Review: Clash of Cultures:: Civ - Coca Leaf of my Youth

by abravenewgeek

Civ - The Coca Leaf of my Youth

My first memory of a Civilisation game was not the original Avalon Hill version, it was the Commodore Amiga version released in 1991. I had swapped my humble Atari ST with a mate for this privilege and do remember turning the machine back on as a 12 year old (after lights out on a school night, sound muted so the folks had no idea) to have "one more turn" so that the slow release of endorphins continued. Civ was probably my earliest video game addiction. Here is a flashback for anyone old/nostalgic enough to remember a screen that had probably been burned onto your retinas in one version or another:




Now, fast forward 20+ years, video games fell by the wayside and board gaming is the new addiction. And so we have Clash of Cultures by Christian Marcussen which I feel to be inspired by that same Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley video game. This review will assume knowledge of this game and the Civ/4x genre in general which I expect will be familiar to most folk reading here (thanks for reading by the way!). There is an obvious comparison to be made to another board game here though this game is definitely it's own man.

Tools of the Trade/Quell those Savages!

The game starts with each player having a settlement and a settler plastic miniature on a beautiful map, equidistance apart and separated by unrevealed tiles with a dreamy cloud background. There are about 250 miniatures in the box, so the end game really is a sight to behold to see player colour (red, green, blue and yellow) ships, armies, settlers forming trade routes, buildings (5 different types excluding Wonders), and brown barbarian tribes. If you consider painting these beauties, make a 200hr playlist to help you through! All other components are high end and tastefully done, the rules have the optimal amount of info with some great back reading (Hmm... I wonder if the designer has read Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.....). Not once have I had to post on BGG for rule clarifications - it's all there.

One very minor point - the wonders are represented by colourful 2d card drawings on a stand which look great though I would have loved to have a miniature in silver or white for each of the 7 wonders as a better beacon to see who is next on the list of siege warfare. These hard to acquire monuments are worth 5vp (with fantastic but balanced but benefits) and with a good end score about 50 or so, they really are the oilfields of the ancient world.

The map tiles are a clever touch with each being 4 hexes in size and cross shaped so upon being revealed, the player may place them in the way that best suits their position (which encourages rapid exploration so the map board is revealed fairly quickly) though also must satisfy a rule of placement: Land unit(s) exploring there must be able to move to a non-sea space, any sea spaces must be joined to surrounding sea spaces if possible and if not, then sea spaces must face outward. This becomes especially important when ships make an appearance as with the right tech advances, ships are able to travel around the edge of the map - a wonderful touch and not something I have personally seen in a game of it's type. It gives a real Marco Polo feeling to proceedings to a time when the world was not considered to be round/an oblate spheroid.

Civ building was never without it's bloodshed and every remembered empire had it's fair share of viking raiders/mongol hordes/Cardiff Football Club fans to repel. So, there are also map tiles that only contain forests, plains, deserts and mountains and these may contain a hostile barbarian tribe (the player picks which plain these "savages" will settle).

Music, Wahhabism, Slave Labour and Sculpture

The standard game last 6 rounds, separated by three turns and on each turn a player will get 3 actions and then play moves clockwise so after a minimum of 54 turns each, the game ends and the emperor is crowned - VPs are 1 for each city piece that is your colour, any wonders, 1/2 per advance, 2 per objective met and any special VPs from cards. Initial plays will be just over 1 hour per person after rules explanation though we now have this down to 45 minutes per player after about 5 games. Turn order is first established randomly and at the beginning of each turn, the player with the most combined culture and happiness will have initiative. I state "normally" a lot here though certain techs and card effects change the rules. A player may do 3 actions of the following on their turn:

Activate a City to do one of the following as an action:

Increase City Size: Add a building that has been researched and pay it's resource cost e.g. The Academy through the Writing advance. Initial City is size 1 and maximum city size is based on the number of cities that a player has though each city is only allowed one of each of the 5 buildings - very thematic as most great cities needed smaller satellite towns for growth.

Collect: Gather resources equal to the city's size and mood. Normally, surrounding hexes are used, can be collected from once in an action to yield a resource (including the hex where the city is based). Hexes containing other cities (including the player's own) and enemy units are off limits which nicely simulate areas of friendly control and logistics.

Other resources include Gold, Ideas, Culture and mood tokens which are obtained by other methods.

Build Units: Build any army, settler and ship units (if you have a port) and pay their costs. Number of units is equal to the city size and mood.

Subsequent activations of the same city in the sameeturn will reduce the mood of that city by one step - your peasants are happy to toil in their onion fields for only so long.

Or....

Civic Improvement: Cities are either neutral (gathering resources/producing units equal to their size, happy (considered plus one for this purpose) or angry (not doing too much really and unable to participate in trade routes). To increase the mood of a city one step requires the player to spend the amount of mood tokens (late 80s Acid House Smileys with sadness on the reverse to also track City happiness on the map) equal to the size of the city - fantastic thematic touch. So in a simple settlement, the people will become happier if a prisoner is tomato'ed in his stocks where as the larger cities will require something more elaborate to keep working/remove all thoughts of revolt e.g. Colosseum style bloodbath/the humiliation of a grown man with face paint. One action can be used for multiple cities/steps if the mood tokens allow.

Settle City: Use a Settler to build a settlement with neutral mood on the hex where they are located. The nomad is returned to your supply as he is clearly now tied down to the chick pea harvest in the new hamlet.

Advance: Normally, spend two food, ideas or gold (gold is a wildcard resource except in the use of culture and mood) to advance a technology area e.g. Military, Science, Trade, etc. NB. First advance in an area must always be the first on the list - after that is players choice. A player cube is then added to the correct box on the player board Some have prerequisites (noted in red on the player board for most techs) though the great mix here is that there is more player freedom to tailor their Civ from the 48 advances. There are a few core techs that rightfully are needed for other areas as doubtfully for example, without engineering, would the Egyptians ever built the pyramids?

Overall: More freedom than other Civ games without spilling over into the ridiculous territory of inventing taxation without understanding the basics of bartering and currency.

Move/Combat: Move upto three units/groups - a group is upto 3 units on the same hex (stacking limit is 4 which nicely simulates the lack of mega armies of the time and so that there is not too much emphasis on a combat as this not a wargame after all despite the combat element). Normally, land units move one space and if they move onto mountain are not able to move again this turn. Normally, Ships move to any available, joined sea hex. When ships and armies enter a hex containing enemy units/cities, combat occurs. Easy to resolve. Each side rolls a dice equal to the number of units, divide by 5 and round down and eliminate that many enemy units. Tactics advance allows the use of military cards once per round e.g. Archery, roll dice prior to combat. Cities/barbarian settlements without units are taken and a VP swing occurs though fortresses provide some protection. Unaccompanied settlers are butchered and eaten by other armies. Steel provides a fantastic advantage though is hard to research. Combat is streamlined, fast and fair.

Cultural Influence: Your city is allowed a cultural influence roll on a size 2 or greater enemy city in an attempt to change one of their buildings to your colour for scoring purposes only (1 vp swing). The range of your city is it's size in hexes and normally, on a roll of 5 or 6 you get to trade one of that player's buildings with an identical one of your own. Culture Tokens can be used to increase your cities range and add one to a die roll. You are allowed as many Influence rolls per turn though ONLY one success per turn. When a player's city has another player's city piece they are not allowed to use that city for cultural influence so a city far away from their sister cities may be have cultural influence from all other players.

NOW.... this is an incredible mechanic that finally makes the culture vulture engine for scoring VPs in games of this type interactive and most of all fun and realistic. No more hiding away. It is super thematic in that a blue city (let's say for example a Somali tribe on the country's northern peninsula) that is closer to the red player's cities (say an Arab tribe) than their own, then it will be easier for the red player to share their cultural influence. The Somali player will still have it's own government type, customs and technologies (see next section) though there will be that little touch of Arabia in that City. The Somali player's other city far from the coast and hence Arabic influence will probably not have this. An example that is still evident today with another being the Roman Influence still seen in ancient architecture in England. This is a beautiful touch to a game of this kind! Genius.

Eureka/Inshallah

All players start with the Mining (to collect ore form the nearby mountain hex) and Farming (to collect food and wood from the plains and forest) tech advances so start powers are symmetrical. I must add here that the way in which the advances and resource amounts are managed are uber elegant. The player mat below will track nearly everything except cards and mood/culture tokens:



A beautiful touch. Some of the techs really compliment each other e.g. PriestHood (pick a science advance without paying foor once per turn) and Philosophy (get a free idea when you advance a science subject) and there are many others to discover that really make for repeated plays. The slide on the board counts resource amounts very agreeably so the spreadsheet management aspect of a typical civ game is kept to a minimum so the player can become immersed in the gameplay and the developing map/dangers/opportunities around them.

Advancing a tech surrounded by a blue box will yield one culture token and a yellow box will yield one mood token which may trigger an event (see later!). The thing to remember here is you will know when an event is coming your way (the exceptions being the global events that have a small impact on each player).

There are 3 government types (Democracy, Autocracy and Theocracy) which the player eventually gets access to which will compliment your strategies and the engine that you have built/defend against the engine that is sweeping it's way across the map to your home territories. They are easy to change really only requiring one action to advance a different government type and all cubes in that government type are ported over to the player's choice of another government type - the revolution will be cardboardised! Sorry.

(Pre-Gunpowder) Russian Roulette

Now, Clash of Cultures has taken all the good parts of the best Civilisation games out there in recent years and distilled them into a very nutritious gaming stew. What I really feel sets this game apart is the replayability factor due to the plethora of cards. Events, Actions, Objectives and Wonders. This really makes it into a living, breathing world with famines, spawning barbarians, great statesman, volcanoes, migration, bumper harvests, tech synergies, population booms. So many cards that are thematically spot on.

When a player's culture or happiness score crosses a certain boundary then this will trigger an event. Some good, some bad though they will balance out and most of all will tell a story. There is a little symbol on many of the cards that will trigger an effect e.g. barbarian attack on one of your cities or find 2 gold and then some text of the event below e.g. cause all players without Sanitation to lower the mood of their cities or add 3 food due to a wonderful crop harvest or Civil War!

Some players, that prefer more control make find this chance element surprising at first but the bottom line is that nearly always, you choose when the events happen, not the game. So triggering an event, surrounded by barbarians with no armies in your cities is begging for a pillaging! Barbarians spawning near you are also a good source of gold as you get one for each unit killed and then can choose to raze their settlement for an extra gold or take their settlement as your own. The captured settlement will start angry as burning and looting is still the universally unpreferred method of conversion. There are a lot of medieval swings and roundabouts to negotiate in this game. In the event of playing with people that cannot tolerate any level of luck, then there are variants for this. I prefer the game played in the original manner as empire building was never going to be easy.

At the beginning of each round (and some other times) a player will get one action and objective card. The action card is basically a rule breaker and has two parts- the top part which will support development e.g. free build action or an extra advance in the same category after a previous advance. The bottom part of the card will have a military benefit that will require tactics and these action cards shape your short term decisions. In the event that a player gets three great action cards that allow him some extra tech advances early in the game, form an alliance with another player and attack from both sides!

Your objective cards are worth 2 vp each if satisfied at the end of the round and really are your medium term strategies. Again, the top half of if completed will be linked to development, expansion and enlightenment and the bottom half will be linked to cold hearted killing. The choice is yours and will hopefully involve the path of least resistance. Each player will get a minimum of 6 cards in a complete game so they really will shape your play as 12 points in the game is big.

Oh, and the game will end if at the end of a round, somebody has no cities so no player knock out here.

So, a pre-determined strategy will not always prevail here and having to adapt to the events, objectives and actions will nearly always provide an engaging evening of fun. Best played with a no holds barred approach with pleasantness turned down a little lower than normal. Pacts are perfectly allowed though not enforced. Ah, the knife. How it twists.

Further additions that could add to the fun:

Trading with barbarians – mini mood tokens for each player in the game. Tech trading with happy barbarians within 2 spaces and resource collection with another tech/card. Though fiddly. Only neutral and angry attack – events could change the mood.

Tokens to add to your action sheet to remind what advances affect your actions i.e. get 1 idea when collecting with an academy city so as not to forget.

A post gunpowder expansion.

White/silver Miniatures for the wonders

Cavalry Units post Husbandry advance that move 2 spaces.


OVERALL....

Despite the lengthy review, I have barely touched on the different strategies, trade routes, ship transport system, warships, fanaticism, art & sculpture, Public and free education, the draft!, nationalsim, economic liberty, the cool effects of all the wonders, player-player resource trading, roads, cartography, siegecraft, civil liberties. So much to discover for when you play.

This is a rich experience and I honestly think everyone should play this game at least once. There is a bit of unpredictability here but it goes with the territory of keeping the masses happy, the weather and the mood of the gods. This game will certainly be very, very fun and create stories and most of all great memories. An Epic Game that fits so much into the time. It really gives that slow burn of endorphins that the original Civ video game gave though with my friends and not staring at TV screen until 4am on a school night!

So, are you going to rule with the crossbow and mace like King Joffrey or are you going to be the next Thomas Sankara?

9 Out of 10 (A bloody great game that gets better with repeated play).