Quicker Variant for Advanced Civilization

A variant by: Steve Genoff

About once a year I get together with a handful (4 to 6) of other gamers and we play Civilization/Advanced Civilization. We have a pretty good time, except that we never finish a complete game. We're good for about 4 or 5 hours max, and then people start to fade (Not like in the good 'ol days when I could game 12 to 14 hours at a stretch...). Advanced Civ, of course, says, well, just set a time limit, start at the beginning, and whoever is ahead when time expires, wins. It seems that the boring part of the game is the beginning dozen turns or so, and I would like a little more variety in starting the game, as well as cutting down the total time of the game.

So I started thinking about how to start the game halfway through the A.S.T. Do y'all think the following make sense ? Would the game still be playable ? It would still take up time to use the following setup would like to establish is that all players start the game with equal opportunities, yet allow for players to adopt a wide range of strategies.

I haven't game-tested any of these ideas yet, so I don't have any idea how well these suggestions work together. In particular I am just picking numbers for the ISPPs off the top of my head. I assume that cities and Civilization cards

Optional Rules:

1.Initial Purchase Points (IPP) After players choose Nations, they are allotted 2000 IPP. These IPP are used to purchase Cities, Population Counters, Trading Cards, and Civilization Cards.

2.Cities/Population Counters Every city selected requires the purchase of supporting Population Counters, under the initial taxation rules. So, initially the cost would be
City at City Site : 1 City + 2 Pop Counters = 400 IPP
City at non-City Site : 1 City + 2 Pop Counters = 700 IPP Additional Population Counters can be purchased for 50 IPP per Counter.

3.Treasury I don't have a clue why anybody would want to purchase Treasury counters, but just in case someone has a winning strategy (or alosing one :-( ) based on this, you can of course purchase treasury counters for the same rate as population counters.

4.Trading Cards To start things off quicker, players will select a number of trading cards equal to twice the number of cities they initially purchase.

Trading cards are selected at random from a shuffled trading card deck before they are separated onto the trade card stacks. Alternatively, cards could be selected from the stacks as usual.

I think the first suggestion would be more interesting, leading to more volatile initial trading situations.

5.Civilization Cards Civilization cards are purchased at face value. Cards that have prerequisites may not be purchased unless those requirements are met. I.e., you may not purchase "Roadbuilding" unless you also purchase "Engineering".

6.Setup After having selected resources, players place cities and population counters on the game board. Players first place cities one at a time in reverse A.S.T. order on the map. A player is forbidden from placing a city in any opposing players' start area, unless he has permission of that player. In addition, players must place cities in areas according to the purchase type of those cities, i.e., if a city-site City was purchased, it MUST be placed in an area containing a city site. A non-city-site City may be placed in any available area.

I feel that initially it would be a good idea for a player's cities to be placed near one another; Therefore, cities must be placed within 4 areas of at least one other city that belong to that player. This four area radius can cross any water or land boundary on the map. (Alternatively, for a more chaotic and possibly more interesting game, let players place cities and tokens anywhere without restriction).

After all cities are placed, population counters are placed. Population counters must be also be placed within 4 areas of cities. They are also placed one at a time by players in reverse A.S.T. order. A player may not place a population counter in an area where someone else has previously placed a counter. Players areunder no restrictions about placing counters in areas containing their own population counters. You may in fact exceed the population limits of an area if you wish to do so.

After all cities and population counters are placed, play proceeds as normal.

To summarize the IPP costs :
400 City (City Site) including 2 Supporting Population Counters
700 City (No Site) including 2 Supporting Population Counters
50 Population Counter
100 Ship Counter
50 Treasury Counter
NC Trading Card
+ Civilization Card

NC = No Cost, Trading Cards are not purchasable.
+ Civilization Cards cost face value in IPP
Final Thoughts : Well as I look over the game board I see that players don't really start on an even standing, anyway. For instance, there are no city sites immediately available for the Illyrians. Insted of starting everyone off at 2000 IPP, there should be different values for different nations.

Lastly, the point values I have picked are entirely arbitrary. I selected 50 for the Population counters, and estimated everything else relative to that. If someone has a better analytical idea about how to assign these numbers, I would love to hear about it.

Again, my initial goal is to allow all players to start the game with equal opportunity, yet provide an interesting and relatively short time frame game.

Happy Gaming!

Send me mail:civgoddess@usa.net
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