Civilization: Mercer Variant
Date: 2 Nov 94 20:09:50
From: dmercer@oracle.com (David Mercer)
Subject: Advanced CIV: rule changes and comments?
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
My roommates and I have been playing A-CIV for a bit, and have found the game, while fun, to have a few flaws.
The problem is that the game seems to end up in a pretty static state, with everyone just working on picking up bigger civ cards. No-one wants to attack the other as there is not enough to gain. You can build your 9 cities within your territory (albeit, some of them not at city sites, and some powers require agriculture in order to do it, but agriculture gives you points anyway) and not have to go to war. Besides, the only ones who profit from war are the non-warring neighbors. This is is not realistic. In ancient times, war was *immensely* profitable, and it also provided the impetus for improving civilization -- to keep ahead of the Joneses, and to have an edge on your neighbors should war break out.
We're going to try Imperial CIV (unlimited stock) to try to encourage war as an outlet for expansion. Furthermore, we have an additional change:
The central treasury is no longer used (these are civilizations, not governments). Taxation is taken during population expansion from the newly expanded population, instead of from stock, and is removed to the cities (two to a city) *as population* (until coinage). There are three reasons behind this: (1) excess population in the cities was an important driving force toward going to war in ancient times (and the excess produced must move out of the city, lest it starve), (2) it gets around the annoying phenomenon of an impassable "wall of cities," and (3) if those two tokens providing agricultural support to a city are sending all their excess food to the cities, there is no excess food to support an increase in population.
If a city cannot be supplied with the necessary tokens for taxation, it revolts, as do any other tokens placed on the city as partial taxation.
Since coinage is a portable form of wealth, once coinage is developed, *any* population expansion, including that ported to the cities, may be taken as treasury tokens (in addition, the number ported to the cities can be fixed at 1, 2, or 3 per city, as is usually the case with coinage). This decision can be made on a token-by-token basis, although no more than two population tokens can be ported to a given city (if the tax rate is three, then at least one of the tokens must be treasury). Treasury tokens reside on the board and may be moved as any population tokens with the exception that they can only move to regions where population already exists (usually, but not necessarily, population of the same color). Treasury tokens are not subject to the population limits of areas, including cities, and do not influence combat. When treasury is to be spent, it can be taken from any place on the board.
Once combat is resolved, treasury tokens may end up in a region that is shared by two or more sides, or that is held by a different side from the owner of the tokens, or in which no population exists. The following take place immediately following combat and before trade cards are obtained.
- If treasury tokens exist in a region without population, or where the only populations do not yet have coinage, the treasury tokens are removed from the board.
- If the treasury tokens exist in a region held by only one power, *and that power has coinage*, that power gains ownership of the tokens.
- If the treasury tokens exist in a region occupied by more than one power, but only one power has coinage, that power gains ownership of the tokens.
- If the treasury tokens exist in a region in
which more than one power has coinage, then
all treasury tokens are distributed: the
side with coinage with the largest
population takes one, then the next largest
side, and so on, and then repeat. If two or
more sides are tied for size, they take
theirs simultaneously; if there are not
enough tokens for the sides to take
simultaneously, then the excess is
discarded.
Example: Thrace, Illyria, and Italy find themselves in Germany (population 5), with the following populations:
Thrace 1
Illyria 3
Italy 1
and the following treasury tokens:
Thrace 3
Italy 2
for a total of five treasury tokens. All three powers have coinage. Illyria, with the greater population, takes one first, followed by Thrace and Italy simultaneously. Now Illyria takes his token again, and there is one left. Since it is not enough for Thrace and Italy to take simultaneously, it is discarded, so the final distribution of wealth is:
Thrace 1
Illyria 2
Italy 1
I also want to solicit opinions on another two changes I would like to make:
- Since population expansion in any given territory is limited to two, it would follow that one must have at least one territory per city in order to provide taxation (or risk revolt). This provides no advantage to holding the agriculturally rich areas of the board. I propose that, while no more than two new tokens (regardless of whether population or treasury) may be placed in a territory during population expansion, expansion beyond the two up to the size of the original population, can be ported to cities. Thus, when a territory with population three expands, only two new tokens may be placed on the territory, but an additional one may be ported to a city as taxation.
- Since population is clearly more valuable than treasury (it only takes six population tokens to build a city, which gives you a trade card forever), to encourage players to build up wealth, I propose that the value of treasury tokens be increase to ___ (I don't know -- any suggestions? I favor something around 3.)
I think the overall effects of these changes would be to make players find a happy medium between expansion (and war) and wealth. If a power is concentrating too much on wealth he will find himself overrun by marauders eager for pillage.
Does anyone have any comments? Has anyone ever tried making changes similar to these?
Regards,
---DBM