I decided to take a break & have a day of gaming with Mo before he went off for his labour intensive holidays. Since we had the whole day to ourselves, I decided to break my duck on the number of plays for Nations since Mo is my one & only gaming partner for the civ genre.
Game(s) Played:
Nations
Suburbia
Session – Nations
Player(s):
Justin (Purple)
Mo (Yellow)
[Game 1]
I played as the Chinese civilization, which comes with a food bonus if I end my turn before Mo does. By placing this restriction on myself, I was hoping to have more effective turns by endeavouring to always go first (by having the highest combat strength – Samurai banzai!). This strategy turned out to be pretty effective & I managed to snag quite a few cards under Mo’s nose this way. In terms of growth, we were actually equal at the end but his lack of improved technologies (cards) meant his workers were not quite as effective as mine were.
As you can see here, I had built up a huge lead mostly due to my knowledge. Mo did manage to catch up with points from his buildings & wonders
The game does require a fair amount of space even with two Players
Player(s):
Justin (Blue)
Mo (Red)
[Game 2]
For our second round (the probability of a second round increases exponentially if Mo loses the first), I played as the Romans this time. I had a much tougher time balancing the various needs of my civilization compared to the previous round. Somehow I couldn’t quite strike the balance of having enough food, stability & minerals. I believe I mistakenly over relied on the Romans’ military bonus and left upgrading my military technologies far too late.
Mo had a huge lead over me this round due to his knowledge bonus
Here’s where I had the chance to close the gap, by grabbing Isabella as my leader my money & food problems would be solved in one move
There was no catching Mo’s knowledge level and I even lost out in terms of growth. I’m surprised our points difference was as close as it was
As usual, Mo favoured wonders as is his style. His civilization bonus was very vague however and we had to go on to the boardgamegeek forums to get a definitive interpretation
Time Taken: 90 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
[Game 1]
Winna – Justin (34 VPs)
Dead Last – Mo (30 VPs)
[Game 2]
Winna – Mo (33 VPs)
Dead Last – Justin (30 VPs)
Rating: 9/10
What’s amazing is how short this game actually is compared to the satisfaction of playing a good civ game. I’m still undecided on how much the card draw affects game play, although in our second round it seemed to be more evident that there were less military technology cards. Mo agreed that Nations has probably taken over Through The Ages as his go to civ game due to the higher number of choices available as well as the shorter length of the game.
Session – Suburbia
Mo wanted to do another round but due to time constraints, I proposed that we try Suburbia instead.
Player(s):
Justin (Purple)
Mo (Red)
We did play a rule wrong whereby if you exceed your maximum income / reputation & then take a hit, you can’t offset that "surplus" and remain at maximum income / reputation. As expected, the goal tiles played a big part in the determination of the winner.
My opening hand was to quickly establish a foothold on achieving the goal tiles for "Most Commercial Tiles", of course Mo did likewise
Having accomplished my first goal, I set out to reach highest income through civic buildings & building up my score through population
I still don’t know how I miscalculated Mo to have only 4 commercial tiles. This was to be my undoing
Time Taken: 50 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winna –Mo (87 VPs)
Dead Last – Justin (76 VPs)
Rating: 7/10
Our actual final score was 77 – 76 VPs because we naturally both had the highest income since we misplayed the maximum income / reputation rule. Then I realise he had one more commercial tile than I did, *slaps to the head quickly ensue*. This would be my second competitive play of Suburbia and I can’t quite shake the feeling that achieving goal tiles feels somewhat "wrong" in the spirit of a city building game. I’m not sure if reducing the goal tiles reward will change this feeling.
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