Steven K. Mariner

Last Updated: 02-Jul-2012

Advanced Civilization Write-Up: July 1st, 2012

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Attendees:
 

	Name		Country		Place		Points
	Faolen		Thrace		1		3693
	Annie S. Mariner		Egypt		2		3691
	Steven K. Mariner		North Africa		3		3473
	Shawn Guy		Assyria		4		2650
	Matthew Weaver		Illyria		5		1781
	Kimmie Sioux		Italy		6		1771
	K Pharris		Crete		-		3600	*
	Jerrel		Babylon		-		0	*

^* Babylon left early; Crete withdrew from active scorekeeping on the last three turns.
See game notes for details.

Game Setup Details:

• Advanced Civilization
• No Western Expansion
• No Eastern Expansion
• Eight Players (Reduced to seven fairly early); Full board
• 8-Minute time trading; nothing else timed

Report:

Training for new players was meant to start at 9:00am, but started closer to 9:40. Game was to have started at 10:00am; we started a bit late but not too badly.

The group had gone a bith lethargic, with one game in the past three years actually coming to fruition. K sought out some new blood using sites like Meetup, and as a result we had a full crew of eight at the start of the game, and a few who had never played the game -- one traveling in from Utah.

We decided to leave most of the game untimed, but limited Trading with the more forgiving 1-minute-per-player rule. We ended at about 10:30pm.

Several turns into the game we became aware that Jerrel had to leave at 4pm due to an issue that had to be resolved with his landlord. After the immediately previous game being utterly ruined by folks failing to commit the whole day as requested, this was a bit of a psychological downer, but we adjusted as best we could. Knowing the departure was coming, everyone started drifting their borders toward Babylon in an effort to mitigate the depth of the impact Babylon's departure would create. Naturally, it was not a very balanced shift, and Crete seemed to benefit the most from the territorial shift.

Unfortunately, other elements imbalanced the game fairly early on, as Assyria and Italy had particularly bad luck with the Calamities.

Italy was the first two recipients of the Barbarian Hordes, as well as the beneficiary in the second Civil War, and wound up completely off the Italian peninsula by the end of the second Hordes.

Assyria was the beneficiary of one Civil War, and was thereafter the primary victim on all but the last one.

Late in the game Crete discovered that Architecture could only be used on one city per turn, and announced that for much of the game he had been unwittingly violating that rule, often using it on three cities. That, plus having been the one who most effectively capitalized on Babylon's early departure, definitely caused this game to be not particularly demonstrative of how the game goes -- but we cannot overlook that several new players got to see how the game mechanics worked, got through all the newbie questions we all have when we play, and seemed to enjoy the game fairly thoroughly.

I am hopeful that we have revitalized the group and will resume the quarterly schedule we once maintained.

I also got news from one of the players that Hasbro may have re-released the game sometime in the past year, something I will need to research.

All in all, a good day, a good return to this old classic, and I find myself already looking forward to the next game.

 

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© 1997-2012, Steven K. Mariner