Civilization: A New Dawn

My son is a huge Civilization video game fan, and saved his own money to purchase this game. The pieces are durable, similar quality you would expect from an Arkham Horror or Twilight Imperium. My son did the setup and read the rules on his own and found the game to be easily playable even as it is more complex in its dynamics than a more conventional board game (Like Monopoly).

We’ve played this a number of times and it’s always fun. My partner likes generic strategy games like Azul and Splendor. I like more niche or complex strategy games. But we both love this one! It’s nice that there are multiple possible routes to victory, and we typically avoid head-to-head combat in favor of the victory conditions for building wonders, making scientific advancement, etc. The game feels balanced regardless of your preferred strategy. We have had one game last ~30 minutes, but most have been 2-3 hours (granted we tend to be slow at most games). We’ve only played with 2 players, but I imagine a four-person game brings a whole other dynamic. I’ve never played the Civ games on PC, so I’m reviewing purely its quality as a board game, and it is darn good.

If you love the computer version, then this game will be a lot of fun. There are a lot of rules and setting up takes time. Games will take a long time to play. But games are very engaging and fun once you learn the rules. There are a lot of strategies. Each civ has a special bonus like in the computer version. So each civ offers a unique play style. The game has wonders, techs, city-states, that you will recognize from the computer version. The game also uses modular map pieces that allow you to create random maps by assembling different pieces like a puzzle. This offers a lot of replayability. The two big weaknesses in the game are the lack of any real military play. There are no military units. You just roll the dices to "attack" a tile. I wish the game had military units. The other weakness is the lack of containers for all the tokens. There are a lot of different tokens and once you remove them, they will be loose in the box. I recommend getting some small ziplock bags to put all the tokens in. It will really help you organize everything nicely.

Love this game - but be sure to add the expansion pack. Takes the game to a whole new, completely different level.

Absolutely fantastic! It really delivers that classic civilization video game experience in the format of a board game. Obviously, there have to be major differences to allow this format change but it capture's the games essence very well. Like the video game, it's complex with endless choices and possibilities, yet also streamlined and very easy to play after the first play-through/learning game. Pros: - Very fun, games typically take around 2-3 hours which is not too long, but long enough to feel like the world/game actually evolves - Captures the video game's essence very well - Endless choices and possibilities - Map creation element generates countless random maps for a different setup every game - Turns can happen fairly rapidly, so you don't need to sit around waiting for other players too long Cons: - Tons of pieces/tokens and the box doesn't come with anything to store them and keep them separated - Setup takes quite a while (at least 15 minutes) - Wish the game supported up to 6 people (hopefully there will be expansions!) - Wish there were more victory scenario options - Rule-book is a little more complex than it needed to be

Amazing board game, but I would highly recommend to buy it with an expansion straight away. The expansion's name is "Terra Incognita".

Lets start by saying that I’m a big Civilization fan, so the theme and scene is very familiar to me, so when I found out about a Civ board game there was a rush in me to buy it. If you are a fan of Civilization by Cid Meier games, you will find a theme rich and complex game in this. The other thing I have to say is that I only played (and will ever play) this game with the expansion. In my investigations pre-buy the reviews made it very clear that the expansion Terra Incognita fixed many of the problems and ambiguities of the base game and ads many well received mechanics. Now with review: The game put you in the shoes of civilization with unique advantages and leave you to form your own path to victory. The victory conditions are card that put and objective in the beginning. The first to complete this conditions, win; in a sense is a race to the finish. This is a long game, you should see yourself playing with friend for about 2.5-5 hours, in that sense is a epic game. One of my biggest complains with the game are the rules and how to learn them. The core system is easy and full of choice, you always have 5 (6 with the expansion) options that determinate your actions. The problem comes when there are a lot terms and in between the lines rules that affect the game and the rules fails to explain them. I short the rules book is a mess that gets worse with the expansion. Learning to play the game take like 1-2 hours of play time until you know what to do. When you do play, and you do understand the systems, it runs smooth like a well oil machine. The 5 options system is really cool and you should play it to really understand. The components in this game standard good. Like any Civilization game, you immerse yourself in the shoes of a leader and in the passing of the game you will fell your civilization growth, with your first city to you lv4 technology cards. The many leaders and win conditions makes for a long running game that have a lot of replay ability. Is you have a group that enjoys the thrill of building a civilization and have the patience to learn the rules by trial and error, this is a good game for that.

Have played this quite bit. Love the game. Not necessarily for beginners of builder type strategy games, but it gets easier as you play it. Quality play system. You will like the multiple strategies to win.

Ponía que era de segunda mano, pero lo único que tenía de segunda mano era que le habían quitado era el envoltorio. Todo sin tocar. Juego muy difícil de conseguir y al final lo encontré a precio increíble.

Very fun for people who like to strategize and think ahead. I bought this game to play with my family and we had a great time. While we were first learning the game through an initial test playthrough, to make learning faster, i decided to have them skip the city/state diplomacy cards and leader effects, and just learned the basics faster. There is a lot of stuff the game throws at you in the beginning that can be overwhelming for people new to board games that you have to learn and remember, I did some research beforehand so I was able to answer some questions. Ive also played civ on pc before but i knew coming into this board game it would be different. Some things aren't really listed or we missed from the rulebook and texts that we are still unclear on, like what happens when a barbarian reaches a capital city and you have no trade tokens, and can you build a city adjacent to city states or other cities? We probably botched a few of the rules but we still very much enjoyed the game. The first playthrough took us about 3 hours with 3 people learning everything. It got very intense for two of us near the end when we were both trying to build cities as fast as possible, while the third player was kind of left out because they were way behind on objectives, so I formed an alliance with them and they helped me attack the 2nd player which is still very fun for them. I really enjoyed this game and so did the others. Formulating a winning strategy was very satisfying. I think this game is very suitable for adults that like to strategize. I can see how it would be discouraging if you're way behind because there aren't many ways to catch up fast, and the ending of a game is just a race against time, but then again, the game can still be fun if you form alliances or try to trade with others to help somebody else win or something. Starting a game, it takes a long time to setup, is the only con I would say. Placing all the resources, barbarians, map tiles, etc takes quite a bit of time and effort. But it was so worth it. For people new to board games or civ, it can be overwhelming, but for people who are invested and in the right mindset to learn and play, it becomes very simple and straightforward once the game starts going and you start recognizing and formulating strategies. By right mindset I mean like you're actually interested in playing the game and taking objectives and focused on a goal instead of just winging it. If I could make one request to the publisher, I would ask you to release a leader pack, so that we could play qin shi huang or more leaders without buying the expansion.

I love this game, it gives a really cool civilization feel, totally recommend it! Much better than tapestry.

Non fate come me, che preso dall'enfasi di un nuovo gioco Civilization ho proceduto questa volta all'acquisto senza informarmi o leggere recensioni, memore di quanto mi fossero piaciuti i precedenti. Le possibilità di scelta sono notevolmente inferiori rispetto ai suoi predecessori e si ha la netta sensazione di aver fra le mani un prodotto incompleto che non aspetta altro che mungere il nostro portafoglio con future espansioni. Le civiltà sono poche, la nuova meccanica di scelta sul come progredire la nostra civiltà è orribile, carina la componentistica e la meccanica di gestione dei barbari ma nulla di più. Sembra più un boardgame introduttivo. Non si sente minimamente il senso di progresso e credo che ciò la dica tutta. Una grande occasione mancata.

Good game. We all enjoyed playing.