Civilization the Board Game.

[KnowTheToe]

Over Christmas shopping season, I ran into Civilization the board game and had to resist buying it because I knew nothing about it and had few who would play it.

Well, Has anyone here played it?

I also would like to know about Settlers of Catan. I see it, and hear good things about it, but know nothing about the structure of the game.

 

[Mark]

I hear good things about Catan, as a simple game that is fun but still gets old fairly fast (though has add-ons.)

I used to play the original Civ and it's a blast. The more people the merrier. No dice. Civilization cards that show your society's growth (from mysticism through democracy through philosophy, metalurgy through architecture and engineering, etc.) bought with commodity cards (grain, gold, etc. with varying values and exponentially more valuable in greater numbers) that you trade with others each turn in some potentially shady dealing phases. You progress both culturally and along a timeline through the ages while attempting to meet a combination of criteria for victory. Kinda a cross between Risk and Diplomacy. We used to have seven player games that would last for ten or twelve hours (with food breaks and lots of beer, of course.)

 

[d20Dwarf]

Settlers of Catan is excellent, and even the non-gamers will enjoy it. The board is composed of tiles that are shufffled and placed in random order each game, and each tile has a random output value. You place towns and roads initially to determine your commodities, and then on each turn you roll the dice. The roll determines which commodities are produced that turn, and anyone with a town adjacent to that commodity gets cards. You can use your commodities to build new roads and towns, upgrade towns to cities, or to purchase cards that could be soldiers, market influences, etc. Players are allowed to trade commodities on their turn. You gain points based on the number of roads, towns, and cities you build (as well as for longest road and largest army), first player I believe to 10 or 15, wins.

The premise and gameplay are very simple but the dynamics of the game shift each time you play it. In my opinion, the replay value is high.

 

[Henry]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe there is a NEW version of Civ as a board game. This one is based off of Sid Meier's take on Civilization (in other words, based off of the Computer Game).

This game is the FIRST time a board game was based off of a computer game, that was in turn based off of an earlier board game, to my knowledge.

The original Civ Board game, the only one I can speak for, was great fun, and lasted as Mark said, for the better part of a day. If you ever find the original, plus its expansion, Advanced Civilization (both by the defunct Avalon Hill), it's highly worth it.

 

[Mercule]

My group of friends plays both the original Civ and Settlers with some regularity.

Settlers is a great game, especially if you add the Cities and Knights expansion and the 5-6 player expansions. We don't much care for the Seafarers expansion, but I could see the draw. It's a great game.

Civ plays best with 6-7 people, so we don't get together for it as often as I'd like (it's probably my favorite board game). It's _not_ a war game, despite appearances. You take an ancient civilization from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Most of the game relies on managing resources (such as they are) and trading well with other players. I'd definitely recommend getting the Advanced Civilization box, too, though. Unfortunately, this game is, as someone else said, out of print.

I know little about the new version, other than it is supposed to be based on the computer game by Sid Meier. Sounds intriguing, but I'm sad the old one is gone.

 

[Sixchan]

Well, all I can remember of it is that it has in the region of 120 pieces. That's a LOT. You might want to try looking around on either Civfanatics or Apolyton. If you happen to ask on either of the forums though, don't say I sent you. I didn't leave on good terms.

 

[Utrecht]

Henry,

You are quite correct, the new Civilization board game is based upon the Sid Meier computer came series and is published by the same folks who make Age of Imperialism.

The original game was an old Avalon Hill games that I beleive Hasbro owns the rights to now.

Settlers of Cataan has 2 expansion packs:

Seafarers of Cataan and Castles and Kings - additionallly they sell 5-6 player expansion packs for each of the expansions. Starfarers of Cataan and Settlers of Canaan are both different games and not affiliated with the Original Settlers which won game of the year in 1995.

 

[buzz]

NEW Civ

I bought the new Civ game (the one based on Sid Meier's computer game) for a friend of mine as a gift. So far, we've played it once. The game board is huge (we had to lay it out on the floor), and there's something like *700* plastic pieces. The rulebook is about 35 pages.

You can play Basic or Advanced rules. We got together six people and played a game using Basic. After about six hours, we had to just stop. If we were anywhere close to ending the game, it certianly wasn't obvious to me.

The game plays sort of like an amped-up version of Risk. I can't give you details due my foggy memory, but I know that at least two of us came away from the game saying, "I wish I had a laptop here to keep track of all the stuff you have to do..." Basically, I think most of us found it way too complicated. I shudder to think what would have happened if we'd played the Advanced version. And this coming from a guy who plays HERO. Perhaps I simply have less patience for boardgames.

FWIW, you can dowload a PDF of the rulebook from the manufacturer's Web site.
http://www.eaglegames.net/products/CIV/civ_resources.shtml

Setters of Catan, otoh, is fantastic. Buy it, play it.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Can Settlers be played with two players?

Maybe I should open this up a little. I am looking for fun games to play with my wife, who loves board games (non military strat war) and dislikes roleplaying. We play tons of different card games, occasional Monopoly etc, but I wanted to find something new. Any suggestions?

I wanted to know about Civ so I could play with my friends.

 

[Sir Edgar]

Yep, I saw the game demo at Gen Con and I just took another look at the huge box it comes in at the store this weekend. It had hardly any description on the back so it's difficult to say.

But I've played every version of the computer game series and it is great. It's obviously different as I saw regions of the map are labeled like "Mississippi" and "Congo", I believe. I'm sure it takes longer to play than Axis & Allies, also a great game. But I'd try it if I had the chance.

Basically, the goal of game is to take a tribe of settlers, build a city, grow it, expand by building more cities, develop technology and military forces, and create the greatest, most advanced, and most powerful civilization in the world.

I would also recommend trying Civilization III on PC. It just came out with an expansion set a couple of months ago. It's definitely more complex than the board game, but easy to learn once you understand the basic concepts. VERY addictive!