As mentioned at the beginning, this was our first time playing with a full nine players. There are a number of changes that come with this. Most obviously, the Celts are in the game, and a huge segment of the board is thus unlocked - with many dynamics changing due to that. But also, there are some significant differences in the trade good decks - which change the game in ways we didn't fully expect. Overall, we found the game to be very calamity light compared to our usual seven or eight player games, and also the calamities tended to be much more distributed. There were few turns which nearly eradicated a player due to monstrous calamity results, partially due to there being fewer of them, but also because of the increased availability of secondary victims. The addition of Minor Calamities also significantly reduces the devastation, as they are really only marginally worse than getting a water. The trade good decks each get an extra set as well as a Minor Calamity, so there is a 50% increase in trade goods, but much less than a 50% increase in calamity damage due to how minimal the minors are. This resulted in the game feeling overall more fair and skill dependant than lower player counts.
Seeing the Celts in action was very interesting. I think it is beneficial for Minoa overall, as both Rome and Hellas face pressure from an entirely new direction. Seeing the large land empire is also a fairly stark difference to the heavy naval play that usually occurs - which was even more notable with how this game went.
At 97 points we have a 3-way tie. [Iberia] is further ahead on AST, securing third place. [Rome] and [Egypt] both have the same AST, same number of 6 and 3 point advances, and the tie is broken on advance actual cost total. [Egypt] with 1710, and [Rome] with 1770. [Hatti] and [Carthage] also tie, with [Hatti] being ahead on AST.
Another interesting note about the overall scores is how much lower they are than in the last game we played. The bottom scores are about the same, but the top scorers are 20 points behind, despite the game lasting the same number of turns. The entire game did feel like we were a turn or two behind on everything, possibly a result of the increase in conflict compared to normal, but maybe something else related to the player count - maybe the 3 good in each pile slowed down the rate of sets for instance.
[Assyria] managed to pull out an unexpected win, given how the early game was going for them. Early on, the war with [Egypt] put both of them very far behind, as well as setting the tone for the rest of the game. The most interesting aspect of later play for [Assyria] was how well they leveraged their military, using it to keep the early leaders down and under pressure for the rest of the game. Otherwise, it was just the good tight play and skilled trading that they are known for that brought the win.
I think I played okay this game, not sure how I placed so highly. Early game was rough for me, due to the increased pressure from Hellas, and my potential suboptimal early city building. I invested heavily in coastal raiding technology, but was not able to leverage as well as I had hoped. With how the turns lined up, there just weren't good opportunities for me to hit any coastal cities. When I could spare the pop, my potential targets could defend much too easily. And I think Carthage had almost no turns where they ended with coastal cities in range, always losing those ones to calamities. The few times I did manage to pull of some raids did very well for me, and I think I had exeptional luck in my pulls of trade goods - getting a single gold from a hand of 8 cards, then pulling the one pair of fish in a similarily large hand. I think a coastal raiding strategy like this becomes more viable with higher player counts, and it was fun to experiment with compared to my usual defensive play. Together with [Assyria], I think we learned a lot about how to play the long-term aggression game and properly leverage it to win.
[Iberia] once again put up a good showing, it seems that maybe their victory last game was not a complete fluke. Their strengths and weaknesses as a player are fairly evident after this game, as I was watching much closer. They seems to understand trading well, being the first person to trade in a big set, but have a very weak on-board game - barely managing to stay functioning most turns. Their final position being so high largely comes down to politics, as they convinced [Celts] to entirely ignore them and just be best friends. [Celts] had a massive board state and military technology advantage over them for many turns, and did nothing with it. [Iberia] very much likes to make non-aggression pacts and be super friendly with weaker players, functionally abusing their trust and lesser ability in trade. I think it's good for them as a player that [Assyria] was so aggressive, as they have to learn to play the board better.
This was [Rome]'s first full game, and they performed well. [Rome] had a very strong early game, being the first to make 7, 8, and 9 cities, and held on to those numbers for some time. However, they collapsed after a turn of aggression from me and [Assyria]. After that, they were just unable to recover enough due to border skirmishes with [Celts] and the constant threat of naval invasions from the eastern powers. The end game was rough, as [Celts] decided to commit fully to detroying and conquering as much of Rome as possible. I think that [Rome] had a strong position and decent trading, and could have had a much higher score with a better understanding of advances and puchasing strategy - which is a very reasonable point for a new player to struggle in.
[Egypt], what a player. [Egypt] started the game with violence, and certainly made a lot of noise about it later. The early war was devastating, especially combined with getting Barbarian Hordes two turns in a row in the midst of it. They then formed a coalition with myself and [Assyria] to try to extort trade goods out of people. I agreed because I was already going into the coastal raiding strategy anyways. [Egypt] used this to try to extort good trades out of people, but they didn't actually follow up on any of their threats, hoping that me or [Assyria] would do it for them. The most most clever play on their part was constantly being loudly verbally violent and intimidating, constantly posturing as being one of the naval powers with me and [Assyria], while not actually taking any real actions on that front and instead buiding up city count and purchasing discount focused advances such as Mathematics. This let them have a very impressive final turn purchasing round, bringing them back into the game.
This was [Hellas]'s first time playing, and they did pretty well. [Hellas] went in with the goal of learning how to play, and not necessarily having a big score, and was a very good sport about everything. They traded well, played the board reasonably, and engaged in politics. They needed to be a bit more aggressive in general to win the game, but most of the mistakes were just general lack of game knowledge and experience. I think they would have been able to place much higher even so, but due to staying up half the night making brisket they were started to fizzle out due to exhaustion near the end of the game, and seemed to give up a bit afer a rough turn, not really caring about optimizing recovery. This is pretty reasonable if the goal was to just learn, and we are all thankful for the hosting and the amazing meal.
[Hatti] is a player that has played with us reasonably often, but is not usually a strong player. Outside of this game, they don't realy play strategy games, so the couple times a year play-rate is not a great way to increase base skills. But I think this game was a very good showing, and a demonstration of clear improvement over previous times playing. [Hatti] played the game well the entire way through, did well on trade, and played a solid defensive game to maximize cities. Historically, they only ever go with the default Orange cards that feel like they are really good strategy, but this time they branched out and tried playing Yellow. I don't think Hatti is one of the better Yellow starts, but being properly agressive with it is good anywhere when done well. Problematically, [Hatti] just didn't do much with what they had invested in, and needed to be much more agressive with it. Partially, I think this was due to being nested between me on Minoa and [Assyria] causing a bit of fear of reprisal. I think if [Hatti] had optimized advances a bit better in the final turns, they had a solid chance for victory. Even with how the game played out, they were extremely close to 3rd place, which would be their best showing. It really did come down to final turn calamities, and with 2 cities on the board more they would have advanced on AST to be the frontrunner. The 5 AST points plus the 2 extra for cities would have brought their total to the 97 clump, and being first in AST would put them in an easy 3rd place.
[Carthage] had also never played before, and was more of a wild card on if they would enjoy the game. We did have someone else lined up for Day 2 just in case they didn't want to return, but happily they did. Overall, I don't have too much to comment on - I think it was a pretty calm and simple game for [Carthage]. Carthage is a fairly good starting position for a beginner, as it is mostly secluded and safe. They specced into being able to maintain wilderness cities in the otherwise largely worthless desert tiles against the edge of the board, and mostly just built coastal cities then lost them to calamities each turn. With the small amount of board play due to coastal raiding and invasions, I would say this was a perfect learning game for them and hope they return for another.
Oh boy, what an adventure for [Celts]. I think they played well, with the exception of some very notable mistakes. In the early game they were able to spread across the entire north side of the board, and also purchased an early Provincial Empire. This would have been a very powerful position, having five neighbours for Provincial Empire and plenty of space. But instead of maintaining this, they gave up on the black sea area and didn't use Provincial Empire for fear of their neighbours being mad. I think they extorted a total of maybe 4 cards over the course of the game, despite being able to get 3 or 4 a turn for most of it. The largest mistake in this was not demanding anything from [Iberia] even once, who often ended turns with extremely greedy hands of trade goods, and was a clear leader throughout the game. This relationaship with [Iberia] was very one sided and detrimental for [Celts], as [Iberia] used them as their military and board presence, while maintaining high city counts and good trade for themselves. There were turns where [Celts] could have nearly eliminated [Iberia] from the game, and taken large sets out of their hand by looting many cities, but instead chose to do nothing. In then end, I think [Celts] did more for [Iberia] than for themselves. The other major issue in [Celts] play was their old-school meme strategy around Civil War/Tyranny. When we first learned the game, the ruleset we used made the coming calamities public information; thus players would use early calamities to jockey themselves into a position to be the beneficiary of Civil War or Tyranny. [Celts] has not played much since that time, and attempted to do the jockeying without the information that these calamities were coming. On two seperate turns they reduced themselves to 1 or 2 cities in the hopes of being the benefiary, and neither time did either calamity actually happen that turn. One of these turns, they were even later reduced to 0 cities and regressed in AST. Overall, [Celts] was very well positioned to be the winner for much of the game, but chose to instead make many poor choices and sacrifice their position for the benefit of [Iberia] (note that there are no external social relationships at play here, the two of them don't really know each other outside of this game, it was just purely bad play).