Age of Renaissance - Old Skool Ameritrash

I played two games of Age of Renaissance in the last month. It had been almost a decade since we last played it, so we all had to have a good look at the rules. Although rusty, we were back up to speed by the end of the first evening.

Age of Renaissance is an Old Skool Ameritrash game by Avalon Hill. As suggested by the title, the game is set in the period leading up to the Renaissance, starting in the 8^th century. The game is not about empires conquering territories but about trade metropolises dominating markets. The trade empires are Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, Paris, London and Hamburg.

Movement by sea is the best way to expand your trade empire. You start out with slow galleys that have to hug the coastline. Although you can extend the range (and carrying capacity) of your galleys, improving shipbuilding technology first removes range limits, first to all of Europe, then to the East Indies and finally the New World.

A familiar map, very early in the first game. With five players, Hamburg

(and the Baltic and Russia region) isn't included

The map is asymmetric with the most high value areas in the Levant (the eastern board of the Mediterranean), the Black Sea and East Indies and New World. This favours Venice and Genoa, because they are closest to the Levant and the Black Sea. It also means Paris, Hamburg and London should be aggressive (or locked out from the juicy bits).

My list of technological advances, about 3/4 into the game
In the right corner below, you see my biddings

The game mechanics are a development on the original Civilization, and similar in feel but a bit more complex. Like in Civilization there are trade goods where the value grows exponentially the more you have, there’s a tech tree and conflict is abstracted and requires a minimum number of counters to engage.

The trade goods are not based on cities but on areas on the map you control and they each produce different goods like timber, wine, spice and ivory. The tech tree is a bit more structured and expanded, and all the technologies now provide benefits in the game. And conflict is influenced by control of neighbouring areas and technology.

A few sample event cards

The major change to the game as opposed to Civilization is the addition of event cards: you can play them to score trade goods and bonuses on technology or tactical advantages in conflict. There’s also a number of catastrophes such as famine, epidemics and religious strife that will increase the misery of your population. 

The Misery track is another addition to the game. As a result of catastrophes and certain technologies, your people will suffer, and at the end of the game, misery will cost you points. And the higher you are on the track, the bigger the steps, so the harder it becomes to reduce misery. Money and some technologies allow you to reduce misery, but it takes some effort to keep on top of it.

The event cards can be very powerful: scoring a high value trade good or a good leader bonus can buy you an extra technology, a tactical advantage can make you win two more areas. And a catastrophe can lose you half your money. Pretty powerful stuff that can determine the outcome of a game and will have players arguing whether the player targeted is the one in front or not.

The Black Sea and the Levant, cornered mostly by
Genoa and Venice in the four player game

Your basic economy depends on the number of areas you control, but as said above the type of area makes a difference when trade cards are scored by playing event cards. The value of your harvest is determined by the square of the number of areas you hold in that trade good, so monopolies can be very profitable. It’s not possible for all trade goods and sometimes it’s better not to monopolise a good because other players won’t score their cards if you’re the only one benefiting. On the other hand, if you have a trade good card yourself and you can try to collect a few more areas to improve your haul.

As an old skool Ameritrash game, it has many of the flaws associated with the genre. The game is long, taking 5 to 6 hours with 4 players (longer with more players) but that also increases the sense of epic achievement by the end. There is the possibility of a runaway leader if nobody goes after him and it is prone to king making. Like Civilization, there’s lots of calculation going on to optimise your score, and that is something not everybody likes to do in their spare time.

The game is also different with fewer players. There’s too much room in a 4 player game, while 5 players is too hard on Barcelona (with London breathing down its neck). I would like to try six players sometime again because that might be the best balance.

Were it designed or republished today it would be more streamlined to fit into 3 hours. I should try the recent Romanian game Warriors & Traders to see how that works, because it basically has the same theme. But despite all its flaws Age of Renaissance is still worth digging out once every couple of years and probably a great game when you're in school or university and have more time to burn.

The Swashbuckling Approach to the History of the World

History of the World is a fun game, with little pretentions. In its original version (which I once owned) it had cardboard counters and a cloth map, but the later Avalon Hill version has got a mass of plastic dudes and a proper reinforced mapboard. 

Opening stages of our game before Christmas

The game is driven by the repeated appearance of new peoples on the map. In each of the 7 ages (from the Bronze age to the Industrial), as many new peoples enter the map as there are players. As there are ample peoples per age, not every civilization will show up, so you can have a game without the Romans making their mark.

Every time your civilization appears, you place an army in its starting area (eg Nile Delta for the Egyptians) and then try to conquer neighbouring areas in a combat system reminiscent of Risk. You go on until you run out of armies and collect points for that civilization, but also for your earlier civilizations still on the board.

As the eras change, so does the value of areas. While the Middle East areas score high early on, China is worth a lot in the middle of the game, and Europe by the end.

Halfway through the game. My high point, with the Romans (purple) hanging on for some time.

The Sung dynasty doesn’t come with as many armies as the Persians, and the Dutch come with a pathetic few. So which civilization you get determines your combat power. 

The mechanism that balances this out is the fact that the player with the fewest points draws first from the deck of civilizations for the next era, and decides to keep it or to give it away. If you get a good one you keep it, if you draw a bad one you hand it to a front runner.

On the other hand, the French come before the Germans in the turn and thus get to score points before them as well. If you’ve just made a big splash at the end of last turn, even a weak civilization can help you to score big again if it occurs before others can destroy the old civilization.

So the allocation of civilizations is the central issue of the game, and because you can’t know which civilizations will be picked, you sometimes get it wrong. You pass on the Greeks because the Romans are still in the deck and someone else might hand them to you, but instead you end up with the Celts.

Late in the game. The map has filled up, even towards Australia.
Red has done well despite being almost taken out at the end

There’s some influence you have over results through event cards, and in this game a +1 on the dice roll can significantly improve your success. A few extra armies as well. So use them for the best possible effect. There’s also a few minor civilizations that allow you a few extra points, or even a lot when you can set them up in the right position.

The game is mostly about combat, although some culture has been injected by the monuments you can build for every two resource areas your people control.

With all the dice rolling, direct conflict, asymmetric capabilities of the different peoples and possibility of kingmaking and runaway leaders it is an Ameritrash classic. However, it has remained in the shadow of its contemporary rival Civilization, although I imagine that in terms of sales and games actually played it might have done better. In many a sense World Conquerors, which I played in Essen, is similar in concept and complexity.

The benefit of the game is that it can be played in an evening, but the drawback is that it hasn’t got much strategic choices. The situation on the board changes rapidly, which means you have to think before each new civilization and this causes some analysis paralysis and downtime. A game you can draw out once in a while, but won’t play to death.

The Long Road to Civilization

I'm not a fast learner. I've played enough games of Civilization by now to know that the technology victory is the hardest one to achieve.

Bit cramped at the start

Collecting 15 coins is relatively straightforward and can be achieved in fewer than 10 turns. You need to focus on developing the tech cards which allow you to gain coins in the city management phase and then pile on the resources. It helps to play the Romans, who start with Code of Laws, so you first victories over villages also count towards your end goal.

Reaching the end of the culture track is also achievable in this time frame, once you see the consequences of the strategy, ie forget about technology (you need the trade points to advance) and use the culture cards to delay predators from conquering your capital.

There's always a chance of capturing a capital, but if your opponents are awake, they'll see you coming and prepare. It then becomes a war of attrition, burning through your victim's deck of units, something that other players might profit from.

So to actually attempt to win through technology, which means you need to collect another 14 technology cards, in a hierarchical order, is taking the hard road. There's not many ways to develop more than one technology each turn. Even the Russian spies are limited in usefulness, although the odd gifted technology from a culture event card or village (from the expansion) and winning the race to Atlantis (also in the expansion) may help a little.

Since the table seating is relevant in Civ, I'll start showing that last Friday night, in clockwise order, we were: Spaniards (Andries), Arabs (Rob), Germans (Paul) and Greeks (me). This meant that Andries and Paul and Rob and I were natural allies against our neighbours.

There's the Germans in blue, with the Spaniards in green closing in as well

The Spaniards and Arabs both set out on a culture victory strategy, but Paul, as first time player, decided to go for the military route. So why I persevered in my attempts to win through technology  I cannot tell. It was foolish and with a highly aggressive Teutonic neighbour, I was inviting disaster.

Soon the Prussian army was knocking on my door, destroying a scout and threatening a city. Of course I was glad to be rid of these uncouth advances when the Arabs (Rob) started to draw his attention. I also cannot explain Rob's brawn here, because he'd just received a bloody nose from the Spaniards (Andries). There really wasn't much for him to defend with.

And there the Germans have done their evil deeds, and turn northwards

Paul quickly defeated two of Rob's armies and killed one unit after another. This left the Arab capital almost defenseless and when Andries drew the extra move culture event from his magician's hat, he could walk in with the result never being in doubt.

It was a rather sudden end, but a fairly predictable one. Andries fully benefitted from Paul's aggression, while Rob and I were distracted. Not sure how you can handle this, other than by the players themselves.

I was very happy to see how well Paul picked up the rules. There's quite a lot of them, especially considering that he's had to digest the basic game and expansion at the same time. He quickly made the leap from rules to strategy and played a solid game, whipping Rob's and my asses.

It was the first time for Rob and Andries, and Paul of course, to play with the Fame and Fortune expansion. And although I'd tried some bits, I hadn't experienced it all at the same time.

I like how the generals have been toned down a bit, the metropolis is an interesting addition, as are the three 'lost civilisations' and the new civilizations add diversity. The best is probably the addition of a 5th player. However, the investment cards haven't delivered for me yet.