|
Steven K. Mariner |
Last Updated: 18-Sep-2008 |
Advanced Civilization Write-Up: May 28th, 2005
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Attendees:
| Name | Country | Place | Points | ||||
| Lynn Still | Thrace | 1 | 5162 | ||||
| Annie S. Mariner | Egypt | 2 | 4653 | ||||
| K Pharris | Babylon | 3 | 4071 | ||||
| Nathan Still | Assyria | 4 | 3464 | ||||
| Steven K. Mariner | Crete | 5 | 3112 |
Game Setup Details:
Report:
We started about 20 minutes late, at 9:20am. There were six people scheduled to play but one of them was at the last minute unable to attend, so we played with five.
Normally we place a time limit on the various megaphases of each turn to keep the game moving along, but all players present were pretty focused and so we didn't time anything. We took a number of short breaks for food and such, and had a few times where the game was held up by side conversation, but with a nice, early start and only five players, we just relaxedly made our way throught he game. We ended at 6:07pm.
All players were familiar with the game so we bypassed the 10-minute introduction.
One amazing trait of this game is that we never had a Civil War. The first time it came up, Nathan drew it, overcalamitized, and successfully sidestepped it (but being the primary victim of both Famine and Epidemic that round). The next two times Civil War came up, the recipient was also the beneficiary and so the game ended without a single Civil War.
Babylon went for the no-coastal-cities ploy, as K had done once before in this Quarterly event using Assyria; though in that game he led Assyria to victory, it did not fare as well for him this game. We're not entirely certain why or how, but Babylon is the only nation which did not ever make it to 9 cities the entire game. Best guess is something in the dynamics of K's playing style which works well with 6+ players didn't work in a 5-player environment.
A lot of people were turning in "n-1 sets" (one short of the full set), a trend we identified early. Lynn, already an afficianado of early Engineering purchase anyway, acquired Mining and started collecting the Metals and thus negated that effect. He also occassionally cornered both markets of the same level (Resin and Spice at one point), and had one trade-in worth some 500 points. Needless to say, Lynn secured every Civilization Card in the game, and led Thrace to victory.
Crete made an early blunder, building the first city one turn too soon and crippling further growth. As anyone who's ever played Crete can attest, you pretty much have to run a flawless first seven turn turns with Crete or you shoot yourself in the foot. Several turns later, when Crete restabilized, a heavy Calamity round knocked it back out of sync, and when Crete recovered from that, found itself reduced to 1 City when Iconoclasm & Heresy came knocking at the end of another heavy Calamity round. Crete finally got to 9 Cities on the last turn of the game.
Annie drew the 1st choice card at the start of the game and returned as Queen of Egypt. With friendly borders on the Babylonian side and no North Africa player in the game, she had no border conflicts of any kind. With the Western Panel removed, it required Astronomy for anyone else to even bother with the North African territory, and the most likely candidate - Crete - actually ended the game without Astronomy. Needless to say, she had room to stretch and grow and was stable for most of the game. Egypt fairly consistently ranked as the highest number of cities each turn during the Acquire Trade Cards phase, although she had the misfortune to draw Flood a lot.
This was Nathan's second game ever and he had a respectable showing of 3464 points at the end. His primary problem was that he was not pushy enough on his borders at the start of the game and was too compressed to grow. That, coupled with being the first recipient of Civil War (although the actual problem were the two calamities he wound up with after overcalamitizing his way out of the Civil War itself), made for a very slow and frustrating start. Crete and Babylon each gave up territory to help balance out the game and shortly thereafter Assyria found himself at 8 cities. Unfortunately, he was never able to quite recover from the early loss of momentum.
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