Something cheesy this way comes
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[The Franchise]
[Sarah]
[Ari EB]
[Elanit]
[ALG]
[Alon]
[Yutopia]
[Code Monkey Ramblings]
Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in the "thegameiam" journal:
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04:38 pm
[Link] |
Answers
Parasailing was awesome. As Sarah put it, "it's cheaper than therapy and so safe that you don't have to sign a liability waiver."
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There was a Civ game at a friend's house yesterday. One new player, stoic rule in effect, no civ card limit. I drew Babylon, and had one of my best trading games ever. My border was pretty much solely ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) georgetowner (Assyria) and after some initial kerfluffle, we settled down in a way which was much more to my benefit than his. Matt left one turn before we finished (yes, we actually finished the game on shabbat, with enough time to davven minha!), and we declared his stuff to be "pirates" at that point, but I think that the final outcome would have been a lot closer had he not left. I had just lost about half of everything to a civil war (with Matt as the beneficiary), and he would have really had an opportunity to hand my butt to me.
My final score was 4607, and toward the end of the game I had the overwhelming majority of the high-point-value cards (Philosophy, Democracy, Monotheism, Theology, Mathematics, Mining).
I tried one thing this game to great success: I didn't buy low-value cards at the beginning. My first four cards were Music, Deism, Agriculture, and Engineering, in that order. The other trading key is that the five and six card stack are totally the best ones to collect.
Of additional note is the steady improvement of shoshiboo (Africa), who finished second - she's gotten a lot more aggressive, and that's doing well for her.
I do think that a civ card limit would prevent one player (me, in this case) from running away with the score - I probably ended with about 20 civ cards.
===
Gov. Palin's resignation is disappointing to me - I do understand that she's become a whipping girl for the left wing, and that due to this, the Alaskan government may be better off without her than with her. However, it's still disappointing: an essential component of the Western-style-grit which I found so appealing is never surrendering in the face of adversity. So I'm disappointed.
===
From Ari comes this Sluggy Freelance image. Now THAT is an American sentiment, in full-on Toby Keith style...
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  happy
Current Music: Zoe Keating, "Fern"
Tags: civilization, comics, politics, travel
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10:21 pm
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In keeping with the times
The Civilization game was downsized - this is the first time I've played a four-player game, and it was a very interesting change. I (Asia) pulled ahead of Jonah (Babylon) in the last turn for the win - he and I were the most aggressive players by far.
Interesting tidbits:
Now I understand what those dotted lines are for - basically Turkey represents the Western border of the map.
Civil War came up three times, but had no effect for two of them.
Egypt (Susan) was in the lead for the first half of the game, but then was hit on successive turns with a Civil War, followed by Flood AND Famine. Yikes. Apparently a bunch of slaves escaped shortly thereafter.
The impact of calamities was much greater than it is in larger games, becuase they still all come up, and there's no chance of avoiding secondary effects.
I had my first tax revolt (hah! I must be a Republican!) and I learned exactly how much that sucks: all of the revolting cities go and join a foreign power. Worse than piracy.
The strategy of "hope for Barbarian Hordes becuase they'll have to go through someone else to get to me" does not work well - Avidan (Assyria) was thereafter cut off from the Northlands, and I ended up with a nice peaceful Eastern border.
In that game a navy was all but useless.
===
In other news, the absinthe glasses & spoons came from Absinthe Devil (hehe), so we got to try them out: it definitely improves the overall experience. Yum!
===
Now back to finishing up my class on kashering a kitchen for Pesah...
Current Location: home
Current Music: Innaway, "Post FM"
Tags: absinthe, civilization, religion
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10:24 am
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Some things stay the same
Sarah is up in Boston with her family and our new nephew, so as always when she's not here, it's Civilization time!
I was Egypt, and there was noone playing Crete. It was not a terribly warlike game, other than some excellent skirmishes between Assyria (Andrew) and I. We did play with the western expansion, and had 8 people. I got to 14 cards, but only had some of the selections I did because we had called the game to end at 7ish. It was surprisingly close, and the calamities right at the end could have easily radically reshaped the outcome (Michael had 4, and I was a civil war beneficiary).
Civil war came up a lot, and seemed to start at Assyria and go clockwise.
The final scores were:
Asia (Ari) 3284
Egypt (David) 3208
Africa (Michael) 3011
Iberia (Matt) 2942
Thrace (Shoshana) 2671
Illyria (Elanit) 2510
Babylon (Martin) 2277
Assyria (Andrew) 2201
So yes, the EB domination continues, and I continue in my "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" second place string.
Current Location: home
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Van Halen, "Best of Both Worlds"
Tags: civilization
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06:55 pm
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n00bz g3t l33t
I had a newbie civilization game yesterday - there were seven players, and I was the only one who had played before. My intention was to broaden the pool of prospective players for future games, and perhaps shake up the crowd a bit. I think it was a smashing success - I suspect that many if not all of the players would like to do so again.
I played Africa (I was going to do either Asia or Crete) because we had two last-minute cancellations - I filled Illyria's spot but wasn't able to get a second new player quickly. Unsurprisingly, I won, but I was pleasantly surprised at how close the game was - if the last turn had gone differently (and I hadn't gotten rid of Iconoclasm & Heresy) I could easily have come in third. Awesome!
We didn't get as far in turns as in other games, and I attribute that to the rule explanations - we were just getting into the Iron age, and only three players ended in it.
Scores:
Africa 2304
Italy 1884
Illyria 1334
Thrace 2153
Assyria 1870
Babylon 1535
Egypt 2048
We put Civil War and Civil Disorder back to their original positions, and I think that worked VERY well - in fact, I think I'm going to recommend going back to that approach for all of the games. Interestingly, it came up three times, and the first time, the victim had the most units in stock, so no calamity happened. The other two times, the victim only had about 39 total points on the board, meaning that he only lost 4 - so not so bad, all told. I got nailed with superstition four times (!), and at the end of the game the barbarians/pirates were substantially stronger than the rest of us: eight cities which could have been fully supported (!).
There was a strongly amusing moment where one person who was extremely calamity-averse (Babylon) had said that the whole trading thing wasn't going to be worth it at all - this ended up being an object lesson in the virtue and value of free-trade, and that player had to be reminded that the isolationism in the 2008 presidential race was coming from the Democrats (the player is a staunch Republican)...
Illyria basically got himself into a bind right at the beginning, because Italy and Thrace divided up Europe much the way that Spain and Portugal divided up South America, and he wasn't in on the negotiations. He ended up effectively locked into Southern Greece.
One substantial note: I've got to start making seudah shlishit plans - I keep getting to mid afternoon, and realizing that I hadn't planned for anything else to eat.
And there was a casualty: the lid to the magic crock pot cracked and broke. :( That crock pot has been to a huge number of places, and I think I can get a replacement lid, but it's surprisingly close in price to just getting a new pot entirely.
Current Location: home
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: States of Melba, "Lost Innocence"
Tags: civilization
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10:05 pm
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Civilization!
Thank you to everyone who seeded the civilization game during March:
The votes went like this: Andrew 56, Elanit 54 (3 1st place), David 54 (2 1st place), Matt 42, Keith 41, Michael 28, Sarah 25 (!) and Shoshana 23. Sarah is of course the "bye." I tried a different strategy this game: I figured I haven't treated civilization as a wargame in a really long time, so it was worth a shot - you can judge for yourself how it worked out.
The variations we played were:
1) 15 card limit. This didn't actually come into play, because when we ended (at the 1300 marker on the AST, near havdalah), the leader had 14 cards.
2) stoic option. This also didn't come into play - noone happened to get more than two calamities at the end of a turn.
3) Civil war <-> civil disorder. Matt pointed out that having civil war come up as a "4" does provide a lot of "shake the board up" impetus - after each civil war in this game, the couple of people who were far behind the others got a quick boost for a while. Perhaps we should go back to regular?
4) Selecting countries based on pseudorandom order. Based on a name based algorithm, we selected in order: Shoshana picked Babylon, Matt picked Egypt, Keith picked Africa, I picked Assyria, Elanit picked Illyria, Andrew picked Crete, and Michael picked Thrace.
Here's the final score:
Elanit - 3573
Matt - 3190
Shoshana - 3120
Michael - 3034
Keith - 2652
Andrew - 2616
David - 2107
And here is the bracket:
I spent the vast majority of the game attacking Andrew and Michael - largely fruitlessly. However, it is noteworthy that they had to use an awful lot of resources in fighting with me, so I think that the warfare did serve to take us all down. Shoshana and I had a peaceful border through the entire game (!) although I've got to say that I was pretty darn tempted to break it about every turn - there were several cities which would have been ripe for the cracking.
One thing I've noticed is that having lots of cities on the board = larger treasury = fewer farmers = gets to move last. Perhaps one of the problems with my war strategy is that I didn't strategically reduce my population at the beginning of the game... There were a ton of fights I lost because I had to move first, giving either Andrew or Michael the chance to precisely calculate the best way to respond.
All in all, that was a great game. (I admit to being terribly frustrated by getting blocked at the Iron age for three turns due to inability to keep 4 cities...)
And the biggest thanks of all go to Sarah, for putting up with the Barbarian hordes...
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Bela Fleck, "System Seven"
Tags: civilization
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10:28 am
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It's march, and I don't have a beer
So the next best thing is the madness of brackets! In my case, that's for the next civilization game in a couple of weeks. The problem is that the BCS turned out to be provided by Diebold, and it got hacked - so I need help with the seeding. So you tell me: who's going to win?
Click here to seed the bracket
Voting closes on April 1.
The bracket from last year's civilization game is here.
The overall history of winners of the past 6 games is this:
Rebecca EB has won 3 games, which is why we exiled the EBs to Philadelphia.
Andrew, Elanit, and I have won 1 each.
The exact variations are still to be decided upon, but I'm thinking of a couple of interesting ones - I'll post them once we have the bracket ready.
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  geeky
Current Music: Creed, "My Own Prison"
Tags: civilization
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07:10 pm
[Link] | Today, caseydk and I went to FF2. I'd give the movie a C- (waaaay too much stuff about weddings, and the Silver Surfer [while cool] shouldn't be able to either ressurect the dead or actually defeat Galactus [damnit! Where's my Kirby-Galactus? Blue and purple armor ROCKS!])
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I ran across this video (h/t sparrowrose), and it's strangely compelling.
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Yesterday, EZRJ hosted a civilization game. As always, I came in 2nd (2999), but this time Andrew won with 31xx. Elanit and Jesse came in third and fourth (neck and neck).
Observations from this: playing Babylon is a huge advantage, especially when newbies are playing Egypt and Assyria. Agriculture is key (still). The credit chart on the back of the rules is more generous than the ones on the cards themselves, and we should use that one. More things give credits toward Law in particular than I expected.
shoshiboo really had her butt handed to her as Crete - that's a hard country under the best of circumstances, but in a crowded board it would have been even harder than usual.
Metalworking is the key to beating the barbarian hordes: having the barbarians remove first is a huge benefit.
==
Also, georgetowner introduced me to this comic (NSFW!). More hilarity here.
Current Location: home, about to walk the dog
Current Mood:  accomplished
Current Music: Indigo Girls, "Galileo"
Tags: civilization, comics, porn
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02:29 pm
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Thoughts for Future Civilization Games
The writeup-history of the various civ games shows something interesting:
July 05 - won by Rebecca EB
July 05 - won my me
November 05 - won by Rebecca EB
November 06 - won by Rebecca EB
March 07 - won by Elanit
Clearly Rebecca was a sufficient threat that we had to kick her out of DC...
The house rules which seem to be gaining traction are:
3-minute timer for trading
if a player is moving slowly, flip the 1-minute timer on him/her. That hasn't had to be strictly enforced, but it does concentrate their attention...
switch civil war and civil disorder
stoic option in force (seems to only have positive effects, especially with civil war higher up)
possible variants we should consider for the future:
1) 15 civilization card limit (out of 24 possible).
2) selecting countries rather than randomly drawing them (would it be better to have weakest players pick first, or strongest, or in random order?)
3) start with some barbarians and barbarian cities on the board, randomly distributed.
4) players each start with one civilization card, drawn at random from the "110 or below" pile.
5) make all calamities tradable
===
I have just GOT to get one of these shirts...
Current Location: Frederick, Md.
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: none
Tags: civilization
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09:49 pm
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Upset!
So going into the Civilization game, Andrew was the first seed, and I was second, as documented here.
The actual results, however, a pleasant surprise.
Here's the bracket:
EDIT: fixed the bracket - thanks Elanit
And the standings were:
1) Elanit (3866)
2) David (3751)
3) Michael (3638)
4) Shoshana (3511)
5) Andrew (3330)
6) Matt (3013)
7) Keith (2236)
A most enjoyable day, if you ask me...
==
Update: Michael (Africa) was the prime beneficiary of the absence of Egypt and Crete, and Andrew (Illyria) effectively played as if he was Crete. There was a bit more warfare than in previous games - Andrew and I had ongoing border skirmishes throughout, and I had minor flare-ups with Michael and Matt. I had a couple of full sets (gems, silver, wine), and my strategy is to be completely unafraid of the calamities. The Stoic option didn't seem to have a tremendous practical effect: I don't remember anyone ending up with more than two calamities in a given turn. (There were a few cases where people drew more than two, but they traded them away).
Good, and well played by all.
2nd update
When Sarah saw this, she described it as Bitul Torah... bwaaa!
Current Location: home
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: none, Sarah's watching "Big Love"
Tags: civilization, gaming
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09:07 pm
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The Rise of the Assyrian Empire
Sarah was away for Shabbat, so as is my custom when she takes off, I hosted a civilization game. Before going into details about that, I want to make note of a few other things:
On Friday night, while I was walking Kacy, I encountered an acappella group on the corner of Wisconsin and M street - they were singing "good old acapella," and they sounded great. It was about 9 young guys - I wasn't sure whether they were a school group or perhaps a Christian group, but they were getting lots of heckles from passers-by. Sheesh. Why don't folks just appreciate art when it's given freely?
Anyway, speaking of "art given freely," here's Borat on Fox News. genius.
Some lessons learned for civ gaming:
1) have a plan for dinner - the game ran until about midnight, and I had no coherent plan. not a good idea.
2) We won't be seriously buying civ cards until after lunch. Thus, set the table before going to shul.
3) Bigger cholent - I totally didn't think a full-size cholent would be inhaled quite that quickly.
Now on to the game itself:
it was an excellent game (although it definitely ran long)- a full 8 people, including two new players. Rebecca played Assyria and won as usual (and why anyone views anyone other than her as the primary threat, I don't know) - I believe she's won far more than any other single player in out troupe. Interestingly, she had a final score of something like 4800, when the theoretical maximum is only about 5400, so clearly she was doing pretty darn well. I played Crete (why am I always Crete?) and finished second with 4151, so that shows how far ahead of everyone else she was. Bracha (a newbie, playing Babylon) came in third with 37xx. We played without the stoic option, although that only came in to play once when Bracha drew four calamities (interestingly, the most devestating effect was probably Yah-El getting both famine and epidemic in the same turn - it took her down to one city and ten farmers when the rest of us had 7 cities...). We also switched the Civil War and Civil Disorder calamities, so CD came up a ton (as did slave revolt), but Civil War was not so much. One nice side effect: because it was non-tradable, and in the "7" stack, a CW would only hit a player who was qualitatively doing pretty well...
A couple of standout notes:
This is the first time I've tried using any piece of a privateer strategy - once I had astronomy, I could effectively crack any single costal city at my whim with two shiploads. I only used this a couple of times (mostly to Ari), but geez that's effective - especially because the survivors will reproduce and can be whisked away to attack somewhere else the next turn. I'll have to do more of that...
Shoshana was more aggressive than in previous games, but still backed away from the total-war approach - she was content to just keep me out of asia minor.
I'm coming to a different position on warfare in civ: skirmishes are actually the thing which steadily drains the coffers (unless you can grab and hold successfully), while a total frontal assault can actually succeed in forcing an opponent to do nothing but oppose you. Also, the fear of the consequences of war or calamities can cause hesitation, and he who hesistates is lost - it's better to attack spectacularly, and get whomped spectacularly than it is to slowly twist in the wind and be stuck in the corner. Several people loudly said "I need more X" be it room for farmers, city sites, or whatever, but didn't seem to want to actively seize these assets from other neighbors.
The strongest benefit any player can get is being next to pacifists.
One thing which was changed in the move from Civ -> Advanced Civ was the lifting of the restriction on number of civ cards. Perhaps we should look at bringing that back? If players were limited to (say) 15 cards (there are 24 civilization cards available), they'd have to make pretty tough decisions about whether they wanted military, religious, or scientific advancement: you wouldn't find the same player being able to get democracy, theology, mathematics, and philosophy: countries would have to specialize more, and cards like pottery would come with an opportunity cost as well. Maybe I can talk folks into that :)
I haven't been in a game where anyone has bought mining, roadbuilding, or military. That sounds like a strategy to me... :)
One more warfare thought: it's always worth harrassing the leader - that'll make tend to keep her from having a walk-away victory. It's also worth it to nail an immediate neighbor who can't retaliate. However, it's not worth it to nail an immediate neighbor if they can easily retaliate - there needs to be a heck of a goal for that...
All in all, a great game, and I had a blast.
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  sick
Current Music: none
Tags: civilization, gaming, music
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08:31 am
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weekend update
So you know I'm well trained because when Sarah goes out of town, what do I do?
Board games! ;)
The Advanced Civilization game yesterday was great - we had a couple of variants involved:
We played the "stoic" option - if you get more than 2 calamities, tough. Now, this game, I was the *only* player to get more than 2 calamities in a single turn (the two turns when I actually had 9 cities, more than half the cards I drew were calamities... geez)
We played the "drinking game" variant - every time you get a calamity, take a drink. Heh. Due to the above, that took effect pretty quickly...
We also had a player join us 2 hours late, as the beneficiary of both "civil war" and "barbarian hordes." This was a very, very controversial move, after the fact. I thought the dynamic was an interesting experiment, and I was surprised that noone reacted the way I would have (more below).
So Rebecca won, for the second straight time, so maybe people will stop assuming that I'm the favorite :)
Anyway, there were a few moments in the game which bear notice:
The two countries not in the game initially were Iberia and Babylon
When Amanda came in as Civil War, it was against Ari (Assyria), whose core was in the Babylon/Assyria region. She came in right on the border between Ari and shoshiboo (Asia). In addition, her hordes came in against Rebecca (Illyria), and were mostly in the border between she and Elanit (Thrace). So here's what's interesting: Rebbecca and Elanit pretty much ignored the intrusion, which gave Amanda a core of 9 farmers which had nothing to do with anything else.
However, Shoshana and Ari (who had been having some minor border scuffles in the middle east) proceeded to try to totally wipe out Amanda (to be fair, Ari was going after Amanda, while Shoshana was going after the same things she was before the civil war - it just happened that Amanda was now in the way).
This was the point where I profoundly disagreed with the otherwise-strategically-brilliant Ari: knowing that Amanda would fight tenaciously to stay in the game, he would have been better off pushing his boundary out in a different direction: for instance coming to an immediate truce with Amanda and invading Shoshana or Michael (Egypt). If he had done so, he would have been able to drive them further westward, such that they would have been forced into other conflicts. By keeping the fight local, he pretty much assured that he would not actually "win" the fight - as long as Amanda had *ANY* pieces there, he couldn't behave peacefully (like build cities without fear), and he had that disadvantage as well as the "not wanting to expand into other nations" disadvantage. The funny thing is that Ari made a slip of the tongue: when he swarmed into Amanda's new territory, she lamented that she had no place to go, and his response was "into the sea," evoking a six-day-war image. It was pointed out that the "drive them to the sea" plan didn't work so well for the drivers in the six-day-war as well, but he went ahead with it anyway...
Rebbecca and Michael spent a considerable amount of time hoarding all the grain between them, so Civil War came up about 3 times in 5 turns :/
Near the end of the game, more open aggression was taking place: Matt (Africa) got Monotheism, and finally began to move against Michael (whom he had been not-so-subtly menacing for the prior 8 turns...) by taking Tripoli, which he held to the end. I (Crete) had gotten pummeled with a couple of pretty devasting civil wars and piracy, so I was having to start going after the islands again - I was probably a little slow there: I could have been more aggressive with no real fear of retribution.
So Matt and I were talking on the way home, and we agree that the calamities are a bit off-balance: Civil War is soooo much worse than anything else, and it's a four. It's certainly worse than Piracy (9) or Epidemic (6). So my thinking is that we should switch Civil War and either Piracy and Epidemic: I'm okay with the Civil war staying non-tradable, and the 4 stack would thus get 2 tradable calamities (yipes!) but we'll need to flesh that out... It'd probably be better to swap with Epidemic, so that no one buying a 9 card would buy a non-tradable calamity...
===
Right before Shabbat, I was walking Kacy on Wisconsin Avenue, and I stopped at Big Monkey Comics to talk to some guys working on the sign outside. One guy was fawning all over her, and it turns out that he owns a doggy day care place on 14th, next to where we get Kacy's food. I mentioned that she was on the cover the first Franchise album, and we talked about that for a minute, when all of a sudden, he said "come with me" and carried Kacy into the store (mind you, it's 4:10, and Shabbat came in at 4:45, and I still needed to make CousCous and other stuff...) - he said that Big Monkey has an online radio station, and I should send him some MP3s of our comic/superhero-related stuff, and he'd gladly play it on his station. W00t! So Kacy's not just a chick magnet, she's a gig magnet :)
And we'll be recording Where the Sidewalk Ends and Rorshach today... :)
===
I'm a bit concerned about Kacy - she hasn't been eating her food, and even though dogs just do that every now and then, the fear is always that her Porto-systemic shunt might have returned: that was the first symptom when we found it back when. Two things make me think that isn't it: she still has energy (a little sleepier than ususal, but not eating does do that...), and also, on walks, she goes nuts to get the shmootz and french fries (etc) on the ground, so I think she's just holding out for something better than kibble - and heck, wouldn't you? I know I would... (Kibble again?)
===
And this comic shows why I won't be joining in the Kesher Football games...
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: They Might Be Giants, "Why Does the Sun Shine?"
Tags: civilization, comics, gaming, kacy, music
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10:11 pm
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civilize me!
Another great game of Advanced Civ:
I was Thrace (why am I always playing Thrace recently?) and I won with 4079 points at the end. I pulled a total bastard move on Matt in what I expected (and was) the last turn: we had had a peaceful border the entire game (he was Italy), and had occasionally made blustering sounds about using his Monotheism card on me - so I bought Theology in the 2nd to last turn, and had the opportunity to move last (very few pieces). So I cracked one of his cities, and attacked two concentrations (one city building, one attacking a pirate city), taking a card, and knocking him down to 4 cities.
Matt got (unsurprisingly) irked by this, and said that this changed his impression of me as a civ player. I waited for a few minutes, and then reminded him of the game last year where he pulled pretty much the same stunt on me, and cost me a victory (I ended up in like 4th or something). Heh. payback's a bitch. :)
Shoshana was Asia, Amanda was Assyria (came in second with 3993- a total photo finish), Andrew was Babylon (3rd place, largely due to getting hit with Piracy and Amanda's Monotheism in the last turn) [aside: Andrew was kvetching that her hitting him was not a meaningful gesture, and of course he was dead wrong - if she hadn't, he may well have either won or come on second...], Clate was Egypt (newcomer! eeek! interestingly, while he had a couple of gear-shift-grinders with the rules, his strategy was rock-solid. He successfully fought off an Andrew-invasion after getting his with something like 5 calamaties in the same turn... not bad :) ]
This is the first game in which I've ever purchased either Mathematics or Theology: in fact, a bunch of people bought Math, which is surprising, given that it doesn't really convey any advantages...
I got pretty lucky that neither Shoshana nor Yah-El ever decided to test whether I was bluffing about our borders: I would have survived, and I think it would have hurt them pretty badly, but they could have done me a hell of a lot of damage...
Once again, it's all about Agriculture: most of the skirmishing stopped then, until Matt upped the ante by getting Monotheism.
mmmm...
I like playing Civilization.
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Starryville, "The Sun Song"
Tags: civilization
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01:23 am
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best game ever
So we had a civ game today, and I think it was my favorite. The level of play was very high, and Rebbecca narrowly beat me in an 8-hour game.
I did a couple of total bastard moves: I offered to trade Elanit an Ivory for two Resin, and because she didn't specify what she wanted for a second card, I gave her Iconoclasm & Heresy AND barbarian hordes. not nice, I know, but it seemed to work out pretty well.
I played Crete, after trading with Shoshana (it seems to be gospel among this group that crete is viewed with much the same pair of eyes which look at a moldy pizza slice - I have no idea why) for it. I love playing Crete - not only is it proof against the hordes, but I think that I end up following entirely different strategy for the different countries.
We were very strict about time limits, and that made a huge difference: 3 minutes for trading, and 3 minutes for aquiring. We established stasis in borders pretty quickly - the only significant border issues were me expaning a little bit into Rebecca's Italy, and Shoshana eventually retaking (!) cairo from Africa (who had built a city there on like turn 4). Civil War was the biggest sower of Chaos - responsible for dropping Egyptians into Greece, and Africans into Turkey.
One notable thing was that everyone got Engineering pretty quickly, and that neutered flood and volcano, but the best card to have this game was agriculture: after people got that, all of a sudden, they didn't need to expand any more...
tired... must sleep...
Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: Fu Manchi, "Squash that Fly"
Tags: civilization
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