Civilisation

So...
This is a post about a game that I play so if you aren't interested in reading about it then skip this post.

The game in brief:
Civilisation the board game is based on a pc game which is hugely successful.
You basically build up a civilisation (surprise surprise) starting from the Ancient era, working your way through the Medieval era, the Industrial era and ending in the Modern era.
You play on a huge map of the world which is broken up into different areas and a town can be built in each area to provide you with resources with which to increase your wealth and build up an army, increase your tech level etcetc.
I just read that paragraph and I thought I'd better mention that the game is slightly more complicated than I make it seem. Think Risk, only a hundred times more complicated.

Initial comments:
The game takes ages to play - when we played on Saturday night we played from about 9pm until 1am and only got through the Ancient era. Fortunately it is entirely worth the investment of time because the game is top-notch. Really you need to either be playing somewhere where you can leave the game set up and play over multiple nights or you need to play all day on a weekend or something like that.

Problems:
There are problems with tha game although how you can get around them is beyond me. One problem is the random resource generation. What happens is that most areas on the map have an individual resource. Some are blank and some have other more nasty effects (ie the plague). Each individual resource gives you more money per turn and if you can get a monopoly on a resource (3 or more) then you get huge amounts of cash each turn. The problem with this is that someone always loses out on the resouce distribution. Unfortunately this generally means that they are playing the game at a huge disadvantage and if they dont get wiped out really early on it is only because the other players feel sorry for them and leave them alone so that they can at least keep playing. Even this is pointless though because they have no chance to really win as they will always be behind on economy.
The second problem is also to do with the resource distribution. If you get a monopoly early on then you are a target. There are no two ways about it. A monopoly is really powerful and the only way for the other players to keep up is to beat you down until you are no longer a threat.

Our games:
Russ like to play fairly peacefully although any (and I mean ANY) slight move against him will be treated as an act of war and Russ will do everything he can (including taking himself out of the game) to do as much damage to you as possible.
Adam is a complete pacifist. He will only build army units to be used in defense and I don't recall him ever retaliating to an attack either.
Reece is still a bit of an unknown quantity but in our last game he had an opportunity to attack Russ and walk away with some easy territory but chose not to. I know Reece too well to chalk this up to his wanting to play the game peacefully - my best guess is that attacking Russ would have left me in a better position so he chose to not increase his own power in order to keep my power down.
Badger is entirely untrustworthy. He plays fairly conservatively so as to ensure that he does not draw attention to himself but if he sees an oppertunity he will take it. In our last game he waited until I was tied up fending off Russ and then stole a key territory from me. If the game had continued much longer I think he almost certainly would have attacked me in force.

Overall I can definately say "trust no-one" in this game. No matter what treaties you agree on or how peacefully someone seems to be playing, if they see an oppertunity to attack without fear of retaliation then they will take it. A perfect example of this is my situation with Badger in our last game. We had lots of trade going on and there was no real reason to attack each other. Badger made some troops movements which were in my general direction but he claimed he was setting them up to invade Reece who was indeed a more obvious target (lots of land to protect and not many troops to do it with). The time came for attacking Reece (Badger bought a ship) and Badger took one of my territories...

As for myself, I suppose I can't be trusted in this game either. I would like to get some decent peace treaties going with some people and build power from that but it never seems to go that way.
In the last game we played I deliberately placed one of my starting units next to Russ so that we could trade but in the end Russ wouldn't trade and I noticed that he was weak and took one of his territories to bring down his economy. In turn Russ launched a full scale war against me and although I won the war I suffered huge losses and was in quite a weak position.

So anyway, I've rambled enough now I think. No doubt Russ and Badger will have some comments to post about what I have said :-) The only conclusions I can really draw from the games I have played are 1. pray for decent resources - if you don't get them then you never really get into the game at all. 2. don't trust anyone. with the exception of Adam, everyone I have played against has gone back on their word at one point or another. 3. try not to attract attention to yourself. it's difficult to do but if you make yourself into an attractive target then someone (or everyone) will come for you.

ttfn