This weekend (or Civ Sunday™ as it shall hence forth be known) was the second time we cracked out Civilization: The Board Game and it was another absolutely epic game. Last time, we were absolutely thrashed by the powerful Egyptians (my girlfriend). As we had one player new to the game, we decided to follow the rulebook’s suggestion of removing the Romans and Egyptians from the civilisation selection process for your first game (which we should have done last time). That left the Russians, Chinese, Americans and Germans; I managed to get the Germans again!
Last time I spent far too long deciding what victory condition I was aiming for. By the end I was doing reasonably well in economy and technology, but it was too late in the day to stop the Egyptian culture victory.
I took a different tact this time and rather than spend too much time exploring the map, I decided to try and increase my building/trade power as quickly as possible. I think that’s one of the key things to do early on in the game: get your second city built! Depending on the spot you find, you’ll either greatly increase your Production or Trade Points. As the Germans, my key skills were geared towards building units, figures and buildings using Production.
Unfortunately my girlfriend (this time playing the Americans) got an early Culture Event card that caused a drought in my city outskirts, denying me 2 Production points every turn! Just like last time! Boo!
Knowing how good she is at board games and logical/tactical thinking in general, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to hamper her efforts to expand as rapidly as she did in the previous game. But expand she did! This session also highlighted just how powerful the Wonders of the World are. They cost a shitload of production points, but they bestow all sorts of awesome powers particularly as you move from the ancient ones, through the medieval era to the modern Wonders.
Ignoring culture and economy, I decided I was going to try and go for a tech victory. I was generating plenty of trade points by this time, especially because an early tech resource ability allowed me to generate 9 extra trade points for myself and give 6 to another player at the cost of 1 silk resource. Luckily, I came to an accord with the Russians who would provide the silk in return for the 6 trade points and they promised to do this every turn. I used all my trade points to “rush production” (this means you can increase your production by 1 for every 3 trade points you spend) in order to purchase the Colossus. This Wonder gives you an extra 3 trade every turn, which is very handy if you’re going for a tech victory.
Later in the game, I manage to scrape together just enough Production to build The Porcelain Tower. This is another amazing Wonder for tech victories because it reduces the cost of researching a technology by 5 trade points (so it becomes 1 Trade for a Level 1, 6 for a Level 2, 11 for a Level 3 tech etc.)!
Alas, America was attempting to build the Statue of Liberty which allows you to “learn” (I prefer to use the term “steal”) another player’s technology that you don’t yet know, every turn. Ridiculous! In theory, that doubles the amount of technologies you can research each turn, which would have slingshot America past me in the technology race. We (by which I mean everyone else) managed to hold them off for a while, blocking city actions and preventing construction from taking place. At one point, I nearly managed to generate enough Production in order to build it myself, thereby preventing America from getting hold of it. Looking back now, I feel kind of glad I couldn’t; having blocked its construction 3 or 4 turns in a row, there would have been real-life hell to pay if I had then stolen it! ;)
Of course it then transpired that America also had another little tactic running on the side: economy. Their coins had been building very slowly throughout the game but some late technologies and resource abilities allowed for much speedier coin generation! We suddenly realised that America was going to win… in only two turns!
The game appeared to be over. America had, by this point, stacked a number of figures around the nearest city to my troops and I had anticipated having to fight my way through in order to make an attack on the city itself – something that would have taken more than 2 turns (and a heck of a lot of luck) to do successfully. At my current movement speed (3 squares) there was simply no way I would be able to get to America’s cities to try and set them back a few turns, before they could generate 2 more coins and win the game*.
And that was when the turning point came…
In what I thought was going to be my last, ultimately pointless, research phase I drew a Level 4 Tech card… It was Flight…
Let’s just focus on that beautiful, amazing word for a second…
Flight.
The technology of Flight affords the player a movement speed of 6. It also allows you to fly over and ignore enemy figures, huts, villages and water squares. Flight unlocks the ability to build aircraft unit cards for battle (which are incredibly powerful incidentally) and one of the Germans’ special abilities means that you get a free unit card every time you unlock or upgrade a unit type – so I got a free aircraft card!
This changed everything. With my city actions I purchased 2 more aircraft units and put down another army figure on the board. Looking across the table, I noticed that America, despite having a lot of army figures on the board actually had very few unit cards available (the figures represent the army, but the unit cards are what you actually battle with – you need to keep a good supply of both in order to be strong in battle). I was going in for the kill!
In the movement phase I used my newly built figure to engage one of the peripheral enemy figures in the hope of taking out another card or two (I had a big supply that I’d been saving up gradually over the game). With so few cards left to play with, I descended upon her city, the first attack sacrificing a few of my lowly cards but taking out some of hers at the same time. I attacked again, and luckily this time I happened to draw all three of my very powerful aircraft units. It was all over. I had killed off her remaining unit cards and the city was destroyed.
When your city is destroyed, you lose all the buildings, Wonders and Great People associated with it. The two Great People she had attached to this city both provided gold coins, so immediately she had to deduct 2 from her economy score. I also destroyed a barracks, which further reduced her combat effectiveness.
At this point, everyone thought my turn was over and that I had done all the damage I could and I had kept the rest of us in the game for at least another turn or two. But oh no, I wasn’t quite finished. There was one lonely figure in what was once the outskirts of the now razed American city that still hadn’t moved. I mentioned earlier that generally it’s a good idea to build your second city as early as possible to reap the benefits of increased Production and Trade. In this case however, it meant this one army figure was within range of her capital!
I moved my last figure onto her capital square.
Combat. America had no cards left, my previous attacks had seen to that. There were no units to defend with. If I had moved any of my army figures onto one of hers, that figure would have been defeated immediately. Unfortunately destroying a city is a little more difficult because it has a built in defence bonus. Capitals have a default bonus of +12. With her additional combat bonuses this brought her total to +16. I had two barracks, giving me a combat bonus of +4.
The entire battle (and the game) would come down to scoring more than 12 points from the three cards I would draw at random from my collection of unit card. And my total combat strength was…
…
11. My card strength totalled 11.
Gutted.
It seemed like all was lost.
Game over.
Hang on though; I’d just taken out one of America’s barracks in the previous attack! That would reduce their combat bonuses, down to +10… but that would mean…
I won! \o/
What an epic game; both in terms of how it was played and how long it took. Our first game took 6-something hours to complete and I assumed that the next game would be a lot faster and quicker.
It was definitely faster; we completed vastly more turns than we did in the first game, but it still took 6.5 hours! We put it down to taking too much time to perform actions during the City Management phase. I think we decided that the next time we play, we’re going to put a 3 minute time limit per player for that phase in the hopes that it won’t take so long. It will probably open the door to people making a few mistakes under pressure as well!
Still, it was a great session and it was nice to see a military win too – we almost completely avoided combat in the first game and we didn’t do much fighting in this one, until near the end. This game was a lot more evenly balanced, with two, maybe even three of the players being relatively close to victories by the time it finished. There was also a lot of canny trading taking place this time, adding an exciting extra dimension that was somewhat missing from the previous game.
Can’t wait til the next game!
