I got to play Mega Civilization again a few weeks ago. A full eighteen-player game, even. Several of my friends on Plus had asked me to let them know how it went and tell them what I thought of the game.
I figured it'd be waaaaaay too long to be a good social media post (not that I've been stopped by that before, mind you), so I'm writing about it here.
Let me start with an overview of the game. This will probably run a bit long.
... just like the game.
In fact, buckle up. This is going to be a crazy-long post.
I actually got to play a few weeks ago. We were originally going to have nearly a full boat (eighteen players), but there was a last-minute communications snafu and so we were down to eight. Or up to eight - I advertised on Boardgamegeek and Google Plus and Facebook for players when it looked like we were going to be short.
Eight is still a fun game, but I don't know if I'd want to play with fewer than that.
Because a few of us had played a lot "back in the day," and a few of us had played relatively recently, we used the Eastern half of the map.
We started around 10 am Sunday morning and wrapped up a bit after 8 pm. Here's a two-minute video of the play:
We had eight players, as I said. Andrew was Persia, Barbara was Babylon, Derek was Indus, Franc drew Parthia, James was Kushan, O. Shane was Saba, and Sean was Murya. I drew Dravidia.
Before the game got rolling, I negotiated borders with Maurya and Indus. Those borders were nearly identical to those shown in the rulebook. Since these were the only players I bordered directly, I wanted to be sure we had stable boundaries - and I worked hard to respect these boundaries over the course of the game, too. Because I had enough room for all nine cities (and support for those nine cities).
In fact, most players spent a few minutes establishing boundaries and looking hungrily at land beyond them.
As always happens, the first few turns went by quickly - populate, expand, populate, expand. Our civilizations were too small to conflict at that point - Persia and Babylon can clash, but rarely do.
With the first wall approaching on the AST, James built his first city a few turns too early (and never fully recovered). I built one turn early, but had fewer neighbors (and suffered fewer calamities), and ... mostly recovered. In fact, my struggles during the game were due to a lack of skill, not due to anyone else's actions.
The East map is either more forgiving than the West map, or else I was just playing with the nicest set of players on the planet.
To prep for the game, I grabbed a few things off of BoardGameGeek. The Errata. The FAQ. And this file. In that file, there is a "Civilization Advances - Terse" document. I printed it out (one for each player), laminated it, and had a couple of overhead (wet-erase) pens on hand. This was a huge space-saver for me - instead of buying a ton of (oversized) tech cards, I just marked this board when I bought something.
The game ran smoothly. We made a few rules mistakes (built on zero-population spaces, for example), and it was a ton of fun.
There were a handful of notable events:
1) Franc lost four cities to calamities three turns in a row. This was especially notable, as Franc's goal that game was not to trade calamities away to other players. Had this not happened, James would have been in a lot of trouble, because Franc and James were both trying to colonize the same area of the map.
2) Franc was the beneficiary of Sean's Civil War. Sean is at the opposite end of the map. This meant that Franc was on both edges of the map, with more/greater presence on the East coast than in his homeland on the West coast.
3) Franc was the beneficiary when I got hit by Tyrrany. This again put him on both edges of the map.
4) We ended a few turns early. I suspect that another turn or two would have brought out the knives.
5) I took a bunch of photos. They can be found here.
6) Final scores:
Barbara (Babylon) - 98 O. Shane (Saba) - 97 Derek (Indus) - 95 Sean (Maurya) - 94 Andrew (Persia) - 90 Franc (Parthia) - 81 Eric (Dravidia) - 70 James (Kushan) - 54
Franc was low because of all of the calamities. However he had more tech than anyone else. I think he was also in a good position to start to benefit from the knives coming out, too.
We're going to try to do this again sometime in June or July. Maybe we'll get more players, and maybe we won't. But I'm definitely looking forward to it.
Many of us have That Game That Got Away. It's a game we played and liked and then dragged our feet on picking a copy up, because "Steve has it." And we forgot that Steve could move to Texas or California. Or we might move away. And not every group has every game.
For me, that game was Avalon Hill's Civilization, with the Advanced Civilization expansion. About twenty years ago, when I was learning that there was more to strategy gaming than just Chess, I had a group of friends who got together to play a bunch of hobby games. And this was one of them.
And then we all grew up and moved away from one another. And I wasn't able to play the game because my current group was too young and didn't have it.
A few weeks ago, I saw a post on one of the (far too many) blogs I follow that stated that "Mega Civilization" was now available directly from pegasusshop.de (that link takes you directly to the game). Hmm, I thought to myself, I wonder if that's at all similar to the Avalon Hill version of the game.
And it is. In fact, it's the Avalon Hill version turned up to eleven.
So I had to order it. I needed this game. Even at €249 including shipping. Because €50 in shipping isn't crazy for a 22lb package from Germany.
Now I have an internet savings account. It's not there as an emergency cushion (although I have used it that way before). It's there specifically for things like this. Things that I want, but that I need to think about before buying. Because the transfer takes a few days, and I only get a few transfers per month (here's a referral link). I hesitated about ten minutes before setting the transfer up.
And I placed my order with Pegasus Shop.
The good news? That price includes VAT. As someone in the US, I don't have to worry about VAT, so my total cost including shipping was only €209.25. About $230.
... and then I learned that they don't take credit cards. Or PayPal. You need to wire them the money. I'm 39 years old, and my only personal experience with wire transfers was when someone in the UK subscribed to this blog on their Kindle, and they paid me via wire transfer. I made $0.40 and my bank charged me $25 for the privilege. So I was a bit wary of the whole thing.
I called my bank and inquired about wire transfers, and it would have cost me another $50 in fees to wire funds to Germany. Ugh. So I went to BoardGameGeek. Someone there recommended Transferwise. Several someones, actually. Transferwise had a $3 fee and had a better exchange rate.
The drawback to Transferwise is that they were slower to process.
But here's the magical thing: Less than a week after Pegasus had my money, the game was in my hands.
That shipping cost - which I found not unreasonable - was actually express shipping. Meaning it was even more reasonable than I'd expected.
And now the game is in my hands. Here I am opening the monster:
I spent a few hours yesterday punching and cutting tokens. I hope to get a group together to play sometime early next year. Because I can't not play this game.
