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From the humble beginnings of civilization through the historical ages of progress, mankind has lived, fought and built together in nations. Great nations protect and provide for their own, while fighting and competing against both other nations and nature itself. Nations must provide food as the population increases, build a productive economy, and amaze the world with their great achievements to build up their heritage as the greatest nations in the history of mankind!
Nations: The Dice Game is a game for 1-4 players that takes 10-15 minutes per player and shares many concepts with the civilization-building game Nations while still offering its own challenges. The game is played over four ages (four rounds). During each round, players take turns until all have passed. The available actions are:
Buy a tile
Build a wonder
Reroll some or all your dice
Buildings and military provide dice. Colonies and wonders provide resources and victory points. Advisors provide rerolls. New tiles provide benefits immediately, so you can roll new dice at once.
At the end of each round, War and Famine drawn at the start of the round is checked for each player, giving you victory points if you match or beat the values. Books are accumulated and scored. Player order is checked, with high military strength going first in the next round. At the end of the game, whoever has the most victory points wins.
Nations the Dice Game
- Dice engine grows from a small start into a larger pool of color-coded dice
- Simple turn structure with low downtime
- Wonders and territories provide distinct, evolving options
- Lack of tile variety reduces replayability
- Setup/teardown feels lengthy relative to short play time
- Food and books are perceived as less interesting paths for scoring
- Tiles in later ages are similar/duplicative, reducing engagement
- Replayability suffers without expansions
- civilization-building through dice-based engine; upgrading buildings and constructing wonders
- tutorial/review with example setup and turn-by-turn discussion
- Roll for the Galaxy
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- age progression and tile replenishment — As ages advance, tiles and bonuses evolve; players refresh chits and dice between turns, with later ages offering different bonuses.
- book scoring phase — After all players pass, players generate books based on dice with a book face or a book icon, contributing to end scoring.
- dice faces and color-driven actions — Dice come in multiple colors with different strengths (white, gold, blue, red) and faces influence outcomes like gold, books, or combat.
- end game bonuses — End-of-round scoring includes famine and war bonuses; tiles grant victory points based on these conditions.
- Endgame scoring — At game end, players tally victory points from all tiles and bonuses; the highest total wins.
- exhaust and reroll — Exhausting a roll chit allows rerolling a number of dice on the board, affecting future results.
- Three actions per turn — On a turn, a player can purchase a tile, build a wonder, or exhaust a roll chit to reroll dice.
- tile placement — Players spend resources (swords, gold) to purchase tiles from an offer; tiles grant bonuses and must be placed on the board.
- tile purchasing — Players spend resources (swords, gold) to purchase tiles from an offer; tiles grant bonuses and must be placed on the board.
- war and famine scoring — End-of-round scoring includes famine and war bonuses; tiles grant victory points based on these conditions.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the central idea for the whole game. And that is building a dice engine.
- I really like the simple turn order structure where you simply take one action from only three options and then it's the next person's turn and we just keep going around the table until everybody passes
- I really enjoy that process of starting with a small basic dice set and kind of customizing your own variety of dice
- There are lots of duplicates with these blue buildings.
- I really wish that the food and books, specifically the food, had been given more reason to even be in the game.
- There is an astonishing lack of variety in the tiles that come in the game.
- Ultimately, I feel like this game needed more variety like the territories and the wonders that are in here.
- Roll for the Galaxy pretty much every time I want to sit down and play a good dicebased engine building game.