Path of Civilization

Anything with “civ” in the title practically buys itself in my group: everyone else loves civilization games, and while my heart belongs to trains, I rarely say no. I looked at Path of Civilization rather suspiciously, though. An unknown publisher, an almost unknown designer—and I had not liked Turing Machine—old-school artwork, lots of cubes, and grand claims about simultaneous play with five players. It smelled like a “golden bucket™.” And yet it whistled at me from the shelf, I threw it in my bag, we happened to be five that day, and since we do not ignore such alignments of the stars, the shrink wrap came off on the spot. Production is middling, but the rules are very well written, and the chunky reference book proves useful because the iconography is definitely not O’Toole’s.

Each player takes a civilization that differs only slightly, but meaningfully, from the others. Every round, you try to build a more efficient engine by gaining technologies and developing your civilization. The technology side reminded me a little of Dominations, without making the game hard to grasp: once you understand its logic, the flow is fairly simple.

At the same time, players compete over monuments, leaders, wars, and the other opportunities appearing before them. Its big selling point is that everyone plays simultaneously, so at five players you are not sitting around watching somebody else’s civilization grow: the game runs like a train. There is, however, a fairly scripted opening, and the random card reveal can punish you badly—especially when a leader who supports the technologies you have already invested in simply never appears.

In the end, I had judged it unfairly before even playing it. Path of Civilization really does what it promises: it offers an interesting civ game that runs smoothly and quickly, even with five players. And as the Jameses who went hard the other day said, “...that’s okay, we’re insured.” When a game does not drag on, a little bad luck in the opening is not the end of the world.