|
Steven K. Mariner |
Last Updated: 18-Sep-2008 |
Advanced Civilization Write-Up: December 28th, 2002
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Attendees:
| Name | Country | Place | Points | ||||
| Steven K. Mariner | Crete | 1 | 4243 | ||||
| Matthew Gomez | Babylon | 2 | 4057 | ||||
| Annie S. Mariner | Egypt | 3 | 3022 | ||||
| K Pharris | Assyria | 4 | Unknown | ||||
| Ramon Alameda | Thrace | 5 | 1750 |
Game Setup Details:
Report:
Six players originally R.S.V.P.'ed in the affirmative for this event, but one wound up at the last minute unable to commit to the entire day; they opted not to show up rather than risk ruining the game for everyone else two-thirds of the way through the game, though as it happened another player arrived to take over that nation had it been in play at the time. And so we had five players.
We forewent the training session, as everyone present had played before, and we started right at noon.
K was disappointed at the vote to remove the Western Panel rather than the Eastern, as it interfered with his ability to try out the new strategy he'd been brewing since the last game, wherein he'd ridden Assyria to victory using the no-coastal-city strategy, often wielding Piracy as a weapon. But he decided he could cover most of the new ideas using Assyria again.
But it was not to be.
Thrace decided to test out the concept of being an agressive nation rather than as, according to his observation of our group's playing style, everybody "being nice all the time". Instead of focusing on the fact that points are awarded for building your own nation, as opposed to interfering with the civilizations of others, Ramon tried to impede the progress of other nations. His stated goal at one point was to get a finger in everybody's pie before the game was over. The results of this approach are, of course, reflected in his score above.
The two nations most affected by Ramon's incursions were Assyria and Egypt, the latter due mostly the the dreaded early Civil War.
Egypt had the misfortune of getting Civil War all four times it came up in the game. It is much to Egypt's credit (and those wonderful lush Nile spaces) the she kept rebuilding after each one, one turn regaining from 1 city to 5, to incite gasps of surprise and praise from other players around the board.
Crete gobbled up a lot of city sites, far more than he needed to survive; but with Thrace not choosing to build up his own nation, nobody seemed to miss them.
Assyria's strategy fundamentally consisted of continuing the no-coastal-city ploy from the previous game, coupled with a unique strategy of maintaining 6 cities and 27 population, and augmented by the early purchase of Coinage. The idea was that Slave Revolt would be rendered ineffective, since 27-15=12, which continued to support the 6 cities, and that Coinage with 6 cities taxed at 3 would permit the purchase of a level 9 Trading Card every turn, helping to mitigate the difficulties of having only 6 cities.
Assyria's plans were first torn assunder by being the beneficiary of Egypt's first Civil War, as it spread out his pieces and gave him unexpected cities. K may well go down in history for being the first Advanced Civilization player to be harmed by being the beneficiary of a Civil War. To make things worse, a Famine and an Epidemic came around shortly thereafter, messing up the delicate math of his strategy. The final blow was Thrace coming in with armies to camp out in the spaces he'd been forced vacate for Famine.
Thrace was the beneficiary of the other three Egyptian Civil War calamities, and he tried to build a second empire over there, ultimately forcing Egypt and Babylon to go to war with him...and of course war costs both sides a great deal in Civ, and thus battling with Thrace, which was to become a hallmark of the game right up until the last turn, cost Egypt and Babylon fairly significantly.
Between Thrace engaging in self-immolation and Assyria and Egypt having to deal with Thrace, the stress levels at the table were higher than they have ever been at a Civ game in this traditional quarterly gaming event's history. Essentially half the players were out of the running, and it really then became a race between Babylon and Crete.
Crete purchased stabilizing Civilization Cards early, such as Coinage and Agriculture, and accepted one stop on the A.S.T. early in the game (two cities that early guts Crete's growth and is practically suicidal). Crete quickly then aquired the usual Astronomy and Clothmaking cards, but was stymied briefly by a frenetical obsession with city count, and kept getting knocked back due to calamities. Finally, Crete spent one turn taxing low via Coinage and built up population, and after that rode through most of the calamities with the usual balance of grace and dismay. Crete never stopped again on the A.S.T., and was hoping to trade mostly at the 6-level cards, both of which can be augmented by Mining. Thus, Crete focused on building the Religion cards, knowing that Enlightenment would help counter the effects of Mining, and Theology was critical to surviving Iconoclasm & Heresy most gracefully.
As luck would have it, however, Crete was able to purchase Mining only right before the end of the game, and used it twice, because a minor panic arose on the board: Babylon purchased Monotheism.
Babylon argued repeatedly that he had found himself at 8 cities for most of the game and needed Monotheism in order to get to 9 cities. For some reason, this fell on deaf ears with his Assyrian and Egyptian neighbors, they themselves having been stuck at 6 or 7 cities for most of the game.
Crete, knowing he should by rights be Babylon's biggest target, sold out half-built sets to purchase Theology one turn sooner than anticipated in order to defend himself from Monotheism, shredding his purchasing power for several turns and leaving Babylon with the choice of sitting on his Monotheism unused, or attack the other two players he could reach, Assyria and Egypt.
Diplomacy, it seems, was not Babylon's forte': Assyria and Egypt became the targets of Monotheism, Egypt taking the hit more turns than not.
In the critical closing turns, Egypt and Thrace wrangled with Babylon; Egypt, Crete and Assyria wrangled with Thrace; and Crete and Assyria wrangled with Pirate cities -- even ones not otherwise affecting their empires -- in an attempt to provide some public service to the global community. In the end, however, the distractions of war kept Crete from being a significant target until the very last turn of the game. As Crete expanded slightly in the few turns preceding, he was at the halfway mark of the Census on the last turn, with noone having purchased Military. Assyria and Thrace attacked cities and population centers, but vacated coastal spaces to do so; and so Crete defended sufficiently the cities attacked and moved assaulted population to new, empty spaces rather than using them to attack the last Pirate city. Egypt and Babylon were limited in what they could do, but attacked population centers in hopes of taking cities down by failure of support. However, when Conflict was complete, Crete had 9 cities and 19 population.
Crete considered it a failing of diplomacy that the game ended with one Pirate city on the board. :-)
The bottom line, of course, is that one turn just isn't usually enough to take down the leader.
It did, however, make Crete far more succeptible to calamities, and these took two cities in the final round, depriving Crete of 100 points at endgame. A trading embargo against Crete nearly succeeded, and the Iconoclasm & Heresy would have tagged another two cities, but as Crete won by nearly 200 points, it would not have been enough to wrest victory from his lap. As it happens, one person broke down and traded, relieving Crete of the deadly Iconoclasm & Heresy, and the endgame tallying began.
Assyria refused to surrender his scoresheet and refused to reveal his data, so we've placed him officially 4th, after Egypt, though he might have in fact fared better than Egypt, given Egypt's having to endure 4 Civil Wars.
All in all, it seemed to be a game of lessons. Assyria learned that 6 cities + a level 9 purchase still deprives you of the level 7, 8 and 9-natural cards, which is an entire trade's worth of cards per turn, and so the 6 city/27 population strategy was not necessarily sufficient to take one to victory. Assyria and Egypt learned that designing your strategy dependent on the goodwill of other players is not safe. Crete learned that there is such a thing as taking too much land; for about three turns, I was getting 9 cards + purchase every turn, and then I expanded my popluation base and never was able to do both 9 cities and a purchase in the same turn ever again. I was, however, able to ride out calamities better, but I still hold that the game is won and lost in trading, and so more cards in the hand is more important than how hard you have to work to rebuild cities. And, as always, Coinage is the great equalizer; if you need population to recover the cities, you tax low and shorten the recovery.
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