Reply: Clash of Cultures:: Variants:: Re: I built my 3 hour civ, then Genghis robbed me +20 points with an unquestionable last dice throw (!)

by mccrispy

If I had a buck for every person who felt that military was unbalanced or unnecessarily effective in a Civ game I would be a very wealthy man indeed. It is such a common problem: the simplest explanation is not that Civ games have a problem with military, it's that you (and others) have a problem with military. I'm a euro-gamer and I dislike zero-sum "thematic games" intensely, but you have to understand that in a game with a military component it is extremely unlikely that there is intended to be zero player interaction it is not multi-player solitaire. Given that you can expect interaction, if you insist on attempting to build a huge empire without spending any resources on defence then you can expect your empire to suffer as a consequence. The fault is not in the game, but in your strategy - you are simply playing the game (and I hesitate to couch it in these terms)... badly. If you win under these circumstances it is because your opponents let you do so.

The last two games that I played Clash the person who went last took advantage of the fact that the leader had built a juicy, low-hanging-fruit and simply went and picked it. Now, there's two things here: first, note that it was the person who went last that did the "bad thing", well the leader has control over who goes last, so that was bad tactics; secondly, it takes time to build up military might, if the leader didn't spot it and put two and two together then that was a poorly played game. If you're not paying attention to your opponents in a game with player interaction then you can expect to lose.

My recommendation? Don't mess about with a game that you have considerably less experience playing than does the designer and his test players, wait until you have a lot of games (like 20+) under your belt before fixing issues in the game that are issues of your play-style. Or simply agree with your opponents up-front that you'll be playing a "gentlemen's game" so no attacking each other's units (but what about Barbarian placement, how are you going to manage that? no more "one for me, one for you" with Barbarian events)