Written by Losers

I picked up civilisation game Historia in the recent maths trade and, having played it through earlier in the week to suss out the rules, sat down for a proper solo game this evening - taking on the civbots that play as your easy-to-use, but possibly harder to beat opponents.

Each player colour in the game has its own civilisation theme; you can be the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, and so on. This filters through to your advisor cards - more on them in a bit. I chose purple, the philosopher's colour, with advisers on hand such as Descartes, Robespierre and Nostradamus. Fortunately for me, they're around to have a word in my ear even at the start of the game, when all I know is fire: as I develop my technology, I will invent the wheel, travel, gunpowder, and so on, as I travel across the most spreadsheety tech track ever, called the matrix: every move right increases my technological knowledge, whilst every move up increases my military might.

The might bit comes into the map. Almost tucked away at the bottom of the board is the map of the world, where me and three civbots begin the game with a single cube, representing our fledgling people. The bots are placed on the highest numbered (and most valuable) spaces, whereas I can go where I like. Seeing them clustered together across Asia and the Middle East, I chose the coward's route and started in North America. Travel wouldn't be invented for a while, I reasoned, so they could fight amongst themselves whilst I expanded at my leisure.

This was a mistake.

Civbots have three possible levels - King, Noble and Chieftain. There's nothing in the rulebook I could see (yet, probably) that stops you having all the bots as lowly Chieftains, but I wasn't that cowardly - I had one of each. What that meant though, was that without me in Asia to stop him, the King would go on to dominate the other bots, and eventually destroy them...

But meantime I had cards to play. The starting hand is eight, plus one advisor from your advisor deck.   Three of them involved interaction with other players (or bots) so I put them aside for now. I began by pushing up my tech (domesticating wheat!) and increasing my military. You might think that with no enemies in sight, there was no rush for this, but the way the matrix is laid out, even focusing on one aspect doesn't allow you to totally neglect the other.

I also expanded into Central America, as your presence on the map is going to get you points. And I built the Alexandria Library. There were no books to go in it yet, and nobody could read, but at least it was there.

I ended my turn by playing the Revolution card, allowing me to retrieve a card from my discards, before the bots took their turn. Bots work from a single deck, and the stronger bots simply flip and activate more cards. At this stage though, the King's extra cards didn't look too ominous, but his rapid progress across the matrix did make me sit up.

At the end of every turn, all players get to pick up their two earliest played cards in their discards, there's some book-keeping too, but it's all easy to keep track of thanks to this slightly-less-spreadsheety round tracker:

Turn two began, and I decided not to expand more for now. Every expansion costs you an action cube, and these are precious because at least three of your cards require them for activation. If you find yourself running out, all you have to do is play the Exploit the People card, and two will come back to you. Exploitation was never so easy! I focused on increasing my technologies, built the Pyramids of Giza, and invented a cow. I also played my advisors: when one goes, another rocks up to take their place. +++EDIT: no they don't. Only developing your tech can trigger a new advisor+++ But when the bots swung into action, the King and Noble were still setting the pace.

And so the the turns went - after four of them, an era ends and new wonders become available. But the bots kept building them whilst I focused on my tech, reasoning that the most advanced civilisation would surely oust brute force in the end. But the King kept doing both, and by the time I sailed across to India to beat the Chieftain in a bloody war, he was top dog throughout the non-Americas continents. On the score track, me and the chieftain were lagging behind, and the King was pushing on, scoring big for all his territories and inventing the compass. I was first to invent nuclear energy, but my military was so weak, they weren't sure what to do with it.

Back on the map, the King wiped out the Chief and the Noble followed shortly afterwards. I trembled in India, expanded from India, was given a hiding, and sat in India, pining for the good old days of the cow and the wheel.

Bots don't build wonders - they just discard them, and score points - so I took some solace in my wonderful architecture. The Eiffel Tower, the Easter Island statues, the Burj Khalifa. I was all over it. And when I invented Tourism loads of people came to see them all, scoring me plenty of points.

However, the wonders of tourism are no substitute for the wonders of maximum tech allied to maximum military, and it was this position the King ascended to, meaning that although I could expand into his territories - and deny him points - I could never wrestle them from his grasp in order to have the points myself. Not for the first time, I rued my decision to begin the game thousands of miles from the King, who coincidentally played in yellow.

The third era finished with me wishing there was a fourth, as I had great plans to expand and build... but even I knew that the King was uncatchable:

King: 175
Sam: 128
Noble 63 (and extinct)
Chieftain 24 (and extinct)

I am itching to play it again. It reminds me of Concordia because of how the cards work, but also those big civ games like Time of Crisis because of the story being played out before you. I'd thought my focus on tech could succeed - and the way the matrix is laid out suggests it's a workable strategy - but leaving the bots to themselves was self-defeating - free to expand with little interference, the King ran away with it, with me watching from afar with a sense of growing despair.

I was so despairing I didn't even notice I'd invented boats, which could have got me there. Possibly I was distracted by Monet, whispering to me that I should build another wonder. Never mind... the King can have his victory, and I'll have the Louvre and Knossos. And my memories.