Re: civilization

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 01:51:35 GMT, bbottorff@xxxxxxxxxx (Boyd Bottorff)
wrote:

>> It covers only the ancient era, and only the civilizations around the
>> Mediterranean, but it does have technology advances. The focus is on
>> building cities to get trade goods, and then trading those with other
>> players in order to buy technology. Most people agree that the
>> Advanced Civilization expansion makes it better, but it tends to take
>> an hour or two longer.
>
>I thought that way earlier in my life, but I think now I'ld probably do
>just the basic game-- more strategy because your civ advance choices are
>a bit more limited.

That was my original impression after playing Advanced Civ. once, but
years later I came back to it and changed my mind: the problem with
the limits in regular Civ is that they tend to force certain
strategies, and indeed different strategies for different civs, when
they're combined with the AST (e.g., certain civs _must_ buy
Mysticism, because otherwise they can't the three colors soon enough).
Also, missing an AST advancement isn't as cripping in Advanced Civ:
in regular Civ, it means you lose, period, which kind of kills the fun
of the game for the remainded of the game; in Advanced Civ, you still
have a good chance to win.
>
>However, to have a decent game of it, you really need at least five
>players... and it really plays at its best with seven.

Advanced Civ is a bit touchier about the desired number of
players--something like you want an odd number, if I recall
correctly--otherwise some players have wide open spaces and others are
crowded.

Scott Orr
.