Copying some notes on this from the iPad thread:
Having a blast with this one. I haven’t played Small World, but I believe this is quite similar in some ways, though it is obviously different thematically and your empire always goes into decline at the end of your turn.
The basic rules are pretty simple, though I’m still trying to get a handle on some of the strategy. I’m finding the basic AI is edging me out in the early going, though I came very close to pulling off a worst to first victory on the last epoch in the game I just finished. There’s a significant luck factor, not only in dice rolling to invade, but in what events and empires are available in each epoch, but that also helps make each replay different.
A bit more on Brief History of the World. The map is divided into regions, kind of like Risk. Each region has a point value of up to 3, and the value changes over the course of the game (in a predetermined way, so for example North America isn’t as important until the last Epoch, when the value increases to 3, whereas the Mesopotamian area starts high and decreases later.
A single territory in a region gives you Presence in the region, scoring the value mentioned above. Dominance is achieved by having 2+ territories and more than anyone else in the region, scoring double. Mastery scores 3x and requires owning three or more territories and that no one else has any in that region.
So mastery of a valuable region can give you a lot of points, but so can having a smattering of territories around the globe in different places. The empires available in a given epoch have predetermined start locations, and it might be advantageous to have one that begins near where you have existing empires in decline (because they still help you score points) to achieve mastery of an area (or prevent another player from wiping the, off the map). The order in which the empires act is also predetermined, which can have a big impact.
For instance, I had Spain as an empire in Epoch V of my last game. I achieved Mastery of North and South America. Because I was in last place at that point, I had first choice of Empire in the final Epoch. One of the empires (in a 4-player game) was US, and my initial thought was I should pick it, then I realized Russia was a better choice for the situation because it played first (and therefore scored before the US empire occurred), had more armies, and was in a better location to gain more points. If France or Britain had been available to choose, I think I might have won the game (because they gets a ton of armies like Spain in the prior Epoch, it can attack almost anywhere on the globe because of its Naval prowess.) There’s more to it, but hopefully this gives people some idea.
The app is well done overall, but it sucks power like a Hoover and the UI layout is inefficient. I feel like they could have made the map much larger, even if it meant other elements had to sit on top.
