Path of Civilization

This is a civilisation themed game which uses an interesting card mechanism. Cards represent your technology and capability. You always have a hand of five cards, and every round you use four of them to make progress. Every round you will lose a card, and you have the opportunity to buy a new one, hopefully a better one. 

Game cards have two parts. They either generate resources (left) or science points (right). Every round you must arrange four of your cards on your player board so that two of them generate resources and the other two generate science. The card not used will be the one discarded forever. 

When you gain science, they come in five different types, and science is like a currency you can accumulate. Every round you spend science to buy a new card in one of the five tech types. Cards have different grades, with the higher grade cards costing more science. Your nation will get stronger and stronger as you acquire better and better cards. 

With the resources you gain, you can do all sorts of things. Each resource type is for one specific purpose, and it’s a matter of generating enough to do what you plan to do. There are specific resources for recruiting leaders, building wonders, developing military strength and advancing in philosophy. All of these give you benefits in different ways. 

The game is played over 10 rounds. From the third round onwards, events occur every round. You know what events they are, because they are set up and revealed at the start of the game. Some events give you benefits if you fulfil certain criteria. Many events are wars. When wars happen, you must have achieved a certain strength threshold, else you will be penalised. Your strength is also compared with others, and rewards are given based on ranking. You have an ongoing arms race. 

Wonders and leaders

What makes the game interesting for me is the core card mechanism. You must prioritise between resources and science you want to generate, and you are constantly thinking about which card you will abandon, and which card you will buy. This is a relentless march of time. The rest of the game is just okay for me. They are there to flesh out this central mechanism. They work, but they are nothing to write home about. Competition between players is indirect. You do compare military strength, and you compete for the same pool of leaders and wonders. However you are mostly managing your own nation. You don’t compete to buy cards. There are enough to go around. This is a decent package if you like civilisation themed games.