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Review/Sessions: Clash of Cultures

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Review/Sessions: Clash of Cultures
There Will Be Games

Clash of Cultures is the sophomore effort of Christian Marcussen, designer of Merchants and Marauders It isn't a civilization style game in the style of older games like Civilization or Age of Renaissance; it shares more with modern games like Fantasy Flight Games' Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game.

Clash of Cultures captures just about everything I like about board games in one box, and it does so with excellent pacing.  The early game begins with one settlement and a lone settler, and except for each player's starting the region the map is unexplored.  There are no unique or asymmetric player abilities, everyone has the same available tech tree advances, and there is very little initial player interaction.

Exploration is necessary.  A city cannot increase in size beyond the number of cities a player has, so you need to establish a second settlement before you can add a building.  Unfortunately 80% of the exploration that's going to happen happens in the first 20% of the game's play time.  I tend to be a voracious explorer, because I want to see the world and watch the other players' opening moves before I commit to a strategy.  Clever exploration can also increase the chances of creating the game map the way you want it to be.  There are placement rules for revealed tiles, yet they can be manipulated to increase the chance to create an inland lake or to create a network of coastal areas.  But CoC is a game of trade-offs.  My opponent's are collecting resources and developing early advances while I'm marching around the map and starting new settlements.  All of the actions you can take are available every turn, but you can only take three actions and three is never enough.

Some tiles are occupied by Barbarians when revealed.  As other players have been developing new advances, their Culture and Mood sliders have been advancing and triggering events that also reveal/generate Barbarians.  When Barbarians are revealed the player who is resolving the Event or region get to place them.  Capturing Barbarian settlements can be lucrative if you're invested in military, but if you haven't then having a Barbarian settlement near your own can be threatening.  While players are only starting to bump into each other on the map, Barbarians create the need for military units.

By now we're approaching mid-game, and things really begin to tense up.  The three actions you were using earlier to expand and advance?  Well now you've got to consider military options if you haven't already.  If you've already gone into military then you're seeing your opponents get naval abilities, cultural benefits, and maybe trade route bonuses that you aren't getting.  Conflict comes into the game not only for your own benefit in capturing settlements and cities, but to take other players down a notch.

The last two-thirds of the game keep increasing in tension because of the way scoring works.  The winner of the game is based on victory points awarded for city pieces (settlements and buildings), advances, wonders, and completed objectives.  Objective cards have two possible ways to fulfill them, usually military and non-military options.  There's incentive to take a military approach, and there's incentive to spend heavily into advances and resources in order to fulfill non-military objectives and build wonders.  However neither option on it's own is real valid path to victory because the unprotected will soon be conquered, and it isn't cheap (resource or action-wise) to build several formidable armies.  Finding that successful middle ground while adapting to the whims of the other players becomes increasingly difficult as the end of the game approaches.

On top of everything mentioned above there are Events to contend with.  Events are triggered as players acquire advances -- up to six Events can be triggered per player.  Events can cause famine, plague, natural disasters, or give players an occasional benefit.  Events can generate more Barbarians, or cause Barbarians to attack.  Barbarians don't roam the map, but will attack player cities within range of their own settlements.  Events can target the player resolving them, or everyone.

If Events weren't enough to put a wrench in your plans, there are Objectives and Action cards.  You know that the bastard across the table building military early is going to be a pain, but you were hoping to complete an early non-aggressive Objective or two.  Action cards likewise have combat and non-combat effects, but you've got to choose which one you're going to use and when.

Scoring in our two 2P games was tight; a couple different decisions by either player would have swung the game a different direction.  Our 3P game was a bit different -- the two of us who had played heavily outscored the poor guy who was learning the game.  The same three of us brought in one more player for two 4P games, and they both played out differently.  The first game the new player tried to use military units to "blockade" other players early, but the cost of doing so caused him to fall behind in advances and resources.  The blockading player lost pretty badly, but the blockaded players did suffer for it.  The player who remained uninvolved won without a lot of fuss.  We discussed the blockade method after the game and we felt the had it been handled a bit differently it may have worked.  The problem was that the new player committed to it so heavily that he made too many sacrifices in other areas.

Our last four player game had the same four suspects, and it was fantastically tense.  I decided early on that I was going to invest heavily in maritime advances and get some ships on the board.  I managed to blockade two of my opponents' ports and establish trade routes to earn resources.  My strategy caused my settlements to expand slower than my opponents, but by mid-game I had established three trade routes generating a good wealth of resources each round and it was paying off extremely well.  "Blockade guy" went full military again though, and he being my neighbor I had to counter.  Having ships gave my armies mobility that he didn't have; however, so while he started raising hell in the middle of the board I started raising hell around the coasts.  With a few rounds of the game left to go I decided that investing in military wasn't paying off over the long term and developed religious and theocratic advances.  I used my actions to "culturally influence" my opponents' cities, replacing one of their city pieces with one of my color, which has the game effect of taking one VP from them and earning one for myself.  The other two players had put very little into military but were in a race to build wonders.  Blockade guy and I had been making aggressive moves towards their cities with our remaining armies (while having our own private cold war) to force the peace-nuts into developing military units or be unable to defend the wonders they were trying so hard to build.  The game ended with one of the peace-nuts being able to build a wonder on their last turn, the other peace-nut afraid to build his, me being able to build a wonder on my last turn (thanks trade routes!) and blockade guy still abysmally behind.  Going full military while neglecting advances just doesn't pay off, but he was intent on it anyway.  Three of us (exception: blockade guy) finished the game within four points of each other, with the winner netting 31 points.

Clash of Cultures is a game done right.  It isn't as political as Warrior Knights, it isn't as "epic" as Twilight Imperium 3e, and it isn't economic or dramatic as Advanced Civilization or Age of Renaissance.  It does take a lot of my favorite parts of all those games and whittle them down into one intuitive game that fits in one box.  There are no asymmetric player abilities, but the game system allows players to play out different strategies.  All of the game's subsystems work together beautifully.  There are few (if any) rules exceptions.  Most of our rules lookups were due to a player trying to manipulate a situation, not because the situation was unclear.  If it sounds like I'm gushing it's because I am.  I'm so impressed by the game that it's probably clouding my ability to find any serious fault in it.  This past Saturday our 3P and two 4P games were played back-to-back-to-back with a short lunch break inbetween.  There were no complaints about game length, and every "Set it up again?" response came back affirmative.

Epilogue: Anyone want to buy or trade for FFG's Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game with the Fame and Fortune expansion?  They're on my sell pile.

There Will Be Games
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