Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization

Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization is a computer edition of the Advanced Civilization board game (the Civilization board game including the expansion to that game called "Advanced Civilization"). Both the board and computer game portray the same basic concept: the players manage ancient Mediterranean civilizations in an effort to move them from the Early Bronze Age to beyond the Iron Age. It was published in 1995, shortly before Avalon Hill was bought out by Hasbro in 1998. It came out about the same time that Sid Meier's Civilization II was released, and as a result, didn't do well commercially.

Gameplay

The game play involves a map of the Mediterranean Sea and surrounding lands, where each player controls one civilization chosen from a set of nine: Africa, Asia, Assyria, Babylon, Crete, Egypt, Illyria, Italy (also named Iberia), and Thrace. Players move population units across the board, taking over territories and competing with their opponents for the most sought after land. A game of Advanced Civilization typically takes at least six hours, and can take up to 18 hours with a full eight players, especially if some are unfamiliar with the game. Players progress together through the phases of each turn. Under normal conditions the game is highly interactive, with little downtime spent waiting for other players to decide what to do. Useful aids to play, such as spreadsheets for calculating the costs of purchase of tools given discounts from other tools, have been devised by players.

Once your population reaches a sufficient size, you can congregate the units into cities. These cities can later be attacked for valuable plunder and to deal a blow to your opponents' chances of winning. The primary source of damage to players' civilizations comes from calamities rather than warfare. Calamities are somewhat under players' control, and can be managed by purchase of appropriate tools.

Building cities allows your civilization to produce commodities such as iron, salt, wine, bronze, and spices. For each city you have, you may draw a card from a commodity card deck, numbered one through nine. Those who have the least cities draw first. The more commodities your civilization produces, the more valuable the types of commodities that you can produce. Hidden within each commodity deck are also one or two calamities, such as earthquake, famine, barbarian hordes, or civil war, each of which seriously damages your population and destroys your cities. All commodity and calamity cards have identical backs, for trading face down. Some calamities are not tradeable. Most tradeable calamities have consequences to other players, and generally the player who traded the calamity is exempt from being chosen.

Once your civilization accumulates enough commodities, you can trade them with your opponents in order to corner the market on a particular commodity and increase its value. By creating sets of two or more of the same commodity, the value of the commodity increases. To trade, you offer your opponents three of your commodity cards in exchange for three of theirs. You must tell your trading partner (publicly, so other opponents may hear) truthfully what two of the three are. You may declare the third truthfully or not as you please; it is the "bluff". The bluff can be a low value commodity, or you can trick your opponent into taking a calamity off your hands.

Once you collect enough commodities, you can spend them to purchase tools, which range from pottery or astronomy to democracy or monotheism. By acquiring these tools, players' civilizations gain victory points. The tools also give each civilization particular advantages during the gameplay. Tools are divided into categories such as Science, Craft, and Civics. Purchasing a tool of one category normally entitles you to a discount to further purchases in that category, and often also entitles you to a discount to the purchase of specific tools. Some tools have prerequisites for purchase.

By collecting useful tools and maintaining as many cities as possible on the board, your civilization advances through the ages. At the end of each turn, civilizations with enough cities and enough tools in appropriate categories are allowed to advance along the game's turn track, the Archaeological Succession Table (AST). Different civilizations have slightly different entry requirements to the spaces on the AST. A civilization unfortunate enough to end the turn with no cities at all will go backwards on the AST. Once one or more players have reached the end of the AST, the game ends and the winner is decided based on a calculation of victory points. The majority of victory points come from purchase of tools and progress along the AST. Cities and stock at the end of the game provide a minor boost to victory points, sometimes sufficient to decide a close-fought game.

Variants

The original game is for two to seven players, but a "Western Expansion" map, which adds on Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, northwest Africa, and southern Britain, creates a larger playing area and can allow up to eight players at once.

An open source collaborative project, called "Civilization: The Expansion Project", is working on an expansion to Advanced Civilization, hoping to expand the game, accommodating up to 18 players and including additional calamities and tools.

External links

* [http://www.advcivladder.net/ advcivladder.net] - play by mail games played with rankings.
* [http://www.boardgamegeeks.com/game/177 Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization] at BoardGameGeeks
* [http://www.civproject.net/ Civilization: The Expansion Project] An unofficial variant for the game