Shogun Variant for Advanced Civilization

A variant discussed at rec.games.board by: Mike Schneider , Richard Irving , and "BigErn"

• Make a deck of cards and put the country names on each card. At the beginning of the game, deal out the cards to all players, with each player getting an equal number of cards. Left over cards are discarded.
• To make the game more even, color-code the country cards based on population capacity and sort them separately. Group 4's and 5's together. Everyone gets the same number of each type. You might also consider sorting island countries separately as well, as anyone who begins with an inordinate number of them is at a clear disadvantage (since I presume you're playing with an "across-the-board" AST progression).
• Each player starts the game with 1 token in each country.
• Then, each player (in AST order) turns over three cities.
• You haven't specified cities as starting anywhere. Are you meaning to say the player replaces three of his tokens with cities? Anywhere, or on city sites first?
• The AST markers are moved so everyone is equal yet in the early bronze.
• Which AST line does each player get? Because they are used to balance the game--those that start in harder, less fertile, territory get an easier AST track. I suppose you could give every one the same the same track, but then the player who gets relatively lucky by drawing a fertile area at the start will probably romp to a win. Those that don't have a LONG day ahead of them. Not a good idea in 12 hour game.
• Every player then gets 6 trade cards: 2 one's, 2 two's, and 2 threes.
• Play continues as normal.

Happy Gaming!