Advanced Civilization, based on Avalon Hill's popular boardgame (designed by Francis Tresham & Bruce Harper), is a turn-based strategy game involving up to eight different civilizations, bumping elbows from the Stone Age (8000 BC) through the Late Iron Age (250 BC). A player may choose to lead any one of a number of famous civilizations including Africa, Asia, Assyria, Babylon, Crete, Egypt, Iberia, Illyria, and Thrace. Players begin with a single unit which can be used to grow exponentially across the continents. Six such units let players throw a city-raising (not razing) party and create their first city in any of several designated areas.
During each turn players receive a "Goods" card for each city they own, representing such items as hides, papyrus, spices, gems, and gold. These Goods cards are then traded in to purchase one of 24 "Tools" to advance a player's civilization. Tools such as Pottery, Medicine, Architecture, Law, and Theology enable civilizations to advance through the different epochs. A special table shows the progress to date of all civilizations -- the leading one sticks out like a sore thumb, begging to be whacked out of its epoch. The goal for each civilization is to accumulate the most points by the time the first civilization reaches the end of the Late Iron Age.
The board game and the computer game, however, are spiced up with war, calamities, and risky trading. War is waged when two civilizations move population tokens onto the same land area, staking a contested claim usually simply resolved in favor of the larger force. Knowledge of Engineering or Metalworking will give an on-field advantage to the civilization possessing such tools.
Calamities are civilization-breakers and can lurk, waiting to happen, in Goods piles from which civilizations randomly draw. They can also be received during a trade with a sneaky civilization that slipped-in a calamity instead of a good. Calamities such as treachery, famine, civil war, floods, epidemics, and unwelcome barbarian hordes may strain a civilization to the breaking point. Calamities can be of two different colors: a black calamity, which can be traded away (hopefully), and a red calamity, one with which a player is stuck - no pawning it off on someone else. When a calamity occurs, a special animation plays out, indicating what has befallen that civilization's people. Fairly small and short (to avoid tedium), these sound-enhanced animations help counter the lack of sound effects and animation elsewhere in the game.
Trading is available every turn and is fraught with danger and opportunity. One of the traded goods is always a hidden item, making it inevitable someone will eventually receive the dreaded booby prize - a calamity. Players shouldn't rely on a good-faith trade with a partner whom they just massacred last turn - he's likely to return the favor in the form of a calamity. Trading can be quite profitable if sets of goods are accumulated; they are far more valuable than individual items.
There are several effective rules that help create play balance and manageability. Population increases every turn and, if unchecked, would soon be overwhelming. To avoid this, each civilization has a fixed pool of tokens that may be placed on the board. If players run out of population counters, they must wait until tokens are removed due to such things as overpopulation, battle, city-making, or calamities. There are also limits on population for each land area, the number of a civilization's cities, and the number of storable goods.
The background music, while appropriate, gets tiresome. The SVGA Graphics are often colorful and provide suitable atmosphere. A recorded history of completed games would have been nice; instead, your civilization vanishes without a trace at the end of the game. The variable (weaker, normal, or stronger) AI is a moderately capable opponent and fairly aggressive, but it will never match the gamesmanship of a human. However, if gamers want the social interaction and diplomacy gotten from a motley group of human opponents they can always "hot-seat" players at the same computer (with some AI opponents if desired) or rely on the provided play-by-e-mail feature.
Advanced Civilization does not contain a tutorial but play a few practice games, watch the AI, use the on-line help, and eventually players should pick up the subtleties of the game mechanics. Multiple game settings, player combinations, and the play-by-e-mail feature will increase replayability. It's not likely to be one of those games players will think about while the computer's off but one they'll enjoy it none-the-less.
