Steven K. Mariner

Last Updated: 22-Mar-2024

Advanced Civilization Write-Up: April 19th, 2003

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Attendees:
 

	Name		Country		Place		Points
	Annie S. Mariner		Egypt		1		4188
	Steven K. Mariner		Thrace		2		4120
	Ty Hare		Crete		3		4049
	Lynn Still		Babylon		4		4019
	Matthew Gomez		Italy		5		3918
	Bryan Hooker		Assyria		6		3450

Game Setup Details:

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

Report:

We started late because the host (me) was late getting back from running errands in the morning. This turned out to be particularly problematic, because the game ran longer than ever before (15 hours).

We skipped the training session, as everyone present had either played previously, or had attended a training session the day before.

The early turns ran longer than usual, in part because one player was new to the game, but not to gaming in general, and so he was being exceptionally cautious making his moves whilst he learned the rules.

Annie continued her tradtion from last game of heavy involvement in the Civil War events of the game; she was hit by it once or twice and was the beneficiary of it once. The first one was coupled with a Flood and it set her back for much of the game, but clearly that did not deter her as she eventually rode Egypt to victory -- Annie's first ever in Civilization.

Matthew again initiated an early race for Monotheism, resulting in most of the board owning Monotheism or Theology within a few turns. Only Crete held out until the end to purchase Theology.

The crew did seem to learn its lesson about not waiting until the last turn to initiate military force against the front-running player. Egged on in part by Crete, a very experienced Civ player (and, I might add, a very fine diplomat), everyone coordinated military attacks against Thrace as soon as he entered the numbered spaces on the A.S.T.  And for the first time in this Quarterly Event's history, a military assault on the leader worked. Thrace was set back about three turns, partially due to unwise purchasing practices in the rounds immediately prior to the assault.

Thrace having been reduced to recovery mode, attention on the board turned to Babylon, Italy and Crete. Babylon's potential leadership position was challanged by repeated and sustained secondary calamity effects. Crete was not deemed to be sufficient a threat until the last turn, where a few minor thumps were dealt to him, successfully depriving him of first place. Italy, on the other hand, was assaulted about as thoroughly as was Thrace, and, like Thrace, it set him back about three turns before he could start purchasing again, by which point the game had ended and afforded him no opportunity to fully recover from the attacks.

To correct the problem of the game going until 4am, we plan several things for the next Quarterly event.

1. We're actually running out of players in the group who have not played the game at least once, and of course you can actually learn most everything you need to know by going through the motions on the first 5 turns. So we're going to start the game at 11:00am from now on, and skip the hourlong training session. If anyone needs to learn the rules, we'll give them the 5-minute intro and let them fend for themselves (that's how I learned to play, so I know the technique works).
2. As the players are more experienced, the lengthy opening moves when "we have all day" will become faster.
3. A little more pressure from the International Community will be brought to bear on people taking too long to do their moves or boat-building decisions.

We still aren't ready to institute timed trading sessions for the Quarterly event, although experience has shown us that a full third of the gaming time can be shaved off when we do this. Between the experience level going up and the hour early start, I think we can keep this event under control. But now that we've proven that ganging up on the leader really does work, I suspect the endgame portion of the game will continue to take much longer than it has in the past. Hopefully we'll find a balancing point in there somewhere.

Though the game ran 15 hours, and though my nation was the first one to be assaulted by the rest of the world and set back several turns as a result, I have to say this was the single most enjoyable game of Advanced Civilization I have ever played. And that was at least in part due to the fact that there was no clear runner at the end. I think three or four nations crossed into the finish column of the A.S.T. at the same time, and the scores above are about the closest spread I think I have ever seen.

I can't wait for the next Quarterly Civ game.  :-)

 

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