More about Epochs

Previously I have highlighted how Epochs: Course of Cultures includes all four Xs of a 4X, and some unique ways these are implemented, but there are more details and nuances to uncover. So follow me and let’s take a closer look! 🕵️

During the 3 Epochs of the game you will play innovation cards that symbolize the development of your civilization. In each Epoch you will add 3 of these cards to your tableau, building up your engine and claiming resources. Action selection is quite interesting: 🧐 you either play a card to your tableau and do 1 action, or discard a card and do 2 actions. As you start each Epoch with 6 cards, this means you will do 3-3 of each turn-type.

You can claim new land with your cubes, build cities on intersections of your territories, build trading posts at other cities, construct wonders, upgrade your troops from the open market or spend science to research or change your government. Most of these require specific resources, so you need to plan forward.

Some positive things:
🏛️ You get to steer your civilization by changing governments to unlock more tokens, abilities and resources. This also means forfeiting other options.
🎎 Asymmetric civilizations help with replayability. They have 4 distinct abilities, from which you only get to activate 2 in a game.

Our main gripe with Epochs is… combat.
⚔️Combat itself isn’t done through an action, instead it is a phase at the end of players’ turns. However, to attack others you have to become a warmonger, meaning that others will be able to attack back freely and you are also punished with a loss of culture points. For us combat is where the game kind of falls apart 😓 (at least in our 2p games), as it is mostly decided by the roll of dice 🎲 which have a spread from 0 to 4. Still, combat has some clever ideas, as your military is made up of a main and a support card. They all have different base strengths and advantages, meaning you get bonus dice on specific terrain. It’s just rolling the dice feels bad in the otherwise quite euro-like gameplay, even though I know it is a common mechanism in 4X games.