Steven K. Mariner

Last Updated: 18-Sep-2008

Advanced Civilization Write-Up: September 21st, 2002

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Attendees:
 

	Name		Country		Place		Points
	K Pharris		Assyria		1		Unknown
	Steven K. Mariner		Africa		2		Unknown
	Annie S. Mariner		Illyria		3		Unknown
	Alex Vaeth		Crete		4		Unknown
	Bryan Hooker		Italy		5		Unknown
	Ramon Alameda		Egypt		6		Unknown
	Cinnamon Ricker		Babylon		7		Unknown

Game Setup Details:

• Advanced Civilization
• No Western Expansion
• No Eastern Expansion
• No optional rules

Report:

Babylon, a new player, experimented with a variety of the critical game-balancing issues, and in so doing, managed to have cities revolt due to inability to pay taxes. To exacerbate this circumstance, she was shortly thereafter the first recipient of the Civil War calamity, known for wreaking havoc on the empire of the first one or two lucky souls each game to inherit it.

By about halfway through the game, Babylon figured out the game mechanics and started catching up, and in fact made it to 9 cities in time for the last turn of the game.

As I played Africa, I have the most detailed recollection of the game from that perspective, so please bear with an Africa-centric recounting of history.  :-)  With a newbie in both Egypt and Italy, fun times ensued. Egypt was surprisingly cognizant of Africa's problems, and didn't even balk as I exapanded right up to the spaces before the Nile. I didn't try to take any of the lush Nile spaces, knowing full well that Egypt needs those. In a humorous moment, on the first turn that Egypt and Africa had excess population that was going to starve anyway, Egypt arranged to send them all into the Siwa space in Africa, thinking Civilization was a wargame. Africa having built boats to get to Sicily and those board-edged islands, had a lower Census; and so I sent exactly enough of my excess population in to retain ownership of the space. Egypt quickly decided that maybe Civ really wasn't a wargame after all, and settled into what would be a long and healthy relationship with Africa.

Italy, however, failed to push against Illyria for border space, and also failed to push against Crete (who turned out to be the second-biggest space gobbler in the game, next to Assyria). Instead, he simply decided that Sicily wasn't meant to be ruled by Africa, and spent four or five turns attacking me -- after spending a lot of money on Military so very early in the game.

He did knock down two cities, one of which came back, and he got the third space for his population, but he was never quite able to get any further than that. Partially, of course, it was the self-defeating prospect of engaging in war with limited resources, and partially it was the fact that he suddenly found himself taking maximum secondary effects from such calamities as Epidemic and Famine from other players around the board. The "Global Community" can be an interesting court in which to resolve disputes. :-)

For my part, I would have dearly loved to attack back and make it not worth his while to stay in Sicily, but the pace of the calamities and the ever-growing AST requirements (I was never held back the entire game, although I came close once) demanded my population do other things, and so I fundamentally didn't ever really attack Italy in return (except to rebuild the one city). After four or five turns, with other people dropping a little extra calamity secondary victim effects his way, he saw most players at 8-9 cities, me in the 6-8 zone and him in the 4-6 zone...and realized that, at least with the players present, engaging in unprovoked war was more expensive than he'd predicted, and quit attacking me. He eventually made it in to the 9 city club, but placed fifth due to expansion delays caused by his war effort, and of course his poor choice of purchasing expensive Military so early, for which he got no discounts against other, more useful cards.

Crete made an odd choice and built boats one turn earlier than most people would have, and spent forever with no cities; but then zoomed to a Census of 55 and caught up in a hurry. Fundamentally one or two cards down over everybody else, and way behind on AST, Crete did eventually become the second person in the almost-permanent 9-city club, but was ultimately hamstrung by low population for the critical latter half of those oh-so-important opening turns.

Assyria, the ultimate winner, was blessed with gentle neighbors on both sides, and quickly took up enough space to have nine cities and plenty of spare population, which never failed to survive the round. His game was fairly static for the second half, and despite calamity secondary effects never fell below nine cities. Like Africa, he was never halted on the AST the entire game.

Five factors played fairly strongly into Assyria's ascension to victory. His trading was better than mediocre, and of course it is in trading that the game is won or lost. But five very prominent factors led him to victory.

1. One of his neighbors was Babylon, who was spending most of the time trying to get cities rebuilt after the Cities Revolt/Civil War combination. Hence, there was no pressure on Assyria's Babylonian border. The second, third and fourth factors were entirely Assyria's own fault -- the product of a rather unique strategy I will share today.

2. Assyria had in previous games determined that Piracy was quite deserving of its level 9 status as a Calamity, in contrast to what he'd been told. Cities, you see, are hard to crack, and even harder to replace with your own. We'd had a previous game where there were so many "Calamity Jane" sessions that people were unable to crack all the Pirate cities before Pirates came again, and so there was an ever-growing quantity of "dead spaces" on the board, taken by the Pirates and unable to be taken back. So this player decided to embark on the quest to design a kingdom where no coastal cities would exist (a strategy often talked about amongst Civ players, but K actually did it). After analyzing the board, K had decided that there were two nations where it could be done. Assyria was one of them, and I seem to recall him saying that either Asia or Babylon was the other. So when he got to the point where level 9 cards were being traded, he made it quite clear that he was perfectly happy to accept the Piracy card so long as the trader "made it worth his while" (A strategy I have often used as Crete regarding the Barbarian Hordes).

   But there is more to this strategy than that. For, you see, anyone with coastal cities and holding Piracy would lose two of them; but a secondary victim of Piracy only loses one -- and if you trade it to Assyria, you're immune as a secondary target anyway. So Assyria always wound up holding Piracy.

   And used it as a weapon.

   For, you see, he was immune to its primary effects, but still had to order two cities belonging, one each, to two other players be sacked by the Pirates. So whomever was in second and third place in his estimation was hit as a secondary Piracy victim.

   Furthermore, by the latter third of the game, Piracy was coming up almost every turn. Many players had 9 cities, several were purchasing the spare level 9 card regularly, and there aren't very many level 9 cards in the first place -- 10, to be precise.

   So about every other turn for the latter half of the game, and almost every single turn for the last third of the game, he was nailing two enemy cities with Piracy.

3. The third factor was an idea Assyria borrowed from the stories of an old-time player who'd invented (in our group, anyway) the process: Overcalamitizing. When Assyria found himself with calamities that were difficult to handle, he simply started collecting calamities, and as it happens never got stuck with the worst two in the bunch.

   This had the additional effect of causing the mitigation of any turns that might have otherwise been "Calamity Jane" sessions, since the excess calamities are simply discarded; ultimately, as this eased the pressure on his neighbors, it reduced the jealousy factor, and probably staved off attacks against him until it was too late to do anything to beat him.

   An additional effect of having no coastal cities was that he wound up either immune or nearly unaffected by Flood.

4. The fourth factor that helped Assyria was that he focused early on getting cards that mitigated, and eventually nullified, other such popular calamities as Superstition, Civil Disorder and Iconoclasm & Heresy. Halfway through the game he was immune to almost everything that could be devestating, and had greatly reduced the effects of most everything else. And he was dealing out death and destruction with the Piracy card regularly.

   Nicely done, Assyria.

5. A final, complementary effect was that Crete was in the game and taking the Barbarian Hordes regularly, reducing the impact they normally have on the board, and eliminating any chance of them hitting Assyria directly, or even indirectly via his neighbors.

Our quarterly Civ games tend to run 12 hours, 13 if we're lax on keeping the folks moving. We can lower it to eight hours if we use 5-minute timed trading sessions, but in the quarterly game it is untimed, originally by request and now by tradition. So 12 hours is the norm for the quarterly Civ event. However, in an amazing display of focus, this group took three breaks and still finished the game in 11 hours flat -- a record for this traditional event.

I have unfortunately discarded the sheets, so I don't have specific scores, but Assyria took 1st by a scant 22 points, Africa second. I believe Illyria took third, Crete fourth, Italy fifth, Egypt sixth and Babylon seventh.

Strangely, Babylon admitted to the possibility of being interested in attending a future game.
 

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