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Review of Western Empires
Blurb from the publisher: 'Western Empires is a board game for 5 to 9 players that covers the development of ancient civilizations over 8000 years of history. It is not a wargame, rather the players lead their civilizations as they expand, develop culture and technology, engage in conflict, apply diplomacy, and face calamities. The objective of the game is to gain the most victory points by trading commodities and strategically developing advances, which represent each civilization's wealth and glory. This game provides a full day of fun for players who are dedicated to epic board games with a strong historical context. Due to the large diversity in advances that can be developed and balanced differences in playing conditions between the civilizations, each new game played is very different from the previous one!
Western Empires includes a 2-hour tutorial scenario, and a 6-hour short game scenario, while a full game takes up to 13 hours.
Western Empires a standalone game. Together with Eastern Empires (not included), you may play Mega Empires with up to 18 players!'
What you get: Your EUR 120 or equivalent will buy you Western Empires, a 5 to 9 player civilization-building game in the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond, that lasts anything from eight to thirteen hours. The game is standalone, yet it can be combined with Eastern Empires, a game expected in 2020, and which tackles the same theme through a different geographical region, namely the Middle East, Caucasus, and India. Together the two games will be able to accommodate up to 18 (!) players.
A bit of history first: at the beginning (i.e. in 1980) came Civilization, a civ-building game with an epic scale. The game was republished in 1982 by Avalon Hill, and in 1991 an expansion came out. That was Advanced Civilization, which greatly increased the options and versatility that players had. Life being what it is, the game went out-of-print, the company got bust (Avalon Hill still exists as an imprint of Hasbro yet it doesn't publish any of the titles that made it famous), and the game was re-implemented in another form by 999 Games and Pegasus Spiel in 2015. That implementation was called Mega Civilization. Where Civilization was a 2-8 player game, Mega Civilization was a gargantuan 5-18 player game that weighed more than ten kilos and was encased in a wooden box. The current Western Empires (and forthcoming Eastern Empires) are in fact a reimplementation of Mega Civilization which has also has gone out of print, with further alterations and cleanups.
I have played more games of Civilization and Advanced Civilization that I can think of, yet I have only participated in a demo of Mega Civilization. Thus, I cannot readily compare Western Empires to its immediate forefather, yet I can do so with its more distanced predecessors, namely Civilization and Advanced Civilization, two of the crown jewels of my gaming collection. This is not your average playtest.
In addition to the 44-page Rulebook and The First Game Scenario Booklet the game also contains the following: 2 Map Boards, 1080 tokens (nine Civilizations, each consisting of 55 Population (+1 spare), 9 Cities, 4 AST/Census markers, 4 Ships, as well as 9 Pirate Cities, 27 Barbarian tokens, one Turn marker, 27 big and 7 small Out-of-Play tokens, and 333 Credit tokens in 5 colours and different denominations), one double-sided City Count board, 9 double-sided Player Mats, 195 Commodity cards,24 Calamities, 5 spare small-sized cards, 6 Trade cards holders, 9 Player Sequence tokens, 9 'The Short Game' scenario tokens, 459 Civilization Advances, one Bonus VP card, 2 spare large-sized cards, one double-sided AST for nine players, one Census Track board / AST for eighteen players, and 5 double-sided player aids.
Gameplay: Western Empires is played on a map of most of Europe, Asia Minor and the South Mediterranean divided in more than 130 land areas and a few sea zones. Each player controls one of the civilizations that dominated the Mediterranean thousands of years ago, like the Carthaginians, the Minoans, the Romans, the Iberians, the Assyrians and the Greeks. Depending on the number of players a different part of the map will be used. Some civilizations can be played in any player count (i.e. the Greeks, the Minoans and the Hatti), while others can only be played on particular player counts. As the most prominent example, the Celts are a playable civilization only in 9-player counts. Each player has a maximum of 55 population tokens, 9 cities and 4 ships that he can use throughout the game, and which at the beginning of the game will be found on the Stock area of his mat. One of this population tokens will start from his region's starting location.
There are thirteen phases in a turn of Western Empires. Some of these phases are executed simultaneously, some in AST order, and some in inverse AST order. AST stands for Archaeological Succession Table, namely the table that keeps track how well each civilization is doing.
In Tax Collection players transfer a number of population from their Stock to their Treasury. If they can't do so due to lack of tokens, their cities revolt and can be annexed by the player with the most cities in stock.
Population Expansion is about adding population tokens on the board. Wherever a player has one token, he may add another one. Wherever he has two or more, he may add two tokens.
Census is what it says: everybody counts his population on the board and notes it on the Census track.
Movement comprises a swathe of actions. Population tokens can move towards an adjacent land area. Ships may be built at a cost paid either from the board through the removal of population tokens, or from the Treasury through the transfer of population back to Stock. Ships can be maintained from one game turn to the next at a cost lower than that of constructing new ships. Ship movement is different to that of populations, since it extends up to four sea areas, and with the right technologies it can traverse the open seas. Movement is likely to cause conflicts, since populations of different civilizations cannot coexist in an area above that area's population total. The most common population totals are 1 and 2, even though a handful of select areas can support 3 populations. There are two types of conflict: population conflicts and city attacks.
Conflict resolves population conflicts first. The player with the least tokens in the area removes one population, followed by the other player or other players in case of three or more civilizations having found themselves in the same area, until the area can support the amount of tokens it holds irrespective of whom they belong to. City attacks are resolved afterwards. For a successful city attack, the attacker must have brought at least seven tokens in the area. If they are less, they are returned to his stock without producing any results. If they are seven however, the city transforms itself into six tokens, and conflict resolution proceeds in the manner just described. Following the successful sacking of a city, the attacker may take a trade card from the defender, as well as move a number of tokens from this Stock to his Treasury as loot.
City Construction also comprises different actions. First comes the eponymous one. If a player has 6 or more population in a location with a city site, or 12 population or more in any other location, he can return the population to his Stock and build a city. Each area can only contain one city. Next, surplus population is also removed from areas that can't support it. Finally, each player checks whether his cities are supported by the population he has on the board. Each city on the board needs two population in order to remain supported. Each city that is not supported is removed from the board and is substituted by that area's support limit.
On phase six players acquire trade cards. First, all players draw trade cards equal to their number of cities on the board. Each city allows a draw from one of the cards' nine stacks. Each stack has a different numerical value, from one to nine. Each value includes different commodities, it also includes however tradable and non-tradable calamities that the players will endure. A player can also purchase cards from stack 9 for 15 treasury tokens per card. Players can never inform one another of the type of cards they are holding.
Trade is one of the game's most important aspects, and definitely its most interactive. The objective is to gather sets of identical commodities, since these increase the value of the cards exponentially. Depending on the number of players, trade is simultaneous, loud and chaotic, like what the old floor of the NYSE used to be. Each trade includes at least three cards per player, and only two players may participate in a trade. A player is obliged to truthfully declare the number of cards he is parting from, as well as what commodity two of them depict. Following that, any declaration may be honest or a falsehood. The cards are not shown, they simply change hands. Trade ends when no other trades can be concluded or when a preset time limit is reached.
Calamities are selected immediately afterwards. There is a limit to the number of calamities that can hit a player in a given round; this phase merely checks how many calamities each player holds. If they pass the game's limits (depending on the number of players), some calamities will be randomly withdrawn.
Calamities are then executed. They come in two types, Minor and Major. The Minor ones are removed first. Expect events like Tempest, Squandered Wealth, and Banditry, with results like losing treasury tokens, reducing cities, and taking damage. Major Calamities follow suit. There are Cyclones, Famines, Piracy and Barbarian Hordes, with more potent results like reducing a number of your cities, discarding a number of commodity cards, or even splitting your civilization in two, with the player with the weakest presence at the board at that point claiming what was once yours.
Special Abilities take effect immediately after. These are linked to the technological advancements that players have, like for example Trade Routes (which allow commodities to be discarded for transfers of tokens from Stock to Treasury), Diaspora (a transplant of tokens to an empty space on the board), and the terrifying Monotheism (conversion of one adjacent area per turn to your population or cities).
Surplus Population and city support are once again checked at this stage, since all kinds of alterations might have taken place since the last time.
At this stage players acquire Civilization Advances, another of the game's extremely important aspects and a key to victory. There are 51 different Civilization Advances, each of which breaks a particular rule or provides an advantage to the owning player. This might be the ability to regulate taxes, pass through the deeps seas, hold an advantage in battle, prevent damage from particular calamities, and many more. Civilization Advances (with names like Pottery, Coinage, and Music) belong to different groups. The more advances a player has in one group, the more advances he can generate from that same group due to cards providing bonuses towards their antecedents.
The players then check whether they meet the requirements in the next space on the AST track for them to progress. There are six different epochs, each of which has different prerequisites. The Stone Age has no requirements at all, yet the Early Bronze Age demands that you have three cities at this point turn after turn. Make it into the Late Iron Age, the game's final age, and to progress, round after round, you will need at least 6 cities, 17 Civilization Advances with a cost price of less than 100 each, plus 56 VPs in Civilization advances. Woah.
The game ends when at least one civilization reaches the last space on the track. At that point, the winner is determined via VPs counted mostly from a player's Civilization Advances. The number of cities on the board, the current AST position as well as the AST bonus for ending the game also contribute.
Taking the game's length into account, rules are provided for players who need to quit, so that the game ends for them without inconveniencing everybody else.
A variant for a shorter gaming experience is also provided. In it, players start with semi-random civilization advances as well as a number of cities already on the board, a number of trade cards, as well as tokens in their treasury and population on the map.
The strong points: Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization is my grail game. The idea that it could be improved and republished was a dream that I have had for decades. The concept of me reviewing such a game was a fantasy, an 'imagine that!' kind of thing.
Yet here we are. And I am reviewing the improved version of what I consider to be the best game in the world. I don't even know where to start from.
Western Empires is not about building a civilization that can excel in one thing while getting battered in everything else; other games go for such an approach. This game is about balance. It is about how well you manage your tokens, so that you are always prepared, no matter what, to tackle the challenges which randomly or malevolently are headed your way. It is about thoughtful and sustainable development, about having the right margins on everything you do and taking appropriate risks, about planning for the future and responding to every curve ball that is thrown towards your path. Unless we talk about hardened Advanced Civilization veterans, it is impossible for a player of Western Empires to outperform his fellow players in every single turn. Yet, he doesn't really need to do so. A systematically better play will keep on being rewarded thanks to the improved game engine that a player will have created on the map and on his mat. The sooner you get well-supported and safe cities, the earlier you will be involved in trades. The earlier you trade, the earlier you will discover technological advancements. The earlier you do that, the earlier your game can branch out and do things that other players cannot Everything that you do now has repercussions that echo many rounds later. If these don't relate to the game's mechanics, they most definitely relate to the board's dynamics, to who might consider you as a threat and who might be more relaxed about your progress.
The magic of Western Empires lies in that, like its predecessors, absolutely none of its mechanics is hard in itself. Collecting tax? Piece of cake. Increase in population? Piece of cake. Building a city? Piece of cake. That goes on for outright everything. The difficulty lies in deciding what to do and formulating a coherent plan. When it comes to executing it, the game is as fluid as things get. Mistakes will happen, and at the beginning you will see your new competitors facepalming themselves in disbelief because they built cities they cannot afford, they moved their units without taking into account their opponents' movements, or they didn't consider the cost of a ship. That is all part of the learning process. The important thing is that you will learn to appreciate all that while playing, not because you will keep on flipping a rulebook.
I know that I already sound like a fanboy, yet I have to stress how well-designed each process is. This isn't a random assortment of mechanisms leading to a point soup. Each wheel works miracles in giving you control, as well as engaging you with the game's abundant theme. Take the commodities as an example. Advanced Civilization did not have a commodity 0, yet Western Empires does. The point? To gain a commodity even when no commodities in that deck are available, without favouring a player by providing the statistically dangerous solution that Advanced Civilization opted for (drawing from the immediately lower deck). Each deck now contains not two but three commodities, as well as three calamities. It is thus statistically less probable for a player to monopolize a deck just because he got there first and benefited from a few rounds of solitary draws. I won't even go into how well this ties with trading. I mentioned the NYSE's trading floor earlier on; that might actually be tame.
The mechanics offer numerous inbuilt contingencies. You can build a ship with what you have on the board, but then again, you can also build it with money from your coffers. When you start advancing technologically, things that could only be done one way can now be executed differently. There are millions of combinations of what you can do and how in order to win the game. Many are logical and are based on basic analysis; especially in the early game, there are certain moves which are superior to others. Others are based on circumstances and board dynamics. The game keeps you on your toes, no matter what you do. If it isn't obvious up to now, the replayability of Western Empires shoots through the roof. Chances of one getting bored by it: zero.
The game is not a rich-get-richer experience, yet consistent high quality play will reward you with higher durability when things go south. Conversely, if you perform poorly, there is no deus ex machina to save you, no matter how lucky you get with the commodity draws. An unbalanced civilization cannot rebalance himself within a turn or two; that is also the case for a well-balanced civilization, which can hold its ground even if all its neighbors decide to turn itself against it. The game rewards thoughtful expansion from the very first turns, when players mistakenly feel that their actions are semi-automatic due to the apparent lack of conflict. That is not however the case; each move is a step towards the future. A fumble here or there, and the harmonious balance you are seeking between stock, board, public coffers, technologies already obtained and credit for future ones for you to keep a permanent edge will prove elusive.
Even though the game's rulebook is a beast, the game is patently easy to understand and learn. I will not lie; you will need time in order to explain how the different phases of each round work. Yet, each phase is well-defined and immediately understood. Most of them are utterly straightforward, with the players needing to take only a handful of decisions. In this way, and even though the game is complex, it never feels overbearing. Even more so, the game begins slowly and expands organically. In the first few rounds only a few phases will be used, as players have no cities and are not necessarily touching one another. This helps everybody get into the spirit of the game, and to understand what is important and what is not. I was sceptical when I saw that the game set a 5-player minimum player count. The reason behind is, of course, perfectly logical for anybody that has played Advanced Civilization extensively. Less than five players wouldn't have been an ideal game. Don't get me wrong, I am unlikely to sell my copy of Advanced Civilization, no matter the crazy, mid-three digit range prices it goes for nowadays. It is true however that from five onwards the game shines. Guess what? Western Empires does not face that problem. Of course it is a louder, amped up, even more unforgettable experience with nine players (and look just at how differently the Celts play!). Even with five players however and only a small portion of Eastern Mediterranean at the players' disposal, the game totally kicks ass.
Civilizations are wildly asymmetrical. This has nothing to do with them having personalized powers; they do not. Their advancement is what will separate the wheat from the chaff. Location however is everything. The Cretans play totally differently to the Egyptians, seeing how they face different challenges when it comes to land grabs, hostile terrain, aggressive neighbors and what have you. The Egyptians play differently to the Italians for similar, but not identical reasons. If the core of your civilization is based on a flood plain, don't be so surprised if others want to trick you into trades with the calamities that will devastate you. That is one of the game's other enormous strengths: when you deconstruct a play after it finished, everybody has a different impression of how things went because events felt different from their own point of view. How many games can achieve that? And even more so, how many games will keep players interested in what others are doing even when they aren't really neighbors? The Carthaginian might not care that much about the Celt, if the latter however plays in a style that pushes his neighbors southwards, the former has to identify the problem before attempting to resolve it.
Incidentally, just because the game is based on a 1980s design does not mean that it is stupid enough to allow player elimination. Statistically speaking, this it is extremely improbable. Even if it were to happen however, the player will be back in the game in an instant, as a result of one of the many calamities that rob players of their population and cities. I liked this before, and I like it now.
When it comes to its materials and production quality, the game rocks harder than its predecessor. The tokens are respectful towards the source material giving winks left and right, they are clearly however the better versions for the better game. The civilizations have been redefined, taking the bigger map into account. The map is gorgeous and easy to play no matter the amount of players. One no longer needs to count the number of cities his opponents have placed on the board; you only need to glimpse towards their player mats. Credits are no longer calculated on pieces of paper, but are visible through tokens that each player holds in front of him. In this way, engaged players can instantly visualize the likelihood of their opponent going for that technology advance or the other. The paper sheets that players had for cross reference in Advanced Civilization are substituted by easy-to-use cardboard sheets that make calculations substantially easier. And all that without even mentioning the plastic cases for the commodity cards while the game is in play (no more decks falling on top of one another!), or the resealable bags for the game's more than a thousand tokens. No matter where I look, I see improvements.
Western Empires: The Special Buildings is the game's only expansion for the time being. A more important adjunct however is Eastern Empires, Western Empires' brother game which we will visit as soon as it hits the market. I remind you that when combined, the two games produce an effect similar to that of Mega Civilization (now Mega Empires), which allows up to 18 people to play. I admit that even I don't know of 18 people committed enough to play this game. If I ever have the chance however, I'd give it a go even if I had to play with perfect strangers from dusk till dawn.
The weak points: Advanced Civilization was playable by two players. Western Empires starts from five. Thus, you need a minimum of five players that are committed enough to play a game with what is nowadays considered a monstrous duration. Unless you are part of a grognard group, a gaming club, or you have a very dedicated gaming troupe, Western Empires is not likely to see the table that often.
Even though Western Empires doesn't use dice, there is luck in the game. I wholeheartedly embrace it; the amount of luck in the game is balanced enough for it to hammer in your head that you cannot control everything, and that first and foremost you need to be adaptable. Many gamers might not like that nowadays, seeing how ubiquitous open-information and luck-free games are. Western Empires is almost the former (the only thing you don't know are the commodity cards your opponents hold), but it definitely isn't the latter. If you are not giving Western Empires a chance out of principle, you are seriously missing out.
I wouldn't go as far as to call Western Empires a fiddly game. In reality however every game that bases itself on balance and fine-tuning requires its players to keep their stacks and treasuries tidy for the other players to immediately consult so that they know what they are up against. Playing with your tokens haphazardly thrown on either side your player mat is outright impolite, if not unacceptable, since it gives the chaotic player an unfair advantage over any other player diligent enough to meticulously count before acting. Thus, you will find the game fiddly only if you organize your affairs chaotically and can't be bothered to keep a clean mat.
The more the game progresses, the longer turns take. That is evident, and to a large extent expected. When the game reaches the point where the average turn takes one hour to complete however, look around you and you will immediately observe who is made for it and who isn't. Yes, it's long, and yes, each turn lasts no matter how easy it might be to execute.
Newbies should be well prepared for some round, emphatic defeats in the hands of more experienced players. These won't be spurious affairs that materialize mere seconds before the game's end, even though a tight contest might be decided that way. They will be obvious affairs, established many rounds in advance. This isn't necessarily a problem in shorter games, it does however crush morale in games that are supposed to last for as long as a day. How do you keep a player in the game when it is obvious that he doesn't stand a chance? The answer is fairly simple: Western Empires, like Advanced Civilization before it, doesn't reward only the ultimate winner, but ranks every single player. I have seen many conflicts last until the very bitter end between players that were competing to avoid the last place. I like the attitude and I applaud it wholeheartedly. In an era where the first place is everything and the second is nothing however, not everybody might feel comfortable getting battered for hours at a time.
Ten minutes for trading?! For real? Five looks like too long already, unless you want people yawning. Trading is what provides pace in this game, since the purchase of technologies is always long, solitary and silent. Set trading to a moderately stressful level and then gradually remove ten seconds each round until you reach a frantic pace. For me, that would be around the two to three minute mark. Man, the adrenaline!
I am happy about most of the rule changes. One I found rather disappointing however was the trading change from 'number of cards plus two honest card declarations' to 'number of cards plus the first two card declarations must be honest'. Oh, come on, this is a game for adults. You'd be surprised by of players in Advanced Civilization insisting in not wanting to hear their interlocutor state the trade's third commodity, just in case it was real and one of the previous declarations was a fake. There was risk in every trade, and readied players better for all the unexpected crap that would eventually come their way. The new method on the other hand might be useful towards drawing a tamer crowd into the game. I do not dismiss it, I would have liked the game to offer more options however.
I get it that a census between 1 and 12 units and above 50 units is not really common, is that however a reason to mix those results on the board? There is ample of space anyway. This is an absolutely pointless change in comparison to Advanced Civilization.
The rulebook is very well-written, there where however a couple of near misses. In at least one instance the full extent of a rule is explained inside an example. I personally felt that I had an easier time assimilating and deconstructing the rules than new Western Empires players did. That last part is to be expected. In all honesty however, I would have tackled a couple of rule statements differently.
Conclusion: If you improve the design of a trusted, proven classic, by definition you are a classic game yourself. Western Empires is excellence distilled. It is not just a great civilization-building game; it is one of the best games you will ever play, an unparalleled, fully immersive experience like no other that caters for everything: engagement, diplomacy, confrontation, number-crunching, and the ultimate commodity of them all, internal balance. Buy. Buy. Buy! Now, where the hell is Eastern Empires?
For more info on Western Empires and 999 Games overall, take a look at https://www.999games.nl as well as its dedicated website at https://www.westernempires.com.
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