How Would You Implement A Classic Mode?

[Gori the Grey]

Games I don't know. I'll have to look into them.

 

[Leucarum]

Games I don't know. I'll have to look into them.

Gloomhaven and Charterstone both have very solid digital implementations which I can reccomend! Neither is especially civ-like, but the legacy elements are what Civ7 reminds me of...

 

[Krikkit1]

But is there even a board game that does what Civ 7 does?

Like, one-third of the way through it, a significant number of things that characterized each player change radically, everything is evened out for all players (which means that leading players lose things they've accumulated in the game). And then the game does that again another time?

I'm hardly the world's expert on board games, but I can't think of one of those that doesn't have pretty regular, steady development within whatever starting grid the game has.

Monopoly, you keep going round and round, progressively building up properties, houses and hotels. The Game of Life, you add kids to your car, but you keep moving your car steadily through the path that is on the board. Sorry, Candy Land: you have a target destination that you move your pieces toward every turn by the same mechanics for determining the length of that movement.

Chutes (or Snakes) and Ladders does have those chutes that can represent a major setback. But that's a random setback for the individual player unlucky enough to hit it, not a complete reset of the whole game for all players at one specified moment.

Jenga (maybe not a board game, but bear with me), you don't reconstruct the overall shape of the tower a third of the way through and have every one start pulling pieces from the new shape.

Like, I almost wonder if Civ 7 violated design principles of games as such, not just turn-based, 4x games, or its own established franchise formula.

Everything is NOT evened out for all players…unless the new Collapse version has all settlements destroyed and everyone restarts with a Founder and no commanders. Some things are evened out, but not the most important ones (settlements…and many others)

 

[UWHabs]

Everything is NOT evened out for all players…unless the new Collapse version has all settlements destroyed and everyone restarts with a Founder and no commanders. Some things are evened out, but not the most important ones (settlements…and many others)

I could see a case to be made that the collapse could even function like the dark age mode in civ 6, where some lonely settlements somehow declare independence. So like some of those random island settlements you end up with, maybe they break away in that mode. But not sure if that's a mode I would like and play if that always happened.

 

[uppi]

But is there even a board game that does what Civ 7 does?

Like, one-third of the way through it, a significant number of things that characterized each player change radically, everything is evened out for all players (which means that leading players lose things they've accumulated in the game). And then the game does that again another time?

Brass: Birmingham is a game about building industries and linking them to your network. It has two eras, Canal and Railway and at the end of the Canal era, all your canal links are taken away (and all obsolete industries) and you have to start the railway era without any network.

And it is currently the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Brass: Birmingham is a game about building industries and linking them to your network. It has two eras, Canal and Railway and at the end of the Canal era, all your canal links are taken away (and all obsolete industries) and you have to start the railway era without any network.

And it is currently the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek.

How much "rubberbanding" does that change represent? If one player was doing well during the Canal stage, and another not so much, does the loss of canals set the first player back more than it does the second?

 

[uppi]

How much "rubberbanding" does that change represent? If one player was doing well during the Canal stage, and another not so much, does the loss of canals set the first player back more than it does the second?

Unfortunately, I have not played the game enough times to know all the intricate details of its strategies. But I would say that the board state gets reset quite significantly and this prevents the player that was doing well from just cruising to victory and it opens new opportunities for someone who got boxed in on the board. But before being removed, the canals will be scored first, so the player having a lot of them is likely also ahead in terms of victory points. But as you can typically score more points towards the end of the game, someone behind might still catch up. Or might not, if the game ends before that. There are strategies that focus more on going for buildings which do not get obsolete, so if you see that you get behind on the board in the canal era you may want to focus on preparing for the railway era instead of maximizing points in the canal era.

 

[Krikkit1]

Unfortunately, I have not played the game enough times to know all the intricate details of its strategies. But I would say that the board state gets reset quite significantly and this prevents the player that was doing well from just cruising to victory and it opens new opportunities for someone who got boxed in on the board. But before being removed, the canals will be scored first, so the player having a lot of them is likely also ahead in terms of victory points. But as you can typically score more points towards the end of the game, someone behind might still catch up. Or might not, if the game ends before that. There are strategies that focus more on going for buildings which do not get obsolete, so if you see that you get behind on the board in the canal era you may want to focus on preparing for the railway era instead of maximizing points in the canal era.

This is a good feature of such games... the "snowballing" is reduced because you have two types of "stuff"
"snowball stuff"... stuff that helps you get more stuff
and
"Victory stuff"... stuff that doesn't help you get more stuff (maybe even makes it harder) but is how you win the game.

so you have a "snowball" phase and a "Cash in" phase.