Clash of Cultures Review

This review is brought to you by the letter "C" - guest reviewer Chris C.
 

Clash of Cultures is a civilization building game for 2-4 players.  It plays in about an hour per player. Designed by Christian Marcussen (also the creator of Merchants and Marauders), this game follows in a long tradition of historically-themed “4X” games, spanning back at least to the 1980 Avalon Hill classic, simply called Civilization.  That board game was the inspiration for Sid Meier’s classic Civilization computer game, and this thread has bounced back and forth several times, resulting most recently in Fantasy Flight Games’ popular 2010 release, Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game.  I'm happy to report that Clash of Cultures stands up very nicely against these giants.

Clash of Cultures is played over six rounds of three turns each.  Each turn, players take three actions.  Actions include moving units, researching technologies, harvesting resources and improving cities.  As in most civilization games, players begin with one city and a settler unit and the board is configured with randomized face-down land tiles waiting to be explored.  Each round is followed by a status phase where players have an opportunity to score objectives and then receive an action card, an objective card and a free technology advance.  Action cards provide special abilities, while objective cards provide ways to score points.  At the end of the game, players also receive points for each of their cities, their technology advances and constructed Wonders.  The player with the most points wins.

Beautifully sculpted pieces.

Cities form the heart of each player’s civilization, and the game features a number of novel related mechanics.  A city may be activated as an action to harvest resources, build units or increase its size with one of the four building types - temples, academies, ports and fortresses.  As a city grows larger, it can harvest more resources and build more units.  However, the size of individual cities is limited by the size of a player’s civilization, providing incentive to explore and found additional cities.  If a city is activated twice in the same turn, its citizens become unhappy and will be less effective.  Morale can be improved using mood tokens earned by researching new technologies.

The technology tree features a number of interesting options and combinations that I have not seen in previous 4X games.  One example is the Trade Routes technology, which will earn players resources each turn for putting units in potentially vulnerable positions near enemy cities.  Research technologies may also trigger events, where a player draws and resolves the top card from the event deck.  These can be good or bad - the player might be attacked by barbarians or simply have a good harvest.  Events introduce a substantial element of luck to the game, but also add much-needed variety and replayability.

The novel mechanics are supported by the excellent components.  Cities are round plastic miniatures, and the buildings are on curved bases so that each fits beautifully around the city taking up a quarter of the circle. Each player receives plastic warriors, settlers and ships in their color and as they march across the landscape the game takes on an epic feel quickly.  The individual player boards list the entire tech tree.  They are made of thick cardboard with square holes next to each technology - when a player researches a new tech, they simply place a cube in the appropriate hole.  This basic idea is a major improvement on previous 4X games, where players must often search through a deck of technology cards and refer to the manual if they wish to see all of the dependencies.  Each player also gets a reference card clearly listing the game’s phases, the ways to earn points, and the cost of each unit and building.

The highly intuitive player board

Though this game is excellent, it is not without flaws.  I wish more had been done to encourage combat earlier in the game.  In the groups I have played with, it is quite rare for players to attack each other before the last round of the game (and then only to attempt to capture cities containing valuable Wonders).  It is relatively inexpensive to found new cities, and additional cities after the first few do not benefit a player during the game, so there is little reason to attack other players earlier.  As a result, the game doesn’t have as much direct interaction as one might expect from a Civilization game.  This problem was solved elegantly, for example, in Empires of the Void, where mid-game scoring rounds provide an incentive to take planets from other players earlier.

The game does try to encourage combat with the objective card deck.  Each card lists two ways for the player to score points, one having to do with building up a civilization, and the other having to do with warfare.  However, players may only complete one of the two possibilities and both are worth the same number of points.  Since the civilization-building objectives are easier and combat will usually weaken the two players involved to the advantage of the other players, the groups I have played with have rarely attempted the combat objectives.  Additionally, the civilization-building objectives aren’t as varied as I’d like.  More than half fall into a few basic categories like building up a certain number of resources or completing a certain branch of the tech tree.  And, unlike in Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game, players do not have races with unique powers, so the game doesn’t feel as varied over repeat plays as I’d like.

These complaints are fairly minor, considering the overall quality of the game.  Any fan of Civilization-style games should pick this one up immediately.  It’s also a great choice for gamers new to the genre - it has an excellent rule book and is easier to learn and play than the Sid Meier’s Civilization board game, even if it lacks a little of that game’s variety.  It also works very well with 2 or 3 players, which is a bit rare for this style of game.  And while it might seem like a small thing, the game’s innovative components relating to cities and tech trees really make it a joy to play.

If Clash of Cultures sounds interesting, you should also check out Empires of the Void, Civilization (by Fantasy Flight Games), and Civilization (by Eagle Games).

I would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing Board Game Reviews by Josh with a review copy of Clash of Cultures.

Empires of the Void Review

I would like to thank my guest reviewer Chris C. for his thoughts on Empires of the Void!

In Empires of the Void, 2-4 players control alien races competing to wrest control of the galaxy from the crumbling Pyrious Empire.  Each race builds a fleet of ships while expanding its civilization’s
influence farther into interstellar space and researching new technologies.  Competition over high-value planets is fierce, and inevitably these budding empires come crashing together in space
combat.  In the end, the race which has best managed expanding its empire’s scope, diplomatic ties and technological expertise will win.

To long-time gamers, this will all sound pretty familiar.  Empires of the Void is a great example of a classic genre called “4X” games: players explore, expand, exploit and exterminate.  The granddaddy of space-themed 4X games is Twilight Imperium, an epic game of interstellar conquest.  While Twilight Imperium is a masterpiece, many gamers have a hard time getting it to the table because of its 4+ hour play time and complicated rules.  In the last two years, there have been several attempts to put out new games that capture the Twilight Imperium experience in a more reasonable play time and with a simpler rule set.

Empires of the Void does an excellent job of integrating and re-imagining many of the classic elements of the 4X genre into a new game.  Players start with only their race’s home world, and must build a fleet and expand into neighboring systems to gather more resources. Each race has unique abilities, and I found these to be interesting and fairly balanced while still clearly distinguishing each race and suggesting a particular play style.  The expanding civilizations quickly collide, and neighbors must fight or negotiate over planets between them.  Diplomacy is important here - two players wasting resources battling over their shared space will quickly find themselves at a disadvantage to the other races.  With a small number of high-value planets at the center of the board, though, peace can not last forever.  Managing your resources carefully and building an effective fleet is essential.

The artwork on the board is well done

The game also adds a number of unique and fun mechanisms to the standard 4X formula.  A novel turn structure keeps the game moving at a brisk pace.  Each turn begins with a building phase where players construct ships and research new technologies simultaneously.  Then a card is drawn triggering an event - perhaps space pirates invade a planet or a wormhole is discovered linking two distant parts of the board.  After the event, each player gets an action phase in turn order to move their ships, conquer planets and attack other civilizations.

The game takes place over 11 rounds.  In the 5th and 8th rounds, the event is replaced with a scoring phase where players earn victory points for their planets, technologies and “influence” (explained momentarily).  There is also a final scoring round after the 11th turn.  An upcoming scoring round tends to spell conflict as players try to grab points from each other.  I loved the way this prevented anyone from getting too comfortable and kept things moving.

Diplomacy plays a central role in expanding your empire and winning in Empires of the Void.  There are two distinct ways to take control of a planet.  A player may conquer a planet by attacking it.  This provides access to the planet’s resources and victory points.   Alternatively, a player may attempt to ally with a planet by sending a diplomat and playing diplomacy cards corresponding to the type of race that lives there (planets may be peaceful, scholarly, mysterious, militaristic or capitalistic).  Each planet has a unique special ability that is available only to its ally (for example, access to unique ships or technologies) and allied planets contribute to a player’s “influence” total, giving them a chance to control the galactic council for additional points in scoring rounds.  Allied planets also provide  resources and points like conquered planets, but diplomacy is a bit harder than simply taking over a planet.

Empires of the Void features bright artwork and nice components.  Each civilization has a beautiful player board with a large colorful illustration of that race.  The player boards also have helpful reminders about the turn structure, the available actions, and the cost of each ship and the required corresponding technologies.  The modular board is large and attractive, always getting lots of attention at my game club.  There are many types of ships, represented by thick cardboard pieces with nice illustrations.

Very colorful components, all around

The game does have a few flaws.  While the rulebook is easy to read, it has a few errors and doesn’t explain every situation that can come up during the game.  We found ourselves checking the internet for clarifications several times in our first two games, though the rules are mostly simple and straightforward.  Some of the event cards can be particularly brutal, possibly taking away control of a crucial planet in the early game.  In my group, we’ve taken the worst ones out.  Additionally, it’s very possible for players to fall behind a bit in the early game and have trouble catching up due to bad die rolls.  On the bright side, the designers have put a free promo up on their website that addresses this problem by giving players a way to slightly modify some rolls.  We like this promo a lot and always use it now, though it can extend the game length a little since players will be able to set up bigger civilizations more quickly.  Also, while the board position is randomized in each game, all of the tiles are used every time - I wish they had included more map pieces for added replayability.

So where does Empires of the Void fit into the world of new space-themed 4X games?  In my opinion, this game does a better job of capturing the epic feel of Twilight Imperium than its two main
competitors, Eclipse and Space Empires 4X.  Eclipse is an excellent and very popular new game, but it feels more like an economic optimization game than Empires of the Void or Twilight Imperium.  Diplomacy plays a less central role in Eclipse, and players aren’t forced to deal with each other as quickly or directly.  Space Empires 4X is more of a gritty war game than Empires of the Void.  It does an excellent job of setting up epic space battles, but it plays best as a 2-player direct conflict game and lacks the unique alien races and bright artwork of Empires of the Void.  Each of these games is
excellent and each excels at a particular aspect of the space conquest genre, but Empires of the Void does the best job of condensing the full range of possibilities that exist in bigger games like Twilight Imperium into a 2-hour play time.

I highly recommend Empires of the Void.  It’s great both as an introduction to 4X games and for hardened space-combat vets that are looking to get their fix in a shorter game.  As with any game that
features direct conflict, play it with folks who won’t take it personally when their prized planets are snatched out from under them.  The game has beautiful art, is easy to learn and adds several neat
mechanics to the genre.  If building an intergalactic space empire and conquering alien worlds sounds like fun to you, pick this one up today.
9.0/10

If you are interested in Empires of the Void, you might also want to check out Civilization, Galaxy's Edge, and Risk 2210 AD.

I would like to thank Red Raven Games for providing us with a review copy of Empires of the Void.