Ideology comes in a small (8"x8"x2") box (over half of which is empty space), and contains a 16-page rulebook (plus a one-page reference sheet), a Ziploc bag of over 100 die-cut counters, 355 cards (in a number of different sizes), and a world map. The key to the small box size (and probably contributing a good deal to the game’s low price) is the fact that the map (which unfolds to 24"x12") is printed on stiff glossy paper, instead of card. This would be a drawback if extensive use of the board was made in the game, but its purpose is mostly for record-keeping, so the tradeoffs are worthwhile.
The components are all in full colour, and the illustrations (by C. James Parks VII) are high-quality. The various cards are printed on glossy cardstock, but aren’t laminated, so wear will show on them more quickly than in some other games. Still, many of the cards spend little time being shuffled or held in players’ hands, so they won’t fall apart as quickly as a CCG printed on this stock would. Some of the cards are also extremely small (1.5"x2.5") but this doesn’t make them harder to use, as those that go into your hand have very little writing on them, and those that have lots of writing stay in open view on the table at all times (and for the most part the writing uses simple boilerplate text, so once you’ve read three of the on-the-table cards you know what the writing on the others is going to be). Use of colour-coding and graphics (graphic design by Andrew Parks) also helps with ease of use of the little cards.
Ideology is a rule-the-world game that recognizes that there are more ways to take over a country than just moving in with your army: the player who has a plurality of Military, Economic, and Cultural influence over a country controls it. Each player is randomly assigned one of the governing ideologies of the 20th century: Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Imperialism, or Islamic Fundamentalism. Each of these ideologies has advantages and disadvantages in play; e.g., the Capitalist player doesn’t pay range penalties when extending Economic influence over non-adjacent nations, has improved defences in Cultural conflicts, but is isolationist, being unable to declare Military war against an opponent (although he can fight if attacked); the Islamic Fundamentalist pays no range penalties on Cultural influence, doesn’t have to wait for the Diplomacy Phase to declare war against his opponents, and can spend Military influence to affect the Economic or Cultural influence of his opponents, but pays extra in order to buy industrial advancements. (In a two-player game, instead of randomly assigning ideologies, the ideologies are matched for balance; e.g., if the first player draws Communism, the second is automatically assigned Fascism.)
Each turn of the game consists of eight phases. A short summary of the phases is printed on the cards that describe the five ideologies, while a more detailed summary is on the map board. Unfortunately, players not in a position to easily read the map summary are likely to rely on the summary on the Ideology card in front of them, which may cause them to miss out on some of their options during each phase (as happened during the session I played at the Games Club of Maryland)(and this is as good a place as any to thank GCOM for providing me with players in a pinch when I didn’t have time to round them up for the review). Every phase requires strategic thinking, and the strategies change as the game goes on.
The first phase is the Resource Phase, when players draw new Influence cards, each Ideology having its own 45-card deck of Influence cards, identical in the distribution of card types, but marked with a different colour and emblem so that everyone can keep track of who played which card where. Early in the game players are handicapped by drawing only three cards per turn, cards that have to be used for developing their own countries, buying advancements, influencing other countries, attacking other countries, and defending their own countries from attack. Obviously, nobody’s going to be able to do everything he wants with just those first three cards, especially if the cards he draws don’t play to his strengths (i.e., the Fascist player has an advantage when starting Military conflicts but pays a penalty when attempting Cultural influence, but if he draws multiple Cultural Influence and no Military Influence cards, he’ll be hamstrung), which means that the first few turns of the game progress quickly (since everybody’s out of cards quickly) but little seems to happen (since it can take multiple turns before anything of substance happens). But when a player gets more cards each draw (either by taking control of independent countries or by developing his controlled countries to higher levels), he’ll find his options opening up, and the game speeding up.
(One interesting effect of each player having his own deck of Influence cards to draw from is that if a player manages to get lots of a certain type of card that plays to his advantages (e.g., Economic Influence for Capitalism, or Military Influence for Fascism) early on is that those cards become rarer in his deck as the game goes on. When the make-or-break final turns of the game come, a player might find himself saddled with a deck stacked with the less useful cards that he’d discarded earlier, forcing him to develop alternative strategies -- and quickly.)
Next is the Trading Phase, when players discard unwanted cards and draw new ones, hoping to get a better hand. The number of cards a player can discard is equal to the number of countries in which he has at least one Influence card; on the first turn he has only his home country, so he can only discard one of the three cards in his initial draw.
Then comes the Development Phase, when players can play Influence cards on countries they already control in order to improve their development levels (increasing the number of cards the player can have in his hand, protecting the countries against attacks, and scoring Global Influence points), or spend cards to buy advancements (e.g., at a cost of two Cultural Influence cards, Patriotism provides limited protection from Cultural attacks).
At the start of the Foreign Phase a card from the deck of independent countries is turned over, joining independent countries that were revealed in previous turns but not taken over by any players. Players can place Cultural, Economic, and Military Influence cards onto the independent countries, and when a country reaches its maximum limit in all three categories it becomes the property of the player who has the most Influence cards on it. A country like Afghanistan requires only one Influence card of each type to be taken over, but Great Britain requires three of each type (nine in all) and may remain on the table as an independent for a while.
(Warning: With each player having in front of him his deck of Influence cards to draw from, his discard pile, his collection of advancement cards, his home country and any controlled countries (each of which has it’s own little stacks of Influence cards), and then with the world map, the rulebook, the bag of assorted counters, the communal card decks (the unrevealed independent countries, the advancements that haven’t yet been bought), and the independent countries (each of them with their own Influence card stacks) in the centre of the table, and then a new independent country being added to the mix each turn, and control of countries (and therefore the placement of them and their card stacks) changing every turn, Ideology takes up a lot more space than a standard board game.)
In the Conflict Phase, players can play Influence cards on countries (both independent and controlled) attempting to remove the already-played Influence cards of an opponent; if the defender can’t counter with an Influence card of the same type from his hand, he loses the conflict and the targeted Influence card is removed from the country, replaced by the card of the attacker. The sequence of phases becomes important here, because conflicts can only be initiated after all players have passed on the Foreign Phase (so a player who has advantages in Conflict might ignore the Foreign Phase entirely, saving his cards for the arena in which he has the advantage); and because which Conflicts a player can initiate against which opponents depend on their diplomatic stance toward each other (e.g., if the player of the Fascism Ideology wants to launch a Conflict against Imperialism’s Military Influence in India, he can only do so if he had the foresight to declare war on Imperialism in the previous turn, which India might not even have been revealed yet).
Only following this turn’s Conflict Phase does the Diplomacy Phase come in, when players decide what their diplomatic stances (peace, neutrality, or war) towards each other for the next turn. This can be the trickiest part of the game; it’s easy to forget to apply the effects of diplomatic stances on Conflicts, and even when you do remember you may have to read and reread the rules (which are included in the Conflict Phase section, not in the Diplomacy Phase) to ensure that you know what they really mean. Importantly, the reasons why one might want to be at peace with the Fascists (not that the Fascists would ever enter into a peace agreement if they knew its effects) aren’t discussed; you have to find them out by trial and error, with some of the error deriving from potential misreadings of the effects of the different stances. There’s a chart on the map board where dove, owl, and hawk markers are used to show what the stances are between each pair of countries, but in addition to that a summary chart saying “If your stance is Peace, you can’t engage in anything but Cultural Conflict with a country; if it’s Neutral, you can also engage in Economic Conflict, etc.” would have been well worth the space.
Finally there come the Assessment Phase, when you record control of independent countries or changes of ownership of controlled countries by putting markers on the map; and the Turn Order Phase, when players count up their Global Influence, which is the total of the development levels of all the countries they control (each player’s home country starts at 3), plus the total number of Weapons of Mass Destruction advancements they may have bought. Whoever has the highest Global Influence goes first next turn, unless his total is 12 or higher, in which case he wins. In a relatively even game, two or more players are likely to enter into striking distance of 12 in the same turn, which means that play in those last turns can be cut-throat, with temporary alliances of players ganging up on the leaders, only to revert to backstabbing when the front-runners are taken out and the alliance members are a turn away from winning themselves. Unlike the official stances ideologies take toward each other in the Diplomacy Phase, these temporary alliances are worth the paper their printed on -- and they’re not printed on paper.
QUOTE OF THE GAME
During our first game, Fascism tried to make an alliance with me, Islamic Fundamentalism, to gang up on the about-to-win Imperialism.
Fascism: “Promise me you won’t waste any cards attacking my countries while Imperialism is still a threat.”
Islamic Fundamentalism: “I promise not to waste any cards attacking you.”
When I indeed attacked him later in that same turn, he threw my promise back in my face.
Fascism: “You said you weren’t going to attack me!”
Islamic Fundamentalism: “No, I promised that any cards I used to attack you wouldn’t be a waste.”
CONCLUSION
Now, that all sounds a lot more complex than Risk, but in reality it isn’t. It may take more than a single play through before everyone’s even sure they have the rules down pat, and on each game a player may discover another one of the possible strategies, but even on the first run-through the step-by-step nature of the phases keeps the many options from being entirely overwhelming, and some strategies are fairly obvious even to a first-time player (we didn’t read the four strategy tips on the last page of the rulebook before playing the first time, and we came up with three of the four independently during the first game). I don’t know if I agree with the age recommendation (12 and up) on the box, but maybe a bright 12-year-old would be able to not only get the hang of this but also out-think his elders.
While it’s not for everybody, I would certainly recommend Ideology to gamers who’ve gone beyond the simplicity of Risk but who don’t want to take the plunge into war games -- a thinking man’s family game.
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