


This is imho a very sencible aproach, but your next event shouln't have to be a two day one (unless some players go to bed very early). 10am to 10pm should do nicely, at least if most players has played either Adv. Civ. or the civproject earlier.


In earlier the benefit of east-west trading was larger (as if you had one more card), with the result that everyone only traded within their half, and then swapped sets with someone on the other half. We think the current aproach is more balanced.
However, the board will force people to interact cross the east-west "border", as some players will border players from the other half, and most calamities can have benefactors/secondary victims on the other side of the board.



Regards
- Jonno

Something else that the local group has used to good effect, is to print out a large "status board". It isn't needed with a small number of players, but it has sped up some otherwise lengthy movement phases.

Basically, it #1) shows what the census sequence is (after taking into account Military et al) and #2) shows who has yet to move, is currently moving, and who has finished moving.

While it doesn't sound as useful, as you get more and more players, it becomes more and more useful .

There an image of an early version in the Images section. http://67.66.187.69/civproject/images/c ... Craig6.JPG

However, what we do instead is to have three columns, and move the country names from the first (waiting to move), to the second (moving), and the third (finished).

The version shown in the image and what I used at the last game is simply foamcore, and glued on paper, with velcro glued on the piece and on the board.

I mistakenly purchased a bunch of 1 inch square pieces of velcro - should have bought a roll instead. I ended up putting three squares on each piece, and then a single square on each of the three columns. It would have been easier to use if instead I had strip running down each column and another strip on the entire back of each piece. So much for hindsight

As an eventualy replacement, one of the frequent players is taking a lightweight board and painting it with "magnetic paint", then using flexible magnets with the country names glued on. The "magnetic paint" is just iron suspended in paint and is not magnetic itself, though magnets will stick to it. I'll have to wait and see how it works.

Hi,

with the 22.January coming nearer we assembled 13 Players (with the hope for a 14th). So we wil have both trade-card-stacks, but not all nations in play. Are there suggestions concernig which nations should not be played to have a (hopefully balanced) game? I assume that the nations should be as evenly balanced as possible between west/east?

andi

My recomendation is to remove either the easternmost or the westernmost civilizations (or some of both), remove the areas listed for those nations in the scenario handbook from play, and divide the remaining civilizations evenly between the east and west tradecard stacks.

Look at the Alpha Scenerio Book.

Hi,

yesterday we played a 13-player ACEP in Bern. In the group we had the full range from beginners playing their first game of civilization (2) over intermediate players to experienced veterans (5).
Since it was a both a test of interest and feasability, we did not intent to finish the game by AST but by time-limit. We startet at 10:00 AM and played until 19:00 PM and got a pure playing time of 7 1/2 hours out of it with 1 hour (in the end it was 1 1/2) of lunch-time at 13:00 PM. In those 7 1/2 hours we played 9 full turns. The longest turn was the first turn after lunch.
We played the board without Iberia and the Celts in the west, Dravidia and Maurya in the East and Saba in the "middle East". We marked the respective areas on the board as unplayable according to the "Scenario Guide".

The results are:
Rome 74 pts (50 AST, 9 Advantages, 6 Cities)
Hellas 69 pts (50 AST, 6 Advantages, 7 Cities)
Babylon 68 pts (50 AST, 6 Advantages, 6 Cities)
Carthage 68 pts (50 AST, 7 Advantages, 4 Cities)
Hatti 66 pts (45 AST, 7 Advantages, 7 Cities)
Nubia 65 pts (50 AST, 4 Advantages, 7 Cities)
Persia 63 pts (50 AST, 5 Advantages, 3 Cities)
Parthia 62 pts (45 AST, 6 Advantages, 5 Cities)
Indus 61 pts (45 AST, 5 Advantages, 6 Cities)
Minoa 55 pts (45 AST, 3 Advantages, 4 Cities)
Assyria 51 pts (40 AST, 4 Advantages, 3 Cities)
Kushan 50 pts (40 AST, 2 Advantages, 4 Cities)
Egypt 48 pts (35 AST, 4 Advantages, 5 Cities)

Test of interest:
I had some trouble to assemble a big enough group of players, some of the "usual suspects" expressed their interest but could not make it (work, military service and 2 cases of untimely illness), and the public advertisement campaign in the local game stores was either unattractive or to late (or both) and in the end proved as unsuccessul. Some were turned off by the long playing time. In addition the local game store in Bern held a Magic Preview Tournament on the same day.
So we got 13 players (we shot for at least 16 to get the full trading stacks)!

Test of feasability:
Actually, the playing experience for me was the same like in other Advanced Civilization games I played earlier. I never got the impression of to many players, or that the game-play slowed down more than usual. The big map reduced the time-hog of players moving after each other by allowing more parallel play. All players expressed that it was a good experience and there will be another game somewhere in April or May! I once organized a Advanced Civilization for 10 players (western expansion with all nations on the board), so I knew what to expect.

Learnings:
* The decision not to play Saba (and having a bigger East with Indus) was a mistake, Nubia behind Egypt without an exit got into problems and had a less than optimal start. Indus should have gone instead.
* Nations considered save and easy to play (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) suddenly proved more difficult to play than expected (by some, at least .
* Kushan discovered that he had no sea-access and had to fight for it (before he got into problems paying his taxes).
* Better advertisement to get more players, and the date of play has to be chosen with more care.
* To have roles of responsability was a good idea:
We split the board into 2 kingdoms with an experienced player as the respective "king" who hat the responibility the get keep the things rolling. We had a "Rider of the Apocalypse" with the reponsability to know, explain and speed up the resolition of the calamities. We had the "Horse-Trader" who sold all advantages and was shown the necessary founds. In addition we tried to have counselors for the unexperienced players(to late for nubia, unfortunately).
* The big status-display helped to coordinate the sequence of play, and a big census-sheet helped to sort out all the census markers in the same number-field.
* East/West-trade was almost non-existant, but this helped on the other hand to speed up the trade-phase. Trade flowed different in the East/West, we had 7 players in the east and 6 in the west. In the west sets of the 4 & 5 level trade goods were bigger and showed up earlier.
* In 9 turns we did not see a to big difference in the characters of the development of the different nations, it just started by having or lacking Agriculture and Metalworking.
* We should have (but did not use) 2-Minute-Kitchen-Timers (what is the English word for "Küchenwecker" or "Eieruhr"?). The idea here is that every player has her own clock and gets 2 minutes to move, and when she begins she starts the clock. When the alarm goes off, her movement ends (and what is not moved yet stays where it is). I already played games in this style and it actually works. Next time there will be the office of "Master of Time".

All in all, ACEP works and opens up new ways to play Civilization. Great work!

Thanks

andreas

PS: if you give me an email-adress I can send you some pictures.

Yes, removing civs from the edges (east/west) of the map is usualy preferable, but this should perhaps be interpreted that a few areas should be realocated from saba to nubia?


Well, most Kushan players actualy get to like no sea acess later in the game (less calamities to wory about), but early in the game, with fewer options on how to spend your tresury, it might be tough. I think it balances out in a full length game though.


I usualy let everyone manage their own purchases (keeping ther purchased and unpurchased civcards in different stacks), and just asking any neighbour done with his purchasing (usualy an experienced one) to verify his cost calculations, but otherwise I think this is a very good idea indeed.


Well, it is usually only beneficial when shared comodities is in play.. As for different amount of players in the east and west "trading zones", we should perhaps compensate for that some way. Any ideas?


No idea of the translation. Swedish is "Äggklocka" (egg-clock), but that won't probably help...
As for limiting movement, I usualy find that unnessesary. You'll not save more than perhaps half an hour in a full length game, and occasonaly it might screw up someones moves irreparably. Imho the only phases that needs time limits is trade (10-20 minutes, usualy we play 15, but if players disagree, I put it to a vote) and civcard purchases (5-10min, as you can start planing during calamity resolution you don't participate in).
Once, in in Adv.Civ., I played with a special kind of timelimit on moves: once you was the only one able to move (everyone else waiting on you), you got a 5 minutes deadline. During our full-length game whe had to start the clock once, and he was done in just thirty more seconds. No big timesaver...


Thanks for the praise, and even more for all your constructive comments.
The acronym ACEP is, however, out of date (by a year or two). We have droped "Advanced" on purpose (as it makes new players think it is difficult to learn, which just isn't true). Please reffer to it as "the CivProject", or it's full name "Civilization: The Expansion Project".


Id love to see them, please mail them to jon@severinsson.net (I can take up to 2GB attachments, so no wory on size or amount).
If you'd like I can make them availible to everyone else (either at my site, or even on the need-to-be-updated "Images" page on civproject.net)

2-minute kitchen timers are called

Egg timers

in English. The Swedish basically gives it away

In the games with the Kushan we have played so far, the player never reached the ocean, and they never had problems with treasury. There are enough new ways to burn treasury in CivProject that it never was a problem.