Hatti had an incredibly lucky early game in terms of Calamities, but also leveraged that and traded really well. Trading in all but one 9-value card on turn 9 is quite the feat, I'll have to be careful to watch for that happening in the future and make sure to intervene in those trades. Being one of the newer players at the table, it's good to see them win.
I think I played well overall. I had a very safe position, which did give me an advantage. Initial plans for setup had Parthia joining in the game after Day 1, which I think would have made my position a lot more volatile. I leveraged my advantages well to get through the calamities. I don't think I was particularly lucky or unlucky on calamities, I got hit with the first 2 Civil Wars, which isn't great, but managed to avoid a lot of the worse things as the game progressed. I was able to rid myself of Barbarian Hordes a couple times in final trades, which would have been truly devastating given my board state and having Politics to make it worse. The pressure from Saba made it hard for me to have a turn to branch out on Advancements, so in the end I was really only able to get Blue cards, and some Orange by happenstance. I also had enough turns of starting with Calamities that I couldn't quite catch up to Hatti properly. I think if Hatti purchased Advancements more strategically, it would have been an even greater difference. Persia is an interesting place to play, I just wish I had more neighbours, I think it would have made the game much more dynamic for me, instead of just a slog against Sabas aggression.
Nubia played well, getting a solid third place. I think they were in competition for first for much of the game, but had some really devastating calamity turns later on, and was just a bit off being able to snowball Advancements. Nubia is a hard start, and they were definitely targetted with secondary effects much more than they should have been.
Egypt is a strong player, and it showed by the end of the game. The early game for Egypt was absolutely awful, with constant calamities well beyond what they were able to sustain. Yet, with experience in gameplay tactics they were able to pull off an effective naval invasion of Hatti, which put them right back in the game. With solid play, politics, and diplomacy they went from a distant last early on to fourth place - right in the middle, and very nearly beating Nubia.
Babylon was a bit of a mess of rotating leadership. Over the course of the game, 3 different players controlled them. The first two were players that had played a number of games, but are not particularly strong players - both still have the Orange Gang mentallity. I had convinced the first of them to try something new, and that looked promising. However the second purchase Agriculture on their first turn of play, which I think is exceptionally unhelpful to Babylon, given their large number of high population tiles. The third player was the most interesting for me, as it's someone I have been trying to get to the table for a number of years now - we'd done one very quick teaching session maybe 2 years prior to this game, but otherwise they had no experience with it. I think tossing them into the total shitshow of the center of the board this game may have set them up to not even start with Orange Gang mentallity, which would be great. From the sounds of it they'll play again, and I look forwards to it.
Saba was quite the thorn in my side all game. They tried to play an aggressive game. This is only their second time actually playing, and from discussion afterwards it sounds like they learned why this game is not a war game. I think their strategy from the start was to try to get into the center board and position themselves in the Levant, then pick up Provincial Empire. I think this would have been a very interesting play, but with their inexperience with trading and Advancement purchasing strategy that plan never came together. Instead, they tried to go full warfare, but got stuck between two defensive players who had time to prepare. When picking up aggressive conflict cards, it is vital to use them the next turn to get as much of an advantage as possible. I don't think they played poorly overall, but a focus on attempted large scale conflict is reflected in their score.
Assyria had a rough time. Usually, this player is one I would expect to be in the top 3 beside me and the Egypt player. But a fairly rough early game hindered them, then they went for a theorized (meme) strategy we call The Green Wheel. The goal of this strategy is to try to force Epidemic to happen every turn, while maximizing your own protection against it. It did not work, this game at least - but there is doubt that it could ever work. I think Egypt and Assyria hindered each other a lot in trade and on the board, while also having bad starts, causing such low scoring games on their end.
The game ran smoothly though ideally we would have seen more players. Saba had a tricky starting location which basically forces agriculture. Their limited access to fertile spots forces some expansion towards the center and thereby be adjacently connected to numerous players- thus Orange red tech with Provincial Empire seems like the obvious approach. However, through poor trading and unfortunate tech choices I was not able to acquire provincial empire and begin my acceleration. I became caught in a cycle of attempting to defend territory while also desperately needing agriculture which forced a pivot away from this previous strategy.
Editors Note: At no point in the game was anyone aggressive against Saba, the territory they were defending was what they took invading other players. (No bias here, for sure, being the neighbour they kept invading)
First off, shit was alot of fun, seeing the climactic end and everyone's scramble for points was cool, the juxting for positions between all players was fun
See the people trying to deflect [Egypt] was entertaining, and it was neat that the two winning players couldn't interact with each other at all, made for an interesting dynamic
The end with my misplay and [Saba]'s good play of knocking down my cities was a fun back and forth, my gambit of taking cards for victory points instead of teching ended up kinda working out, ended up learning alot through that game, and it was fun learning small snippets of different strategies at the end, I should really sit down and read through all the cards at some point
Overall a good fun times
Got green wheels partially online with a medicine -> Anatomy/Coinage buy over two turns. Then got invaded by the sea people ([Egypt]), got a civil war which went to [Egypt], gave him the coast which was a mistake as they became entrenched with Engineering/Military + Naval support and I never had the option to retake. Also had a trade dispute with [Egypt] where we had a 2([Egypt])-4(me) split on bronze for three turns. This kind of tanked my econ and only had one "good" (220~) buy in the penultimate turn with a Library play.
Green Wheels thoughts: It is bad, it is like mono-yellow but buy in cost is 400-650 (Mining, Medicine, Monarchy + Anatomy, Coinage) points and the mitigation to it is 140 Medicine. As opposed to Mono-Yellow where the min buy in is Monotheism and the Mitigation is at minimum Fundamentalism.
Second you have little to no control over where the epidemic goes so if you get behind your tech cannot remotely save you. Unless doing some collusion play, the only way that this can work is to probably do a max tax start running 9s, splash medicine, then swap to 6s if your econ is still strong. But even then you need to be very far ahead with a safe board position. Probably need to fit some real board presence tech in there so that you can pressure/reclaim territory.
After my turns last night I had a target the size of Texas on my back. In future games building a bit more defence before the wombo combo would help. Biggest thing is that despite winning I still lack a lot of game knowledge and likely could have built a bit safer. This was shown by how [Egypt] decided I wouldn’t get to play the game for over half of day 2 and I had no counter play. While I could still snowball I needed what I bought it later turns of military and engineering at least to help protect myself. I also got caught by far more catastrophes in day 2 which hurt much more against an active aggressor.
Biggest takeaway is that I still don’t know how to play against an aggressive player. Combined with the fact that I haven’t had the chance to play in a non-corner I rarely interact hostilely with anyone. I typically can turtle and succeed far more than I should which I need to work on.
Failed superpower becomes Barbary state 😭😭 honorable extortion
Editors note: Egypt later provides a detailed summary of the game from their perspective, link below