OUR REVIEW

DEVELOP CIVILIZATIONS

NATIONS

WHO succeeds best?

„Nations“, published in 2013 by publisher Lautapelit from Finland, designed by Einar and Robert Rosén and Nina and Rustan Håkansson (two pairs of siblings?), a game on the "great civilizations of mankind", came to my attention in Essen, because the demo tables were always thronged by onlookers. Those experienced players that are already a bit advanced as to age will instantly remember the three predecessors published so far with a "Civilization" topic - the one published in 1981 in England and designed by Francis Tresham, in which you handed several catastrophe cards, for instance famine, with a derisive grin and which seemed to go on endlessly, that is, all night. In the first decade of the new millennium two other games with the same name were published, both based on the PC game designed by Sid Meyer. I have not played the one that was published in 2002 by Eagle games, but the one published in 2010 very frequently - this edition featured four different winning conditions, none of them really balanced, but we pull it out with pleasure rather often, despite a playing time of more than four hours.

In contrast, this new adaptation of the same topic provides a totally different flair in playing: it is highly competitive with permanent interaction, which is unusual for a development using worker placement - usually in such games each player devises his optimum strategy by himself and overlapping with other players is scarce.

The tension in Nations is achieved by limiting the playing time to eight rounds - with two of them representing one era, as there are: Ancient times, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Industrialization - and a large - and at the beginning rather confusing - number of "hand wheels". In other games I am often angry when a certain spot that I want is already taken or someone snatches up a resource before me, but in Nations there is a whole network of contexts and interrelations which allow me to choose another, equally successful, path.

Nearly everything that a player does has effects on other players, many a chosen action or event forces the dear opponents to do things that deviate them from their chosen path of action.

„Nations“ must be learnt - just like all other really good game -, as the plethora of possibilities is basically achieved with three different actions only:

1.) Buy a Progress card,

2.) Place a worker, or

3.) Hire an architect.

In each round there are three consecutive phases of play, whereby the first phase - Maintenance Phase - and last phase - Resolution Phase - demand pure administration actions only, for instance displaying of new cards, collect income, determine order of play, deal with effects of events and wars, etc. The central and core element of the game is the Action Phase, in which each player in turn can do one of those action per turn, until all players pass their turn. This is when things are happening in Nations!

Let me take a closer look at those three actions: There are two game boards, a "Score Board" and a "Progress Board", and a Player board for each player as well as more than 300 cards - the majority of those cards are connected to Progress, the other cards represent events (all of those cards show the painstaking attention of the designer for details: each cards represents historical events, personalities, battles or "wonders" including dates, as well as building and military units with their exact names).

The central feature is the Progress Board, on which you lay out Progress cards open-faced in three rows at the start of each round. The cards feature colored borders which indicate the function of the card, for instance blue for buildings or red for military; the colors also correspond to the storage areas on the player boards - those boards carry imprinted cards, the basic equipment for each nation, so to say. Buildings, units, etc. that are depicted on Progress Cards cost between one and three money units and replace those already displayed, thereby enhancing your income. As soon as the cards are displayed all is quiet all of a sudden, you can see the wheels turning in all heads: "What would I like, what can I afford, will it still be available when it is my turn, and how can I distract my opponents from my intentions?". and suddenly all talk to all others at the same time.

Buildings and military units are useless when not occupied by a worker, so we need the second action: Place one worker. This placement either enhances the military power instantly or your income, in the evaluation phase.

The third action - hire one architect - allows you to set up a "Wonder" (another kind of Progress Card which yields income or bonuses without deployment of workers). Unfortunately, the number of architects that are available in a round is limited, so it can take you more than one round to complete a wonder.

Other kinds of Progress Cards represent Colonies (requiring military power) and Advisors (important celebrities), which are also cards that yield income or additional actions without blocking a worker; those cards are also placed on the corresponding placement areas on the player board.

Which leaves three more kinds of cards which you can buy:

a) War - only one war can be bought in a round; if you do so, you place the wooden War marker underneath your personal marker on the track for military power - this track is located on the above-mentioned Score Board, where there are also tracks for turn order, number of rounds, a book track, which I will explain later, and areas for the war cards, the event card - one is randomly drawn each round - and the number of architects. Stability is another track on the board that shows how nations can cope with wars and catastrophes, it is important for growth and contentedness of countries, in case of low stabilities unrest can occur, which costs you victory points.

b) Battle - they are discarded immediately after using them; the earn resources depending on your military power, but without workers at the military no power, therefore no resource.

c) Golden Era - Once-only card, earns you one resource or a rather cheap victory point instantly when played, the card is then discarded.

During one round you can buy several Battle and Golden Era cards.

Your goal in Nations is to accumulate most victory points in course of eight rounds, using resources, buildings, military, stability and acquired knowledge, represented by the book track on the Score Board. You can acquire and also lose victory points over the duration of the game; at the end of each era you score victory points depending on your ranking on the book track. Another scoring at the end of the game adds up the value of all three tracks (Stability, Military and Books) and also the total of all your resources; the resulting total is divided by then and this result are additional victory points (for instance, a total sum of 108 gives you 10 victory points, the rest of 8 is forfeit). Another source for victory points are building, military, colony and wonder Progress Cards on your Player Board. A really elegant solution, in my opinion, has been achieved with this, because all that you achieved for your civilization in total, be it wealth, knowledge, military power or architectural achievements, is evaluated and rewarded.

Now to resources and how to acquire them:

There are cardboard markers for food, stone and gold, the number of books is marked on a track, victory points are represented by tokens and, on the Progress Cards, as laurel-wreathed numbers on a yellow background. On the player boards the starting wealth of resources and victory points is listed, identical for all nations; on the back sides of the double-sided boards the respective nations have different starting conditions. The number of available worker also varies only on the B-side of the board.

WORKERS - Each player has five wooden men at the start and a population reserve of eight additional workers. From this reserve you can acquire one man per round instead of resources in the first phase of the round, the Maintenance Phase. FOOD is needed for famine (each round, can come with value Zero occasionally) and for additional workers, which are made available with food; STONE pays for placing workers on Progress Cards (Military and Buildings), the price raises in each era. Architects are utilized to construct Wonders.

GOLD is needed to acquire Progress Cards, the costs vary between one and three gold. BOOKS are a kind of joker, you can pay for missing resources by moving backwards on the book track. One VICTORY POINT is lost for each defeat in a war, and also, when you cannot pay for resources in the Resolution phase (for instance, not enough grain to feed additional workers that you took. Debts must be paid for with books, but for each missing kind of resource also one Victory Point, for is the maximum that is possible. You can only buy when you can pay the price in money, books cannot be used for payment.

With workers present on military cards your military power increases, which in turn is necessary to acquire colonies and for battles, but they usually cost you different resources in each round and block workers, which would earn money in other places. On the other hand, though, the turn order is determined by military power (the strongest goes first, etc.). In case of war all players, whose marker is situated lower on the track than the war marker on the military track; each such player loses one victory point plus the number and kind of resources noted on the War card, reduced by the position on the stability track (so, for 7 grain stated on the War card and a stability value of 5 you only pay 2 grain). Actually, quite a clever idea, stable national economics can deal better with war damage.

Let me give an example of what you have to take into consideration if you want to buy War: If I am a pacifist, I have a good reason to buy war so as to suffer too much damage; if I am a good soldier (high mark on the military track) a war is of advantage, too, either to damage others or to force them to put their workers on military cards, too, which results in a reduction of their income. Remember: The War marker (black) is put on the current position of the buyer. If can even happen that you lose the war that you bought, because you must use your wooden men to acquire the urgently needed resources and have to remove them from the battlefields and thus fall below the black marker on the military power track.

A few words on the events that are drawn in every round: After the Progress Board has been replenished each player can achieve growth: You can, depending on the chosen level of difficulty (1-4, is marked on the Score Board at the start of the game) choose a certain number of either stone, gold or food or transfer a new worker from the population track into the game; for this transfer you must  pay with a loss of 3 stability points or with 3 grain at the end of the round. When this decision has taken by all players an event card from the stack for the respective era is drawn and they can be real whoppers - Loss of up to 6 units of grain (famine), penalties for lowest number of stability or military power, but maybe also rewards in the guise of victory points, advancement in turn order or additional resources. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, you do not know when you choose the growth for the round what you will need urgently later on - and this can overthrow the best-laid plan for the round, as an obvious lack of resources can force you to acquire other cards than originally planned.

The Resolution/evaluation Phase as the final stage of every round begins with production: Each building cards yields two commodities (for instance the Stock Exchange in the Industrial era yields 4 money and 2 stone; or the Library in Ancient times yields 2 books and 1 money, if you have one worker at the library, double the amount in case of two workers and treble the amount in case of three workers). The sum of all occupied buildings is the income of a player, the costs for military cards (for instance Ancient Times - the elephant raises strength by 4, but uses up 2 grain) and the price (as grain) for additionally hired works at the start of the round are deducted. This total income can raise by income from Colonies, Advisors and Wonders.  Besides stone, gold, food and books Progress Cards can also yield stability and military power. The price in gold for the cards is always the same and only depends on the row in which they were randomly placed. The price for stone for placing a wooden man rise over the eras from One to Four, the returns from the cards rises, too ( the starting cards printed on the board give you only one unit of both resources - with buying and building of additional more productive buildings your nation would come to an economic standstill quite soon).

After production comes determination of turn order, then an eventual war is resolved (can be skipped when nobody did buy a War Card). Next in line you resolve the event card (two historic occurrences) - penalties, losses or bonuses (Thank god, that I was able to fill the grain storage on time with a new card), followed by famine and, after every second round, the end of an era, which means that the book track is scored - each player receives as many victory points as there are players with a lower book mark than his own (for instance, in case of five players the one in front scores 4 points, the one in last place nothing).

Our playing group is in agreement that Nations is an absolute top game. It takes some time to get used to it, the designers recommend to play it with four players and basic cards only until you have learnt your way and then add cards for advanced players and experts, and it rarely plays under three to four hours, rather longer, but works excellently for any number of players, albeit with the solo version playing a bit different. The detailed and caring components and design must be emphasized, the rules - in German - are clear and easily understood, they leave nothing unanswered.  What really inspires enthusiasm about the game is the high degree of interaction and the fact, that this relatively long game stays challenging all the time, an effect that I only know from very few games, all of them with a short duration. Nobody wants to leave the board, and if you have to, the first question upon returning is "What did so-and-so just do? You even forget to eat! Quiet thinkers, on the other hand, will not have much fun with Nations.

Christoph Proksch and Ursula Vlk

Players: 1-5

Age: 12+

Time: 240+

Designer: Einar & Robert Rosén, Nina & Rustan Håkansson

Artist: Ossi Hiekkala, Jere Kasanen, Frida Lögdberg

Price: ca. 50 Euro

Publisher: Lautapelit / Asmodee 2013

Web: www.de.asmodee.com

Genre: Development

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: de en fi fr it pl

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Lots of interaction

Tension and challenge are high throughout all the game

Test games and some learning of the ropes are necessary

Duration far above average

Compares to:

All development games with a topic of guiding civilizations

Other editions:

Asterion, Rebel.pl, Ystari Games

My rating: 7

Christoph Proksch und Ursula Vlk:

Extremely thrilling and challenging development game with lots of interaction, not suitable for players favoring quiet pondering.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0