In addition, the advancement of the technologies themselves never gets as modern in Clash of Cultures, so perhaps it makes more sense for the technology tree to be flatter. One indicator of this is that Clash of Cultures only includes the 7 ancient wonders of the world for players to build, whereas the other two include more modern “wonders” like Space Flight or the Sydney Opera House. Thematically, I think the reason for this is that Clash of Cultures appears to take place over a shorter time horizon than Through the Ages or Sid Meier’s Civilization. (Although there are some exceptions, with a few technologies having prerequisites and government technologies working slightly differently). Or in the Warfare category, you have to start with Tactics, but can then move on to Siegecraft, Steel Weapons, or Draft in any order. So for instance in the Spirituality category you have to research Myths first, but then that opens up the rest of the category, so you can research any of Rituals, Priesthood, and State Religion in whatever order you’d like. On a player’s turn, he or she can spend 2 food to research any technology, with the one caveat being that you have to research the first technology in a given category before you can research any of the others. In Clash of Cultures each player has a board with 48 technologies listed on it in 12 different categories with 4 technologies per category. This is what you may be used to in Through the Ages or Sid Meier’s Civilization, where your technology progression is somewhat rigidly structured by the game.Ī feature, or possibly a bug, in Clash of Cultures is that your technology progression is much more open-ended. Over time they build up and ultimately might have the opportunity to research computers or even space flight. Players start in the early days researching basic things like irrigation, fishing, pottery, horseback riding, iron, and the like. In all civilization games it would seem the players must research technologies, or “advances” as they’re called in Clash of Cultures. So which of these three games has the leg up in each of various facets - technology, map, victory condition, wonders/leaders, and combat? They start the players small, puny even, researching prehistoric technology, but over the course of a few hours, they give players the chance to expand their civilization into an advanced powerhouse, or be wiped off the board trying. Through the Ages, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and now Clash of Cultures - these are ambitious games. Other games may have “civilization” themes, like Tigris & Euphrates or Age of Empires III or 7 Wonders, but few try to recreate the vast and sweeping arc of a civilization’s development like these three. Why just those two? Because none of the other “civilization” games ranked in the top 500 on Bo ardGameGeek are even comparable, except of course Francis Tresham’s Civilization, but I have not played that so hopefully another Opinionated Gamer can comment on the relationship between the two. Specifically, it’s hard not to compare and contrast it with Vlaada Chvatil’s Through the Ages and Kevin Wilson’s Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game. Z-Man Games recently released Christian Marcussen’s Cl ash of Cultures and it’s hard not to compare it to civilization games of years gone by. Well, not quite, but it’s more dramatic that way. Three games enter only one can emerge victorious.
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