A very interesting combination of European and Anglo-American game design with a problematic combat system that unfortunately overpowers the rest of the game.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2004-02-11 06:45:29
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Excellent review. Count me among those who find the minis, attractive as they are to be a complete waste in this game. Aside from taking hours to cut from the sprues (there so soft that care must be taken, or the xacto knife will be lopping off arms and heads)they probably added $20 to the cost of the game. And they are entirely unnecessary.
I also find the parallels to Puerto Rico to be MUCH MUCH stronger than you have. In fact, as a fairly heavy Puerto Rico player, Age of Mythology is pretty much Puerto Rico with combat. When I taught the game to my group I simply identified which of the several action cards were similiar to a Puerto Rico action and they grasped it immediately.
The difference is that its a poorly done hack job of a Puerto Rico variant. Something I have found to be true of every Eagles Game ever done...insufficient playtesting. There are serious play issues in all of their games that should have been discovered and fixed, but they don't bother, relying on stead on the fancy pieces to sell.
Where the interplay of the various features of Puerto Rico are subtle and elegant, the interplay of largely derivative features of AoM are clumsy and heavy handed.
I disagree with you profoundly on the Victory Points issue, however. I think this is one of the few redeeming qualities of the game. Players get to set for themselves their own victory conditions and how much those conditions will be worth. Its actually a system I'd like to see implemented in a better game where it has the chance to actually make a difference.
You are spot on with the weaker opponent problem. Vulturing off of a defeated enemy is just way too easy. I also found the difference between the standard and random action cards to not nearly be strong enough to matter, with the exception of the god powers which were pretty cool.
A relatively simple solution to improve combat is to change the rule that has both sides select a new fighter for each engagement. Rather use a rule borrowed from Warlords IV (which has a very similiar 1 on 1 combat system). Winner stays.
In this way, it gives the other player the opportunity to intentionally match up the scissors to the paper rather than relying on guessing, and makes a player think twice before leading with his absolute best unit because it will have to survive the whole fight.
All in all, I rate the game a C+/B- but with huge points taken off for the unneccessarily high price tag I'd give it a final grade of D.
Its worth picking up for the minis if you can find a copy for $20 on ebay. And maybe worth playing a few times at that price. But for $40-50. No. Play Puerto Rico instead.
Post originally by coatdance at 2004-02-11 07:56:41
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My thoughts are apparent on the forums. In essence I think the review is based on an errant perception of the game. The game plays fine. The only legitimate gripe with combat i can justify is the buckets of dice - but even that isnt so dire. Combat most certainly doesnt create an unfair advantage to the victor as there is only one way to victory that actually depends on winning a battle, and that requires people allocate points to it and consistently score those points.
I would hate to see this game suffer because of misperceptions and ill founded opinions like this.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2004-02-11 08:49:00
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Not having read your comments in the forums I can't address what you're trying to say.
The game isn't horrible. It is poorly playtested and there are lots of small niggling issues that when combined with an unnecessarily high price tag for fancy pieces you don't really need, make it a game I certainly can't recommend to others.
It has some really neat features, like the god powers, the funky way units match up to units, and the rollercoaster ride of build up, get smacked down, build up get smacked down, which all model in a board game the feel of the computer game very well. As I mentioned, I think the build your own victory parameters to be a great idea.
This is true of pretty much all Eagle Games. There are outstanding ideas and really great potential in all of them. And all of them, this one included, needed about 6 months more of hard core external playtesting before they were really ready to be published.
Age of Mythology the board game is a fantastic Beta. But $40-$50 is way to much to pay for a beta version. That's my biggest disappointment with all Eagle Games thus far. They are all beta versions...really great beta versions...but not properly tested.
Post originally by Numskull at 2004-02-11 13:05:28
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"Pick on the Loser Syndrome: There's an unfortunate tendency in this game to pick on the loser. if someone's army gets knocked out, that person is likely to get hit again and again and again. The problem is that they still might be doing OK in other areas: they'll still have production tiles and will still be generating resource cubes. This means, ultimately, that's it's more valuable to hit losers than winners, because you can get just as much reward with little risk; a well-designed game should balance this in the opposite direction."
I disagree with this assessment largely because POTL Syndrome is more of a player problem than a game problem. If it's a three player game and Player A continues to kick Player B when he's down while Player C quietly amasses buildings and combat units (where most of the victory points usually lie), then Player A is simply an idiot. The VPs he'll snatch from the "Won the Last Battle" card are insignificant compared to the VPs that Player C will grab at the end of the game, since Player C is using his actions more constructively. And losing a building (sometimes two), or a production tile, or five resource cubes, isn't too difficult to recover from in most cases.
Plus, if Player B is, as you say, still "doing OK in other areas", then is he truly "losing"? It's possible that he's lost a lot of combat units, but it's also possible that this is partially his fault for not knowing when he should withdraw, or for relying too heavily on the random action cards as opposed to the permanent ones. (This is something I've seen more than one first-time player sorely regret. I often use nothing but the permanent cards for my first few turns, and it usually works out nicely, since the other players' greed will, in all likelihood, produce a "Gather All" card from which I benefit as much as anyone else).
As for the combat system in and of itself, I admit it can be tedious, but neither I nor the people I've played with have found it unbearable. It makes the bonuses appropriately relevant, but not so overwhelming that the occasional David vs. Goliath moment never happens.
Post originally by coatdance at 2004-02-11 16:27:53
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>The game isn't horrible. It is poorly playtested and there are lots of small niggling issues that when combined with an unnecessarily high price tag for fancy pieces you don't really need, make it a game I certainly can't recommend to others.
And these niggling issues are?
I've played the game and found i quite satisfactory. The system works fine. I have yet to read a valid criticism of the game that stands against examination.
Post originally by Shannon Appelcline at 2004-02-11 16:31:51
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Count me among those who find the minis, attractive as they are to be a complete waste in this game. Aside from taking hours to cut from the sprues (there so soft that care must be taken, or the xacto knife will be lopping off arms and heads)...
I was actually very pleased with how little time it took to separate all the plastic pieces. For the most part they could be simply twisted off the sprues. Because of the notch in the base of each unit, typically no more cutting was required. (In contrast to other Eagle Games which took 3-4x as long to separate the plastic bits.)
I disagree with you profoundly on the Victory Points issue, however. I think this is one of the few redeeming qualities of the game.
Generally, I agree. I found the system interesting and innovative. However, because of the chaos implicit in other systems in the game, and the overpowering of combat, I felt like the get-it-all-at-the-end setup for the cubes made 80% of the game irrelevent. Either, there needed to be more opportunity to win Victory cubes earlier or else there needed to be better ways to protect a lead.
A relatively simple solution to improve combat is to change the rule that has both sides select a new fighter for each engagement. Rather use a rule borrowed from Warlords IV (which has a very similiar 1 on 1 combat system). Winner stays.
That is indeed another decent method that I've now seen suggested a couple of times.
Post originally by Ralph Mazza at 2004-02-11 18:11:40
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well, lets see. It was a few weeks ago that we played so the memory isn't completely fresh but here it goes.
1) the standard cards vs random cards: Sounded good on paper, didn't really work well in practice. The number of cards you were able to draw by later ages was large enough that there was little to no risk in not being able to do the action you wanted. It meant you could take standard cards just to make absolute sure and still have enough random draws to get the cool stuff. The ability to hold the cool stuff from round to round meant if you happened to draw the kick ass combat card this turn you could hold it and use it later. And because hand size was large enough, there was little down side to this.
This was compounded by the fact that the difference in power between the basic card and random cards were fairly minimal. Taking the risk to get the random card was no big deal because, aside from the god powers (which were quite cool) the random cards weren't all that much better. In fact some of the random cards (like the ones for drawing terrain tiles) were often worse.
In other words what was supposed to be a major strategic choice of the game...play it safe and take the weaker basic cards...or get ballsy and go for the big random cards, in actual play made little difference. The random cards in general weren't worth taking a big risk to get, but ultimately the large hand size meant it wasnt' very risky anyway.
The choice was a virtual non event. An extra step in the rules that proved to have little function.
2) The Trading rules are HORRIBLE. You can basically trade any cube you want 1:1 for any other cube. There is a minimal cost, but the cost is so easy to circumvent that there is almost never a time when you'll actually have to pay it. The cost also doesn't scale, so by the end of the game when you're rolling in cubes even paying the minimal cost is trivial.
This undermines the entire point of production. A key difference between the races is the Terrain types they have access to. A key factor in chosing production tiles is in trying to get a balanced production with an terrain selection thats imbalanced. This should have been a key strategy of the game. How do the Norse work with a huge gold advantage and food disadvantage. How do the Egyptians work with a huge food advantage and gold disadvantage.
In actual play completely irrelevant. Unlimited ability to trade means everybody can rebalance their production imbalances with relative ease.
Another point in the game where you have an extra step (actually a number of steps) in the rules, that ultimately mean nothing.
3) The ease of beating up the weak guy. This is the huge exploit. You have no armies, or few. I play a production card...now you have lots of production. I then play an attack card and with minimal risk go and take your production away from you. This is another way in which the production differences from #2 are rendered irrelevant. One can simply raid for resources almost at will once one side is whittled down to the point that they're perpetually weaker.
4) The restriction against attacking the guy opposite you. Another rule that does more harm than good. It means that the only guy who might be powerful enough to stop the leader...isn't even allowed to attack the leader. Another rule which serves little purpose.
5) Villagers...absolutely completely totally irrelevant. Villagers allow you to boost the production of a tile by 1. Whoopdie friggin do. Production by mid game is so easy to come by that an extra couple of cubes has little value when compared to how hard it is to get those cubes.
Regardless of the cost you have to pay to build the house to produce the villager...it takes a build. There are FAR more useful buildings to buy than Houses. Wasting an action to build a house to get a villager to give you 1 extra cube...is pointless.
There are something like 10 or 12 villager minis per side...thats alot of minis that never freaking get used.
There are probably more I'm forgetting but ultimately the big problems were actions being to easy (one of the hard lessons of Puerto Rico is dealing with the fact that you almost NEVER get to pick the action you want at the exact time you want it. In AOM...you almost never can't), and large portions of what sounded like really fun strategy from reading the rules being rendered completely moot during play.
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