Rise of Empires- anyone played?

Anyone played that "forgotten" Martin Wallace game Rise of Empires and care to comment? My Hellfire Club group would eat this up...wondering if it's worth checking out.

Forgotten? I have played it and loved it however, there is a real rules debate between editions and reps (or so called reps) have contradicted Martin's own rule set. For example, there are those that argue that you cannot move from lower Asia to upper Asia because of the great wall. However, Martin Wallace said (I asked him at Gen Con) of course you can invade from the south to the north and it does not require a water action.

I guess my point is read up on the FAQs and make a decision how you want to interpret the rules (I went with Wallace's suggestions) and I think you will be set.

It is a great game but my one word of warning is carefully explain that when you select an action, the order of actions goes from left to right, and then the order goes in reverse for the second part of the turn. So what seems great for the first part of the turn, may put you behind the eight ball during the second part of the turn.

It is also is not really as much of a war game as it is a territory control/resource management/small econ engine game. So if you attack too much you will loose the game. It can be somewhat of a brutal game if people are not careful. I played the game once and got such a high score, that I could have quit the game after the first scoring session and still beat everyone's final scores. I was able to get such a high score because two players went after each other tooth and nail, and the other two attacked split time between attacking each other and the first two players. I stayed away from conflict until the end of the game and I wiped the floor. In each case I made calculated attacks and was able to convince the other players it was not personal, and I only went after weak regions that others perceived as weak...but they filled out my needs nicely.

Ok no I am rambling...so yes I quite enjoyed the game but I like Wallace's wargames in general.

I only played it once, but it's a solid civ. It's kind of a hodgepodge of a bunch of games like El Grande with some worker placement, mixed in with some Struggle of Empire type battles. But it's a good Hodgepodge. It's more on the lighter side of SoE, but heavier than say Vinci. It's a good Civ, and would like to play it again soon.

Rise of Empires = HodgepodgeCivliteish

It always struck me as SoE light...if a gamer is too dense to grasp SoE, too bad. It ain't that hard .

Rise of Empires has this one mechanic. You choose your actions worker placement style and in next phase you play these actions backwards. It's nifty. Otherwise the game is a collection of area majority, resource management, engine building blah blah blah.

Without the one mechanic the game would be average on every account. My issue with the game is that I don't see what the one mechanic has to do with anything. I guess I have the same issue with most worker placement games, but the backwards thing makes even less sense to me.

If this issue doesn't bother you and you like Wallaces style you should enjoy Rise of Empires.

I am just a "snoot" who likes to lurch here. For what it's worth, here is my 2 cent:

It feels "tidy" in gameplay for beeing a Wallace. The mechanic Mikko mentioned really is nifty, and arguably very "Euro". But still: this is no polite game where you get decent scoring just as long as you're not throwing away your moves all the time. In many of my games there have been a huge difference in VP's.

Potentially a run-away-leader "problem" and some Kingmaking. But this can of course be considered as "good stuff". Sometimes you have to bash the leader in this game for a turn or two, hard..

The areacontrol aspect - it rewards aggressive play, and that's fun. It is a bit abstract, and it's "fiddly" with all the counting of tiles/resources in the end of game turns. But I really like it: 9 in TOS-rating..

Huh...it sounds pretty good, but it also sounds like something that might get passed over for other games. I'll see about getting it in trade, don't think I'd want to buy it.

Thanks all.