Since I think I may have had more experience in this game than quite a few others here (I have been fortunate to be part of a group of three of us in a student hostel over summer who bought the game a month ago), I thought I should start this thread on starting out the game. All of what I mention here applies to the advanced rules, but certain elements will apply to the standard rules as well.
To begin with, each player gets to choose two regions to have their free cities on. They also get to place a settler (for the founding of new cities) and a single infantry in the region they select for their city. A roll of the dice determines who gets to choose first, and then the choosing goes in a clockwise direction, each player choosing one region. The last to choose chooses twice, and then the order reverses for the selection of the second region/city.
Choosing regions can determine the game from the outset. The map is a slightly distorted version of Earth, and at the start of the game there is generally a land rush (there are only a certain number of regions, a la Risk). North/South America and Australia are separated by oceans and are thus unreachable until someone has bought quite far into the technologies to reach ships.
I have seen many games where one player will choose the region approximating Mexico and another player will choose Panama. Quite often in the first movement/attacking turn, one will attack the other, and whoever wins will be the undisputed master of the Americas for some time to come, and it is difficult to dislodge them. You may not realise the significance of this if you have not played, but everything is done with the money you get - buying troops, improvements to make your cities happier/more productive, buying technologies for the better units... If you control the Americas, you have something like 20 or more regions to yourself, and there's a good chance that the counters randomly placed on each region at the start of the game will add up to a very nice collection of resources before you even trade with anyone! And resources means more money.
If however, like me, you are more likley to opt for Asia (larger than the Americas and plenty of options for trading right off the bat), you can rarely eliminate a single player from there, let alone try and take the whole place for thefirst 4-5 turns of the game! You will (depending on the number of players) usually have several other players able to reach you, and if your chosen opponent has chosen two regions in Asia/Europa/Africa, you need to kill both of them without worrying your rivals around you. Tricky, and the people I play with never let me get very big that early on.
Of course you could always choose Oz, and expect that no-one else would then waste their time - it is only three regions large, there is a decent chance they are all crap regions (no resources on the randomly placed counters), and you can't go anywhere until you get to ships.
So, to conclude, having heard of these problems and considering your own (for those who have played the game), what selection of regions seems to work for you?
To begin with, each player gets to choose two regions to have their free cities on. They also get to place a settler (for the founding of new cities) and a single infantry in the region they select for their city. A roll of the dice determines who gets to choose first, and then the choosing goes in a clockwise direction, each player choosing one region. The last to choose chooses twice, and then the order reverses for the selection of the second region/city.
Choosing regions can determine the game from the outset. The map is a slightly distorted version of Earth, and at the start of the game there is generally a land rush (there are only a certain number of regions, a la Risk). North/South America and Australia are separated by oceans and are thus unreachable until someone has bought quite far into the technologies to reach ships.
I have seen many games where one player will choose the region approximating Mexico and another player will choose Panama. Quite often in the first movement/attacking turn, one will attack the other, and whoever wins will be the undisputed master of the Americas for some time to come, and it is difficult to dislodge them. You may not realise the significance of this if you have not played, but everything is done with the money you get - buying troops, improvements to make your cities happier/more productive, buying technologies for the better units... If you control the Americas, you have something like 20 or more regions to yourself, and there's a good chance that the counters randomly placed on each region at the start of the game will add up to a very nice collection of resources before you even trade with anyone! And resources means more money.
If however, like me, you are more likley to opt for Asia (larger than the Americas and plenty of options for trading right off the bat), you can rarely eliminate a single player from there, let alone try and take the whole place for thefirst 4-5 turns of the game! You will (depending on the number of players) usually have several other players able to reach you, and if your chosen opponent has chosen two regions in Asia/Europa/Africa, you need to kill both of them without worrying your rivals around you. Tricky, and the people I play with never let me get very big that early on.
Of course you could always choose Oz, and expect that no-one else would then waste their time - it is only three regions large, there is a decent chance they are all crap regions (no resources on the randomly placed counters), and you can't go anywhere until you get to ships.
So, to conclude, having heard of these problems and considering your own (for those who have played the game), what selection of regions seems to work for you?
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