Path of Civilization - Board Game Review - Choose Your Technology Wisely

[@ddolgov]

At 14:10, you have to select 4 *different colors* for the 4 challenges, to avoid clear favorite. It's a rule that's easily missed

[@abelb.7997]

At first, I wanted to give them credit for the AI art disclaimer. But after playing it back (at half speed), it seems a bit condescending. I mean, I don't think there are many publishers that would use AI art completely unaltered and unedited. They are obviously going to use SOME vision, discretion and editing. But they are still letting AI do 90% of the work in order to avoid paying an artist for their creative process.

[@elqord.1118]

And still charge you 90 bucks

[@dcrbdh]

Game Designers will start caring about AI art when A.I. gets good enough to design games based off of their ideas and designs

[@thegamesninja3119]

Go look up Yavalath. It is a simple and good abstract strategy game designed by an AI. I personally will start to care about AI generated images when they start to impact gameplay.

[@wsiegel9539]

Thanks Luke, While I like the streamlined game play, I feel the price point is way to high for what the game actually is. Would I play it and have fun? Yes. Would I invest in the cost for it... NO. I enjoy a meatier game even if it takes a good bit to set up and teach. A New Dawn and Mosaic are my current go to Civ games. ( love my Technology cards )

[@harsuke.c3397]

Yes tooo expensive

[@tonybowers9490]

Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing downsides, but they don't bother me. To me the positives greatly out weigh the negatives. It looks to have a lot of aspects that I enjoy going for it. I'm going to look into getting this one.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Thanks for sharing!

[@tvvista9715]

It looks interesting as a civilization card game. I don't like that almost every games includes a solo mode these days. It feels like that just increases prices by a minimum of 5€ and a lot of people don't care for solo at all. Might become an interesting pick up for 40-50€. For what it is 75€ is too much.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

I do agree, the price is ridiculous. Pick up on sale if you can.

[@thegamesninja3119]

As It's a Wonderful World gets compared to 7 Wonders, I could compare Hadara to this. I would also see this as a game to play after Hadara. I found your video really good. In another note, I think it is hard to do simultaneous actions and have heavy interaction.

[@bbrecailo]

While I was watching the video, I was constantly comparing it to Hadara too.

[@thegamesninja3119]

@bbrecailo top 2, is 5 players and everyone selects at same time.

[@superwotan]

Thank you, very informative and reasonable review.

[@realdealastrology9]

I’ll be getting this one, particularly for the solo mode. The only thing I find unethical is the use of AI art in board games while keeping the price point still way high. Like, seriously? It’s AI art, which means far less human effort being out into it. Less effort = lower price. Common sense. If it was hand drawn by actual artists, like Beth Sobel, then I would justify the price.

[@yaryayray]

Do you have a video "Top your civ games"?

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Nope sorry.

[@bijanajamlou5152]

So they took Hadara, 7 wonders and Nations and decided that interaction is not fun, lets remove it... for anyone creating a civ games, what makes it fun is that civ games offer a wide variety of strategy and game styles (interaction is one of them). In addition civ games build upon previous actions. So if you have card in early age gives you x, then when you get other techs kn other ages it build on that thech. My fav long civ game is through the ages, mid: Deus, the golden ages, tapestry. Short: 7 wonders, peleponnes.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

To be honest, those 3 games don't have a massive deal of interaction, Nations probably having the most of the 3, but then that's a heavy game and this isn't. Through the Ages is certainly interactive at times though potentially in a hyper punishing way - though it's not such a problem in 2 player only.

[@soyuz1974]

If you haven’t tried “Clash of Cultures”, I highly recommend it.

[@keithnemes5466]

What is your favorite solo civilization game? Thanks for review.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

A New Dawn has a solo mode with it. And this one is certainly a nice one now.

[@thegamesninja3119]

​@TheBrokenMeeple when did Civ new dawn get it? I saw Mosaic had it. Imperium is supposed to be particularly good. I need to look into it. I am a big Civ game fan and am soloing now.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

@@thegamesninja3119 FFG did an official one and I believe in bgg they uploaded cards to update for the expansion but I've not tried those yet

[@thegamesninja3119]

@TheBrokenMeeple cool. Noted and I will look to get to it. I need to get through solo modes out of the box for games I have first. 7 Wonders Duel print and play I found to be real good.

[@maxkosek]

On BGG its only “artist uncredited” it should be clearly indicated there too, am I right? So you are saying that the price do not reflect that they did it “cheaper” with Ai not really investing in an artist making so many art and did it way faster? I think it will only speed up how many new games will be pumped every year to the market. I’m afraid they will be not so well polished and produced and we will be just flooded. I just would love publishers to be always transparent about it. That note added is nice. Im sure more and more games will have it and it is how our industry is turning to. I wonder how much ai was also used in the research for this game and how much was created but the designers.. creating all that civilisation content is a humongous work (from my experience- for years now I work on my own civ game and for one person it’s countless hours of history research). I’m jealous for sure but also curious. Did they say anything about involving Ai in anything more then art?

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Just the art aspect I believe - not the design.

[@perrymihalakos2119]

AI art blows.

[@Katoh64]

There hasn't been a single original Civilization game since Bios: Origins second edition in 2019. Such a disappointment.

[@bijanajamlou5152]

There is evoultion for 12-30 years before a revolution/paradigm shift. This game was clearly designed during the pandemic...

[@FalkFlak]

If you're accustomed to it I swear you can see AI art from a mile away and PoC looked so bad at SPIEL because of it (mainly the portraits where you can see the "AI style") and NO ONE was talking about it while hyping the game. So thank you.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Telling it how it is ! :-)

[@rickgoodman8911]

He’s being kind. The game gives you little strategic depth. I feel like the game plays on rails, with me having little input.

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Other than choosing your techs, buildings, people and what upgrades you have? Definitely not being kind, hell if anything I was a little tough love in places to bring it down to an 8. When some people say "on rails" I think they mix it up with the fact that it plays really smoothly and quickly, but maybe too quickly for what they would like.

[@thegamesninja3119]

Building a rail network and strategizing can be strategic if not as tactical as rich.

[@Sych0symatic]

I know I’ll be in the minority with this opinion, but I think the AI art actually looks better than a good chunk of games that a lot of people would consider amazing today. Then again, I am in the minority on a lot of opinions concerning games these days.

[@maxkosek]

I’m not sure that main problem is in how it looks, yeah there are better and worse examples but it’s amazingly fast getting incredibly better and better. I think main concern about Ai generated art is it’s unclear copyright status and first of all that it was trained and generated on top of the others people’s art and materials without their consent, without any compensation (i believe Adobe is working now on Ai generated art based on payed content from their library on artist who allowed their art to be used that way so thats a big future change). So thats main concern. It is a bit learning and a bit “taking” small bits and pieces from other forms of creation to create a new one. And second industry concern is that artist would want a chunk of money for such a huge project like civ game and it would take them a lot of time to research and paint all of that art, and now they can do it much cheaper and much much faster, and question is who should pay and get paid for that? Well as we heard this game is not that cheap, right? But also if that would be cheap how could a game created by human artists compete? This are big questions and concerns hard to address. But the industry is definitely changing and we can’t do anything about it. What I really want is for publishers to be transparent about it, like with production of food we should have ingredients listed on the box, who created art, does it contain sugar? Or other chemicals and allow people to know what they are paying for. Now another question is if the Ai helped not only with art but with name, theme, mechanism, research or writing? You can now generate so many things and speed up the processes while dehumanising it. I refrain from stating its good or bad just want to ask some questions and would love to see publishers begin honest and transparent about it.

[@maxkosek]

Yes I agree. Although, no matter how sad it may sound, from business perspective it is just a product 😢 if game with Ai art will bringing good money and can be made faster and cheaper they will go this way. So people will vote with their wallets once again. Thats why for me the most important thing is to advocate transparency. We should be informed how the product was created just like in the food industry. But we need to consider that some graphic director was curating that art. Someone was giving commends to the program and trying to achieve the best outcome. Someone curated that product to look good and cohesive and gave initial ideas what to generate. In some games some people overpaint Ai art, add details from their heart and experience… it’s not black and white, it’s more blurry, and there is still some human touch on top of that. (But not sure what future will bring) Someone who is trying to creat cool a product but with new different tools. Thats why it is so hard for me to judge.

[@thegamesninja3119]

What one is going to see with doing art connected to AI generated images is going to be more sculpting of stone and editing, than building up from clay. It is polish. The AI generated images from public domain stock was polished with human editing. I didn't find it bad either.

[@thegamesninja3119]

@@MattWGAllan my focus is on the finished product, not the starting point.

[@thegamesninja3119]

@MattWGAllan I wasn't looking at what an I needed to start generation. I was looking at how humans and artists would use AI generated images. It is going to be more sculpting and editing than building up from scratch.

[@shatnershairpiece]

I’m already using AI generated art for my album covers and KZbin thumbnails. It’s just too easy to do.

[@CarlosRodriguez-ez3ls]

Great review Luke! Meh production value. Multi- player solitaire. Not for me. Thx!

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

Fair enough!

[@runiruniru7158]

Thanks

[@wallyvdb87]

Pfff just played it yesterday... it s very very... mediocre (at best). The phases are very procedural. If you want to do well you have to take very lot of downtime trying to work out a tech tree cascade of symbols... but it doesn't feel the game has the 'weight' (the right) to take a lot of time on your turn... Furthermore it has (the horrible) simultaneous mechanism, so you have no idea what other are doing (unless you take even more downtime calculating your icon-techtree And keeping in mind the other players)... And many things don't feel exciting: the challenges and battles... none of them give you a yeah feeling. Many card effect are boring as is the philosophy track in particular... Just a very very bleh game IMO... Maybe your solo perspectives lifts your score a lot?? Multiplayer is a hard pass IMO...

[@thehandoflenin]

Cardboard is not cheap anymore, even if it’s still coming from China!

[@Xscone]

Video keeps halting

[@TheBrokenMeeple]

I had a similar issue at first, not sure what it is, can only imagine it's a KZbin problem as the video runs fine on my pc hard drive

[@StoneTempleGlyph]

Orange people? Is Trump a leader in the game - a trump card?