Do you be a diplomat end eager to build bond with his neighbours or become a fear of conquering his military superiority? The base game loved to pound its chest with pride about the quick pace, and it did hit this mark like an Olympian archer. My name is Michael, I am based in Warsaw, Poland and I have been playing board games since my youth, being firstly attracted to strategy and economy themed ones.

Surprisingly, we did not discover much – the game set-up with forts really prevented us from far away journeys. The biggest reason to go after someone is to stop them from achieving a goal, but you can only slow them down so much and you’re likely spending more turns using combat (and derailing from your own victory path) than the turns you’ll cost them for undoing their stuff.On top of all this, barbarians are present to derail your plans of domination with there movement and actions determined via an event dial and direction token. Cleverly, the game discarded the secrecy of its digital siblings, and were it not for the dice rolls, goes for a perfect information approach. They found it very dry and most of the time we are a group of 5, so bringing this to the table was a challenge already. The card’s focus row slot also determines which types of terrain on which the player can place control tokens. These would-be conquerors construct and populate the map with barbarians, natural resources, and city-states, then formulate their plans for how they will shape this world to their vision.

And as with most GOOD board games you don’t even realize how much time has transpired because of the fun you are having. Each action usually requires little in the way of adjustment of components so the pace is quick and “almost” light. While I’ll admit this is a nice idea to bring more interaction, but I can’t ignore how silly this is from a thematic standpoint.

Science allows you to advance your tech dial, which over time will allow you to upgrade your focus cards to stronger replacements. World Wonders provide powerful, unique effects to the player that controls them, and come in four types: cultural, economic, scientific, and militaristic.

Tactical purposes, however, will early develop improved versions of their maps to optimize their strategy. The focus row slot affects either how many control tokens can be reinforced, or affects the strength of each attack.Or you find yourself in a situation with several city-states of different types, giving you a nice edge of diplomacy cards and trade tokens. No, you won’t be constructing buildings in your cities or sending your armies across the map or building ships. I would like to mention – again – great components quality; FFG is known for great quality products and here it is no different! The game's goal is clever, yet the mechanics that lead there mean that a civ is likely to win with only a handful of Level IV Focus cards. A card resolved in the fifth slot has a greater impact than one resolved in the first slot, as more time was spent on that pursuit.