Building a civilization has its price

🏛️ Path of Civilization is a civilization building card game for 1-5 players, that was released at last years Spiel'23 . This is the kind of abstracted civ game which only has cards, so no map or units moving around - similar to 7 Wonders or Hadara, I’d say. 🤔 In the game you use your technology cards to generate resources and develop your civilization to greatness, and all of this is simultaneous so games should be quite quick. 🏃

Everyone starts with the same 5 technology cards, but each round players will play 4 of them and get rid of one, buying a new (better) one - thus strategies will diverge. Deciding which 4 cards to play is the most important phase ☝️ - you will put 2 cards to the left, activating their left ability, and two cards to the right, activating their right side ability. The left side will turn your agents 👤 (cubes) into different resources, so you can later buy wonders, leaders, advance on the philosophy track, and do better during challenges and war. The right sides provide research 🔬 points, that are used to acquire stronger technology cards for future rounds.

So as you can imagine everything is quite abstract - you will get different colored resources to turn in for things, but you can synergize wonders and leaders, and optimally plan for things. 🧐 At the end of the round you either have a Conflict, which is a majority contest for military power in exchange for bonuses; or a Challenge, where everyone can reap rewards if they match the requirements. These are events you are always on the lookout for.

🎨 Let us briefly mention the art, which is AI 🖥️ generated. This is a hot topic nowadays with many people passionately against it. For me it’s not the end of the world, but I would think that a game would be cheaper in exchange, which is unfortunately not the case here. Other than some double layered boards, you mostly only have cards and basic cubes and cylinders in the game, yet the MSRP is quite high. This is definitely a big issue with the game. 😶

Otherwise if you are looking for an abstract civilization game that plays fast thanks to its simultaneous nature, you might want to give this a closer look. 👍