Wray Ferrell - 11:18am Dec 4, 2001 PST (#2739 of 2895)
Currently reading "Chronicle of the Roman Emperors"

Eagle Games' War: The Age of Imperialism

I actually got a chance to play this last night. My one sentence review
is that it is a Advanced Civilization lite construction kit. Lots of
pieces, lots of rules, lots of stuff, not very well developed. This is a
game that screams for house rules.

We played a five player game (advanced rules) last night and quit after
2 1/2 hours when it became apparent that one player was going to run
away with it.

The game starts ala Risk with each player putting one infantry unit in a
province. Once each player has five provinces the rest of the provinces
get a native marker face down. (large luck factor here which I will talk
about later).

Then everyone getting 140 production points to build your starting
forces. It does not buy much. Buildings (cities, forts, schools,
factories) cost 30, Leaders (help in battle and subduing natives) cost
40, Artillary cost 20, Cav cost 15, and infantry cost 10. Two special
units can be built, engineers cost 15 and explorers cost 10. Infantry
can be built anywhere, the rest have to be built at cities or schools.
Engineers reduce the cost of any building by 10 pp, but must be in the
space in which the building is being built.

Cities produce 10 pps each turn, factories produce 10 pps + (2 x number
of developed resources). So after spending your 140 to start with you
end up with maybe two cities, a small army, and maybe an explorer or
two.

Each turn consists of move, fight, move, fight, buy stuff in player
order. When entering an area with natives, you must fight them unless
you have brought an explorer along. If you have an explorer you can roll
2d6 and if you are equal or higher than the native's strenght rating
they don't attack you, but are still present. In addition, you get a
free infantry in the space (I don't know why either). So the first big
luck factor is are the natives around you wimps or studs? (All the
native markers are placed face down so you don't know until you try).
The natives range in str from 4 to 12. The number indicates the number
of infantry they have. In addtion the counter may have upto 2 + on it.
One + means the natives have additional calvary equal to have the
infantry rounded up. Second + means they have one artillary piece as
well. So a 10++ marker means the "natives" have 10 infantry, 5 cav, and
1 artty. A 4 marker means they have just 4 infantry.

So quickly everyone learned that you just send in a lone explorer and
hope he can "subdue" the natives by rolling >= thier strength. If he
rolls lower than the number he is killed, but he only costs 10 pps. If
you send an army with the explorer and he chokes the roll then the
natives fight your army. A 10++ native can destroy most armies thrown at
it early in the game. Once the explorer subdues the natives, ie keep
building explorers and throwing them in there until you succeed, during
the buy phase you can buy off the natives by paying thier strength X 2
in pps. Or you can pay 25 - native str to incite a revolt. ie the
natives rise up and attack whatever pieces are in the space. So what
happened is that everyone quickly just sent in exploreres with no army
until they subdued the natives. Then the lone explorer sat there,
because if you leave they are no longer subdued, until you could afford
to buy off the natives. And no one is going to spend money to make the
natives revolt just to kill off a lone explorer.

The other huge luck factor was that once the natives were subdued or
killed off by your army, you draw a resource marker at random. Only you
get to see what the resource is. 60% of the markers have a dot meaning
nothing of value. The rest range in value from 4 to 12. During your buy
phases you can spend 30 pps to develop a resource, ie turn the marker
over so everyone can see what it is. Now the resource will generate it's
number in pps each turn plus make each of your factories more
profitable.

So the problem is that you have the same chance of finding a resource if
you kill off a wimpy native or a strong native. So last night one person
just happened to be surrounded by the N*Sync natives and quickly wiped
them out and also happened to find four resources in his eight spaces.
Another player was surrounded by the Atilla the Hun natives and made
slow progress against them AND never drew a good resource, ie all his
resource chits had dots on them.

House Rule #1: After defeating or subduing natives, draw one resource
chit. Draw addtional chits equal to Native Str - 8. Draw two addtional
chits for each +. You may only place one resource marker, the rest are
returned face down to the pool.

So if I defeat the wimpy 5 natives, I draw one resource chit. If you
defeat the 10++ natives, you would draw 7 resource chits and pick one to
place and return the other six. So now at least risk and reward are
somewhat tied together.

In addtion there are advances you can research which make your cities
more profitable, factories more profitiable, miliary better, etc...
Kinda like the computer game Civ technology tree in that some advances
require other earlier advances in differnt areas. You research by
spending pps and then rolling 5 dice. If you spent more pps than you
rolled on the 5 dice you get the advance. So you can spend 30 to ensure
that you get it or less and take your chances.

There is a good game in here just don't expect it right out of the box.

Wray