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viktor_haagYesterday was another boardgame afternoon at the Old Huron Redoubt. We had six players, and then four. So we played two of (quite possibly) the top 10 games from the last 30 years: Civilization and Puerto Rico.
Civilization
"If only this game were shorter, it would be perfect!" This seems to be the constant complaint about Tresham's masterpiece, and most certainly how it manages to weigh in at place sixty-three on the Geek's rating system behind a host of much poorer games. My contention is that Civilization is already near perfect as it is. Yes, a good play will take between 5 and 8 hours; if it takes longer than that, then that should be a sign that either you're playing incorrectly, or that it's just not the game for your group. That doesn't mean the game is "too long". Rather, Civilization's thematic depth and strategic wealth demands the length.
While it's true that Civilization is not a sprint to the finish like many more modern boardgames, it's involving, engaging, and demands attention and thoughtfulness throughout. It is true that it punishes those who fall behind, and true that it's obviously less pleasant to be in the lower half of the standings when the game you're playing is six hours long than when it's only sixty minutes. But, again, I don't think this means the game is not as good as the sixty-minute sprinters: what it does is demand more from the players.
But Civilization is not a chit-fest, nor a complex simulation exercise; the mechanisms in play are easily graspable by anyone who can get a grip on Age of Steam, Power Grid, or similar. And the length of the game also gives those in the back half time to make up lost ground: granted, there comes a point where you will be unable to get yourself back in (so it is quite important not to fall too far back off the pace), but it's not like some of the modern german-style games where you can be lost from a few steps out of the gate. These types of games hide this lack of balance through play brevity; the reason that Die Siedler caught on like wildfire was that, despite the fact that you could be royally hosed after the first third of the game and impossibly behind, you could be comforted by the knowledge (a) that your pain would last only another half hour or so, (b) that perhaps the dice would come to your aid, and (c) that you could then have time to reset the pieces and try your luck again.
I think both styles of games have their place, but Civilization still stands at or near the top of my list.
Our six-player game was reasonably close; slowly, over the course of the game, the race divided into two groups. Had there been more interaction and deal-making going on, the gap between the groups might have been kept a bit closer, but once the discrepancy started, those in the upper group had an interest in keeping it going, and those in the lower group didn't do anything effectively to change it.
At about five and a half to six hours, we had to end early because two of the players had to leave; however, the game's end was no more than another hour off, and it was fairly clear at that point who the likely winning candidates would be. I think it was a satisfying experience for everyone at the table, but this is not a game we're going to play every two weeks (nor should we; do you run a marathon every month?)
Puerto Rico
This was quite possibly the fastest game of PR I've ever played. It lasted barely more than an hour, and had several suspension points when one or both of us dealt with getting the kids to bed. Nobody in the four-player game got more than 39 points. Wow. How did this happen? Fairly clearly, the players as a whole invested heavily in production infrastructure in advance of capacity. This ensured that the game rocketed through colonists quickly. In the latter half of the game, when people's settled fields started being able to take advantage of production buildings, people still chose Mayor frequently because there was a race to populate the key expensive buildings they were moving to put in place.
This was an interesting game, and fun, but a bit of a strange ride. I can't shake the feeling that Puerto Rico basically shakes out what the successful strategies would be in the first few turns, and woe betide you if you aren't in accord with one of them. The game just isn't long enough for you to correct your course.
The longer Civilization provides you with opportunities to make subtle adjustments, throughout play, to what your turn-over-turn goals have to be to make progress. You have to follow several basic principles (or be very, very lucky) to avoid getting hosed in Civilization, but within that framework there's some opportunity for a slower pace: you can try things that might not work, and rebound; you can get smacked with an unlucky event or series of events, and rebound.
In the shorter Puerto Rico, your success is pretty much tied to how quickly you can make the right decisions about how to finesse the state machine that gets set up in the first few turns. And even then, there's really only two ways to win: do you produce and ship, or do you trade and build? The strategy that will work for you depends on what the other players choose to do, and where you're sitting relative to them at the table. (One solid lesson I learned last night, is that if both Hospices are in play, then "trade and build" is a lot less likely to win, because you just can't get enough high value buildings on the board quickly enough to keep pace with the "produce and ship" crowd.)
But once you determine that your choice to "trade and build" is met with the other players investing heavily, early, in production infrastructure, buying out all the hospices, and then producing and shipping like mad, what can you do to correct? Nothing, because at that point you've lost any control you might have had on the game's machine to turn it to your favour.
Puerto Rico is a fun game, but easily half its virtue lies in its brevity; players have much less control over their circumstances than it appears, but the length of the game keeps this from stinging too harshly. In general, the play experience is a fun one. What's interesting to me about Puerto Rico is the lack of randomness: on the surface, you'd think this would be a positive thing -- you can't get hosed by dice, therefore you must have more control! But I think this is a sly misapprehension. What Settlers brings to the table, with its dice, is that Lady Luck can help to bring you back into the game. In Puerto Rico, once the game's machine is against you, you're done. In Settlers, you can always hope for a lucky, and against-the-odds, string of rolls to bring you a surplus of production you can parlay into buildings and card draws.
Civilization
"If only this game were shorter, it would be perfect!" This seems to be the constant complaint about Tresham's masterpiece, and most certainly how it manages to weigh in at place sixty-three on the Geek's rating system behind a host of much poorer games. My contention is that Civilization is already near perfect as it is. Yes, a good play will take between 5 and 8 hours; if it takes longer than that, then that should be a sign that either you're playing incorrectly, or that it's just not the game for your group. That doesn't mean the game is "too long". Rather, Civilization's thematic depth and strategic wealth demands the length.
While it's true that Civilization is not a sprint to the finish like many more modern boardgames, it's involving, engaging, and demands attention and thoughtfulness throughout. It is true that it punishes those who fall behind, and true that it's obviously less pleasant to be in the lower half of the standings when the game you're playing is six hours long than when it's only sixty minutes. But, again, I don't think this means the game is not as good as the sixty-minute sprinters: what it does is demand more from the players.
But Civilization is not a chit-fest, nor a complex simulation exercise; the mechanisms in play are easily graspable by anyone who can get a grip on Age of Steam, Power Grid, or similar. And the length of the game also gives those in the back half time to make up lost ground: granted, there comes a point where you will be unable to get yourself back in (so it is quite important not to fall too far back off the pace), but it's not like some of the modern german-style games where you can be lost from a few steps out of the gate. These types of games hide this lack of balance through play brevity; the reason that Die Siedler caught on like wildfire was that, despite the fact that you could be royally hosed after the first third of the game and impossibly behind, you could be comforted by the knowledge (a) that your pain would last only another half hour or so, (b) that perhaps the dice would come to your aid, and (c) that you could then have time to reset the pieces and try your luck again.
I think both styles of games have their place, but Civilization still stands at or near the top of my list.
Our six-player game was reasonably close; slowly, over the course of the game, the race divided into two groups. Had there been more interaction and deal-making going on, the gap between the groups might have been kept a bit closer, but once the discrepancy started, those in the upper group had an interest in keeping it going, and those in the lower group didn't do anything effectively to change it.
At about five and a half to six hours, we had to end early because two of the players had to leave; however, the game's end was no more than another hour off, and it was fairly clear at that point who the likely winning candidates would be. I think it was a satisfying experience for everyone at the table, but this is not a game we're going to play every two weeks (nor should we; do you run a marathon every month?)
Puerto Rico
This was quite possibly the fastest game of PR I've ever played. It lasted barely more than an hour, and had several suspension points when one or both of us dealt with getting the kids to bed. Nobody in the four-player game got more than 39 points. Wow. How did this happen? Fairly clearly, the players as a whole invested heavily in production infrastructure in advance of capacity. This ensured that the game rocketed through colonists quickly. In the latter half of the game, when people's settled fields started being able to take advantage of production buildings, people still chose Mayor frequently because there was a race to populate the key expensive buildings they were moving to put in place.
This was an interesting game, and fun, but a bit of a strange ride. I can't shake the feeling that Puerto Rico basically shakes out what the successful strategies would be in the first few turns, and woe betide you if you aren't in accord with one of them. The game just isn't long enough for you to correct your course.
The longer Civilization provides you with opportunities to make subtle adjustments, throughout play, to what your turn-over-turn goals have to be to make progress. You have to follow several basic principles (or be very, very lucky) to avoid getting hosed in Civilization, but within that framework there's some opportunity for a slower pace: you can try things that might not work, and rebound; you can get smacked with an unlucky event or series of events, and rebound.
In the shorter Puerto Rico, your success is pretty much tied to how quickly you can make the right decisions about how to finesse the state machine that gets set up in the first few turns. And even then, there's really only two ways to win: do you produce and ship, or do you trade and build? The strategy that will work for you depends on what the other players choose to do, and where you're sitting relative to them at the table. (One solid lesson I learned last night, is that if both Hospices are in play, then "trade and build" is a lot less likely to win, because you just can't get enough high value buildings on the board quickly enough to keep pace with the "produce and ship" crowd.)
But once you determine that your choice to "trade and build" is met with the other players investing heavily, early, in production infrastructure, buying out all the hospices, and then producing and shipping like mad, what can you do to correct? Nothing, because at that point you've lost any control you might have had on the game's machine to turn it to your favour.
Puerto Rico is a fun game, but easily half its virtue lies in its brevity; players have much less control over their circumstances than it appears, but the length of the game keeps this from stinging too harshly. In general, the play experience is a fun one. What's interesting to me about Puerto Rico is the lack of randomness: on the surface, you'd think this would be a positive thing -- you can't get hosed by dice, therefore you must have more control! But I think this is a sly misapprehension. What Settlers brings to the table, with its dice, is that Lady Luck can help to bring you back into the game. In Puerto Rico, once the game's machine is against you, you're done. In Settlers, you can always hope for a lucky, and against-the-odds, string of rolls to bring you a surplus of production you can parlay into buildings and card draws.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-27 20:43 (UTC)I try to get some of my gamers to play it as often as I can, but once every month or two is the limit on their tolerance. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-27 21:10 (UTC)(As for the rest of the 18xx series of games, I have a strong suspicion that they will have been "improved" in the same way that Advanced Civ "improved" Civ. But I remain prepared to be convinced otherwise.)
Tresham just seems to have everything in his games: some chaos where it's warranted, but which can be carefully managed; player interaction, but not full-wheeling stabbing and politicking; strategy and tactics, but not full-on chit pushing; economics, but not full-on cost-forward accounting. And theme. More than just about any other designer I can think of (except maybe Martin Wallace), Tresham manages to pin theme into his games so much better than just about any German-style designer you can mention.
Whether Tresham can, in the end, get me to admit that Wallace is no longer my favourite designer overall, I'm not sure. But he's well on the way.
It's funny that, having dived full-on into the German boardgame phenom, I"m slowly working my way back to the mid-weight games that got me fascinated with boardgames in the first place.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 21:02 (UTC)Doesn't mean I'm gonna stop playing Ticket to Ride and Power Grid, though. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 01:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-27 22:12 (UTC)Re PR: it's got further depth, though there are obviously bad strategies. In my experience, players who buy the Hospice will find themselves losing very fast games to trader/builder players, as their severe lack of money is compounded in the early/midgame. In general, however, the rule for all except very wonky PR games is that "everybody builds. Everybody ships" -- unless you can get a player to craft for you, or you can get ahead enough on money that you no longer need to worry about shipping at all, the question is not whether you're going to play for shipment or building, but where you make the shift and what your money strategy/cash crop is. But yes, the game is all about anticipating the other players' strategy and not being the only player crafting/picking captain, or not having to always select trader or builder while other players constantly craft/captain, depriving you of needed good and money.
What I want to play more of (but will have to wait until my birthday gift is ordered/arrives) is Phonecia -- which is a build/production game with a central auction mechanic (and some interesting choices to be made both on what you take from the auction and whether you save money to auction with or use it to max out your current production, which is usually (in the short term) more effective. It does have (given my one play as an example) a runaway issue as someone who gets enough more production (with accompanying storage) than anyone else can often win all the auctions they want and stay ahead, ensuring the victory, but there's still quite a lot of play there, and the combination of discounts, direct income, and indirect income (some possesions generate income or are worth victory points directly; but quite a few require trained workers manning them to really do their thing), plus a good auction mechanic as a counterbalance, seems to produce a good game.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 14:02 (UTC)I can't remember if the dynamics of ACiv are different; but in Civ, I think the right word to stick in the parens is "only slightly". All players know the starting positions of the calamities. All players know (or can know) how many cards are in each stack. With some care, it's possible to know where all the calamities are, within a certain degree of precision.
Accordingly, it's very important to know how to manage your game so that you can minimize your reception of calamities and push them on others. This has to do with carefully managing your population and your city growth.I have found that it is very dangerous in the game to let your population dip to below a certain point--it may seem like you're OK, especially if you're not getting actively punted on, but the problem is that, unless you have a lot of chits on the board, it's very difficult for you to properly manage the number of cities you have. One of the things that hardly anyone notices is that some times it's better to elect not to build a city and let a certain number of chits die off. Most people react with horror at this event, because they haven't bothered to do the actual math and think about how many tribes they have on the board and how many are in their stock and treasury.
In both of the recent games I've played (and done well in both), I did well for several reasons, but surely one of them was carefully managing my city growth at all times to ensure that I knew my exact position in the trade card draw. Thus, I was able to foist off calamities on others. In the entire six and a half hours we played, I drew calamities only once and in that case, the total damage to me was five tribe chits. I also only received calamities through trade two or three times. And in those cases, I was very careful to trade only with players where I knew the calamity I was receiving I could handle.
What I haven't been able to determine is, if you get into the back half of the pack where you get slammed with calamities, is it possible for you to carefully get yourself out of that situation? I'm not sure. I think the machine is sort of like a large washing machine or something: once the spin starts destabilizing, it's really hard to get it back into balance again...
Puerto Rico: unless you can get another player to craft for you
In the game I just played, there was a very nasty harmonic that got created: the player across the table from me pimped out on sugar; the player to my right pimped out on corn; I got the factory going, and the player to my left was waffling a bit as to what exactly to do, but eventually settled on pimpin tobacco after it became clear to her that I was favouring coffee production over tobacco.
What this did is make it mutually beneficial for Mr Sugar and Ms Corn to assist each other! One of them would Craftsman and one would Captain, and in cases where either one of me or Ms Tobacco would do one of those, then they'd be free to choose Mayor, or Builder, or another advantageous selection at the time.
Because of the number of turns where more than two of Captain, Crafstman, Builder, and Mayor got chosen (especially when the Factories got into play, so Trader played a back seat), the game went very, very quickly. (And if you think about it, in a four player, you don't really require that all four of those get chosen in a turn, you only require that two of them get chosen in a turn; because of the way PR handles resource management, what ends up happening is over a rolling eight or ten action period, you can get all four of them happening the majority of the time, as long as two or three of them get chosen in a single turn, and then you don't really get the spare money showing up on cards as a real factor.)
Very interesting and unexpected rhythm. It was fascinating to watch. And laden with doom as well! After about turn three or four, I had a strong feeling there was absolutely nothing I could except enjoy the ride... 8)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 01:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 16:11 (UTC)And if I did, I'd almost certainly play 2-3 shorter games instead. The logistical problems of getting a sufficient number of interested (and dedicated) players together are very difficult to overcome.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 18:32 (UTC)On the other hand, soon your children will be of the age when they can be in your gaming group. Surely you can convince Sam that your whole family needs to spend a whole weekend afternoon/evening doing this one day! 8)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 20:42 (UTC)Adoption!
I can see the advertisement now.
"Wanted 2-4 young children, must be quick of mind, patient and possess a good attention span. Own dice an asset but not necessary."
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 21:04 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 21:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 22:11 (UTC)Btw, has anyone ever told you that you look, from the photo, like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 22:17 (UTC)I can't play the flute, but I'm reasonably adept at standing one leg. I'm no gentleman farmer however.