Took Antiquity out for a spin on Monday. This is another Splotter-title. Nice production, 2-3 hours, little to no luck. Unlike Indonesia, not much direct interaction early. More along the Roads and Boats style.
Ten phases to a turn, but most are mechanical -- resetting workers, turn order, harvesting, checking storage limits, victory check, famines. Most of the game takes place during two building phases. In the city phase, you buy buildings and assign workers. Most buildings cost a wood or a stone, but some cost other items (like food, or luxury). Some have combination costs, like two different food. Once you buy the buildings, you have to arrange them. Each player starts with a 7x7 grid of spaces ... some buildings take one space; most need more. A few require eight or nine. Getting them set up takes work.
Each building provides a benefit, similar to the genes in Ursuppe. Most buildings have to have a worker to activate the benefit (a few buildings don't). So, in addition to buying and placing buildings, you move your workers around to activate what you need.
This phase is simultaneous. In theory, players should have screens to shield their city; in practice we just ignore each other.
One of the buildings (The Cart House) lets you build on the main board, which shows terrain (water, clear, woods and mountain). Building in the "fields" phase is the other main area for decisions, but is done in turn order. Typically, you'll use Cart House workers to get resources ... chopping down trees, farming, mining or fishing to get more goods. These all follow the same basic mechanism -- you set up the worker (who may need a specific good to get started) in a space and place the appropriate good in all adjacent spaces. The worker has to be placed within your zone of control (two hexes from a city). You can also use the Cart House to build an Inn (which increases your zone of control) or another city (which gives you another 6x6 grid to place buildings and increases your zone of control).
Two of the other phases are of particular note. In the famine phase you check your food supply versus the famine level. If you don't have enough food you get graves, which fill up spaces in your city. During the pollution phase you dump your trash in the nearby countryside inside your zone of control, cluttering the board. (You also trash the board when you mine and farm). If you can't find a space, you get graves instead. The more cities you have, the more trash.
In order to win, you have to build a cathedral. That doesn't win -- it merely determines your victory condition (and bonus power). One Saint requires that you surround another player, another saint wants you to get twenty workers. Another saint demands you build up buildings. One wants you stockpile resources. And Santa Maria demands that you fulfill two of those victory conditions .... but provides you with the special powers of all four 'basic' saints.
There are other phases, but that's the gist. (Other reviews go into more detail, and the rules are online.)
Overall, I enjoyed this. It's processional, but the sequence of play's structure just gets you started. The decisions (What to build, what to man, how to arrange your city, what Saint to worship) reduce the "Over and Over" feeling. That's not to deny the importance of turn order. You have to get a feeling for when resources enter (and leave) the game; the phase order has implications. I see why Sumo feels Antiquity's flow just repeats, but it didn't bother me.
Much like R&B, Antiquity features tough growth. You'll have to accept some deaths and pollution to grow quickly, but too much and you'll run out of city (or countryside) space and fall into a 'death spiral.'
Antiquity's superiority over Roads and Boats jumps out after a single play. I find the 'ten phases' approach cleaner than R&B's fewer phases with turn order (potentially) changing each phase. That means less times where the game pauses. Antiquity also 'gets right into it.' By the second turn players differences are apparent -- Saints can be chosen, deciding how many men to have in the fields vs manning buildings, etc. In Roads and Boats, the first five turns (or so) feel like prologue.
But mostly, I prefer the indirect interaction. In R&B, your primary conflict with others is done by stealing goods (or getting priority in mines, etc). Then you have a second order interaction by how you build. In Antiquity, you can't steal. You compete for space (first to an area can harvest it) and can trash shared areas (if your opponent doesn't have the "Dump" building), but these are second order effects. By removing the direct resource conflict, antiquity focuses on pressure in space and time. This feels cleaner, and then emphasizes differences in buildings.
Players still squeeze each other (expanding and polluting to try to force an opponent into the spiral); but the asymmetry of R&B is missing. Here, if I pollute (or grab land from) one opponent, I've hurt him and gained a benefit. But it doesn't help me with other two opponents. In R&B, if I steal my victim's geese/bricks/whatever, then I'm the clear leader. A weaker player isn't as important.
Finally, it's easier to deal with a game where my infrastructure is mine. Roads and Boats (and Neuland) just feel weird.
Components look nice, but fiddly counters everywhere.
Our game clocked in at three hours, including a fairly detailed rules briefing and slow first turns. This could easily fall to 2.5 or 2.
One ominous sign -- I had a nigh-unstoppable win 2-3 turns before the end. I believe that was because I'd gone over the rules 3-4 times myself, so could focus on decisions after a turn or two (and my opponents spent longer getting a feel for the game). This will take repeated play, but I imagine those will disappear as we learn defense.
Antiquity's learning curve appears steep. I like that in a game, but it will probably keep me from playing with new players once I have numerous games under my belt.
Still, a happy acquisition.
The first turn or two of R&B is scripted, but once you get past those obvious plays, it's a contest of who can make the fewest mistakes, and early mistakes become magnified as the game goes on. The prologue ends and the game begins earlier than you think it does, IMHO.
By defense, do you mean defense against the ravages of the game (make sure to build an early granary, etc) or defense against other players (build a dump, chop down the forest to prevent them getting it, etc)? I think it will be difficult to bash a runaway leader in Antiquity (and this is a flaw R&B has as well).
There is a decided learning curve to the game. One player in our game failed to build a granary early on and went into the 'death spiral' almost immediately. I avoided it because I built one first turn as a lark more than as a strategy - I just wanted to use all my wood.
Antiquity is an outstanding game (probably a '9' for me) but I don't feel the need to own both it and R&B (this may change). It does have one thing I looks for in a game - constant tension. Multiple critical decisions are required every single turn.
The only real defense is to be on a similar pace.
And I agree that "I don't feel the need to own [both]." I took R&B off my wanted list monday night.
But the thrill of Antiquity wore off after only a few games. Once I had learned the ropes, and I no longer felt under constant pressure, it seemed like just another empire-building game. A fun and interesting one, but not one with a huge amount of variety.
By contrast, Roads &Boats seems like a far richer game. With the ability to customize the board in detail, with the proportion of land and sea or presence or absence of rivers on the map making a big difference, each new map setup forced you to seriously re-evaluate in a way Antiquity doesn't. Likewise, the &cetera expansion for Roads &Boats gives you quite a number of different ways to play that fundamentally alter the game.
I like both games, and I would certainly agree that Antiquity is the more polished, more systemically solid game. But I think Roads &Boats great variety is what will keep it on the table after Antiquity fades.