Through the Ages (iOS and Android) by Vlaada Chvátil

Hit me up for m/p!

I’m still recovering from our Twilight Struggle games and ongoing games of PUBG. Multiplayer makes me neurotic these days!

I can sometimes beat a medium and easy AI and I think I have beaten 2 medium AIs once. I am really bad about not analyzing my strategies at all and thinking “Hey, this looks like a good plan” when I have done something similar a dozen times. I have played a ton of this. As in most things, I am terrible at identifying my mistakes and learning from them.

I’ve decided to wait for the Steam version before diving in again (yes, it’s worth buying twice). The game suffers horrible lag when I play it through my Android emulator, probably because my rig is a bit long in the tooth (waiting for Black Friday deals before replacing it).

I just bought it earlier today and am working through the tutorial. Seems great so far! It definitely feels like Civ.

I’m getting incrementally better at this game, and have made some observations which are probably obvious to better players than me, but you really have to pay attention to each Age’s deck and what’s cards are left in it. Thankfully, this is easy by just hitting a button, and the game tells you where every card from that Age is. I hosed the AI in one game by grabbing Scientific Method from the very expensive part of the track early in Age II while the other one was in one of the “about to be discarded” slots, and the AI still had Age A labs. That left him stuck with terrible research for an entire Age, and Computers came out pretty late in Age III, so my advantage lasted even longer. You really can’t afford any bottlenecks for too long, so it can be very helpful to force your opponent into one if you can.

On the other hand, the game can turn very quickly: I started a War Over Culture in Age III with a 65-45 military advantage, and Winston Churchill kicked my butt by making it 85-65 in one turn with some shenanigans I’m still studying with some skepticism. The game has some very investing rhythms in how you leapfrog technologies and such. I really like it.

Bruce, want to play with me and someone else again?

Sure, set it up.

marksweston would like game invites.

85 military strength?!? Um, are we playing the same game? (Don’t think I’ve seen higher than the mid-40s?)

The amount of detail put into this game for everything a player may want is breathtaking, from the deck tracker that doesn’t just show you which cards are not out yet but where all the previous cards went to the build prompts that remind you to use your special cards and power to the super-thorough undo/redo system to the end turn warnings if you have a corruption issue or haven’t grabbed a free worker or whatever. I can’t think of another board game conversion that is so player-centric.

(Finally beat the 4p Hard Challenge, this time with a 22-point cushion…)

Invite sent

This was one of the challenges, where everything cost 20% less. So there was an abundance of tech and units. Still, I have been hit with 60+ military in the past in m/p. There are some real sharks out there!

In the original edition of the game military strength was capped at 60. In the group I played with, it was pretty common for all 4 players to hit the cap.

The thinking goes like this. Being behind in military by more than about a single defense card’s worth is just death. So is being the last by even a single point’s margin for more than a couple of turns due to all the strength-based events. Avoiding that is worth pretty much any infrastructure sacrifice (except happiness and food production). If just one player believes this, things will stay under control but they’ll probably win. If most players believe it, almost all resources in the game will be pumped to the militaries, and the strengths will just skyrocket incredibly quickly.

I finally finished my first real game, just 1 AI at the easiest level. I took my time, examined each card and pulled off a victory of 173 to 105. I must have taken 6 hours or more because I was keep track of the cards on paper for future reference. That was such a fun game. There was always stuff I wanted to do but couldn’t. I produced much fewer resources than he did but managed to build enough. I snatched up the fast food wonder to net a pretty big culture bonus. I also grabbed Bill Gates to boost my late game resource production with some bonus culture at the end to boot.

Glad a picked this one up.

What makes for a better progression after beating 1 easy AI - adding another easy AI or playing 1 medium AI?

Probably 1 medium. The thing is duels are very different games from 3-4 player games.

OK, thanks.

Mark, our game is crashing to desktop as soon as I load it. Not the first time I have run into this error.

Mark, I started another one. While I reported this bugged game to Czech Games, based on my experience, the previous game is dead.

Ah, OK. Right now, the game is refusing to see my internet connection.