Through with Through the Ages

Yeah I know this game is super popular and well rated, to be honest, I can see that theres a good game there in somewhere, well, the more I play it the more I see that theres a good APP/VIDEOGAME in there, but boardgame? I think I'm through with Through the Ages.

Tried the new version out last night, 3P, one guy has played say 15 times, I've played about 5 F2F and 5 online, the third guy similar, so we werent mired in learning the rules, just some quick checks for the new rules and the odd thing we forgot. The thing is even the 15 play guy was forgetting shit and doing stuff wrong. I watched a video how to play by the massive eyebrow guy who works for CGE and while the video was pretty good even that had several errors, a guy who by his own admission has played this for more than 10 years and was doing a demo for a retail release

I've never played a game where so often everyone fucks some shit up because theres so much fannying about moving this or that bit around, updating this or that shit, and all of that just takes you away from the game, I mean we took FIVE HOURS which normally I'd be like woo hoo deluxe gaming time, but how much of that was actually coming up with a coherent strategy (so many options, cards flying by) and even less thinking about how to interact with what the others were doing. We were updating stuff while the next player went so its not like the long time was wasted time in that sense. And still everyone made upkeep errors, some of which we just could not be arsed to rewind, I dont even know if the game made any sense at the end because some of the mistakes I think were bigger than we realised (the winning guy had taken a leader when he shouldnt have been able to, thus canning James Cook for a free lucrative colony and then immediately dropping a new same age leader down for yet more bonusses). I didnt draw ANY colony/defence cards so the other guys were winning all the territory bids and amassing loads of extra yellow and blue cubes and culture. I stayed ahead in military but theyve tweaked all that down so the rewards really werent worth it. Somehow leaders were never on the display when it was my turn except the odd crap one,

Anyway, I didnt care about who won, if anything I prefer to play games with people who beat me because you learn stuff more and its more fun to try and raise your game, also it just makes the whole thing more intense for me if I have to focus, but I just feel like no matter how cool it is to see how your card empire grows, its still just a glorified video game spreadsheet and theres just way too much fucking shit going on thats not game but requires attention, check these cards, add these markers, move those, check this icon, take those off, update your sliders, move your scores etc etc.

And the design is still hideous, yes, they made it all look nicer (cards) but whats the fucking point of all those stupid arse separate boards with unlabelled spaces to shuffle some tiny icons around on over the table. Why didnt they let you track your stuff on your own board and make the pieces bigger and more visible (would also allow the box to be less stupidly big

I dont know, it just feels like to play this you need to play it often and without large gaps between plays and thats only going to happen with the online version or an app version, which also avoids you having to mess with a lot of the physical upkeep. So I guess its the physical implementation I dislike most, but I dont know, when I think about whats going on in the game and how it fits together, I just think the way the cards come out limits and defines your options a lot more sharply than you realise (unless you're very competent with the game) but theres no real sense in game of when youve just blown it, so you play several hours more when actually youd kind of blown it a few hours ago. And just way too much time floundering with too many options and then your turn is over and youre trying to update your stuff, and not make a mistake, and then you look over and youre sure the other guy took the wrong token to pay for this or that, but fuck, who cares

I dont know, its probably just me but I just dont feel like the game, the sense that I'm in a competitive game with other players is strong enough, for that length of time investment to be worth it. This game must be hell to play with 4 players. 2 players is probably better but why would I ever play this over Twilight Struggle with 2, when that is a similar time investment but every minute, even with all the options is thumbscrew level pressure all the time but all of it is focussed on using your options to get one over on the other guy. Making the best of all your cubes and watching the cards swish by, and pulling cards which randomly let someone else win all the bids for extra stuff on top just isnt on the same level of what I think a "game" should be.

well, it is Friday, but I dont think that was too much of a rant

That's not a rant, that's an article.

I definitely understand what you're saying. I've never played TTA, but I'm pretty interested in it. I like quite a few Vlaada games, and I like him enough as a designer that I'm willing to try out whatever he's made. I saw Paul Grogan's how to play video, and my thought was "Wow, this game looks immensely fiddly with a ton of bookkeeping on every move. I'd rather play the electronic version so I wouldn't have to deal with all the extra work." I feel the same way about Suburbia and Sentinels of the Multiverse. Maybe I'm just getting old, and I don't want to do accounting for entertainment, but there's a point where I think quite a few popular board games would be much better as a video game.

Yeah I burned out on that game eventually too. Too long and I never cared who won in the endgame. Good point about it being a video game instead.

ha, thanks Sag, but its just incoherent blather, which only highlights my own respect for those of you who can be bothered to sit down and write a coherent article, I feel convinced in equal parts that I could write some great stuff and that I am just too lazy (well, maybe just tired with 2 small kids at home) to make it happen.

TTA definitely feels like a video game gone cardboard, not surprising since Vlaada was a video game designer right? I actually think almost all of his games feel very much like a cardboard version of what would probably be more suited to an electronic version, then again, I think Galaxy Trucker is just overrated crap and actually still no fun even on the ipad.

Theres lots of clever things, but I just dont know if it makes a fun game - for me - obviously it appeals to lots of people but I wonder if its a lot to do with peoples fascination for puzzling away at how to pull a hundred little levers and buttons to do the best, I saw some 8 part strategy guide online somewhere and fuck, it just reinforces that view that this is for people who enjoy thinking about whether this or that card will provide 4.32 extra actions on average.

Probably with expertise you can get past the book keeping a bit, but I mean, we werent hanging around and it took 5 hours, if we'd been "methodical" to avoid mistakes, god knows how long it would have taken, but none of that stuff has anything to do with the game really, its just moving stuff round and checking various indicators and markers and totals. Theres not enough connection to whats happening (for me)

I like the abstraction away from a map, but I feel like Innovation provides a thematic (by interpretation of how the cards are played) abstraction of a civ building without map but still with conflict, plus resource management, with strategy plus some combos, and does it in well under an hour with almost no book keeping.

It feels here like the early game has some general solutions based on ramping up an engine of food/goods/population but its kind of obfuscated away behind all the cards and options so its very easy to get mired in a sluggish cycle where things dont happen, I suspect the range of viable options you actually have is quite limited but the game does a poor job IMO of getting out of the way and making those clear enough so that players can get at each other (consider something like Tigris, where points are easily understood, the civs grow, clash and break up thematically, but theres no "out of game" upkeep to worry about, no obfuscatio of "what does putting this green tile here do",

I think this is just another way to say I've gone well past the point of having any time or patience for this secret spreadsheet style gaming, even if I can see some of the cleverness behind it, I just think this game is a colossal waste of time. I could have played Tigris at least 3 or 4 times in the same time window and had a lot more "game". And I think I'm really just sick of "pretend gaming" which is how I translate this idea that "you need to play it lots of times just to understand the value of stuff". I don't think its bad that more experience with a game should make you better, in fact, that should be an obviously GOOD THING, but its how much initial time and energy shall we all waste (IMO) learning that this card (one of about 12,000) is probably worth this much in general, and no matter how much people want to say its all about learning the subtleties of the cards depending on the state of the game (duh!), it seems to me the game is much more highly scripted, or at least narrowly constrained early on, in a way that will really define whether you waste another 3 hours playing what is already a messed up position.

And like i said, theres just way too much, ok heres a dozen cards to see, heres my 4 white cubes and my 2 red cubes, I can do about 2 or 3 things, I guess I do that and that, and then look down and fiddle a load of cubes from one place to another, the next guy is already doing his stuff (so as to not make the game last 18 days), I'm not paying attention to what hes doing, I'm still moving blue cubes back and forth and "accounting", oh I look up, theres a great card popped up, oops, I guess its gone by the time it gets round to me, well, never mind, time to pick a couple of options from the next lot of 12 cards and make sure all my markers are in the right place, wait, what was it you lot did again, hang on, when did you get all that military score, why have you got all those blue cubes, are you sure you did it right, youve got like 3 times more than me already....

ugh, its been tried several different times now, I'm getting the same vibe every time, and it seems that everyone else I play with has the same vibe and feel, and when the 10 year veteran guy working for the company makes elementary mistakes (that even *I* spotted while trying to remember the rules myself), I dont know, this game is just a game where that shit happens all the time and it just doesnt work (for me)

Nations is a big improvement on TTA, losing a lot of the nonsense overhead involved. It has its own issues, however.

Who wrote this? J.J. or is it Craniac? This place is descending into chaos.

I only ever play it online. I like it well enough when I can take my time and make one or two moves a day. I have no desire to ever play it face-to-face again.

repoman wrote: Who wrote this? J.J. or is it Craniac? This place is descending into chaos.

Neither. This is mystery lala/IaIa guy. I've only play TTA twice and I found it too complicated for what it was. I'm sure it's a good game but I just had no desire to play it again.

Nice write up.

Legomancer wrote: Nations is a big improvement on TTA, losing a lot of the nonsense overhead involved. It has its own issues, however.

What do you think its issues are, by the way? I think I remember you talking about the problem of the random deck if you are playing with all the cards (e.g. more random distributions of buildings/leaders/wars/etc can result in corner case drafting boards). I played it solo again a couple times last week, I've played it about 4-5 times with others.

I've only seen TTA being played, but Nations has enough counting as it is, and I'm led to understand it's "lite" TTA in the accounting respects...

yeah the designer of that game is just up the road, whenever I trade stuff with him hes always trying to palm in the expanion and promo stuff for it.

The thing is, I think its not just the overhead, thats more the icing on the cake, I think first of all I'm just not that interested in civ games, really, something about them fascinates me on some level but I wonder if it is just a vicarious interest in the levers you have to pull to crank up the variables which make up your typical game, but I think its best just left as that, a voyeuristic interest and nothing more, because when I think about this generic thing of putting a handful of variables together and just watching them grow, it bores the shit out of me these days.

Gary Sax wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Nations is a big improvement on TTA, losing a lot of the nonsense overhead involved. It has its own issues, however.

What do you think its issues are, by the way? I think I remember you talking about the problem of the random deck if you are playing with all the cards (e.g. more random distributions of buildings/leaders/wars/etc can result in corner case drafting boards). I played it solo again a couple times last week, I've played it about 4-5 times with others.

I've only seen TTA being played, but Nations has enough counting as it is, and I'm led to understand it's "lite" TTA in the accounting respects...

You can easily start backing a strategy that then peters out due to which cards come up, and it's not easy to pivot away. There's also a "rich get richer" issue with the military, since military lets you go first (and because, cue my theme song, there's so much emphasis on military otherwise). We've thought about trying the game with either Books or Stability determining turn order to see if that helps, but haven't done it yet.

The main thing is, it's a very swingy game, and I don't mean in points, I mean that you can play once and have a good time and then immediately play again and it be utterly miserable. We had some good games of it but also some awful ones and I think not knowing why sometimes it was bad has made people unwilling to risk it. I sold my copy.

My wife and I--or at least I--made some substantive errors in TtA (previous edition) after only a short layoff from playing a 3p with a mutual friend. I'd still like to play again, and the new edition intrigues me partly for the facelift and partly for what *seem* like smoothing-outs that would make the game more palatable to my wife, but, regardless, I can empathize with the OP's feeling. I feel pretty much the same way about Elder Sign. I like it, but we are for*ever* screwing up something moderately important to major, and it always feels like every game is being played under a figurative protest.