Bob did not play this game yesterday so could not really describe it
in his report, so here goes:

In a nutshell Neil kicked my ass and almost won the game, then Josep
kicked my ass even harder and snatched victory at the very death. OK
thats not telling you much more than that I'm not a very good player
so I'll describe how the game developed.

Each player represents a tribe of peoples in ancient times (Persians,
Arabians etc)in a map of the Med/middle east and wins by being the
first to score 8 victory points, which you achieve by accomplishing
various things such as building new cities, temples, inventing new
technologies/economies.

The first four rounds were notable in that we all did exactly the
same thing but this was merely setting the stage for the difficult
choices that follow. Do you manoevre your men into new territories
asap or do you strengthen your defences by investing in temples? Do
you spend resources arming up or do you invest it in being the first
to develop a new technology?

The turns were completed very quickly as many of these choices are
quick to do. George was in the centre and was the early front runner
inventing the marketplace but Josep was fortyfying himself by
building numerous temples. Neil was slowly but surely accumulating
troops and technologies. I developed a fleet of galleys because I
had a lot of captured coastline.

The dynamic of the game is that you score points by developing cities
etc but these points are limited and run out so to win the game you
have to attack the others to get the remaining points and by that
stage players should have alot of troops/galleys so its difficult.
George launched a preemptive strike on Dave in the west but they both
only succeeded in cutting each others throats. I had built up
galleys and so was vulnerable in ground troops so Neil launched a
huge attack with his chariot technology to destroy 2 of my temples
and win the 2 points he needed to win the game. He destroyed one but
could not complete the task. Even so it looked only a matter of time
before he would win but suddenly Josep pounced with his chariots with
a far reaching move for the kill and the game.

Good game, fast turns and builds up from developing economies until
stage that you need to wage war, although there is not that much
fighting. Theres a video presentation of this game on
http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?cat=2&paged=2 if you're
interested.

Andrew