There has been much controversy over the demise of Eagle Games last year; I personally think Glenn Drover's new company, Tropical Games, should have perhaps took the title Phoenix Games from the manner in which it seemed to rise from the flames.
But enough on the politics of it all, for after last night's session I can now try and put your mind to rest regarding the much-discussed vanguard of his new Tropical Games label; Age of Empires III - The Age of Discovery. Like many of his previously published (and previously promised) boardgames, Age of Empires III is themed on a computer game of the same name. I've never played it but I am in no doubt it is a real-time strategy in which buildings are built for various functions and units are built to gather resources, fight enemies or for some other purpose.
Naturally a boardgame cannot be a real-time strategy; but the underlying theme of the exploration and conquest of the New World has been transferred successfully into this carefully considered design. The end product is a finely-tuned balance between risk and strategy, our group thoroughly enjoyed it - so much that they didn't realise that the passage of time had gone way beyond the stated ninety minutes!
Portuguese influence in the New World was slowly being choked out of existence
Each player represents one of five European powers competing to discover and exploit the New World and other undiscovered territories. In oirder to do this they must send out soldiers to pillage the natives and deal with opponents, captains to make thier discoveries, merchants to trade with the locals, missionaries to convert them to Christianity and of course colonists to, well, colonise.
The game unfolds thorugh a series of action selection rounds reminiscent of Wallace's Way Out West (though I am almost certain a similar system has been used elsewhere this is the best example that springs to mind). Players place colonists and specialists in various spaces to carry out various actions. Some have limited places, others do not; they include a trade goods section where goods may be obtained (which earn income but are never actually traded between players), a specialist section where the specialists may be gained or trained, capital building spaces where one of a number of available "buildings" may be bought (tiles each carrying their own benefit - though some don't sound like buildings at all) and the colonists dock where colonists and specialists embark for the colonies in the New World.
The number of rounds played is fixed, with scoring for the colonies taking place at the end of every age (endgame scoring being most involved) and every age consisting of two or three such rounds up to a total of eight. This seems to me to be a little unbalanced in some respects, because the end of age scoring (as opposed to the endgame) doesn't seem to earn very much at all. however I'll take the designer's word for it that every game should feel different and I'll see how it goes next time.
I cannot say hand-on-heart that this game did not carry with it some disappointment for me; I thought the components could have been better for a start, but that's never really a problem and the play is the thing. In all honesty I will have to play it again a few times before I can finally decide its fate because a game of such complexity may be masking the possibility of more than one or two workable strategies. However at several points in the game it seemed to me there were a couple of problems. First of these is a perceptible monopolisation of the action selection; should a single player continually gain more pieces for placement it will be very difficult to stop him making the best of every subsequent turn. Similarly a player who gains income at a greater rate than others early on is automatically empowered to carry out the more beneficial actions (capital buildings, extra specialists and so on) without any real intervention from the trailer(s). Of all the minor disappointments I experienced the worst was that I had bought a game for six players which only contains enough pieces for five to play - yet I still wonder if five is too many!
I am looking forward to our next game, hopefully towards the end of the week; it seems there is enough going on here that everybody in the group wants to try it some more just to see if they can eke out a few alternative strategies. I can't see many myself, so I am looking forward to proving myself wrong!
But enough on the politics of it all, for after last night's session I can now try and put your mind to rest regarding the much-discussed vanguard of his new Tropical Games label; Age of Empires III - The Age of Discovery. Like many of his previously published (and previously promised) boardgames, Age of Empires III is themed on a computer game of the same name. I've never played it but I am in no doubt it is a real-time strategy in which buildings are built for various functions and units are built to gather resources, fight enemies or for some other purpose.
Naturally a boardgame cannot be a real-time strategy; but the underlying theme of the exploration and conquest of the New World has been transferred successfully into this carefully considered design. The end product is a finely-tuned balance between risk and strategy, our group thoroughly enjoyed it - so much that they didn't realise that the passage of time had gone way beyond the stated ninety minutes!
Portuguese influence in the New World was slowly being choked out of existence
Each player represents one of five European powers competing to discover and exploit the New World and other undiscovered territories. In oirder to do this they must send out soldiers to pillage the natives and deal with opponents, captains to make thier discoveries, merchants to trade with the locals, missionaries to convert them to Christianity and of course colonists to, well, colonise.
The game unfolds thorugh a series of action selection rounds reminiscent of Wallace's Way Out West (though I am almost certain a similar system has been used elsewhere this is the best example that springs to mind). Players place colonists and specialists in various spaces to carry out various actions. Some have limited places, others do not; they include a trade goods section where goods may be obtained (which earn income but are never actually traded between players), a specialist section where the specialists may be gained or trained, capital building spaces where one of a number of available "buildings" may be bought (tiles each carrying their own benefit - though some don't sound like buildings at all) and the colonists dock where colonists and specialists embark for the colonies in the New World.
The number of rounds played is fixed, with scoring for the colonies taking place at the end of every age (endgame scoring being most involved) and every age consisting of two or three such rounds up to a total of eight. This seems to me to be a little unbalanced in some respects, because the end of age scoring (as opposed to the endgame) doesn't seem to earn very much at all. however I'll take the designer's word for it that every game should feel different and I'll see how it goes next time.
I cannot say hand-on-heart that this game did not carry with it some disappointment for me; I thought the components could have been better for a start, but that's never really a problem and the play is the thing. In all honesty I will have to play it again a few times before I can finally decide its fate because a game of such complexity may be masking the possibility of more than one or two workable strategies. However at several points in the game it seemed to me there were a couple of problems. First of these is a perceptible monopolisation of the action selection; should a single player continually gain more pieces for placement it will be very difficult to stop him making the best of every subsequent turn. Similarly a player who gains income at a greater rate than others early on is automatically empowered to carry out the more beneficial actions (capital buildings, extra specialists and so on) without any real intervention from the trailer(s). Of all the minor disappointments I experienced the worst was that I had bought a game for six players which only contains enough pieces for five to play - yet I still wonder if five is too many!
I am looking forward to our next game, hopefully towards the end of the week; it seems there is enough going on here that everybody in the group wants to try it some more just to see if they can eke out a few alternative strategies. I can't see many myself, so I am looking forward to proving myself wrong!
2 comments:
I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I hope that's not just because I won, though I would admit it probably helped ;)
I'm sure that there are quite a few strategies in there waiting to be discovered, but I'm not going to give too much away until we have played it a bit more ;)
I thought the components were fine, but I'm a sucker for bits (I think I told Hatti I was going to have to buy it after opening the first bag!) - though a quick spray, ink wash and varnish would make them so much better!
Can't wait to play it again, but I dont think I'll get away with my last approach again.
A sure sign Neil has way too much time on his hands:
"...though a quick spray, ink wash and varnish would make them so much better!"
Even if I wanted to do this (a great big "IF") I doubt I would ever be able to fit it in between the few sessions I manage to attend and worktime.
I am not against minis but I found these quite irritating. For this reason I have replaced them all with generic pieces - except the ships which are great.
I will be melting the remaining plastic down to cast myself a dice boot.
Just kidding - but I did think that they were way too cumbersome, fiddly and sometimes difficult to distinguish.
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