Uncomfortable Discussion- is Civilization obsolete?

Duke,that is probably the most straightforward and level-headed take on game nostalgia I've read.

I think that just like how people buy new games to keep trying to recapture that "frontier" state when everything is fresh and exciting, people hold on to (and romanticize) old games that aren't played much anymore because of those great memories and feelings like what Von Tush described there about the scope and scale of how hobby games USED to be.

But the reality of it is that buying a new game doesn't work, and neither does trying to get back to gaming times 20, 30 years ago. The sad reality is that I will never play Civilization again pretty much every week for a whole summer with the same five guys like I did back in 1991. Those were great times, great memories. But these days, not only is it much more difficult to pull that off...it's also quite frankly undesirable.

I can't honestly say that Clash of Cultures and Mare Nostrum do not provide pretty much everything that Civilization does (and then some, really) EXCEPT the extended real-world timeframe. That does bring with it some positives, like that sense of investment and development over time, but there is arguably more GAME in the newer titles than there is in the 35 year old design if only because "game design technology" has gotten so much better at compressing process and abstracting out everything but the essentials. I keep coming back to this idea that Civilization, given its mechanics and process, doesn't actually NEED to be as long as it is. Not with the way game design has developed since 1980.

Orlok's point about losing interest after six hours is something that I think gets glossed over or wilfully ignored when we talk about these old, long games. I can remember MANY sessions of long games in my formative years that were hardly these legendary, epic events where everyone was magically transfixed for 10, 12 hours around a board. In fact, I would say that almost every session I ever had of one of these extremely long sorts of games would be characterized as either:

- Ending before the actual endgame condition because everybody got bored and wanted to do something else
- Ending because we were out of time/somebody had to leave
- Ending because there was a clear winner that no one could really challenge
- Being much less interesting in the last several hours than it was in the first several hours
- Featuring two or more players that completely lost interest either due to position or distraction

Then there was the eight hours deep Advanced Civ game that ended due to Catpocalypse. Cat jumped up on the table right on to the board and pieces went everywhere.

Let's come to Jesus here. How many of you guys have actually played Civilization in the past five years? Ten years? How many games with 8+ hour playtimes have you FINISHED in the last five/ten years? And NOT on Vassal.

To quote Michael Barnes: "if you're doing anything for six hours, you should at least be making minimum wage to do so."

Michael Barnes wrote: Let's come to Jesus here. How many of you guys have actually played Civilization in the past five years? Ten years? How many games with 8+ hour playtimes have you FINISHED in the last five/ten years? And NOT on Vassal.

Personally...None. Well a learning (and only) game of TI3 about five or six Thanksgivings ago.

This question though kind of smells of "Well this is what I do so this is what everyone does" mentality. And that's what I'm kind of getting at, it may be obsolete for you and perhaps most gamers in general these days. But the unique aspect being the long personal time together isn't replicated so for others that do have the ability for the game is still very much viable.

That said though, I personally wouldn't get rid of it, because for me being able to hold and touch a tangible thing opens up the floodgate of memories. I've very much had that moment you had last night where I picked something up that I haven't touched or thought of for a while and suddenly a lot of forgotten memories came back. So I tend to hold onto things long past their useful life. But my answer might not be right for you. It's the same reason on why I like to buy books instead of checking out from the library.

And of course what is good for me might not be good for you.

If we're going to listen to the Font of All Wisdom, Chris Farrell (I'm only partly joking - he knows what he's talking about) he'd tell you that Civ is the bomb and Advanced Civ basically sucks ass. That it adds a couple of hours to an already long game, and breaks the game in the process.

Maybe it's because I'm an old fart, and a terrible game duration optimist, but I think a six-player Civ game isn't going to take any longer than a six-player TI3 game. Having played both, I _know_ I'd have have more fun playing Civ. If I played with my current gaming group, I'd have to teach 3 or 4 players TI, vs all of the others for Civ, and they'd have the same beginner's issues.

As for getting rid of it, I'm heading that way with a lot of games on my selves. I'm probably never playing a lot of games on my shelves again, so they should be gone. But, dumb as this may be, some I wouldn't sell or trade even if I knew I'd never play them again. Civilization, for me, is one of the keepers.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Let's come to Jesus here. How many of you guys have actually played Civilization in the past five years? Ten years? How many games with 8+ hour playtimes have you FINISHED in the last five/ten years? And NOT on Vassal.

Me! Me! Pick me!

I was in an 8-player TI3, played with the changed Imperial card, Imperial II (I had to look it up), as well as a couple of the other expansion set Strategy cards. This ran from 1 to midnight, with a pizza break. That game _really_ needs something like Nexus Op's "Win a Battle" VP cards, to keep the fights going.

I thought the whole point of the original Imperial card everyone hates was to speed up the game. I've only played TI2 so don't have an opinion on it one way or the other. Did it actually shorten game time versus when its not used?

i picked up a Hartland copy of Civ in a trade and played 1 3 player game of it for about 5 hours. It was ok, but clearly designed with more than 3 in mind. I mostly wanted to play it, because as someone who is 'into' boardgames, I want to play many of the influential designs that underpin the hobby. I trade it off after that one game though.

I do play long games of 18xx still. But im in a part of my life where i can and i have two opponents who want to do it. If that changed, i would move on and play shorter or different games. I found this is the way with me and video games. I used to play a load of total war, rome and medieval 1 in particular. I had plenty of time for pc games back then. These days, i tend to play shorter pc games as i don't have as much time for it. Also, because i played those games to death i can't really get into the newer games in the series. My interest isn't really there. It was fun but now its done.

I think for one group, discovering civ now could be cool. They might have all the time to play it, and the old school might not bother them. But they probably are not middle aged guys with families.

Michael Barnes wrote: How many games with 8+ hour playtimes have you FINISHED in the last five/ten years? And NOT on Vassal.

errrr....quite a few actually. TI3, OCS Case Blue, ASL (Ok that was a few scenarios but together was 8hrs+)

In other words, we aren't all the same and we don't ALL want games that drop below 4hrs. In all of the above cases, I would rather have been playing those particular games, at that time, than any number of filler/euroweenie games.

Mad Dog wrote:

I thought the whole point of the original Imperial card everyone hates was to speed up the game. I've only played TI2 so don't have an opinion on it one way or the other. Did it actually shorten game time versus when its not used?

I think the purpose of the card was exactly that. "Here, have two points." Players didn't like it because you ended up with these three cards walking around the table.

Player 1 - take Imperial for 2 VP. Which is big.
Player 2 - Take Initiative so that they can get Imperial on the next turn.
Player 3 - Take Technology for a free tech.

Technology isn't quite so much of a forced move, but techs are big enough that you'd better have a damn good reason not to take a free one.

Imperial II replaced that with, "Cash in as many objective cards as you can fulfill", as opposed to one objective per turn. Which does stretch out the game, if players aren't really aggressive.

Personally, I liked the original Imperial. "Get off your dead ass, or Player 1 will win."

Chris Farrell makes the claim:

Yeah, Civilization is a long game, but many peoples' memories are influenced by the fact that the playing time issue was greatly exacerbated by Advanced Civilization, which could take a grueling 8-12 hours, or even more, to play. Civilization can be comfortably played by 5 reasonable people in 5 hours

Here are his suggestions for keeping the game time down etc.:
So You Want To Play Civilization

Personally? We've only played a couple times, and it was always REALLY fucking long. But then, I play always with slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww-ass players, especially if politics/negotiation is allowed. We've never had an under-6-hour game of Dune, for example, and Cosmic Encounter takes at least 2 hours. So I don't feel qualified to talk about playtime.

And sorry, but this is terrible, expensive advice unless your shelf space is ABSURDLY limited in comparison to your income:

Got a hankering for Civ? Set up the date, go buy it again, play it, and then get rid of it again.

RobertB wrote: If we're going to listen to the Font of All Wisdom, Chris Farrell (I'm only partly joking - he knows what he's talking about) he'd tell you that Civ is the bomb and Advanced Civ basically sucks ass. That it adds a couple of hours to an already long game, and breaks the game in the process.

I give him more credit than some, but I'd call bullshit on this. Its been a long time, but I don't remember AdCiv taking significantly longer. What I do remember though was that it made the wise move of taking away the 13 card limit for Civ cards that the basic game had. Because with that limitation, it became very apparent early on that buying a cheap card like Mysticism would hurt you in the long run because it was only 30 points. Which thematically made no sense. IIRC it also allowed you to fall a box behind on the AST and not get totally hosed.

As for long games, I spent 4 days playing the same game earlier this year ( hex / counter / ZOC game to be fair ) . So long play times don't faze me, if its the right game.

On a related note, anyone here play REVOLUTION ? IIRC it was Tresham's first design after a relatively long drought and people were quite excited. It was also rather pricey for its time, around $80 I think.

Man did that game suck hard. A dense impenetrable rule book, some unfortunate graphics choices combined to make a pretty dull experience. A group of us sat down and tried to play it. Its one of the few games I've ever packed in without finishing at least one game.

Msample wrote:

I give him more credit than some, but I'd call bullshit on this. Its been a long time, but I don't remember AdCiv taking significantly longer. What I do remember though was that it made the wise move of taking away the 13 card limit for Civ cards that the basic game had. Because with that limitation, it became very apparent early on that buying a cheap card like Mysticism would hurt you in the long run because it was only 30 points. Which thematically made no sense. IIRC it also allowed you to fall a box behind on the AST and not get totally hosed.

Bear in mind that I haven't played this game in maybe 30 years. That 11-card limit did make life more interesting, especially for all of the big-point/close speedbump civilizations like Babylon. It's going to make your life easier now, and a PITA later when you need to come up with 1400 points to win.

This from Farrell himself:

boardgamegeek.com/thread/16870/civilizat...dvanced-civilization

I know they also changed the trading, which I liked a lot. Let's have a game of Pit, every turn.

Michael Barnes wrote: Let's come to Jesus here. How many of you guys have actually played Civilization in the past five years? Ten years? How many games with 8+ hour playtimes have you FINISHED in the last five/ten years? And NOT on Vassal.

In the past 5 years (all finished, in person):
. Civ+AdvCiv: 2
. 7 Ages: 2
. Age of Renaissance: 4+ (only one game with all 3 Epochs and new players took close to 8 hrs)
. TI3: 1

Also, we've played a handful of storyline sessions of BSG. Each game corresponds to a different in-game ending and season of the show. Dead characters and revealed Cylons are removed from the game between games. Crisis Cards are not reshuffled. Titles are not redistributed (whoever is alive and President in game 2 stays that way in game 3). There are some other minor details as well. Those are all day 4-game affairs that generally last upwards of 9 hours.

Games I haven't got to that I want to:
. Here I Stand
. Virgin Queen
. Blood Royale

Games Barnes should trade to me:
. Civilization
. Advanced Civilization

VonTush nailed why games like Civilization and 7 Ages are great on page 2 of this thread.

There is a special kind of tension that happens when trading in Civ that doesn't happen in other games. It is worth keeping for that reason alone. I say keep Civ and just play it over 3-4 sessions (take a photo of the board and note cards etc). One month every year or two is enough to justify owning the game. And I bet it will leave you with more memories than playing 3-4 sessions of other shorter games.