iPad Reiner Knizia's Tigris & Euphrates

Game Impressions

Okay, I just played through the tutorial game and am still very sketchy on specifics but I can give the very bare bone basics of play as I understand it.

The game boards starts off with a handful of temples (red tiles) already on the board with treasures (while normal tiles can be placed anywhere, a leader must always start adjacent to a temple).

From the start you get one leader of each of the 4 colors and 2 catastrophes plus a hand of 6 random tiles.

During your turn you can take two actions (usually based on the placing a leader or tile from your hand).

The leaders and tiles placed together in a continuous clump are considered all part of a single kingdom and it could even be more than one player putting tiles in a given kingdom. When placing a tile or leader you can join an existing kingdom of tiles or start off in some other area of the map to found your own thing.

The aim of the game is to gain victory points which is done by placing a colored tile in a kingdom of which you already have a same colored leader placed (if you already have a blue leader in this kingdom clump and you or another player places a blue tile anywhere in this connected area of tiles, you get a blue victory point).

Conflicts occur when two same color leaders end up in the same kingdom clump (either by a player just putting down another same colored leader in the clump (revolt) or placing a tile so that two separate kingdom clumps are now joined together (war). Without getting into the specifics, once these two same colored leaders are occupying the same clump only one can remain (the one with the most support of tiles already placed as well as whatever tiles the controlling players had in their hands that they were willing to sacrifice to the cause for a little bump in power just for this one conflict) with the losing leader being returned to his controller (you can never permanently destroy an opponent's leaders).

While most aspects of the four colored tiles and leaders behave fairly identically, each color does have some distinguishing bits:

Red: The red tiles are temples and the red leaders are priests. All leaders must start adjacent to a temple. Temples are very key in revolts (internal fight within a kingdom). All of the starting temples on the board have treasures which are valuable bonus points in the game (sadly the ones you add later have no treasures).

Black: The black tiles are settlements and the black leaders are kings. Kings act as surrogate leaders in the game. If you add a green tile, for example, to a kingdom that has no green leader but has a king in it, the player controlling the king will get that victory point. If there was a green leader in the kingdom then, alas, it is back to business as normal and the green leader would get that point for that green tile.

Green: The green tiles are markets and the green leaders are traders. If you have a kingdom with multiple temple treasures, the trader can claim one of them. This gets a little confusing though since he can only claim a treasure WHILE the kingdom has more than one...so if taking one now means the kingdom only has one temple treasure left, he can't claim another one until another temple with a treasure is merged into the kingdom.

Blue: The blue tiles are farms and the blue leaders are farmers. Farms can only be placed on river spaces while all other tiles and leaders (even the farmers) can not be placed on river spaces.

Hopefully I haven't already lost you but I'll leave it to others to describe how monuments work, the specifics of determining winners of revolts/wars, and how the winner of the game is determined (suffice it to say you'll be judged by your weakest component).

I can't claim I have a firm grasp on it yet but I'm loving it!

5/5

 

Game Impressions

Question:
When in either a Revolt or War when playing on an iPod, how do I see the final results? The in-game tips did a great job leading me up to the battle and even what it meant now that I just lost/won the battle but I never actually SAW the final results (i.e. how many reserve tiles my opponent added to their total). If the game told me I just lost, I don't doubt it, but I would still love to know how the AI acheived this victory (did they just scrape by or trounce me by a mile?).

 

Just picked this up and while I love the game there are some things I take issue with.

There are 2 buttons in the main menu that automatically kick you out of the game and open safari... If that wasn't bad enough they are located I. The lower left and lower right corner of the screen, where your thumbs are most likely to hit. I was booted out several times because of this.

One of those buttons (tap here for more games) is actually duplicated by the "more" button that is located RIGHT NEXT TO IT!

The opacity of the options on the main screen is ridiculous as well, it's so transparent that it is hard to read because of the text under it. Ingame it is handled better with the previous menu layer disappearing while staying enough to see the game board.

My only issue with the game itself is that throughout the tutorial I'm allowed to see my opponents scores but in a real game the points rise from the game board and fly to the right, just with no totals for the opponents :/

 

Color me confused but can't you bring up each player's total by clicking on their name on the right?

 

Actually it's an option on the game setup screen (where you choose how many opponents, etc.) it just says "public scores". I never touched it (unless I somehow pressed it through an overlay) but it seems that was not checked so tapping on opponents only shows what kings they still have and nothing else.

The only reason I know that is because after so many years of UI testing for EA and then moving to iOS games I have the nasty habit of going through every button/option in a game to see what happens.

While the game itself is fantastic and the in-game information is all laid out really well (minus the redundant red X taking up space when tapping on an opponent to see their points) the actual menus of the game are hideous.

The home screen is pretty bad. It's some kind of odd tabbed overlay which is partially transparent and obscures the beautiful statues behind it. On the first menu there are a whopping 9 buttons... 3 of which instantly kick you out of the game (not including the GC button), one of the other buttons is actually a duplicate of one that kicks you out... but this one DOESN'T kick you out although the tap for more games hitbox is so large it crosses into the More button, and tapping on play (which SHOULD be the most important button) is the only button that has a 2 second lag before performing an action. Rules, and Facebook integration should be moved inside Options. More and tap here for more games should be removed completely. The sage games logo should be moved to the bottom left (because it is currently under where all confirm or deny boxes appear) and should open the same page that More currently opens; Inside this new area would be the credits and a like to sage games' site.

That saves you from the giant overlay on the main menu as everything else fits nicely between the statues

The Game Type menu is equally as bad. "Game Type" should be centered over the top and the list should be Resume, Local, Online, and then Tutorial.

All of that would easily fit in the space between the two statutes and not require a massive overlay.

The overlay for creating a local game is a bit trickier since it needs quite a bit of space... I would have made the statues slide out and reveal a piece of parchment with the AI and player selection buttons. When the game is started the information fades out, pulls back, and the river fades in to become the game board.

I think it would make for a streamlined interface.

And just to be clear, I know this comes off as a total rant but Tigris & Euphrates is an amazing game and I highly recommend it to any board game lover. The in-match UI is fantastic and even on my cramped iPhone 4 screen all pertinent info is just a single tap away. I want this game to be huge and have a GC community as big as Carcassonne.

I just think an elegant and streamlined menu would make this game a complete package.

 

So is there a way to see the final totals in a war? Is it simply the help screens blocking my view of the reserves the AI is adding?

 

Ohhhh, I for some reason thought the committing of reserves was done secretly by both players and then revealed simultaneously, but if it is actually an open deal with the attacker declaring their total attack strength and then the defender can counter with just enough my previous whines are totally moot and it explains why no totals are shown!