Civolution First Impressions

hello everyone and welcome back to the board gaming doctor my name is Phil I'll will be your board game doctor today in this video I'm going to go over a long awaited game of mine this is civil luution uh a game by Stefan Feld that has been talked about since last ESS in 2023 last year so this is a very much anticipated and expected game on my end and so this video is going to go over the game highlights how it works and what you're generally doing in this game as well as some game comparison that I've made as I have played this game uh some peer review comments and then finally my first impressions and ranking of this game so in cvoluion it's got a a very interesting Twist on the theme of a civilization game which this appears by its title and look so in this game you are a part of a Class A Futuristic class where the final exam is this game you simulating a civilization experience as de uh doing everything that a civilization game could offer such as movement you know exploration uh taking resources you know moving your growing and moving your tribes around and and such but with a Euro twist involving uh dice placement uh dice rolling and action selection with dice Tableau building with these cards and of course track advancement at the end of four rounds after you follow all of the phases listed here you will score and whoever has the highest score wins so that you know as far as an overview that is very much scratching the surface there is a lot to this game I believe the rule book has yeah 44 pages to it and not including the glossery and player AIDS and so this game is quite heavy in terms of rules complexity and learning complexity and learning but here are some comparisons that might help give a flavor and an idea of how this game plays so the first comparison obviously as a failed game is castles of burgundy castles of burgundy Works in a very similar fashion to how you take your turn from turn to turn which is to place dice that have been previously rolled onto a spot in civilation here there's this module that we'll talk about or in castle of burgundy you just simply uh take the two dice and uh utilize an action based off of the hips that are shown so at first glance there I mean you are rolling dice not from turn to turn in Civ in cvoluion but very often and so to mitigate the randomness you have factors that you can use such as in this game ideas to add or subtract one from the PIP you can use Focus d uh markers that can allow you to automatically use them as any wild dice as well and you can even use resources as planning markers to automatically use that pip as a dice so there are plenty of ways to mitigate the randomness that is inherent by the dice as well as in a similar fashion in castles of burgundy and so so one way to think about this game is a civilization civilization themed approach and more complex approach to the core mechanisms of castles of burgundy and I feel like that's true for how it's scored as well the next game I want to compare is a feast for Odin and mostly in terms of the different actions that you can take so A Feast for Odin if you are not familiar with it is a game that features a lot of worker placement options I believe around 60 in the base game and while there aren't as many action spots to take in civilan the wide variety of actions that you can take in this game are more so than say castles of burgundy or your average mid middleweight EUR game and so there are a plethora of options that you can take on your turn you essentially grab a pair of dice for example this six and a five they would match up with this building action and you take either the build or uh you can play a card from your hand however another similarity between these two games is how this is organized if you notice here at the very bottom you know you can place any two random di to take this action but stemming from the one slot here you can you notice that as it progresses left to right you increase that second dice on the right from 1 to six and as you go higher up you increase the leftmost dice uh up 1 through five and the way that it's so it's it's organized by dice Pips but it's also organized by what the actual entails and and so I think this is pretty neat not to spoil a little bit of what I will talk about at the end but it's really neat how this whole organization is happening thematically as well as uh logistically for you to understand where what actions you can take based off of the dice that you have the organization is somewhat similar in A Feast for Odin where you can kind of understand how many workers you would need to place based off of the colon and the rows are the groups of actions that perform similar functions and and you can tailor that based off of what you need to do on each turn so in addition to the modules and ways that you take actions this is a very sandboxy type of experience lots of things to do lots of different ways to earn points and different Avenues to pursue strategically and that is very similar to A Feast for Odin where you have different routes to Victory as well in a sand box fashion and so in terms of complexity and action selection and organization of how you take those actions too I found a lot of similarities between this game and A Feast for Odin the last game I want to compare is tapestry tapestry is also a civilization themed game that has a very much Euro style approach to the civilization theme and this game plus tapestry are very much abstracted uh there aren't a lot of of in-depth and complex rules in terms of how these actions work there are just simply an abundance of those types of actions in this game without the nitty-gritty that you might find in an older School type of civilization game and so both of these games are very much abstracted uh approaches to the civilization Style game tapestry is lighter in terms of rules and plain complexity compared to this game but I did find some similarities there and there's some other game comparisons that we'll talk about in the next section so moving on to the peer review I have listed here a amalgamation an amalgamation of the comments that people have made on Board Game Geek at least a lot of them and I put them through chat GPT to summarize what people are saying so here are some of the strengths that collectively some people who have had the chance to play this game are insane so first of all a lot of people feel like there are there is immense replay playability with this game with different paths to Victory which we have sort of talked about uh to not to go into too much detail you have a wide variety of ways that you can score points in this game intermittently and at the end of the game here is the end of the game final scoring breakdown uh you can score based off of how far you've gone on these tracks which are also included uh step by step after each round you can score uh based off of different categories that are randomly set up for these different uh icons uh BAS off of the buildings that you place and the uh resources that you have at the end of the game you can get points for Prosperity uh for features that you have on your console which is your Tableau how many tribes you have and every territory that you're in so you gain points for exploring and populating the game and then of course you have a interesting way to score points on your board the higher up uh so I should say you fill in your Tableau with these cards that you play from your hand from the bottom up you can also Place gold tiles to help fill in some cracks and for every tier that you fill with cards or goal tiles you will SC score points for those cards at the end of the game based off of these criteria in addition to what might be listed on these cards as well and so there are plenty of ways to get points either through you know advancing on tracks or little steps that you take in the game based off of cards that you have already played based off of what cards you how many cards you play you know Etc and so as in typical fashion for Feld there are very many different ways that you can score points in this game uh people say that there is excellent iconography graphic design and well-written rules and I do agree with that as well the iconography is very well done I think Dennis lohen is the artist and perhaps behind the graphic design as well and I'll be at the 44 Page Long rule book the time investment that it took to learn it I would say that based off of the I iconography it does stick pretty well when you are in the midst of playing the game and so I do agree with that uh meaningful decisions balanced between tactical responses and strategic planning yes that is true tactical based off of the dice rolling that you have and strateg strategery that happens based off of the cards you play and the board situation the solo mode I do have my thoughts on this as well I'll talk about that later uh and so a lot of people enjoyed that and uh High player engagement despite Long play times and that kind of goes into the weaknesses of this game that people have mentioned for example the heavy Reliance on dice can frustrate players yes since you are determining what actions you can do based off of luck they're based off of dice rolls which includes luck I mean there's probably more luck and Randomness involved in this game from turn to turn than say a more deterministic uh worker placement game or even a civilization game in general although I I will say I will interject I suppose that Civilization games do include a lot of events and Randomness you know dice roles for combat Etc I'm generalizing here I'm not really pointing out a certain game but I suppose that this is a more Euro based uh abstraction and uh emulator of what that might feel like in a classic Civ game so take that as you will for a long and complex game that does involve strategy the amount of luck that is inherent in the dice roles can be frustrating uh I guess if you enjoy failed games you are already used to that in some degree and so you can mitigate and play around that uh the lengthy play time yes this game is very long even at a solo game I will say that I mean it it took me about well I I'll get into that how long it took a little bit later in my final thoughts but it took a long time um the random randomness of what happens on the board as well you know you might be looking for certain resources and as you can see here each region has a certain resource randomly allocated to it and you and is flipped face down at the beginning of the game uh such such as it is here and so you have to explore and find out where those resources are before you can purs pursue certain strategies of types of buildings and cards that you can play and so that Randomness May hinder the enjoyment of being able to accomplish what you want to 100% so that that can be frustrating and and so and people say yeah despite the randomness that is abstracted in the form of dice rolls this does feel less like a traditional SI game and more like a tactical dice puzzle yeah I mean that that's what fil games are in general and so if you're looking for a somewhat more traditional approach to a Civ game then this might not be for you so moving on to First Impressions the way that I'm going to approach this is to try to be as subjective with myself as possible or objective I should say with my subjective opinions and score the game based off of 10 uh Criterion that I find personally uh important when I play a game and as I approach it as far as how much I want to play it again Etc so starting at the top for rules complexity and each category is going to get a score from 1 to 10 and add it to 100 that's the score I'm going to give it on Board Game Geek so I'm going to give a six to rules PL and complexity uh it it does not reflect the true complexity of this game I believe it's above a four out of four out of five on Board Game Geek but yes this game took a long time for me to understand and wrap my head around the rule book itself it it took me you know probably about an hour and an hour and a half to kind of read through carefully just to make sure I understood everything and that doesn't include any videos that I might have consulted and the I mean the cons consultations that I had during the game itself with the book I did go back many times during the play especially as I played solo just to make sure I was doing everything correctly and so about an hour or so to learn the game I don't know know how long that would equate if I were to teach this game to people in real time but uh and and to play the game rather it it took quite a bit of time probably about 2 hours or so solo just to include all the time that I needed to understand what I was doing and to strategize as well you know and so it it honestly took me a couple of days to get through because I didn't I wasn't able to play this in one sitting and so it it took me about a week or so to learn and play this game but uh so take that as you will in real time it is definitely a complex game strategically as well uh there are so many things that you can do since it's very sandbox in nature that it could be very difficult to wrap your head around what you might want to do even though there are some help you know there there's some helps that you get along the way such as goal tiles that you can fulfill and add to your board the cards that you draft or start with at the beginning of the game can kind of inch your way towards certain strategies and it addition to uh the different scoring opportunities in each era which are randomized at the beginning of the game so there are helps it's not completely sandbox and you are left to the you know the Wilds there are some ways to uh figure things out events as well can give you some guidance as well so strategic expression I'm going to give this game an eight out of 10 for strategy uh what a couple of points are taken off yes because of the randomness of the dice but essentially because of the helps that you get along the way you do have the opportunity to strategize and follow those offerings based off of the the tracks and the final scoring the cards in hand the events Etc all of those combined can give you an Avenue for which you can pursue I do believe that this game leaves General strategies open as well that you can pursue as well uh I mean you always have options to draw additional cards to alter or pursue strategy in different ways and so I do believe there are plenty of ways to win this game and to win this game create uh creatively which kind of goes into my next section mechanism uniqueness and execution how well does it play how well do the mechanisms mesh and work together and I also give this an8 out of 10 I really like how straightforward it is once you understand what the actions are that you can take in this game you know you pair up Dice and take that action some of them are an either or type of situation there aren't a lot of uh you know nuances there there are nuances I should say to some of these actions like how do you move how do you explore uh Etc and but you know I do feel like this game uh with the iconography in particular makes it a more streamlined and smooth experience once you understand what is going on there are a lot of phases in this game akin to once again A Feast for Odin that you do follow but it's very much spelled out here and you know the action phase is probably the most uh difficult to understand based off of you know when you reset and roll your dice and how this advances Etc but uh it's it's very straightforward and you follow these steps and it makes the game you know one might say this makes it more clunky but you know it is what it is and it makes the experience a lot easier to understand once you are playing it I feel so so an 8 out of 10 for me for the so next with thematic integration I'm going to give this game a 10 out of 10 for that what I look for in Euro games in particular and I'm particularly fond of Euro games are ways that make you feel like you are thematically aligned with the game the game setting and theme in terms of mechanisms as well I think this game meshes those two worlds the theme and mechanisms very very well one down to to the actions that you take and how they're organized as well if you notice like you know you these lower actions sleep you know is the basic need uh followed by research and that can lead you to you know research ways that you can migrate and you know do different activities to plan and gain sust you know this this follows a very very cool and interesting and in a thematic way that makes sense I feel of how a civilization would progress and so I mean you can take these actions and at any time based off of the dice that you have but I really like the the feeling that this offers more examples right the cards themselves I really some of these cards make sense in what kind of resources they require like you need iron ore to make screws here uh this represents dexterity and intelligence as well and so I think the the screw is really represented well based off of what costs it has and how you advance on the technology track here as well which makes sense CU it's a an invention card so the cards are really thematic um we didn't talk much about hunting but way that and there is a feeding mechanism in this game which totally makes sense and I love that I love feeding uh as I love Agricola in games like that so this way that you gain food based off of the terrain type is very thematic as well you get a lot of food if you're in the forest and water areas versus the desert for example I love that and one small little Nook here is this favor of a Aira and so like I mentioned before we are it's not a civilization game based off of our own history on Earth but it's like a futuristic alien type of world that we are pretending to be deities of in a simulation and so the iconography it kind of represents that simulation type of like video game experience but here you can some actions allow you to uh take extra bonus actions if you roll the dice and it falls under the category of fa based off of the where you are in this track and you can also you know lose a track point to perform a de6 Machina and save you know a tribe from being removed from the game and so I love that little touch as well a lot there are so many things and ways that this game makes it very thematically feel like a Civ game but utilizing Euro mechanisms in a very Feld way that is intriguing so I love the the whole background of this game this kind of unique I I feel approach to a civilization game it's not like science you know sci-fi or anything like that but it you know it it just makes sense and it I think I think it this is probably the most thematically integrated Euro game I've ever played variability I'm also going to give it a 10 out of 10 I feel like there are enough cards here uh setup Randomness and different gold tiles I mean you can count how many of these chips that you can place onto your Tableau there are 20 different types of income chips you know over 60 cuz I have a few out already uh for gold chips attribute chips cards there are like 30 in each deck you probably you see more in a higher player account but you're not seeing the entire entirety of these decks the different uh eras that you score the events that you choose you choose four out of a large number of events that happen during the game um so there are a lot of different pieces that make this game different each time which is awesome replayability I'm going to give it a nine for me personally I do feel like this game is very replayable based off of the variability but also the strategery that happens in this game you can pursue different uh different Avenues of play every time and have a game where you explore a lot like I did in this game I got a lot of points by exploring but you can also have another game where you really focus on your Tableau and build out points that way or really you know Advance on these tracks Etc I I do feel like it's not as replayable because of how long complex this game might be it might be best if you have either if you really enjoyed the solo experience or two or three other friends that you can play this and have enough time to do so I think that's where that comes into play the best so not a perfect score and for fun Factor I'm going to give it a seven as well to acknowledge the dice mitigation even though it is pretty robust in this game there is that luck factor that can dampen the fun I mean this is not a fun for board game it's a very strategic game and so there is an enjoyment in you know just pure strategy but the amount of tactility that happens or I should you know the Tactical nature of the dice rolls and uh I mean during my own play for example I did not you know I ran out of ideas pretty quick and so it takes some skill to know when you should use ideas and when you shouldn't but it is very easy to deplete your resources to do what you want to do and so it does take some effort and it can be frustrating if you need an exact Dice and despite their play being you know six dice you can choose from potentially more it can ruin your strategy over a long period of time if that happens all right so let's talk about the solo mode I'm going to give this an eight out of 10 the solo is quite surprisingly simple to do you flip over a card on the solo player's turn and you perform the action that is based on the card itself usually it's just moving up tracks or placing markers onto the board very very easy to do there are some edge cases where you need to consult the rules for priority but other than that the majority of the time it's pretty much just flip over and play gain uh a base Victory Point score for the uh Vicki which is the a AI opponent and there are also different uh uh difficulties that you can increase as you get better at this game and so yep very easy to play I had not many issues with it not a perfect eight out of you know Perfect 10 score I think just based off of the uh fiddlin that comes with the priority in certain actions that they take player interaction I'm going to give an eight out of 10 as well for the most part I think you can kind of pursue your own interests in this game but the central board is where a lot of that that interaction may happen whether you are racing to get to certain spots on the board as you explore you can claim the uh spots where you will get more points uh you are going towards these building grounds to build settlements and statues as well so there is a little bit of a race to get to certain points of the board and to produce and gain resources therein and so at higher player counts this will be very interactive but I feel like at Solo or at two players it's not as interactive I think the potential is not quite there since you do play with the same board at a two-player level as you would at a three or four and so yeah I I I do miss out on a perfect 10 score I think because it's it feels pretty wide open in my opinion at a two-player experience and then finally tournament style competitiveness you know how how well can this could this game be represented in a tournament style or very uh very competitive type of scene I'm thinking like board game arena uh you know the arena format where people are grinding and really playing this or live tournament scenes as well would this game ever be featured in the world series of board gaming for example that's something I'm always interested in you look at games these days that are very much meant to weight or meant to heavyweight Euros like Arc Nova and you know you can see that being very competitive on YouTube and otherwise and so does this game have that opportunity chance I think it does uh one thing that I think about with this game is that if with comparisons the castles of burgundy if you do play castles with someone who is very experienced despite the randomness of D dice rolls you will probably lose and I think that says a lot to the Strat the foundational strategy that this game offers and I think that the same can be said about this game as well it is very complex and there are a lot of moving parts and while there is Randomness it can be very much mitigated and you do have opportunities to have plan B's and C's to pursue an overall you know experience that gets you a lot of points and I so I I I do see a lot of potential for this game I don't think it's got the same legs uh competitively in the tournament scene as say games like Dune Imperium Arc noova teram mytica which are somewhat more deterministic as well I think there's a little bit too much luck with the cards the dice as well as the board State itself as well that might deter uh you know very hard you know grinding type of players to want to do that and for this to be in that scene as well but I can see this potentially being there it's just because it's such a great game so overall if I calculated this right it's an 82 or an 8.2 out of 10 on Board Game Geek for me very which kind of aligns with the average score that it has on Board Game Geek at this moment it's a very very complex very long very fun game I think the sandbox nature of the civilization game it it fits that theme very well whereas I bounced off a lot of other failed games the past my favorites so far are castles of burgundy and Brugge um a lot of the other games that I have tried in the past didn't sit well with me because I felt like they were too abstracted and too much of a mechanical puzzle which a lot of people enjoy but I I tend to enjoy a little bit more of a thematic approach to the euro style mechanisms that are in place which is why I enjoy Rosenberg and that's definitely a personal opinion but I think this is definitely going to be my favorite f I think it's a Civ game which I really enjoy the theme it's a Civ game done very well uh it's complex and strategic uh it you know albeit being very long it's it was pretty easy to understand after you put in the time commitment I think the Jews is worth the squeeze with this one I think this one is doing well on ratings and will continue to do well because I I think it's an excellent game and I highly recommend it so that's civiliz civil by Stefan Feld uh thank you for Consulting with me today and I hope hope that you schedule an appointment with me real soon take care