Review Summary: The fact that you don't need it does not mean that you will not get it.
Blurb from the publisher: 'During a game players may choose to construct a special building which grants various benefits. Constructing the right building at the right time will provide additional victory points.
Both Special Buildings Expansions for Western and Eastern Empires can be combined with Mega Empires.'
What you get:Your EUR 15 or equivalent will buy you Western Empires: The Special Buildings, an expansion for Western Empires, the brand-new mega game for 5 to 9 players that started the Mega Empires game line and which lasts anything from eight to thirteen hours.
Gameplay: The expansion introduces special buildings, one of which belongs to each of the nine civilizations at hand. Civilizations can only build a building within their own region. In other words, a civilization can only build one building, even though it may control more during the game.
The cost of a building varies depending on the era. The earlier a player builds one, the cheaper it costs (from 30 to 50 trade points). The player can build any building, not only the one commonly associated with his civilization, he may however have only one building built at any point during the game. The building must be placed on the player's starting location or, in case it doesn't host a city, at another location with a city inside the player's region. Special Buildings cannot be attacked or destroyed, no matter what happens to the location they are built in. The only way for one to be violently removed from the game is if the player that fielded it exits the game.
Irrespective of its actual appearance, a building provides four bonuses.
First, the area supports one an additional token in case of surplus populations (e.g. for the benefit of the Public Works advance), or increases its population limit if initially 1 or 2 (just like the Agriculture advance).
Second, the building can be sacrificed in order for an incomplete set of commodities to count as if one extra commodity existed. Obviously enough, this increases the value of the commodities exponentially.
Third, the building can be sacrificed in order to avoid the AST-marker going backwards in the case of the Regression calamity. It is worth noting that any sacrificed building cannot be immediately rebuilt by the exact same player; one turn must pass before that player can build it again, even though other players can build it within that time.
Finally, a building will be worth 3 VPs at the end of the game. If this is also the building commonly associated with the civilization and it is still set in a city of that civilization, that Civilization will earn an additional 2 VPs. Such a building is the first and foremost tiebreaker in final counting. It is the quintessence of what your civilization is about!
The strong points: Those who have played Advanced Civilization know where the idea behind The Special Buildings comes from. In one of that game's official variants, it was suggested that a player having built a city on a particular region could improve the trade bonus of a single commodity. It was a nifty little thing that increased player aggression and made certain areas on the map more desirable than what they initially were. It had however a couple of issues. First, these were dispersed on the map based on historical, and not gamist considerations. That meant that certain civilizations were much more likely to control more than one of them, while others would have been happy to control even one. Second, that approach created more static games. If everybody knew that a city in X would increase the value of your commodity Y, the behavior of neighboring civs became much more predictable. Namely, everybody was after that area.
Enter Western Empires and The Special Buildings expansion. The geographical concept still exists, it is however dormant. It is the player himself that will decide when to activate it, and whether that will happen in the middle of his empire (as the starting location usually is), or on its fringes. Second, the bonus does not apply to one commodity only; it applies to any commodity you desire. Consider it an investment; it can be either a short or a long term one. At the game's first eras, and depending on the commodity you actually use it on, it might only provide modest profits. Yet, a profit of even 5 or 10 or 20 trade points can be pivotal towards a better performance. Later in the game however, it might provide enormous windfalls. Even if you pay 50 credits trade points for it, if you make it worth double that at the game's crucial, almost final stages, you are very likely to come out on top.
To avoid the repetition of a pattern, the designers introduced an initially perplexing, but ultimately fair concept. First, you may not immediately rebuild the same building that you just sacrificed, and second, the building associated to your civilization will give you additional points at the end of the game, compared to you having any building on board. The reasoning is obvious: if it weren't so, players would build their own special building and hog it until the end of the game. That is not however the point. The point is that more tactical thinking is created out of thin air. It doesn't really matter what buildings you build and sacrifice during the game. At its end however you'd better have one, and if you wish for more points, it'd better be the one people associate you with.
An interesting side effect of the buildings in addition to the extra credit they provide towards buying advancements is that they allow you to hedge your bets in relation to what other civilizations are doing. You have the credit to buy an advancement, yet you are not sure of what to do taking the dynamics of the board into account. Instead of the advancement you get a monument, and presto: your credit will most probably increase, while at the same time you have gained an extra round in order to check which way your opponents will go and how this affects your play. Cool, hey?
To all that, add the extra bonuses about populations and aid against this particular calamity, and you understand why the appeal of the buildings increases. To make a long story short: if you play with the expansion and you ignore its components while other players don't, your chances of winning the game are visibly reduced. You are effectively giving up one of your options for improved purchases of technological advancements for no reason whatsoever.
The miniatures are small, yet I am actually happy about that. They have to share the same board as dozens of tokens, and everything has to remain visible after all. They are very small, mind you. I'd be very surprised if anybody bothered to paint them.
The weak points: As I already stated, the premise behind this expansion was a variant back in the days of Advanced Civilization. Interesting as this might be, it is not an indispensable element to the game. You don't lose much by not purchasing it, on the other hand however, if you have invested EUR 120 for the humongous game, it is very unlikely that you won't be tempted to try this one for a mere EUR 15.
That having been said, the bang for the buck is rather low. Then again, we are talking about a phenomenal game, and YOLO.
Conclusion: Western Empires: The Special Buildings is a cool expansion for the very committed, yet it is not an indispensable expansion for the basic game. If you, like me, are into this incredible game experience, and even more so, if you have a history with its predecessors, you know better than not to buy it no matter its marginal content. Honestly, the two go together.
For more info on Western Empires: The Special Buildings 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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