I won my retry of Imperium classics as rome against carthage 124 to 92. I believe I take too many cards in my deck… and then it drags on. Finished the game by 1st running the fame deck out, then I did my last development and the bot cleared the main deck. And then we played the final round.
Scoring is a pain. I used this app https://imperiumscorer.surge.sh/
It worked quite good.
The app helped me to better understand. So the boat card in play counts all water and grain regions, doesn’t matter if in play or not. I will try a two player game soon. Not sure if I like the bot. He is doing a lot of stuff with his tables, but at the end, it just feels random to me.
I like the bot in Raiders of Scythia more. 2-3 steps instead of 5 steps and checking tables and multiple actions. It feels very solitaire unless some actions by the bot hit me. But I can’t really prepare or respond.
Scoring is a pain. I used this app Link
Oh sweet god, thank you. The scoring is the worst part of this game, which is a masterpiece btw.
These player aids have been fantastic as well - they summarize each civ in both eras,
wow, I am not deep enough into the game. It’s all about the cards and how good you know them and how you could build a strategy. For the romans, I tried to collect a lot of population and pop scoring cards. This somehow worked out.
Having played against the Roman bot quite a few times, I don’t think it’s random at all.
It thins it’s deck and runs a fairly straightforward strategy of acquiring land cards and tributaries and then building up his lands to cash in on them with either Glory or Prosperity. It uses it’s Barbarian cards to force your lands back into your deck slowing your own thinning down.
The VP on the cards are very specific when saying if the VP’s are counted for cards in play otherwise it’s always everything you have that isn’t in your nation or development deck.
It feels solitaire because it’s essentially a game with very little player interaction and I don’t think your experience will change with multiplayer. It reminds me of 7 Wonders in that way.
Totally agree with you here. The bots in Garphill games are so light to execute that I can keep my head focused on my own plans while executing them. The Imperium bots are heavy enough that I have trouble keeping a through-line in my own play. I got to play Imperium once with my wife and it felt so freeing to focus fully on my own game (and the infrequent interaction points), which is making it hard to go back to solo.
The bot in Raiders of Scythia is super-smooth; it makes it so easy to take put the game on the table when I have free time.
I also really like the bot in Pax Pamir. It’s closer to a human opponent, taking actions to directly challenge and attack you.
And then there’s the bot in Oath, which caused my brain to melt out of my ears.
That looks rough! I wonder if it hadn’t been a flowchart if it would be easier to understand.
I remember there was a flowchart in the black box version of Glory to Rome that made the game seem significantly more complicated than it is
:strip_icc()/pic4153386.png)
True, the Raiders bot is really slick. But Imperium is like 16 different bots… and you can’t really prepare or respond against the Raiders one either.
They’re pretty simple tables. Nothing like trying to parse the flowcharts in a COIN game. :P
But it would have been better if the tables were on player aids rather than in one of the two rulebooks.
In Imperium, do you guys go for a slim deck. I ended up two times now with a fat deck. I really wanted to put cards into history, but there were only a few cards, that let me do that. One was a fame card, I believe.
But I accomplished an 8 card hand limit, so I could cycle my deck faster.
Also, what is the opinion on Bread & Circuses? I didn’t play it for a long time, and when Carthage became an empire it gave me a lot of unrest cards. B&C let you get rid of 1 unrest during solstice, but you always need to discard 1 card even if you don’t have unrest.
It’s massive against opponents whose strategy is to flood you with unrest. I guess it also allows you to ‘acquire’ with impunity, versus the more expensive ‘break-through’.
It lets you get rid of TWO unrest cards every solstice, one from your hand and one from your discard. Of course you have to discard something every solstice, but if you had two unrest in your hand you can discard one then return them both - perfect!
The last few games, I tried to make sure I was shuffling once every turn except the turn immediately following “Glory” plays and turn 1. This seems to work pretty well for drilling through the development deck. But that’s also the end condition I’ve hit every time I’ve played, so it seems like there’s more to it that I haven’t gotten my head around yet. I tried playing Greece since it seemed to incentivize a big deck, but I got some History making cards early and my deck was just as slim as usual. I’d say I’m usually running around 8 cards in my deck, and I try and setup some possible extra card draw if it doesn’t seem like I’m going to shuffle this turn.
They are available for print out on BGG, the Qin one is the corrected one with the errata in it too on that file.
That Oath bot designer needs to sit back, take a breath, and just look at that flowchart with fresh eyes.
To be fair to the Oath bot, once you understand the game is basically 6 different icons it makes some sense.
It doesn’t work very well (since Oath basically requires 4 live people to be fun), but the bot flowmap arrow hell is functional. Just not approachable :)
Not to worry, the easy-breezy rules reference will clear things right up.
(If you’re already familiar with Oath, the flowchart and rules do make logical sense once you start putting them into practice, but it’s still a hefty mental lift.)
I know, but I shouldn’t have to! :)
Besides, I don’t have the facility to print anything here, let alone cards. I would love to find somewhere local-ish that did print cards, because then I could also get the Ironsworn cards printed out.
I just rewatched the SUSD review of this and have been pondering getting the game. I like the fact that it works perfectly well as just a 2 player game which is great because right now I only have one potential player which is myself. Perhaps my 7 year old would play with my in 10 years.
A flowchart is kind of important for teaching Glory to Rome (or at least learning it from the rulebook), since unless all players understand the flow of cards they’ll optimize for things that should not be optimized for and grind the game to a halt. Specifically, the card text only matters for cards in hand. Not for cards in pool, stockpile or vault. And cards never enter your hand from those locations either, only from the deck.
Well you don’t have to :) They are in the rulebook and the errata are online so you can mark up your rulebook or write them out in biro…