Turns will alternate between players until all have eventually run out of actions or most likely resources and have passed.
The Player action phase is the main body of the game and will give players a choice of eight actions to choose from, which include spending resources to place buildings, such as mines, to terraform a planet, upgrade buildings, found a federation or even pass, which counts as an action and can also give players benefits for future rounds, should they be the first player to do so. The Gaia phase barely qualifies as a phase as the only action taken is to restore any used ‘power’ to pool 1. The game is split into numerous phases beginning with the income phase which, as you may expect, gives players the chance to count their available resources from their player boards and research boards and move their resource tracks accordingly. As the game progresses and players use actions to place these buildings on the board, each building space, once removed, will show a resource that adds to the player’s total and fuels the in-game economy: The more you build, the more you earn. Players will also get the chance to build Gaia Formers through research, and they are used to transform planets to your race’s liking. Players will place their buildings on their board, which include mines, trade centres, research centres, academies and a planetary institute. Starting with the lowest cost building, the mines, players will upgrade to other buildings, which in turn offers more options or benefits throughout the game. Each race will start the game with a varying number of resources which are knowledge, ore and credits, they may also have Quantum Intelligence Cubes (QIC) which act as another form of currency, essentially. When a player chooses a race, they will take the corresponding coloured playing pieces and begin to set-up their player board. Players will also create a pool of round boosts that will offer several benefits to individual players throughout a round, and they are changed each round. As players move up each of the tech tracks, they will receive a plethora of benefits from resources to a speed up in certain actions, as well as the technologies already mentioned. Six advanced techs are then placed at the top of each track, meaning that the player who excels in that track will receive the benefit of that tech. The minor techs will give players one-off resources or abilities, victory points or continuous resources from round to round. The research board is then set up by randomly selecting minor technologies and placing them on the board below each of the six technology tracks. This is a grab-the-most-points style of game, with players trying to find the best strategy to achieve this. These targets may include having the most of a type of building, terraforming the most planets or having the most satellites in orbit. Between these planets is the vastness of space, which players must traverse using satellites, and ultimately large federations, which are several planets working towards the same cause.īefore the game starts, the victory board must be set up with 2 random end-of-game victory point targets and 6 round victory point targets. Players will choose one of 14 different races and lead them through a civilisation expansion in space by collecting resources, advancing up a technology tree, creating powerful federations whilst hitting round and end-game victory point conditions. Like Civilization: A New Dawn, the board is constructed through tiles of hexes that all fit together, meaning the playing surface will change from game to game. The tiles will have a number of space hexes and various different planets which players must transform into habitable planets for their species, such as volcanic, swamp or ice habitats. Gaia Project is essentially a massively heavy Eurogame which allows 1-4 players to score points through numerous different actions and locations.
This review certainly isn’t going to be a comparison between the two games, nor can I ever hope to explain every rule or nuance that Gaia Project has to offer, as there are so many of both, provided and beautifully packaged together by publishers Feuerland Spiele and Z-Man Games. more time? That sequel has arrived in the form of Gaia Project, and from first impressions, it has all the pre-requisites of a successful successor with a sci-fi theme added and Solitaire mode for good measure, but can it measure up to its big brother? Let’s find out.
In 2012, game designers Jens Drogemuller and Holge Ostertag brought us the hugely successful area control, civilisation builder that is Terra Mystica, winning a host of awards along the way, including the Spiel de Jahres Kennerspiel in 2013. In movie terms, any sequel to Terra Mystica would have to add more: more components, more actions, more rules, more weight….