Let's Discuss Nations (and other civ games)

Legomancer has a point. I think some of you guys are being a bit blase about the effect of someone taking Steel Weapons and Draft, the war track. If someone does it, like Legomancer says, I think all players HAVE to respond by doing it themselves. And build up troops in outlying areas since they can teleport 2 spaces with Roads.

I, again, would still argue the person with the decent econ engine will often win, as the authoritarian direction has no real economic advantages and aggression takes so many actions. Nor do I mind this characteristic of the game (reactive decisionmaking), it wouldn't be as good without it.

Gary Sax wrote: Legomancer has a point. I think some of you guys are being a bit blase about the effect of someone taking Steel Weapons and Draft, the war track. If someone does it, like Legomancer says, I think all players HAVE to respond by doing it themselves. And build up troops in outlying areas since they can teleport 2 spaces with Roads.

I, again, would still argue the person with the decent econ engine will often win, as the authoritarian direction has no real economic advantages and aggression takes so many actions. Nor do I mind this characteristic of the game (reactive decisionmaking), it wouldn't be as good without it.

This is where I fall too. Legomancer is right that one guy making war on the table will shift how everyone else has to play. And I also fail to see how that's a problem.

Since this thread was originally about Nations, can I just say that I am genuinely surprised at how much the game retails for? MSRP is $99.

San Il Defanso wrote: This is where I fall too. Legomancer is right that one guy making war on the table will shift how everyone else has to play. And I also fail to see how that's a problem.

I don't mind conflict in a game, but I also like multiple viable strategies and paths. A game with three or four players, where one of them can always say, "fuck it, we're all playing Nexus Ops now" isn't interesting to me, unless that game is Nexus Ops. Don't give me what, 48? different techs to pick from if someone else can make me pick from them and make me pick military every time. If that's the case you don't have a civilization game, you have a light wargame. The thing about a war strategy is, the only counter to it is itself. (Compare with Nations, where going with high stability is an alternative to drafting all your farmers when there's a war.)

"That's part of civilization," is depressing to me because I would like to think that something drives people further other than just military action. Of course conflict happens, and it should. But the consensus seems to be that a "civilization" game means you come up with 20 different types of military units, add a temple or library, let people build a colossus, and bam, you're now capturing the sweep and grandeur of human history.

(Speaking of which, there's a contest over on TOS where you do free work for the publisher get to design a card and apparently 4000 years of actual human progress is insufficient and what we really need added are Doctor Who, Atlantis, Time Machines, Sherlock Holmes, and aliens.)

Gary Sax wrote: Legomancer has a point. I think some of you guys are being a bit blase about the effect of someone taking Steel Weapons and Draft, the war track. If someone does it, like Legomancer says, I think all players HAVE to respond by doing it themselves. And build up troops in outlying areas since they can teleport 2 spaces with Roads.

I'm reminded of this game in Chaos in the Old World where the Khone player (who isn't a gamer, over his head and we picked the wrong game) just refused to attack. That turned out to be the most challenging but my least favorite game I've played of CitOW.

Him going "off-script" killed any sort of expectation of how the game would play out and different approaches were needed to deal with this wild card. A lot of Above-the-Table negotiations emerged. Lots of talking trying to get him to do anything (typically for the player's advantage who was trying to get him off center). Lots of trying to get people to play outside of their typical roles just to keep the game in check to some degree.

So it was a whole new dynamic and environment and different from any other game that I played and that's why it was the most challenging game I've played. But, since the game did play out so off script and different than one would expect a game of CitOW to play out when each player plays to their "roles" assigned it is in all likelihood my least favorite game.

Where am I going with this rambling? I think at first my gut said to just "deal with it" and play the game that emerges. But then I started to think about my experience when a game dynamic just gets dominated and controlled by one person (in a way that makes it improbable for the player to win) and I was reminded of this CitOW game and just how frustrating it was. How disappointing it was. How pissed off I was. And just how much I was not liking the game.

So I guess my question is: In CoC is a military path in a way going "off-script"? Is Military a viable strategy to win? Or is a more "balanced" approach the expected way to play?
EDIT: I haven't played CoC, though I really want to, so I don't know how a game is supposed to play out.

Which I guess leads to a bigger question of: Do games have a Social Contract of sorts where players are expected to play within a certain and expected script? And what happens when that Contract is broken by a player?

Legomancer, your arguments here did not fall on deaf ears. I think Nations has a place in my collection (I love Civ games) so I ordered it... might actually be able to play it with less aggressive friends. The ones Agricola has gone down like a champ with.

Civ games have been abounding lately, and yesterday we played a 3-player game of Nations, which went really well. One of the guys playing was one of the guys who had made that previous game so miserable with the military, and once I explained the rule we got wrong there, he saw what a difference that made. I was planning on doing a sort of blitz strategy, building up military, hitting colonies and battles, and then moving off of military before production, but the cards were against me, and I didn't rethink my plan fast enough to recover. Still, a good time.

Then a four-player game of Sid Meier's Civ, with both expansions. A lot of faff has been added to it with those, but also a lot of meat. I got England for my civ, which is good at a lot of things but not great at any, and I couldn't figure out what path to take until everyone else was about to win. My own fault, though, and I enjoyed the game a bunch. Despite its length and size, I still think I prefer it to Clash of Cultures.

I gave up and traded Sid Meier's Civ... I felt like it was too tracked. What were the best additions (the meat) of the expansions? Curious to hear how they added to it.

I took a solo spin with Nations (not the official solo game, just playing two sides). It's a very clever engine, I like it. The war system is great, accomplishes exactly what it is supposed to.

My big concern is the maintenance/mathyness. It's something I love about Clash of Cultures, there is no maintenance phase and it reduces bookkeeping. Especially near the end of the game, it's clear that Nations prioritizes a lot of "ok 3x2+2-8+4-3+7-2+6" calculations, often happening because of different cards in a many different phases. It's very manageable early but once the resources pour in during the industrial phase it's pretty mathy. Not hard math, but important and detailed bookkeeping.

Gary Sax wrote: I took a solo spin with Nations (not the official solo game, just playing two sides). It's a very clever engine, I like it. The war system is great, accomplishes exactly what it is supposed to.

My big concern is the maintenance/mathyness. It's something I love about Clash of Cultures, there is no maintenance phase and it reduces bookkeeping. Especially near the end of the game, it's clear that Nations prioritizes a lot of "ok 3x2+2-8+4-3+7-2+6" calculations, often happening because of different cards in a many different phases. It's very manageable early but once the resources pour in during the industrial phase it's pretty mathy. Not hard math, but important and detailed bookkeeping.

It's also very easy to forget resources provided by Advisors or Colonies, and the cost for workers. A lot of folks have created resource tracking boards, which is probably not a bad idea.

Speaking of creating things, I'm going to make some new player reference cards. The ones included get the resource order wrong (at least, according to the rulebook) and leave off the extremely important rule that, during Production, if you're in revolt (negative Stability) you lose 1 VP and a book for each negative Stability. Forgetting that rule makes for an utterly miserable game.