Tôi yêu cái trò chơi này!

(“I love this game!”)

There is a lot that I have discovered I love about Age of Civilization (Jeffrey CCH). Top points for me include:

  • A traditional civ-like game that plays in 30 minutes solo (though it can also play up to 4).
  • Small footprint (one standard CCG playmat, or 24” by 14”).
  • Pleasingly simply play loop and good narrative arc.
  • Scenario booklet.
  • Multiple components for variants bundled in the box – essentially, small expansions that come with the base game is one of my favorite, yet rare, characteristics of any game.
  • And most importantly: Vietnam is one of the many civilizations.

I’m Vietnamese, and I know Vietnam is a small country so it’s not like my motherland is going to be widely featured in tabletop games. But when it is, it’s a big feature point to me – because it usually means that the designer(s) didn’t think that little countries should be left out when little countries could fit into their game’s vision.

And really, the above points, even outside of including Vietnam, already make this game launch itself into my heart, a feat that only some of my absolute favorites in times past and present have managed – such as Race for the Galaxy, ROVE, Maquis, Sylvion, ExoBase, Dominion, Viticulture, Fields of Arle, and a few others. At this point in my life I have played literally hundreds of games so it takes a lot more to make me say “Yes, this is probably a good bet without even a first free try” – and to have it work out.

My weird accidental evaluation test

Because I really am enamored with the frankly pretty unique aspect of a game where Vietnam is on equal footing with, say, Rome, I decided to try a wild variation for my first two games – and if game two actually held out despite it I would be impressed.

I decided to make it such that my first civilization was always Vietnam, and that no other civilization would rise over Vietnam. Instead, the two other civilizations chosen over the next rounds would never be ascendant over Vietnam, and indeed would never give me their new special abilities – I would only ever be able to use their legacy ability as I tucked them beneath Vietnam’s card.

The way Age of Civilization is structured, while this is a legal choice, it also severely hampers adapting to changing and varied game conditions – from the availability of other civilizations, to which Wonders are available, to what the action card timeline looks like.

Anyways so the game held out on the second play as well as it did on the first play. I scored close to 20 points on the first game, and a bit above 20 points on the second try – which is not that easy to do within the five rounds of the game; points are sparse and rely on being able to build yourself up past specific points of development – quickly.

What does this say about the game?

Well, first, I am impressed. More importantly, I would need more time and more plays to answer that question.

But I also realized this is an incidental variant.

Accidental variant campaign mode: Tell a Nation’s Story

Setup: do what I did, but pick your own nation to keep as the ascendant one throughout your campaign. Or pick Vietnam. But as far as I can tell, every nation is pretty good on its own. And boy there are a lot of them, both ancient and gone, or more modern and still extant.

Games: Play multiple games where you keep your chosen nation as the main character – any other civilizations you incorporate go under your nation’s card and only gives you their legacy ability. Play as many as you like.

Wins: Games where you win, your state doesn’t change, except maybe your campaign title reward goes up and up for every game you win. (I don’t have a list, but the titles should start humble and get more grandiose as you continue on.)

Losses: For every game you lose in a row, start with one extra coin the next game, and this is cumulative for a series of losses. When you get another win, decrease your carry-over coins by one. Essentially, every loss gives you a catchup coin, and every win decreases your catchup coins, in a cumulative manner.

Tell the story: After you finish a game, write down in as brief or as detailed a fashion as you like, one good thing that happened and one bad thing that happened. Embrace imagining how the good thing and the bad thing could map to hypothetical historical events.

Yes, this is basically “turn this game into a campaign journaling game” but I really love journaling games so I don’t know what you expected from me. XD

Other variant thoughts

There are other things I sort of want to do that’s mostly along the lines of “how do we incorporate the few civilizations that are left out of solo mode because they strongly rely on other players” and “how do we enable the Changing World variant/module for solo games.”

But Age of Civilization needs to hold out first, enough for me to want to do a full review. Truthfully, I think it will – but the proof is in the playing.

Also I am going to play my weird journaling game campaign variant until Vietnam subsumes China, for historical reasons but especially because of irony, between more normal games of Age of Civilization.