CAVEAT - these are my initial thoughts after playing just one five player game

Picked this up at Essen and now have had chance to play it. I enjoyed it and really want to like it. The mechanisms were slick and worked well together and the game played quickly (2 hours including explanations) for a game of this scale. However, all five of us pretty much adopted the same approach in terms of securing personalities (victory points)

- expand to five cities and take a King
- build 3 temples for a citizen
- secure a knowledge breakthrough for a Scholar
- go for a second King, citizen and second/third Scholar (in some order)
- occupy 7 sea spaces and take a Navigation

By this time 2 or 3 of us had 7 personalities and needed one more to win the game. All the Kings, Scholars and Citizens had gone and it wasn't really practical to get a second navigation so it was simply a case of building a large enough army to go and smash someone's temple to earn the General.

Now all this sounds fine and it worked pretty well but to be honest I cannot see why this approach wouldn't always be used. In a 5 player game, 4 of the players can get two Kings reasonably easily (and it's just a race to make sure you're not the one left out) but you certainly won't get three, 1 player will get two temples (possibly the one who missed out on the 2nd King) but it would be very hard to get a third before they have all gone; 3 players should be able to get two Scholars (three if you're really lucky). Most players can get a navigation which leaves you needing 1 or 2 Generals. But waging war is expensive and, as with many multi-player conflict situations, will probably just benefit the other players in the long run so if you go for your generals early then you will miss out on one of the other personalities and also be in a wekened position compared to your opponents. Therefore it makes sense to start off by picking the low lying fruit (5 cities, 3 temples and a know-how) and then scrap for the surplus in these categories before leaving the Generals until the end (when it doesn't matter if you have weakened yourself because the game has ended)

So although the game sort of suggests there are different strategies my concern is that, in practice, there is only one.

Of course we've only had one game and I will certainly play more and vary the approach - my initial analysis could quite easily be wrong and I also have to consider that 'group think' may play a part. However, whilst I did enjoy the game, if my concerns prove founded then the game will just become an exercise in optimising your position to implement the strategy before any one else does which means it will have no long term replayability for me.

Anyone else had similar thoughts or can dispel my fears?

After one play, I can say that in our four-player game no two players adopted the same route to the VPs. One player started in Greece and built Temples early on, then fleets and cities (he won); another built Temples consistently thoughout the game; I concentrated on Scholars (securing three or four), and didn't build a temple all game - while others were grabbing early kings and temples, I was making sure that I was more advanced than they were in time for a "land grab" to claim three kings in pretty quick succession. I *would* have won if I'd managed to find a temple or two to sack (I just couldn't get at the first two players); the losing player concentrated on building cities and armies (having seemingly forgotten how else to get victory point cards).

I couldn't see a dominant strategy in all that, to be honest - certainly my own play was "sub-optimal", continuing a war against the weakest player who was in my way instead of trying to get an agreement that would have seen me able to get at the leading player - but it was pretty much neck-and-neck for the personalities between three of us.

Certainly a balanced building strategy - a king or two, a temple or two, a scholar or two etc - is going to be attractive to most players, but I have a feeling that deliberately unbalanced strategies can be made to work. If I get the chance to play at the weekend, I might try a Ghengis Khan approach - sack all before me, THEN build the monuments for my successors to squabble over.

Richard, I understand what you've said but I'm still not convinced. The limitation of the numbers of Personalities means that, for example, it will be very difficult to get more than 2 King cards (at least with 5 players). By the time you get in a position to take 15 provinces there's a good chance that they've already been snapped up. Therefore that makes an expanionist strategy difficult.

It seems like in your game no one adopted a military strategy and I'm not sure it's viable because, as I've said above going to war is not cheap and someone on the board will benefit from it. I'll be interested in your findings if you do adopt the 'Genghis Khan' apporach in your next game (I will also try that but I've another 12 Essen games to get through so it may be a while before Antike gets back to the table )

Having picked off the low lying fuit (and why wouldn't someone do that) it seems the investment approach is the only sensible one - that may be temples or knowledge or a combination of both.

You all seem to go for the peaceful approach. So did my three opponents when I played. I did not play along: I built a temple in iron and started to build armies. My neighbour was doing very well, so I took some of his temples. Now I was in the lead. He reacted and destroyed most of my armies. After some more turns I was in a comfortable third place and he was dead last.
Unfortunately, the other two players were being peaceful and I had no way to attack the person that was leading. I could only attack the person in second place, and that would leave me open for attacks from mister four, who wanted revenge. The guy in second place wanted to attack mr one, but he was too late...

The aggressive approach works in the short term, destroying a temple = 1 VP, which is easy money. Unfortunately, destroying a temple costs a lot of troops, so it leaves you open for attacks. So I fear that it's only useful in the last phase of the game. It may be a nice climax to the game, we'll see after some more plays.

As counter point: In tonight's four player game I built a temple on my first turn. On the next few turns I built two more temples so that I had a temple on each of my three initial cities for 1VP. I then expanded slowly, only as fast as needed to keep on building more temples. By the end of the game I had built 11 temples (3 VPs), been the first to buy 3 advances (3VPs), occupied 11 cities (2VPs), and occupied 7 sea districts (1 VP) for the win. I never once engaged in combat, tho I did have a nicely thick wall of military units and temples along my front line (typically 5 units plus a temple).

I won my third game of Antike by getting the third king!

Do you feel there will be many different strategies to win, a few, or just the one? It seems like any amount of military action simply hurts the 2 players involved, and indirectly helps all the rest. Is "steady expansion" too boring to give the game any long-term appeal?

How many players were in this game?

I'm not sure this is a counter point as it seems to support the points I was making. You got very similar VP's as me except I had one General which was the final vp acquired.

Has anyone in a 4-6 player game won with a military approach?

Not yet, but it seems to be a matter of playing style of the group.
I cannot imagine a peaceful player winning in a game with three agressive players.

When we tried the game out in Essen I played Babylonians and went for expansion/army. Öyvind played the phoenicians and had a comfort trip. He had won, if we didn't ended. He was out to crush with his superior fleet.

It is of course not that good to go for war, but I will have to play more games before I tell that it is a bad idea to have som armies rattling around.

You all know that you can found cities after ANY action you just performed, so the more armies you move around, the better the options for more cities?

/Strömer, from Sweden

It's like many other games - if you build military units and don't use them to achieve something, you've wasted units; at the same time, if you're fighting another player BOTH of you are losing resources, so you'd better make sure that you're picking on a leading player rather than leaving him to cruise to an easy victory. This was my mistake in the game I played - after some initial knowledge advances, I pursued a military strategy that targetted the wrong player - although I scored points by taking 15 cities, I should have done more about the leader. He was a tough nut to crack, though, as he'd been aiming to get 2 VPs for naval power, and all those fleets were a powerful disincentive to my huge army.

As for being peaceful, I had 17 legions on the board for most of the game; I ended two points behind the winner because I had failed to concentrate on actions that would earn points, namely temple-trashing.

There are 9 kings, 8 philosophers, 5 admirals, 6 builders and 7 generals - 35 in total. Yet the admirals and generals appear to be perceived as something that you can pick up later, after the cities and temples have been built. I wonder if that is a flaw in the game, or a flaw in our thinking.

One other point occurs to me - which side of the board are people playing? I can see competition for the admiral cards being fiercer on the Western Med side of the board; we played in the East, and there wasny much scope for 2 of the 4 players to get an admiral (indeed, I decided there was no point in my buying fleets, as it would have only seen me hemmed in on the eastern edge; at least my legions got the chance to march west).