I finally got a chance to play this game last night and I decided this will be my 1st review in the last 3 months. I received this game as a trade and am glad that I did. I have been looking at getting this game since it came out but was not happy with the pricing model by Fred Distribution. I will get into that at later in the review. So without further delay...

(This review is based on a 2 player advanced game)

Componants:

I have the 2nd Edition by FRED Distribution.



The box is a decent size and seem quite sturdy. Inside the box are a couple hundred cards, some cubes & disks, Player boards, Player aids and a board.

The cards are small format and are IMHO better then the 1st edition cards as they are of a better quality and have nice rounded corners (I like rounded cards).



There are lots and lots of cards. There are 8 different decks along with 4 sets of starting cards and a start player card. I have to say that the insert is 100% useless. The cards wells are nowhere near deep enough to keep the cards inside it even with all the boards and rules sitting on top. I bagged the decks (I have not had a chance to make tuckboxes yet) and chucked the insert in the closet.



The rulebook is a tad bit confusing but it has ALOT to go over. the colored bullets help out in finding those important rules quickly.

The FRED version of the game comes with wooden cubes for tracking the player points as opposed to the cones and wooden disks instead of the glass beads in the 1st edition. The disks are very small but I think they would be easier to move around then little glass beads. this game is VERY fiddly and I will get into that more later, lets just say I am glad the disks are wood and not glass beads.



Now there are some errors and omissions in the FRED reprint. The board has a error at the 90 point mark on the culture track. it goes from 80 to 100 missing 90 - 99.



The game is also short player cubes for tracking things like Happiness and pacts. There are also 4 cards that are misprinted. FRED released a Fix kit for this in the form or 4 cards and a sticker kit that fixes the misprints and a pack of cubes and some extra disks of each color. Once the fix kit is applied you can hardly notice the stickers on the board unless you get real close to it.

Is this game worth $70? In my opinion no. As it has been said before you are not paying for the game components but the game mechanics and it shows in the quality of the parts. In all I would pay $40 - $50 for this but not $70. That is exactly what I did I traded a $40 game for it so I am glad I got it. My traded copy came with an unused fix kit so I didn't have to wait for it to get here. The card errata is very important. If you have extra money to burn then I suggest you wait till the 3rd printing to purchase it so you get the corrected items already in the game and pay the $70. While I don't condone the Minimum retail price by FRED if you must have it then wait till 3rd edition (Not like you have a choice right now unless you buy it after market)

I give the components a 8 out of 10 AFTER the Fix kit is supplied. The disks are very small and with the fiddliness of this game I think small cubes would have been a better choice



Gameplay:

Well the game is played in rounds and there are rules for 3 types of games. There is a simple game that uses the bare minimum of cards and is basically used for teaching the game to new players. There is the advanced game (which is what I will be reviewing here) and the Full game which introduces some advanced concepts.

Each player receives a set of yellow "population" disks, blue "resource" disks a set of cubes in their player colors, a player board, player aid and 5 cards.

Each player then sets up their player area as shown in the rules and the board is seeded with the Era "A" cards. There is a turn of choosing card for civil actions and the amount of civil actions you receive is based on your position in the turn order. Then everyone produces and the real game begins. Each player then does a series of phases in their turns (see the player aid below for a details explanation of the phases of your turn)



Each turn a set number of cards leaves the game (if there are cards on those spaces) and new cards come out from the Civil Deck. Once that deck runs out then an End of Era phase happens. Cards and Population leaves play and then it keeps going with the new Era. The advanced game ends when the Era II Civil deck runs out. I am not going to get into the rules as this is a pretty deep rules and I am not a rules explainer but I will get into a few of the things that stood out to me.



The Events

I find the Future / Current / Past events track an interesting mechanic. Each turn you will have the chance to draw from the military deck. after seeding the board at the start of your turn you have a chance to perform 1 political action. 1 of these options is to place a future event. when a future event is placed the top card of the current event deck is turned over and takes effect. Usually it is an event but sometimes it is a territory that can be colonized. The part I find interesting is that when the current events deck runs out (cards = number of players +2) the future events deck is shuffled and placed in the current event space. this means you have no idea when the event you placed is going to come up. I really enjoyed this.

Fiddliness

The game is FIDDLY! You are constantly moving disks around from your player board to your cards and back. During the production phase of your turn you are supposed to actually take resources from your player board to place on your farms then remove some of those disks to feed your people before you do the same with your mines and preform the same thing regarding corruption. Lots and lots of moving disks around. There is ALOT of bookkeeping in this game. I had read reviews talking about the fiddliness but until you play it you have no idea how many times you will be moving those little disks around on your turn.

Length

The game is pretty long. For 2 players the advanced game took about 3 hours. It moved fast though and I actually contemplated playing through the Era III deck. I actually had a little set back early in Era 1 where I was barely creating enough food for my population so by the time my Civ was running smoothly and I was ready to get moving the game ended. This is one game that after 3 hours I was wishing it would go longer so that I could see what happened to my Civ. I can't see playing this with 4 players as once the game gets moving and you get 6 or 7 civil actions per turn and some military actions the downtime would get to great. There isn't alot of interaction in the advanced game especially with 2 players as you remove the Pacts but it is enough work trying to keep your people fed and happy to worry about attacking your opponent.

I give the game a 9 out of 10 for gameplay. Yes this is a GREAT Civ game. I was worried about the lack of a board or the lack of different Civs in the game but this really works. I was really looking forward to seeing what happened to my Civ. I would recommend this to anyone as the advanced game but no more then 3 players.



Conclusion:

I really enjoyed the game. It is a VERY good Civ game. The game plays great with 2 and I think it will play just as good with 3. I am going to rate this a 8.5 out of 10 at this time but that may go up with further plays. I am subtracting 1 point from the game for it's fiddliness and .5 points for the price of the game. Yes I didn't pay retail but I think that it is over priced for what is in the box.