Note that I will not bother going into much detail about rules as these have been covered amply and well in other reviews ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/265911 and http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/262021 are two I would recommend), but will focus mainly on some issues touched on in these forums that people might otherwise have considered deal-breakers in deciding whether to purchase CoP.
Map, components:
Others have already mentioned the extraordinary sturdiness of the box (like that of Commands & Colors: Ancients, or Winds Of Plunder). But this aside, the most frequent critique leveled against CoP is that the components are of poor quality. As another BGG member has already stated: "If you're a Eurogamer, you'll be disappointed; if you're a wargamer, you'll be impressed". Though not hard-mounted like Winds of Plunder (a game with significantly less gameplay-value), CoP's card-stock board is quite satisfactory and much more sturdy than paper would have been. Though there's lots of dead space around the edges of this largish map, it is pleasantly colorful, and provides a good frame of reference for the playing area in the south Pacific between Australia and South America.
Where CoP is most likely to lose an audience of Euro-purists is in using cardboard counters for its playing-pieces. People who decry this sad state of affairs, however, seem to be missing the point that one's counters need to be turned face-down to bluff or conceal the type and number of one's units in a hex that could potentially face enemy attack, something that could not be done at all with plastic minis or wooden cubes.
Critics have a more valid point in saying that the player-colors could have been better chosen, though saying these consist of "white, and three shades of beige" is just gratuitous inaccuracy under cover of hip cleverness. It appears rather that an attempt was made to select player colors from a tropical-inspired palette, with the results being light versions of: coconut-white, banana-yellow, kiwi-green and khaki. Color-blind players appear to have problems distinguishing the non-white player colors, though orienting one's pieces can apprently mitigate much of that. Though it is a shame that the player-colors were not more textured to eliminate that problem completely, they do not otherwise appear to be as onerously difficult to differentiate as has been described.
Theme:
I also don't understand those who say CoP's theme is tacked-on, and could just as easily be about space exploration. After actually playing CoP, its theme is anything but merely "tacked-on". For those who want to see a tacked-on Polynesian theme, I propose that the simple canoe-launching mechanics of Tongiaki could be about anything: CoP is the game that Tongiaki made me yearn for (not that I particularly dislike Tongiaki, of course: it's just no CoP). In CoP not only do players have some control over where they'd like to explore and where they choose to settle, but if their corner of the Pacific turns out to be empty of attractive settlement prospects, they can always shift strategies and slip loose the canoes of war against their luckier neighbors, or against the independant islands already printed on the board. The well-researched "Arts and Culture" cards that can (and should) be randomly purchased for one's tribe certainly aid in cementing the theme, as they are not over-powered, but supply appropriate benefits to their owner, shaping subsequent gameplay thereby. A space-themed game employing cards, on the other hand, would necessarily have artificial goals and concepts -- such as Nexus Ops' rubium, for instance -- whereas players' goals and playing styles in CoP develop organically from cards received, including one's level of success in discovering worthwhile island groups in one's corner of the ocean, as well as the apparent success of one's neighbors in doing the same.
Gameplay:
As mentioned previously, I appreciate CoP's gameplay much more than its comparable brethren, Winds of Plunder (a fellow wargame-euro hybrid, also by GMT), and Tongiaki (a Polynesian-themed predecessor). I like the feeling of strategic openness in CoP gameplay: you can choose to go off and explore in these directions here, or you can attack those folk over there and try to take away their stuff. All that matters is your eventual VP total, regardless of how you get there. Naked aggression is unlikely to be the primary means to success, however, as combat is basically a 50-50 roll-off (not an unrealistic mechanic for this type of combat) until one side has driven the other from the field. Acquired cards can help in these battles (limit 1 per battle), but even the strongest are generally not powerful enough to decisively tip the balance in the holder's favor. What this means is combat must be used sparingly and only when tactics or necessity demand. Players who use combat as their entire strategy will find they lose their old islands to counter-attacks as fast as they gain new ones -- while losing fighters faster than they can be replaced -- essentially treading water while those following a more balanced strategy progress.
Canoe-lines are a mechanic used to connect together the various island chains in one's empire, and expedite transport of colonists and troops between them. Since a transport canoe rarely leaves the line once it joins it, die-hard Euro fans might even use their wooden boat-meeples (beeples?) from Tongiaki to add back in some of the 3-D wooden goodness they feel might otherwise be missing from the game.
Another place where CoP might lose its euro fans is in the general fiddliness associated with its use of cardboard counters for pieces. Again, counters are generally turned upside-down for fog-of-war and bluffing purposes. Island discovery is also a random chit-pull process that seems to off-put some, especially as blind luck determines whether one finds one island paradise after another, or mile upon empty mile of open ocean. On the back of each chit is a number of knots (varying from 1 to 3) equivalent to a push-your-luck/action-point system where one has five movement points they can spend safely, but doesn't know beforehand just how many knots the next hex of exploration will cost. If you overshoot your limit, that last hex is resolved but the explorer is lost at sea, causing you to lose your opportunity to explore the following turn. Thus the overall effect of this random chit-pull is that in some games Hawaii will be discovered at the full cost of three knots, but occasionally someone will get lucky and the big island group will require only one knot of effort. While this process may strike some as inelegant, it's hard to see how else such a variable discovery-cost mechanic could be implemented while keeping the ratios of 3-, 2- and 1-knot costs relatively constant.
Finally, although the stated playing-time on the box is 60-90 minutes, I can see this game possibly starting to wear out its welcome in certain situations (such as a game-group's first play or two of the game, or 2-player bouts when a higher level of VP are required, or multiplayer games where frequent combat on everyone's part retards the growth of all), possibly reaching into 180 minutes. In most cases though I can see play-time going down as participants gain experience in the game.
Rules:
The blurb on the outside of the box claims that the game takes only 10-15 min to learn, but I believe that's only true if someone who knows the game is explaining it, as reading/internalizing the nine pages of rules for the basic game -- to say nothing of subsequently passing them on to other players -- will certainly take longer. A minor complaint, to be sure.
Of slightly more concern is that the CoP ruleset displays a certain lack of clarity on some issues, such as how exactly the implementation of being blown off-course in the exploration phase works (answer: you are blown from the intended destination hex, not the departure one); or when transport canoes can or cannot enter a space containing an opposing counter (answer: they can go anywhere a war canoe can go while accompanied by a war canoe; otherwise they can only enter non-occupied hexes). Careful re-reading will generally allow one to come to appropriate interpretations in most of these situations, but it would be far preferable to have all relevant rules on a subject unambiguously stated under one heading rather than cobbling them from separate sections or being told in a FAQ how the answer to a question can be "implied" from the ruleset. On a more positive note, some enterprising BGG members have already started an initiative to address these gaps in the ruleset: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcnxr79f_11hh8zdxtp
These occasional false steps aside, however, the rules really are very easy to grasp for the most part, and communicate the overall structure of the game quite well.
Conclusion:
The upshot of all this is that even if there are some passing inelegancies in the implementation of some mechanics, they appear to be justified in the effects they are meant to produce, and there certainly doesn't appear to be a more convenient way to achieve them. For me, the interactions between players and their empires that result from these mechanics is engrossing enough that I don't mind the perceived inelegance, nor even the passage of time as we play. This immersion quality to a game far outweighs for me any gripes about card-stock boards or lack of color-colored villages. I like that players are not forced into any predetermined strategy, nor is combat a catch-up mechanic designed to make up for one's initial blunders. Planning and forethought are needed to implement a successful strategy. I predict the winning player will typically have gained about 2/3 of their points from exploration, and split the remaining third or so between combat and card purchases. As both a wargamer and a euro-fan, I applaud Kevin McPartland's impressive effort and look forward to playing Conquest of Paradise for years to come!
Last edited on 2008-01-28 07:01:07 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:16 am
