What I’m playing: Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game (2010)

I may have previously spoken of my love for Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise before, a relationship that started way back in 1996 with the second iteration of the computer game. The most recent version, Civ V, was released back in 2010 and its second major expansion, Brave New World, will be released in July. According to Steam, to date I have played 696 hours of Civ 5, and I would assume an equally large amount of time was sunk into the earlier iterations.

Today, however, I’m going to talk about my very first experience with the board game of the same name. What’s funny about this is that the original Sid Meier’s Civilization computer game was actually based off the 1980s board game, Civilization. So this is a board game of a computer game of a board game. HA!

There have actually been two attempts at turning the computer game into a board game, the first of which was back in 2002 by a different publisher. Below is a timeline to give you a better view of how things have developed over the years:

• 1980: Civilization (board)
• 1991: Sid Meier's Civilization (computer)
• 1996: Sid Meier's Civilization II (computer)
• 2001: Sid Meier's Civilization III (computer)
• 2002: Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game
• 2005: Sid Meier's Civilization IV (computer)
• 2010: Sid Meier's Civilization V (computer)
• 2010: Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game (unrelated to earlier version)

With that little bit of history out of the way, let’s jump straight into the game!

First off, this is not a short game. This is absolutely not the sort of game you should attempt to play at 8pm on a Thursday night, especially when three of the four players have never experienced it before. Of course, that’s exactly what we did.

It took Jeff about an hour to go through all the rules and then we played for four and a half hours before quitting at 1:30am. We were probably at least 30-60 minutes away from a winner being crowned, so that should give you a good idea of the scope. Obviously our next should run faster now that we are all familiar with it, but I’d suggest putting aside about three hours if you want to play it.

The game starts with each player (2-4) choosing from a pool of civilizations, all of which have unique powers and play styles. The board is a giant map constructed from sixteen squares that are randomly placed face-down in a 4x4 square. Each player starts in one of the four corners of the map, which are flipped over to allow placement of their capital and starting units.

Units come in two flavors: scouts, who are represented by covered wagons, and armies, that are represented by banners. Each turn, each unit you own gets a set amount of movement points that they can use to reveal and explore new squares of the game map. By doing so you open up new space in which to build new cities, discover “goodie huts” and eventually encounter other players and potentially engage in warfare.

“Goodie huts” come in two flavors: abandoned and barbarian encampments. The former can be looted by having either a scout or an army walk into the square it occupies, revealing a free random resource that can be put towards various projects in your civilization. The barbarians, however, require you to fight for your loot, and as such can only be taken by an army unit.

Combat in SMC:TBG is based on “rock, paper, scissors.” For the majority of the game there are only three types of military units available to you: infantry, cavalry, and ranged. Each unit has a strength assigned to it, which can vary by a few points from card to card. When two units face off in battle, if either one can deal damage equal to the opposing unit’s strength, the opposing unit dies.

Example: A German infantry unit (Strength 1) faces off against a Roman infantry (Strength 3). Both units deal their damage to each other, with the German unit dying and the Roman unit taking a point of damage. If the Roman unit takes 2 more damage before the battle ends he too will die, otherwise the damage with be healed.

Further, if both units in the above example had strength of 2, both would have taken lethal damage and died. However, each unit is geared towards defeating a different type, giving it a chance to strike first in tie-breakers. Infantry excel against cavalry, cavalry excels against ranged, and ranged excels against infantry. So if an infantry unit (Strength 2) fought a cavalry unit (Strength 2), the cavalry unit would get to strike first, killing the infantry before they had a chance to retaliate and deal damage. So ideally you want to build your army to include a variety of units to help balance against whatever opposing units you may come up against.

While exploring the map, settling new cities and beating up on the indigenous people, you can also attack your neighbors, grow your economy, grow your culture, and research new technologies, all of which are potential paths towards victory.

Technology is broken into five tiers, each representing a new age in mankind’s history, and is researched in a pyramid fashion from the bottom up. That is to say, before you can research a level 2 technology you would need at least two level 1 technologies already researched. To research a level 3, you would need another level 2, which in turn would require another level 1. Get it? Good.

There’s a ton more I could talk about this game (e.g. economics, culture, city building), but this post is already fairly long in the tooth so I’m going to stop. But if you are the sort of person who enjoys strategy heavy games and don’t mind committing an entire afternoon or evening to the experience I would recommend you try this game out. It was a lot of fun and I look forward getting a chance to try it out again.

P.S. I have been told by people in the know that aggressive strategies win this game, and as such, the Germans are super over-powered, so maybe leave them out the first time you play.


Image source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.