Last night's gaming session was
Rise of Empires, another Martin Wallace empire building/civ-like game. Roman era, mix of conflict/engine building... This has some really neat turn mechanics - 3 "eras" with two turns in each, six actions per player each turn... Players choose an action in sequence, six actions each (with six types of action), taking up 'slots' on the action chart, as shown in the bottom right of this pic:
But then in the next turn, you're taking "back" your action markers, repeating the same types of actions you selected before, with a gold cost for each marker to the left of the one you're picking up.... This works out
really well - there's a real strong push to plan for that second turn & ensure you've got a good set of 'slots' available.
Actions are picking up resource tiles, city tiles (for VP), 'progress' tiles that let you tweak rules or get extra resources etc, trade (turn resources into gold/vp) & the all important expansion tiles that let you put new cubes out on the gameboard & attack. Attacks are deterministic - take away x of his cubes, y of yours, as shown on the card.
Every round, there's an upkeep of food & income. At the end of every era, you pay for each 'progress' & city you want to keep for the next era, and all the empires are demolished
Every location gets its number of cubes halved, rounding down of course.
There's a strong element of build up/knock down, but not much luck (just the tile drawing at the start of each round). Our game was really close & I definitely want to play again.
