Hi, all.  I'm a Civ lover from the first non-video game with square tokens and a map of the Mediterranean Sea.  I'm fascinated by then new board game and want to hear main criticisms of it by those who have played it more than a few times.  So convince me the Russians really have an advantage or the setting of a unit's strength at its birth are really flaws of this game, but have some meat in your criticism and some playing to back it up.  In fact, let's start there, but list any kind of criticism you have here.

Does Russia have an advantage overall?

Is it easiest to win a military victory?

What do you think of the strength of units being set at their draw and unchangeable therefrom?

Ok here's my take on this having played a few games, and I'm finally getting to play the same people so it's getting challenging.

Pulsar said:

Hmm.. they are powerful, in some respects their most powerful ability is starting with Communism giving them a serious production boost. The stealing tech power is good but can be countered. I find the Romans and Germans also very powerful, especially the German free units ability.

Pulsar said:

After 6 or 7 games I've not seen one yet. Mostly science victories and some culture. Economic has come close a couple of times but no military victories yet. Maybe we're all too nice.

Pulsar said:

Well they can get upgraded, I don't really have a problem with it.

I've not really got any issues with the game as it stands, the rules are a bit badly worded in places but that's getting sorted. More games, that's what I need.

This is great, thank you, Scimon.  Does anyone else have criticisms of the game so far?  I'd love to hear where the rules are badly worded (I don't think FFG's errata sheet is nearly long enough—one page—to cover their characteristic list of unclear rules.)

I have found that you have to pick your path to victory as soon as you see your civ you are playing.   While a military victory is the easiest way to win, having a back-up is good.  Trying to change your plan half-way through the game is a MAJOR disaster.  

That's too bad. So basically you could be screwed half-way through the game, feeling it's pointless to go on.  That's way lame.

Note: please have proper punctuation when creating topics.  All caps read as if you are shouting.

Depending on which Civ you play will help determine your strategy.  Examples are Russians winning by stealing tech and being good at it, Chinese focusing on Culture and being lucky enough to reach plenty of Huts/Villages early in the game, and Germans focusing on fighting and winning often without needing a backup.

I would think that the Americans and Egyptians would be the best to win by any choice since they start with a random Great Person or Wonder.  Those are my thoughts.

I played this game a couple of times with friends and we all agree that it is too easy to cross water - especially at the beginning. We think that it might be a strategy boost to the game when the Navigation tech would allow just one movement above water or something similar.

Thank you, Maarek, I have been made aware I don't know proper forum etiquette in the slightest, so I need all the notes I can get

Yinkou, I think we'll try playing like that—have you tried a specific house rule out you could share?

Not yet.

We are still discussing the best solution.

Imho it would be great to have some land tiles with more water squares on it and then apply an alternative rule to the navigation-tech like "just one move per round on water" or "limiting the movement to the coast". But these rules don't make much sense without more water... In most of our games the land tiles formed just  one square wide rivers and in the rarest cases larger seas.

In addition to that we also thought to limit the movement on hills but give some defense bonus to Armys of e.g. 2 combat Bonus Points. (works good for us, but can be more or less)

Our House rule to that: A unit has to stop when it enters a mountain square. If a player researches the engineering-tech (II-tech) his units can move one additional square if they have enough travel speed left. As soon as a player researches the Flight-tech, his units can move normally. If it comes to a Battle on a mountain, the defending side gains 2 Combat bonus points. (They don't stack with the number of armies on the tile. One army gains 2 Combat bonus and 3 armies also get just 2 bonus points)

this makes the game a bit more strategic and more like the vg.

I would really like to hear FFG's official view of Yinkou's rules here.  I like them a lot.  Any quick perspective you guys have on their playability/whether they would imbalance a playtested mechanic?

I haven't found too many things to be critical of yet. The only one that I believe is going to crop up is how easy it is to achieve a coin victory. I have played a few games now, 2-2 player games (both coin), 1-3 player game (tech victory - also first game), and 1-4 player game (coin). A friend has also played 3-3 player games all ending in coin. A focused drive towards a coin completion is difficult to prevent, as it can occur quite quickly. We are seeing coin victories with only 1-2 level III techs researched, and players obtaining 3-5 coins per turn (win a battle - code of laws, give two resources - pottery, give 6 commence - democracy, give 5 culture - printing press) and 3 easy coins for researching whatever turns markets into banks (this was alleviated somewhat with multiple players wary of a coin victory, but I still managed to build 3 banks in a single turn in the 4 player game). What would seem to be the obvious solution is a quick rush with military, but I find you can't get to a capital in time and even if you get there you don't have sufficient techs to be able to win the battle. Another theory is use of spies and appropriate techs to cancel city management actions but that it very difficult to do and requires a game focused on solely preventing another player from winning (at the expense of your ability to win) and luck in getting spies out of the huts. My group will for sure be playing more games but I think it will simply be a race to see who collects 15 coins first (which negates so much of the positive aspects of this game - the diversity in winning, the late game techs / wonders, etc.).

 It looks like you have very peaceful friends. ;)

I agree that on a 2 player game the easiest way to win is by coin if the opponent plays passive. But as the number of players rise as harder is to get coins because you have to pay attention to far more things. It's a bit like Poker.

-That's just my opinion from the games i played till now and i had just one economic victory.

@ pulsar:

We just played once with this rule and we were really excited about. It doesn't imbalance the game in any way but gives more strategic thinking about movement and Army positioning.

@ criticism: I more and more think, that the battle system isn't that really convincing. There should be a better way to fight and win a battle. E.g. it should be also possible for a single, strong unit to win a battle against a bunch of weak units. That is not possible if the player with a large army always just opens new fronts.

Huh, yeah I've heard the battle system is innovative but "unsatisfying."  I was worried about the rigidly determined units' strengths, but it seems others aren't as concerned about that. How unrealistic does the badass-unit-can't-beat-three-weak-spearsmen thing seem? (Does it jerk you out of the story/realism of the game sometimes?  That's what I really hate.)

 Hmm, my concerning isn't actually about the super-cybertron-ultra-mecha-godzilla unit (lol!) which has no chance against 10 Bowmen in this game.That was just a small missing thing in the game. But as you already said, i'm not really statisfied from the system itself... The friends which i'm playing with actually like it.

For me it's not a true battle system, the actual battle is missing for my opinion. It's just points counting. But i don't think that ffg will do something about that because its hard to change the game rules afterwards, neither in an expansion...

Maybe i'll try a modified Cosmic encounter battle system. Just got a great idea during i wrote this post.

I agree with Chirisophus. Economic victory is by far the easiest. The coin-producing techs are level I (Pottery/Code of Laws) and level II (Democracy/Printing Press) so you can research them early in the game and start collecting coins. Being resource abilities they cannot be blocked by other players unless they have researched Mass Media, a level IV tech. You gain coins also from some other techs as a bonus(Civil Service, Metal Casting, Computers), from buildings, great people, from the map and by changing your government to Feudalism.

All the games we played were 4-player and most of them ended with economic victory. Our last game was again ended with economic victory in only 10 turns! We were all disappointed by this so we decided to exclude economic victory in the future as a house rule.

Just won with economy yesterday, and I was a good two turns ahead of everyone else's victory. The last turn I generated 5 coins (Democracy, Pottery, and building two more Markets (for a total of 3), then researching them into Banks).

I'd be interested in seeing if Economic Victory would be more balanced if you just raise the threshold of coins needed. Maybe 18-20 rather than 15.