I think there are two, one predating the computer game and one based on the computer game. Which do you mean? The first one rocks. I've never played the second.
Greg
Originally posted by Greg I think there are two, one predating the computer game and one based on the computer game. Which do you mean? The first one rocks. I've never played the second.
Greg
The old Avalon Hill boardgame Civilization (and its add-on Advanced Civ) is possibly the best board game ever made. Did someone create one based on the computer game? That would be interesting, but the bar is awfully high - the old Civ is a true masterpiece.
I am going to assume that thread starter mean the new Civ board game, which is based on the computer game of the same name.
I have played it a couple of times and found it lacking. There is too much stuff to keep track of during the game and luck plays a huge factor.
The technology tree is a prime example. In the game, there are various technology cards that the players can buy. Once a player buys a card, all players can benefit from it. For example, buying the Horsemanship technology allows everyone to build calvary units with the player who bought the card getting a percentage of the money spent on calvary.
This means that a player has to keep track of which technology cards are available, which cards will be available soon, which unit and city enhancements are available, and which players get monetary kickbacks for those units.
Keeping track of upcoming technologies is extremely important. You see, the game is divided up into 4 eras. The game advances to the next era as soon as a technology from that era is purchased. Once the era is advanced, all the city enhancements purchased in the previous era go away. City enhancements are expensive but they increase the productivity of a city. If you buy an enhancement, you'll want to make sure that you can recoup your cost before the era changes.
Ye gods, Mike Z makes the new game sound horrible. I haven't seen it, kinda glad now.
I can speak only of the old game, which has only one flaw: My gaming group would rather play two games of Cataan than one game of Advanced Civilization.
That said, IF you have that block of time open, There is no better game to drop into that block than Avalon Hill's Civilization.
This a board game so good that the computer games it inspired have inspired other board games.
I bought every expansion for it. None are needed, the basic game stands alone. And none of them really wreck the balance, so much as change it, requiring an adjustment to your strategy. Treat them like scenarios, not patches.
I'll go on record as saying that the new game is a lot of fun. After one game we played to get the hang of the rules, we found that as long as you divide up all the duties, the game runs pretty fast (eg one person is banker, one hands out units, one keeps the technologies organized into a pile of "available now" and a pile of "not available yet", etc...).
There is a lot of crap to keep track of, I'll admit. But divided up like I suggested, it's not unmanageable. There's a lot of fun politicking going on what with trade and the potential for war, and things like causing a new Era have a lot of strategy behind them. Usually, the guy with very little in the way of tech or improvements saves up for a turn or two so he can pop the new Age and make everyone else lose their advantage.
Well, we had fun playing it, and there are a couple old threads on the subject if you want to search for them.
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-Josh
It makes me sad that Aeon will now be nothing more than a hack-and-slash, kill-things-and-take-their-stuff game. I will always long for the true days of Aeon, when it was about being a brooding undead monster. - Jim DelRosso
Civilization Board Game
Linear Mode
