day of gaming
We invited some people over for gaming yesterday, specifically to play longer games like Age of Renaissance or Seven Ages. Most such games that we own are calibrated for five or six players. We ended up with eight, though, so we split into two groups of four. (I think the only candidate we own that works for eight is Arkham Horror, which garnered reations ranging from indifference to hostility.)
The other group played History of the World; ours played Seven Ages. This was only the fourth time I've played and the first time without Dani (who's played a little more). I found that while I know the game well enough to play, I didn't know it well enough to teach it efficiently. Sigh. It shouldn't have taken me an hour to explain it to the one new player, and I hope that didn't turn him off of the game. Once we got into it, everyone seemed to be having fun. (I would specifically like to play another four-player game including that new player.)
Most world-domination games don't work well with fewer players than their targets, because the same map is generally available (so you can spread out more and avoid conflict). Civilization and Age of Renaissance both restrict the map when that happens; History of the World doesn't (and I can't remember of Age of Imperialism does). Seven Ages doesn't, but it's different because you're still going to end up with 15 empires in play regardless of the number of players, and it's in players' interests to bring in more empires if they can.
The four-player game does have an advantage over larger ones, though: while there will be just as many empires in play, you have fewer players to conflict with and more chances to work your empires together. At one point I had Babylon in play and wanted to bring in the Persians; if those had been different players there probably would have been a lot of fighting, but since they were both mine I just sent my Persians east toward the fertile lands in India instead. With fewer players, negotiations about territory were a little easier.
On a completely practical note, four players can sit comfortably around the map (on our dining-room table) such that everyone can see; this is harder with five.
We randomly dealt two empires in ages one and two to everyone (and the rest of a hand, of course), to avoid sucky starting positions. Well, mostly -- my two empires from that deal started in the same space. :-) Fortunately I got another age-two empire in the deal, though all of my options were lower card values. (I started play with Babylon (3) and the Inuit (1), once the game had been determined to be in age two.) My Inuit were actually doing ok for me, winning world domination after a few turns of ramp-up; if we had played a few more turns they would have succeeded in trading for knowledge of horses and then their cavalry would have been all over the Americas and northern Europe. Which is, in a sense, wrong, but would have been fun.
We had very little conflict through much of the game; most of it was of the "my starting position is occupied" variety. The Mongols showed up in the last turn so there was a lot of conflict there, but through a combination of good luck (on my part) and suboptimal play (on the Mongols' part), my peace-loving Iliryans (called something else, but their starting land was there) defeated most of the invading Mongol army, including killing Chengis Khan. So there. :-)
No empires showed up in India, which was odd. I was holding a card for Australia (didn't expect them in age two), but it would have been another empire similar to the Inuit, occupying land no one else cared about with no knowledge of boats or horses, for mediocre point values. I passed. Most of Europe (except northern) and Asia were occupied, and all of northern Africa. (Subsaharan Africa doesn't show up until later, I think.) I was sharing the Americas with somebody who started in Mexico.
We started at the beginning of the second age, and when we finished (we had agreed to end when the other game did), the lead player was in the first or second phase of the third age. (Some empires were still trailing at the end of the first age.) In terms of where the game was, I wanted to play longer (maybe as much as another age). There were things happening on the board that seemed to be building toward something interesting, but we stopped to satisfy time constraints. Next time we should try for a longer game; we might also be able to reclaim some time by improving the management of game pieces.
The game has a lot of varied pieces, and that slowed us down both in initial setup and during play (when, for example, we needed to find a specific leader's chit). We've already done some reasonable sorting into bags, but I think we need to replace some bags with trays and subdivide some others. My current thinking:
Leaders should be in trays sorted by age. (They are currently in bags, two ages per bag. A tray would be easier to sift through, given that there wasn't enough table space to just dump out all the age-relevant leaders and leave them there.)
Artifacts: ditto. There are fewer of these, so some pairing-up could be reasonable, but they need to be in trays, not bags. (Sort by earliest age in which the artifact can appear.)
Instead of sorting the progress and money markers with the matching military tokens, pull them all out into a bag or a couple tray sections. They are tied to empires, not to players, and when they come into play they go onto scoring tracks, not the players' playing mats. So just give them directly to whomever is managing the game.
Each player starts with two colors of tokens. Extra sets can be played by anyone. Currently we have everything from a pair of colors in one bag, and players spend time sorting that all out. If you're playing early ages you'll never care about some of the units, but you have to dig through the subs and bombers to get your spearman and chariots. If you're raiding one of these sets for a third color, you won't care about the action tokens that are mixed in at all.
I'm not sure about this, but I think we'd be better off doing one of two things. The easier one would be to sort by color (not by pair of colors) and then sub-sort for stuff relevant in the first two ages versus everything else. If you're playing a later age you need everything anyway, but we tend to play earlier ages and that makes start-up faster. Sort by color rather than by player because unless you're playing a seven-player game, that's going to make access easier for the third (and fourth, if relevant) empires for each player.
That's one approach. The other would be to use a tray for each pair of colors, sorting the units into the dozen or so piles represented on the playing mat. Go ahead and sort the two colors together; any given unit type tends to have three to five units, so that's few enough to manage. Use the tray instead of the playing mat (just finding some place to put the empire cards, on top or off to the side). This probably uses more precious table space, but it expedites start-up. We'd still need the playing mats for splitting up color pairs being used for extra empires, but that's fine. The player-specific tokens (score tracker and set of actions) can just go in baggies.
Trays take up more space than baggies (this surely won't all fit in the game box), but I think it would end up saving us close to an hour, between initial setup and slow-downs during the game (while we hunt down dark-blue spearmen or Cleopatra or the Hanging Gardens). It's worth the cost of getting a bigger box to hold everything, I think. When you're itching to play a game (or, in the game, itching to bring your Huns into play), the last thing you want to do is spend ten or fifteen minutes sorting tokens.
The other group played History of the World; ours played Seven Ages. This was only the fourth time I've played and the first time without Dani (who's played a little more). I found that while I know the game well enough to play, I didn't know it well enough to teach it efficiently. Sigh. It shouldn't have taken me an hour to explain it to the one new player, and I hope that didn't turn him off of the game. Once we got into it, everyone seemed to be having fun. (I would specifically like to play another four-player game including that new player.)
Most world-domination games don't work well with fewer players than their targets, because the same map is generally available (so you can spread out more and avoid conflict). Civilization and Age of Renaissance both restrict the map when that happens; History of the World doesn't (and I can't remember of Age of Imperialism does). Seven Ages doesn't, but it's different because you're still going to end up with 15 empires in play regardless of the number of players, and it's in players' interests to bring in more empires if they can.
The four-player game does have an advantage over larger ones, though: while there will be just as many empires in play, you have fewer players to conflict with and more chances to work your empires together. At one point I had Babylon in play and wanted to bring in the Persians; if those had been different players there probably would have been a lot of fighting, but since they were both mine I just sent my Persians east toward the fertile lands in India instead. With fewer players, negotiations about territory were a little easier.
On a completely practical note, four players can sit comfortably around the map (on our dining-room table) such that everyone can see; this is harder with five.
We randomly dealt two empires in ages one and two to everyone (and the rest of a hand, of course), to avoid sucky starting positions. Well, mostly -- my two empires from that deal started in the same space. :-) Fortunately I got another age-two empire in the deal, though all of my options were lower card values. (I started play with Babylon (3) and the Inuit (1), once the game had been determined to be in age two.) My Inuit were actually doing ok for me, winning world domination after a few turns of ramp-up; if we had played a few more turns they would have succeeded in trading for knowledge of horses and then their cavalry would have been all over the Americas and northern Europe. Which is, in a sense, wrong, but would have been fun.
We had very little conflict through much of the game; most of it was of the "my starting position is occupied" variety. The Mongols showed up in the last turn so there was a lot of conflict there, but through a combination of good luck (on my part) and suboptimal play (on the Mongols' part), my peace-loving Iliryans (called something else, but their starting land was there) defeated most of the invading Mongol army, including killing Chengis Khan. So there. :-)
No empires showed up in India, which was odd. I was holding a card for Australia (didn't expect them in age two), but it would have been another empire similar to the Inuit, occupying land no one else cared about with no knowledge of boats or horses, for mediocre point values. I passed. Most of Europe (except northern) and Asia were occupied, and all of northern Africa. (Subsaharan Africa doesn't show up until later, I think.) I was sharing the Americas with somebody who started in Mexico.
We started at the beginning of the second age, and when we finished (we had agreed to end when the other game did), the lead player was in the first or second phase of the third age. (Some empires were still trailing at the end of the first age.) In terms of where the game was, I wanted to play longer (maybe as much as another age). There were things happening on the board that seemed to be building toward something interesting, but we stopped to satisfy time constraints. Next time we should try for a longer game; we might also be able to reclaim some time by improving the management of game pieces.
The game has a lot of varied pieces, and that slowed us down both in initial setup and during play (when, for example, we needed to find a specific leader's chit). We've already done some reasonable sorting into bags, but I think we need to replace some bags with trays and subdivide some others. My current thinking:
Leaders should be in trays sorted by age. (They are currently in bags, two ages per bag. A tray would be easier to sift through, given that there wasn't enough table space to just dump out all the age-relevant leaders and leave them there.)
Artifacts: ditto. There are fewer of these, so some pairing-up could be reasonable, but they need to be in trays, not bags. (Sort by earliest age in which the artifact can appear.)
Instead of sorting the progress and money markers with the matching military tokens, pull them all out into a bag or a couple tray sections. They are tied to empires, not to players, and when they come into play they go onto scoring tracks, not the players' playing mats. So just give them directly to whomever is managing the game.
Each player starts with two colors of tokens. Extra sets can be played by anyone. Currently we have everything from a pair of colors in one bag, and players spend time sorting that all out. If you're playing early ages you'll never care about some of the units, but you have to dig through the subs and bombers to get your spearman and chariots. If you're raiding one of these sets for a third color, you won't care about the action tokens that are mixed in at all.
I'm not sure about this, but I think we'd be better off doing one of two things. The easier one would be to sort by color (not by pair of colors) and then sub-sort for stuff relevant in the first two ages versus everything else. If you're playing a later age you need everything anyway, but we tend to play earlier ages and that makes start-up faster. Sort by color rather than by player because unless you're playing a seven-player game, that's going to make access easier for the third (and fourth, if relevant) empires for each player.
That's one approach. The other would be to use a tray for each pair of colors, sorting the units into the dozen or so piles represented on the playing mat. Go ahead and sort the two colors together; any given unit type tends to have three to five units, so that's few enough to manage. Use the tray instead of the playing mat (just finding some place to put the empire cards, on top or off to the side). This probably uses more precious table space, but it expedites start-up. We'd still need the playing mats for splitting up color pairs being used for extra empires, but that's fine. The player-specific tokens (score tracker and set of actions) can just go in baggies.
Trays take up more space than baggies (this surely won't all fit in the game box), but I think it would end up saving us close to an hour, between initial setup and slow-downs during the game (while we hunt down dark-blue spearmen or Cleopatra or the Hanging Gardens). It's worth the cost of getting a bigger box to hold everything, I think. When you're itching to play a game (or, in the game, itching to bring your Huns into play), the last thing you want to do is spend ten or fifteen minutes sorting tokens.