Tresham's Civilization (and Advanced Civ) thread

I have played twice, and that was enough. To be honest, I don't know if I played Civilization or Advanced Civilization, but it was the same game each time.

The first time was a five-player game, and it lasted maybe 4 to 6 hours. I don't know, I lost track. I didn't win. It was moderately interesting.

The second time that I played was a four-player game. Three of us had just gotten laid off from the same seasonal job, and the fourth guy was already unemployed, so we had all the time in the world. The game lasted twelve hours, including a lengthy meal break. Apparently it was my fault that the game went so long, because two of the other players were clearly annoyed with me in the final hours of the game. I have no idea what took so long. The trading never lasted more than 10 minutes per turn, and usually was over within 5. There may have been some time spent looking up rules. I don't know, it was just long and increasingly tedious.

The tech tree is a great idea, but I think that Twilight Imperium 4 has the right idea in streamlining the tech tree.

I have seen the Mega-Civ map once. A friend of a friend brought it to a game session in the cool, hipster part of town, and unrolled it like a big banner to show us on the sidewalk. Disapproving hipsters and pretty young women walked by as we gawked at the map. I love the idea of an over-sized convention game, like Zombies!!! for 12, or especially that one time that I played Strategic Legend of the Five Rings. But the idea of playing Mega-Civ isn't even remotely appealing.

Tech tree? I think there's only 2 of the civilization cards that require another card to be purchased first.

You need LAW to be eligible for PHILOSOPHY and DEMOCRACY. But you get a discount for higher cards if you already own certain other cards, e.g. of the same colour. So the tech tree is built in and you don't need to refer to a sheet but have all the info on one glance, which is another awesome design feature.

So, I downloaded the PC version of Advanced Civilization and gave it a whirl.

It surprised me, but this is an eurogame pure and through. Sure, it predates the actual movement, has the nasty calamities and takes a very long time but it has the same interests eurogames have. It's, in a sense, a very gradual efficiency game. You have to expand to a certain point, attack a bit but not much, manage the flow of the cities and games and play for the long term. I don't think you can pinpoint a single moment that cause you to lose the game, you simply play poorly through it and lose. Barnes is spot on when he says it's a very procedural game.

The big difference compared to what we now call eurogames is that it's very limited (Number of tokens, map spaces, money can't be accumulated) and extremely subtle. There's no obvious path that you can follow and optimize to win per se, just a lot of different phases that all work together and have to be coordinated well. I think this is something all Tresham designs share, 1825 is one of the subtlest most opaque 18XX games.

The other is that it's both an extreme brainburner (now uncommon) and very long so it feels like running a marathon through a downpour. The artistic vision of the game is super strong, this is not a game where empires grow and smash each other with ease, this is an ardous grind with small highs and inevitable lows. So far I'm not sure if I want a game like this, but playing it with people might change my perspective quite a bit.

Notably, the game is actually quite combative. There are not big, super-destructive wars but there are lots and lots of border fights following calamities or city building. Spending a couple tokens to block someone's potential city for 1 turn is more than worth it.

The PC version has convinced me that Advanced Civilization is way too long. Seriously, I got bored playing the game because it just kept going and going and going. The game doesn't really have as much of an arc as 18XX or other long games so it feels kind of repetitive. I also feel the technologies are one of the less interesting parts of the game as they mostly mitigate calamities or reduce costs. Still a great mechanic, mind, they simply do not change how you play when you get them.

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Ultimately, I think this is a fantastic game though its actual target audience is narrower than it seems (Very long, heavy brainburners). So far I'm not sure I like it more than Age of Renaissance so I'm going to think about printing the later rather than the former for now. I think it might not be as good of a design as Civ, and it would absolutely benefit from a second edition but I think it's more "raw fun" in a sense.