So as I mentioned in my previous blog post, I picked up Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game the other week. Yes, it is the board game of the videogame that was originally based on a board game. And yes, it is amazing.

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game: The Box

Everyone knows Civilization, right? You build up your chosen empire from one spot on the map into a sprawling existence fuelled by the pillars of society; culture, technology and economy. Slowly you become a beacon of wonderment and awe and the other civilizations of the world stare on in disbelief as you look down upon them with disgust and contempt for their savage ways. And then, when it all goes to shit or someone starts giving you grief, you get militant on their asses. Or if you feel like it, you get militant from the very start. And herein lies the beauty of Civilization: The Board Game. Choice. You have lots and lots of choice.

There are four ways to win; a culture victory (devoting your cities to the arts and spending culture points to advance up the culture track), a technology victory (building your Tech Pyramid up until you acquire the technology of Space Flight), an economic victory (where you earn coins through completing a variety of tasks) or the aforementioned ass-kicking military victory (achieved by taking out another player’s capital city). Each method of victory requires different tactics and it’s in the balancing of these different tactics that the game excels.

You can play it any way you like but other players’ actions will obviously cause you to change and adapt your plans. You can tell that each of the four victory paths has been playtested and refined to death and each one will take a similar number of turns to achieve; it’s beautifully balanced.

Here's everything (other than the map) laid out and ready to go!

The world map is made up of 4×4 square tiles, and is randomly generated every time you play. Every civilization has a specific home tile, designed to help them get started and play to their own strengths and special abilities. The rest of the tiles are shuffled and placed face down (the shape and size of the map varies according to the number of players). As each player explores further from their home tile, they can use a move action to flip an adjacent tile and reveal the map in the classic videogame-style. That’s right kiddies… this game has a “Fog of War”! It’s a beautifully simple idea, but really provides a sense of exploration and the excitement of discovering new lands.

The other really cool thing I want to talk about is the Tech Pyramid. All these type of games (I’m talking about videogames here) tend to have a tech tree system, whereby researching a technology or building a particular structure unlocks the ability to create new specialist units or other structures that then in turn develop new units, buildings, technologies etc. Due to their sprawling, complex nature, the Tech Tree is a tough concept to transfer to a board game.

Fortunately Kevin Wilson (the game’s designer) came up with an amazing piece of game design: Tech Pyramid. Throughout the game you have the option to spend your Trade Points (one of the forms of “currency” you use to complete a variety of tasks) on researching new technologies. The 30+ technologies are divided up into five levels. There is only one Level 5 card (that card being Space Flight, which as I mentioned, wins you the game). In order to research a Level 2 tech, you need to have at least two Level 1 techs below it as a foundation. In order to research a Level 3 tech you need at least two Level 2 cards and 3 Level 1 cards and so on; a pyramid! It’s lovely. Each technology tends to unlock a new building type and will provide you with special abilities, either at the cost of a resource or when you complete certain tasks, such as winning a battle.

It's not a Tech Tree, it's a Tech PYRAMID! Got it?

In our game, I was playing as the Germans. There were also the Egyptians, Romans and Chinese on the board. I foolishly decided that I wanted to avoid combat and explore the other victory conditions a little more. Unfortunately, military is what the Germans do quite well and I spent far too long dabbling in various activities without focussing on how I was going to try and win, by which point the Egyptians were already a towering monolith of culture and art. By the time the rest of us realised we were soon going to lose, we didn’t have enough turns left to get across the board and attack, despite a valiant last-ditched attempt that left the Egyptian forces weak and exposed.

There are very few things that I would consider to be negative about this game. With the maximum four players you can expect game time to take maybe 4 or 5 hours. In our first game, this is what we were using as our estimate. A 4-5 hour game time is not a bad thing per se but for our first game, this (unsurprisingly) turned out to be wildly optimistic. I spent probably an hour explaining most of the rules/ideas the game has to offer and then the first few turns really took a very long time. The estimated 4 hour game time was more like 6 or 7 hours in total.

Of course, by the end turns went by much faster and I can see next time we play, it’ll be closer to the estimate. My one big piece of advice would be to email the rulebook (PDF) round to everyone that’s going to play so they can get up to speed (or at least have a rough idea of the format) before you start! It will save you many hours! Also, read the FAQ (PDF) that addresses a few print errors and omissions.

One of the great things about the structure of the game is that you’re always playing; you’re always involved in what’s going on. Even though it’s someone’s “turn”, that turn is broken up into phases and everyone is playing during those phases. If it’s your turn, that just means you go first in each of the phases. You’re almost always active, making it very difficult to step away from the table. It’s a tribute to the compelling nature of the game that at one point, when it was getting very late and we were considering stopping in order to pick it up again later in the week that we actually just ended up carrying on until the end – we couldn’t stop playing!

The only other issue with the game is the box design. I don’t mean the artwork or the quality of the components; they’re all spectacularly detailed and robust – the quality of all the game pieces, tiles and tokens is absolutely exceptional, but the box has NO compartments! For a game with HUNDREDS of tokens, cards, coins etc. it is beyond my comprehension that so little thought has gone into the box design. There is no way to divide things up properly. There are a few ziplock bags, but you end up putting loads of different things all in one bag. Given that you need to sort through everything and lay it out on the table before play, this can really add to the set up time (I’d guess at least 20-30 minutes if you’re doing it on your own). I’m considering buying or making a little tray that everything can fit nicely into. That or I’ll get some small sandwich bags.

Obligatory mid-game action shot!

Of course when the internal box design is one of your main complaints, you know you’ve got a great game on your hands. I’ve used the word simple to talk about it quite a few times now. It is simple, amazingly so. Once you’ve got the rules down it’s very straightforward, but I don’t want to sell it short or make it sound trivial. The complexity comes from the options available to you at any given point. It’s a very deeply tactical game that demands critical analysis of the current situation, clear, decisive thinking and a good idea of what everyone else is up to.

You should buy it. I simply can’t stress enough just how brilliant this game is. In all seriousness, I think it’s probably the best, most balanced board game I’ve ever played. It is freakin’ awesome. You should buy it. Like, right now. And then play it. And then bask in its infinite glory.

The cheapest place I’ve managed to find it so far is (perhaps surprisingly) from GAME.co.uk but if my review hasn’t convinced you, you should definitely read this and watch this:

And if THAT didn’t convince you… well, you’re a lost cause. Sorry.