At present, I rate it as a “7” on the BGG site: “Good game, usually willing to play”. It’s a very FFG-type of game which – thankfully – is in one of its smaller boxes rather than a coffin box. Strangely enough, there are hardly any plastic pieces, something that really improves the game. Despite the fact that I’ve won two of the completed games through a military victory, the game isn’t all about armies: you can win in other ways.

However, the game is about armies in one way: you need to be able to mount a defense. 

There are four ways of winning the game. Let’s have a look at the first of them.

If you capture an opponent’s capital, you win the game. 

Military in Civ is a combination of three factors, which are quite confusing to explain. They become clear through play, but getting the right balance between the three can be very tricky. On the map, your armies are represented by army figures: little flags. Having more than one flag in the same square on the map means that you’ve got a potentially stronger force. However, what this actually means in play is that you draw more cards from your “standing forces” deck to use in combat. You draw three cards for one flag, with each flag giving you an extra two cards.

Keeping your standing forces deck full of good cards is a key part of the game: you start with three cards in it, an infantry, a cavalry and an artillery unit. Once you get into combat, you draw cards according to the size of your army (number of flags), or six cards for defending a city. If you don’t have the cards in your deck, you don’t get extra ones. So, I think it’s pretty important to get up to 6 cards in your standing forces so you can defend your cities well.

Battle involves players playing the cards in their hands alternatively: either by just playing to the table in a new “front”, or directly attacking an already played card. There is a rock/paper/scissors part of combat where a unit that is “superior” to the opposing unit gets first strike damage and often destroys it outright without taking damage in turn. Destroyed forces aren’t returned to your standing forces at the end of combat – they’re lost and returned to the supply. This attrition is why it’s very dangerous to attack another player: you weaken them so another player can just walk in and take their cities.

Cities are destroyed when they lose a battle, so this is a big, big penalty in the game. You can only have three cities in play at once! (And that presumes you’ve researched Irrigation). Losing your capital? The attacker has just won the game.

The third factor you have to worry about is your technologies. Certain technologies provide bonuses to the strengths of your units: you upgrade your Infantry, Artillery and Cavalry through four levels, and finally you can research Aircraft. Meanwhile, there are ancillary factors: the speed units can move at, whether they can cross water, and the stacking limit (which shows how many army flags can be in the same square).

In Saturday’s game, I played against Nash, Richard and Sarah. The final victory was a military victory when I took out Sarah’s capital. It should be noted that Sarah was very close to winning the game with Science, and I could probably have attacked Rich easily instead, but I decided to go for the more difficult victory. I had the better tech, and my initial victory knocked out enough of Sarah’s forces so that I could then just stroll into her capital. Well, I say “stroll”, but it required aircraft to get the range to get there.

In Thursday’s first game, Derek and Paul were my opponents. They fought each other once, knocking down their standing forces enough so that I could stroll into their cities and they couldn’t stop me. (Note to Paul: don’t attack someone when the third player has an army adjacent to your opponent’s capital!)

In Civilization, Military would seem to be most powerful when you don’t have opponents that can stop you. I was able to take on Sarah’s forces because Rich and Nash were weak. In a two-player game, military rises in importance, but in no game can you ignore it. In the second game on Thursday, Derek, Paul and I were well aware of how dangerous military could be, so we all had good forces – and no-one was game to attack. By the end of the game, Derek was ready to attack me, but I had enough culture cards to stop any such movement… and I used the time they gave me to win otherwise.

So, once you understand the importance of keeping your military up and you’re aware of the MAD tendency of this game, you can start trying to win by another method…