Andy Novocin

This is much improved over the earlier version of Civilization the boardgame. Rather than lasting all night and ending when the players decide to quit, this game is done after a couple satisfying hours. It’s not a symmetric start game, each starting civ has it’s own flavor. So there is room to think the game could be unbalanced (in a more positive light someone who’s had a rough night can easily make excuses). I’ve played around 10 games and played as each civ but the Russians (haven’t got the expansion yet either) and I think that they are fairly well balanced.

So I love this game. I’ve always enjoyed the computer game and this boardgame scratches the itch well enough. You get to micromanage your cities, customize your tech track, militarily dominate if that’s your thing, explore unknown terrain, and adapt your path to victory to what life has given you. It’s simplified enough that it’s never particularly overwhelming. I enjoy searching for synergy in my techs or making a plan happen and I always walk away happy that I played.

So what are the flaws? Well not all of the paths to victory are the same, if you go the economic or military path then you can typically win much faster than someone going the tech route or culture route. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that those two tracks (econ and military) compliment each other very well. So I suspect that going with all of the coin techs and building a strong military tech will always be the right way to play. If that is the case (I’m not sold just yet, but I suspect it is true) then it takes away some of the need for adaptation or adjustments. If you’re in a game with more than 2 players then it’s not unlikely someone will fall behind militarily making a juicy target for an easy win (to a person in the right seating position). I’ve yet to lose this game, which means something (either the game is unbalanced and I have the right strategy, the game is not as luck dependent as it seems, or I need stronger competition to really get a feel for the depth of the game).

So as a game it’s not as strong as Caylus or even Through the Ages, but gosh darnit I have so much fun playing it. It hits the table more often than most games in it’s complexity/time class as there is such a large following of Civ fans out there already. It feels good to build up a foundation or march your military down the throat of some weakling nearby. Even players that insist on being tech players (and probably won’t win that way) have fun doing it. So I’m hoping that I’ll still enjoy the game this much in 3-5 years, here’s hoping.

I’ve played this game more than 30 times, both in real life and at boardgaming-online. It still isn’t stale, the majority of turns are full of tension, and as I’ve gained experience the game has grown with me. Now most of my games are against the same people and I don’t know if it would be as entertaining playing against new players (it might, I really don’t know).

The first major paradigm shift was understanding the power of the military. If someone has a strong military (a pre-sacrifice strength of 60 is actually possible particularly with air forces and Napoleon) they can overtake huge culture leads with a couple late game wars and bonus cards. Our early games were high scoring tech/culture affairs (a large military in those days was size 10). Once the concept of military domination entered the picture the game became a balancing act. As it says in the rules, you can’t win with the military but you can lose by ignoring it.