🎲 Civolution Board Game Review: Likes AND Critiques 🎲

it's time for your final exam in civilation design will you create the most successful civilization in [Music] civilation thank you for joining me at tantrum house Studio D I'm Alissa D I'm Kevin DPP Civ olution is a dice action selection game for one to four players that takes about 2 to 3 hours to play or a little bit more if you have someone with analysis paralysis it's designed by Stephen Feld and published by Pegasus Spiel the publisher sent us this review copy so there are a lot of other indepth how to play videos like from me University and gaming rules so we're just going to give a super quick overview of the game and then the majority of this video will be our thoughts about the game celution is played over 4 rounds called Aras in each round you perform eight phases the first three involve setting up the round phase four is when you take turns performing actions and phases 5 through eight involve things like feeding your people resolving an event scoring the round goal and collecting income during the action phase you use your dice to activate action modules each activation requires the two dice shown on the module now there are 22 modules so we're not going to go through them all the types of actions involve things that affect the board like adding tribes moving them around and producing and transporting resources you can also explore sites and build structures gaming and playing cards are other actions you can take the cards provide a variety of benefits and will be worth points at the end of the game based on their position in your console if you run out of dice or don't like your remaining options you can take your turn to reset reset setting allows you to reroll your dice and gain either a food or an Insight which helps you adjust your dice rolls resetting also moves the phase tracker forward after a certain number of resets the action phase ends your goal is to score points you'll gain some points during the game but most will be tallied at the end of the game the player with the most points after final scoring he'll be the winner so that was a very quick overview that doesn't touch on everything there is a lot going on in this game but we'll go over some of those things in more detail as we talk about our opinions we're separating the sections into four C's our thoughts about components our critiques our accommodations and finally our conclusions all right so let's start with the components all right so this game has a main player board that's actually in three sections there's a middle section that is the map and those are made from tiles that you've placed down so it can be slightly different each time true and then there's a sideboard that has your progress tracks and places to put some of the components you'll be Drafting and then the other side is your phase tracker with all eight phases of the game and some other stuff that you'll be doing so uh lots of players lots of table space yeah it's a pretty big main board area and then the players have a pretty big inset player board which I think works really nicely I will say though you have to make it your own it's I mean it's comes with basically it all unfolded you have to put little sticky things on and create the inset player board so don't bring this game to game night in shrink wrap and expect to play it yeah so just for warning you there are also five different decks of cards they there's a fair amount in each deck so they're different like technology and Innovation and things like that one of my favorite things in a game is a good player Aid and this one being a heavier game has a player booklet I forget how many pages it is it's like six to eight pages but it does do a good job of talking through all of your 22 action modules and some of the other things in the game so it is a very helpful resource when you're teaching the game and trying to remember what everything does I mean let me just so here this is oh this is the glossery one that's the that's the rule book here you go oh yes so let me see eight pages yes but I I think I find a small booklet easier for me to digest than just like a huge cuz some games have like an AP i1 sheet of paper that you're trying to look at everything so this for me was helpful to be able to uh look at a specific page and know this information is on that page a lot of people usually ask like what kind of player components you have so you have wooden components they have the ships and you have your um tribes mhm and and then you have little um hexagons to track your resources now a lot of times in our our Euro games we like our resources to be like the gold or the wood like shaped like that and colored that way in this case there's 18 different resources so that'd be a lot of resources um so there's just a way to track all of that on your player board with they have the little um symbols or the icons on your board and you're just using the your little wooden hexagon um wooden pieces to track all that so maybe not as as very functional but maybe not as cool looking not as thematic thematic but yes it would not be practical to have 18 different shaped in colored resources and then I believe there's also opening components for your farms and settlements so um another thing that this game has are little storage boxes they are cardboard so there's not a traditional insert for the game but there you're also making those as well lots of things to make when you first open the box um but it all fits in nice like I don't know if I have a shot of it all but I will sort of show you here real quick there you go look it's I mean it all fits in there very nicely and there's a little box for each player's components and then a box for the cards with dividers a box for the extra components that are just use throughout the game that don't belong to a player so um those work well the storage boxes let's move on to our critiques I really enjoy a game that the Thematic elements just work really well seamlessly connect to the game play and the theme and the components are are aesthetically pleasing I would say in this game in cvoluion the game um the Thematic I think it makes sense to me but the Thematic elements or the the theme is just very plain it maybe is the way I would say it and when I'm playing the game it really just feels like homework you know that might make sense because the theme is actually that you're taking a final exam for your civilization class and so you have this Con soul and you're moving your little pegs around to so yeah it's I mean I guess if people really like homework and they like taking tests then this is going to be a game they like they enoy maybe uh I usually am a mechanic's first person and I do like to take tests I enjoy a mechanic uh game that's mechanically good and I think solution is mechanically good I just don't know just I feel like it's just mechanics though okay um one of my critiques and I usually like Point salad type games where you can get points doing lots of different things but this one's a little overwhelming for me there are many many things that will score you points but if you don't do enough of them you're just going to get like tiny piddly points so you do have to focus but there's so much going on trying to figure out what to focus on I think it will take several plays of this game to really get good at it yeah I also one of my critiques is the length of the game I mean it says um 90 to 180 minutes so that's up to 3 hours I would say your first play is going to push 4 hours easily especially if you're playing Max play yeah yeah sorry we usually try to play the max player count or higher player counts we enjoy games that are you know built for those you know three or four players to try them out and I would say this game you sort of want to play that cuz you have that Civilization theme although you're doing homework you know you have putting your tribes out and you got the ships going going around and all that um I I don't know maybe the actions in the game feel tedious if he is the word I would say I don't know it doesn't feel enjoyable yeah I I remember you saying something along the lines of some of your turns are more interesting and then others it's like I put a person out or I move a pig yeah I got an idea I mean you can get ideas pretty simply but it's like okay I want the actions not to be equal weighted CU I know understand some things you're building up for something a bigger turn um there not a lot of combos going on there are some things that connect but it does feel like there's some turns that I'm like man that person maybe did a lot more on their turn or there's is more like you may be flipping the tiles over and then there those tiles flipped you know you're you know moving things around the board and then yeah on other terms like and I got a you know resource or I don't know something like that so yeah um and probably something that feeds into the game length is the analysis paralysis AP this game wow I I admit I struggle a little bit or sometimes a lot with ap when there are a lot of decisions to make and trying to organize my thoughts and especially if they have to be done in a certain order like this is the goal that I want to get to and I need to do these things to get to that goal well with 22 different action possibilities now they are limited by your dice but then that throws a slightly other kink in oh I want to do this my dice results don't let me do that easily but there are ways to mitigate so I can still reach that goal but it's going to take me five turns instead of two turns is that still like profitable or should I rethink and do something else it would be a big critique because even though you might be able to do it is it your best option or should you just use with what dice you use the dice you got you rolled so for me personally I enjoy those decisions and thinking through those things but I struggle to do it quickly so my game play is potentially affecting the enjoyment of other people's game play so if you are an AP player or play with someone who tends that way just know that this game may be very triggering of that and it might be hard for some players to take quick turns or an acceptable length of especially when you're trying to figure out what you're trying to accomplish yeah so sorry honey that's okay small small critique um another thing and it probably dovetails a little bit into that is there is a lot of variability in the game and some Randomness because of the dice rolls and because of cards that come out or different income tiles so you can have some players who maybe not luck into but are able to synergize much better than others so the things align for them and they're able to do those bigger turns or get a lot more accomplished and then some other players may feel like they're scringy thing and they're limping along in the game While others are more profitable and I would I would sort of piggyback just because you're doing something doesn't mean you're going to do well in the game there was one game that I thought oh I'll just do try and upgrade a lot cuz usually in games when you upgrade that helps you to you know get get you more stuff or things upgrading this game is good if you're going to use those upgrades and I had a my player board wanted me or I had a power that when I upgraded I got a um I forget the tiles that you you that I got oh the gold ties the gold tille so when I upgraded I'm getting a like a gold tile and I wanted gold tiles because that was my goal like so I'm like oh that was one gold tiles help you upgrade right so I'm like okay well that was sort of the path that the board wanted me to go but that was maybe I focused maybe too much on that and there were upgrades that I never used um and I was trying to pick good ones I was like oh maybe maybe maybe I'll use that one and I was like oh I'll never use it so you have to really at the beginning of the game plan okay what am I trying to accomplish and what what actions because you're not going to be able to do all 22 but you maybe not want to focus on just a couple you want to pick the best ones that will help you accomplish your tasks to do well on your homework do your homework all right we ready to move on to our commendations commendations so I like the variable nature of the game that the setup is going to be different each time there's going to be different goals different cards I also like the tactical nature where you do have to kind of change directions and figure out your plan not being able to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish well I like that it's a different puzzle each time I like games that it's like oo what can I do how can I solve this or how can I do it better than other people um the the only issue that we have mentioned a few times is is I struggle to do that quickly so in this game particularly I don't do it quick enough okay the one thing I like in this game are the dice actions I I like Kingsburg I like those kinds of games where you're you know rolling Dice and you have to place dice out and this is a maybe a different way of doing it where you're rolling your dice and you're choosing two of those Dice and yeah it's kind of interesting like okay I do have 22 possibilities what what two what two dice am I going to pair together or you know and then how am I going to what what is available on the board I think why I like that a little bit is that it does limit you a little bit limit you a little bit so you're like I can't do all 22 I don't have them all available to me with the dice there are other ways um which you might get into but I think that also the limiting is a little bit there's the mitig the manipulation of the dice with the ideas so you can it's not like I'm locked in it's limiting but not locked is probably what I'm saying right okay so it's kind of guiding you but still gives you a little bit of room to play and maneuver um yeah and it's not only just the dice because there are some actions that allow you to use your little tokens in the place of dice so that gives you a little bit more control do whatever you want it's not because they act as certain numbers right you have to determine what numbers they're going to be when you put them onto your board there's also an action that lets you gain more dice so then you're dealing with more dice each each round and which could elongate your turns which I think is important in this game you want to be able to not have to reset as often mhm especially if you don't want to move that progress tracker which um is another thing that I actually really like about this game is the board that shows you the phases and it walks you through all of the phases in the game so it's like oh phase one this is what you're doing do it phase two do it phase three do it action phases you're watching that token oh yes getting closer to the end of the action how much more time do I have before this round ends yeah who's going to trigger it um I also appreciate that I believe it's phase one or two you reveal the event card for that round and the event doesn't trigger until the end of the round so you have the whole era the whole round to prepare for it and decide do I want to go after those points or do I want to um keep from getting that penalty so it's not a completely random yeah cuz we've played games and I don't appreciate like oh I'm randomly going to what's going to happen this this this game it's like oh everyone dies or something that's like lose all your cows yeah so this is nice that you could prepare so I do like that aspect of the preparation you know what's coming also at the beginning of the game you set up the scoring objectives so you know what's going to score at what time and how yes it is a lot to keep in mind sit right by that scoring thing and keep it's like sitting at the front of the class so you can hear what the teacher says but I I like that most of the things you can prepare for I guess I should say is a commendation for this game any other commendations um I I think that's what I have let's move on to our conclusions all right so compared to other filed games there prob a few of them yes I I would say it has some similarities you have Point salad is there are lots of ways to score points there's a lot of variability interesting ways to take actions but this I'm pretty confident is probably his heaviest game agree just the vast amount of actions you can take and the variability and things like that I do think though that even though it's heavy and there's a lot going on and at the beginning it can be a little bit of a visual overload the game makes sense like once you learn what the different actions are it it makes sense oh I'm putting people out on the board I'm moving them around I'm playing cards and these cards are going to give me things it it's the tricky part is playing it well not necessarily just playing it and figuring out how do I play it okay well uh conclusion I don't know if youve figured it out or not but this game just isn't for me I if I'm going to play a game that's two three maybe long two three hours or longer I just think I want a game that's more beautiful to play um to to you know enjoy and I think this game maybe just leans a little bit too heavy into the mechanic side of what's going on and not enough on the other aesthetic uh value which I put a lot into games I want a game that's mechanically sound but I also want it to be pretty okay and I think maybe the other maybe just another add-on is this game just has too many decisions for me okay so uh I would say that I enjoyed the game more than Kevin did cuz I like trying different things pulling different levers what's going to happen if I play it this way or that way but I know that my AP is triggered and so my playing this game is probably not going to be enjoyable for other people especially people who want quicker games so there may be a table of people who would wouldn't mind playing with me I'd be surprised if if you played this game with other AP people how long would that go so I guess to me it boils down to I enjoyed it I liked it but I probably won't be playing it often because I don't think other people would enjoy playing it with me now I think this game is going to work best for people who want to play it over and over and over again and really dive into it because of how much variability it is you don't see a lot of the cards during the game and those cards can give you different actions and benefits and bonuses and your you know what you upgrade or the income tiles you get so I think it is going to feel slightly different each time and so people who can take the time to really dive into it I think are going to enjoy it we just don't play games 15 20 25 times right um but if you if this is like oh this is what I'm going to do I'm going to play it that many times a given year yeah I mean you probably yeah and and the more familiar you are with it the quicker and quicker it will go so it won't be a 3 to four hours slog unless you're playing with me but so um yeah I would say I think evolution is a good game mechanically sound and if you like homework I'm kidding I had to throw it in so so while it probably won't be hitting our tables uh anymore I understand why it did make it to the top of some other people's list for the year of people who like those heavyweight Euros with lots of crunchy decisions to make okay well if you enjoy heavy games check out cvoluion from Pegasus Spiel and please like subscribe um we' love you to comment on this video it really helps get more uh people people's eyes on tantrum house thanks so [Music] much for