Fiddling around with history – A session of 7 Ages

On Friday 11th, I´m gonna meet with some friends to play 7 Ages. It´s the first time I play this multiplayer and I´ve played it only once before. So I thought it might be a good idea to do another solo play to get the rules straight and maybe find houserules to solve certain problems….

The first empire that entered the stage where the Nubians, followed by the Sumerians:

A few more empires followed: The Egyptians under Tuthmoses III, the Iranians and the Japanese. The Sumerians wanted to do some trading to advance in progress, but their negotiations failed. We´ve seen a first battle between the Nubians and the Egyptians. The Nubians wanted to destroy their new neighbours right after their appearance, but they had to retreat after a small skirmish. Still, we´ll pretty sure will see more conflict between these two.

More empires showed up: The Shang and some Steppe Nomads from Khalka. We saw some dramatic developements in Nubia: After the failed campaign against the Egyptians, the Nubians overthrew their weakened leader and founded the Free State of the Red Sea (FSRS)!! Nubia no longer exists! A new, much bigger power is now threatening Egypt.

The Iranians migrated into Europe, longing for more fertile country than the vast Asian steppes. Sumerians did a good trade…their now the most advanced empire of the world.

The blue player harvested 8 glory with the Sumerians and the Iranians, and is clearly ahead with overall 15, followed by Red (now without empire) and Pink (Japan), both with 8 glory.

The Assyrians entered the stage and were immediatly attacked by the Sumerians under their leader Sargon. The Sumerians suffered a devastating defeat though and Sargon got killed. I have my doubts that the Sumerian empire will recover from this again.

Another historic battle was fought in Egypt, between Tuthmosis III and the new founded FSRS. As I expected, the Egyptians were slaughtered, Memphis was destroyed and Tuthmosis was captured and executed. All that´s left now of the Egyptian empire is a single unit of bowmen, garrisoned in Palistine.

Eventually the Fins showed up in northern Europe.

The Egyptians were wiped out by the FSRS and with the Mitanni, another power shows up in the Near East. The empire of the Medes appeared in Central Asia, while the Iranians are now in complete control of Eastern Europe. The Shang rule over the fertile areas of China, wich provide them with an enormous income.

The picture above shows an interesting situation: The blue player, controlling the Sumerians and the Free State is far ahead. The red player controls the Assyrians and the brown player the Mitanni. So the brown player offered red a deal: he would destroy the Sumerians and occupy the fertile regions of Syria and Asia Minor. The Assyrians would destory the Free State, So in the end the blue player would be stopped and there´d be no war between Syria and the Mitanni.

Red though has refused the deal, although the Assyrians control a weaker army. He holds the cards of the Armenians, the Phoenicians and the Parthians in his hand. So he has a really good chance to control this whole region on his own in a few turns, wich would give him an enormous advantage. What they didn´t realized was, that the pink player used his Vizier card to take the Egyptians out of the discard pile. Overall, I´m sure this ongoing struggle for dominance over the Near East will go on for a while…

In the following turn, the Egypts indeed reappeared, the Parthians showed up and so did the Irish. The Fins vanished in the darkness of history as quiet as they appeared. The Partians and the Medes came to the agreement not to fight eachother, wich allowed the Medes to spread in Central Asia and to go India. The Sumerians undermined their position as the most advanced culture in the world by building the Great Pyramid and attracting the most famous artists of the time. Finally we see fires leading to disorder in Vladivostok and Korea, where the Japanese established outposts.

There was a lot going on in the last move. The culture of Teotihuacan showed up as the first culture in the Americans. We also see the Phoenicians in Syria and the Tamils in India.

We finally saw the big clash in the Near East. Mitanni, realizing that they had little options between the Parthians and the Assyrians decided to do a desperate attack on the Sumerians, basically to stop the blue player from getting even further away. After a battle with many losses on both sides, the Sumerians were wiped out, the Pyramid was destryed and their culture is gone. The weakly protected capital of the Mitanni though was now sacked by the Parthians. Finally, the army of the Free State at the Red Sea, wich was garrisoned in Palestine was attacked by the Assyrians: No one on both sides was left alive.  The Egyptians wiped out in Nubia what was left of the Free State. Now, the red player is basically controlling the Near East and agreed with the Egyptians not to interfere in Africa.

In China the Shang had some great achivements. They founded two cities and built the Colossus of Szechwan and the Great Lighthouse of Shantung. Still, their rich and prosperating land is threatend by the Nomades from the Steppe…

Finally we´ve seen the Irish mobilising quite a fleet, preparing the invasion of Scotland and England, maybe even the continent.

Interestingly, the Medes are now the biggest and mightiest empire in the world, without having fought a single battle.

As expected, the remains of the short living Mitanni empire were destroyed by the Parthians. Still, the home of the Parthians has been shaken by an earthquake and their capital was completely destroyed. Disorder spread over their empire and it might be hard for them to recover from this misfortune.

The Steppe Nomads decided that the Shang cities are too heavily fortified and therefore marched to the Japanese colonies in Siberia, wich are already weakened by disorder.

In Ireland a wonderful Temple for the pagan gods was build, wich attracted famous artists from Northern Europe.

Next turn, the Syracusians showed up and builded a large fleet, just to get wiped out by the Romans who also entered the stage in that same turn. The Roman army is huge and I assume we can expect a lot from that culture wich is led by Cesar. They also have build a great forum, famous in all the mediterranian for its beauty.

The Nomads attacked the Japanese in the mountains of today´s Vladivostock and they managed to win the battle, but nearly lost their whole army, so they will be probably fade away in history pretty soon. That´s exactly what happened to the Assyrians.

Parthians managed to find a gold mine. The new richness allowed them to restore order in the mountains and to build a capital in Mespotamia.

The people of Teotihuacan are great builders and are constucting spectacular cities.

The Japanese became the most glorious empire: As a rich, seafaring nation, they generate 5 points at the moment. Blue is still ahead, but the others catched up, now that she only controls the Ancient Iranians….

The Plains American appeared, threatening the urbanistic achievements of the Teotihuacan people.

After things got finally quiet in the Near East, we´re gonna see some conflicts in Europe. In addition to the Iranians, the Irish and the Romans, the Saxons and the Celts showed up. The Iranians arranged the successful assassination of Cesar during the festivities for the opening of the Great Library.

In addition, the Iranians built a new capital in Hungary and hired a Administrator to maximize their production efficiency.

The two pictures above show the latest developements.

The Plains Americans attacked  Teotihuacan and were terribly defeated. The red player now is really in trouble. He´s pretty far behind and has no promising empire: The Parthians are stuck between the Phoenicians and the Medes. They´re now trying to spread a little onto the Indian Ocean. The Phoenicians are also doing pretty bad and are stucked in the Dark Ages.

The Irish established some outposts on the continent. The yellow player kinda sacrificed the Celts to signficantly weaken the Saxons, wich wanted to move to Britain. In this way she could protect the Irish people from future trouble.

The Iranians are definitely an amazing power now, using the ability of the administrator that allows you to place all new units in the same area. This gives them a massive army and I see no one that might be able to stop them now except their counter limit.

The famous Oracle of London was established by the Irish, and the Roman Empire´s production capacity suffers from concentrated land ownership.

Last but not least, in the mighty empire of the Medes, Hinduism developed.

Okay, sadly I had to finish the session here, because tomorrow I´m gonna play this with my friends.

The Pink player clearly won! Japan was simply too strong during the whole game. The option to generate points for the most money is a huge advantage…especially in the early stage of the game when there is no competitor. There was also no real competitor for the biggest seafaring nation: the Phoenicians were no match and the Parthians and Irish just start to improve. The Japanese entered the game with a time ripple…usually they shouldn´t have shown up in age 1, but in age 2, so that definitely also helped them. The Tamils, also controlled by the Pink player, suffered from an uprising in their capital in the last round, but overall they were doing fine: first in India and close to the largest fleet. The Egyptians were also doing really well. In the last turns they were stuck in a Dark Age, still, they´re first in Africa and with a chance to become second in the world. Apart from that, the Tamils and the Egyptians were the only ones controlling elephants…also an advantage for the things coming.

Second was Brown…and she was really doing a great job after a pretty rough start. The Romans have become a great empire: They managed to deal out a Peace Treaty with the Iranians (the “official” Peace Treaty Artifact”. That was amazing…they can now completely focus on becoming second in Europe. They probably won´t beat the Iranians, but possibly the Irish, who have not such interest to be big anyway. With their new leader, a great strategist and tactitian, they will easily can conquer central Europe, especially now that the Celts and the Saxons eradicated eachother. They are also the Empire with the greatest cultural achievemts in the world, wich also gives them points.  The Shang are also a solid culture: First in China and in close competition for number one in the world. With their heavily fortified rich and fertile areas and the rough mountain regions, it´ll be really hard for invaders to bring them down. The culture of Teotihuacan lost their points for the biggest cities to the Japanese and the Irish, but their still within reach. in addaition, they are first in America.

Blue had a wild ride: After she had a fantastic start, everybody was playing against her. When the Sumerians and the Free State were destroyed, only the Iranians were left….and they were falling behind too. But now, when this great administrator showed up, they are easily the biggest empire in the world, controlling all of Eastern Europe. They also started the Seldjuks in the last turn, and they looked really promising. I would have loved to see them rampaging through the  Parthian empire on their hunt for areas in Asia and Africa. So Blue was doing a nice comeback….

Yellow in fourth place. A bad result, but interesting anyway: They controlled the Medes, wich were the biggest empire for quite a while. Still, these points alone were not enough. Their Hinduism should have given them an additional advantage, but they received a Religious Strive, so that advantage is lost. The Irish were doing great…pretty big empire, but it´s only worth little glory. They gain one point for being first in Britain, another one for the homeland, and that´s it. They wanna be Christian! If yellow could somehow have brought Christianity in play…she could have played it on the Phoenicians and then the Irish range would be, thanks to their explorer, enough to adopt that religion. So, for the future, the Irish were and extremely promising culture, but they were only little help for Yellow now.

And Red, well Red was really far behind. And that´s interesting, because she was the winner of this big conflict in the Near East. But in the end it simply took the Parthians and the Phoenicians too long to catch up to the rest. The Parthians had to recover from this bad earthquake, and I can´t tell myself, why the Phoenicians were doing so poorly. The Parthians were now just starting to compete for first in Asia, but now the Seldjuks appeared, and in future turns, the Parthian hopes would be destroyed. Maybe there would be a chance that the Plains Americans might recover from their defeat. They possibly might be able to settle in the fertile areas of the North American continent and generate some solid points…still, no hope for Red I guess…

Overall it was a great gaming experience, and this is now one of my favorites. I´ll try to find the time in 2015 to play a whole game of all ages and maybe even do a playthrough…I really would love to do this….