In response to a qyestion about two-player play:

Well, I can tell you that my wife and I tried to play it a couple times with just two people, without very much success. The biggest problem with having only two people is that player interaction is not a very interesting experience. I would imagine that adding the third player would go a great distance in this regard.

We have a (more or less) regular gaming group that started with a game of Advanced Civ. There are five people in the group, and we're about to play our second game this weekend. Only this time, we're not going to let Jon get away with the trading style he seems to like (screw 'em all, screw 'em often) without a pretty serious trade embargo...

I think five feels like a reasonable number. If things go well on this game, we may try to play with seven in our next one. As it was, we spent 12 hours on the last game, and didn't really finish (didn't get all the way down the advancement track). Of course, we got a slow start, since my wife and I were refreshing our memory on the rules, and teaching the other three how to play. I think things will go much quicker this time.

In response to the question `how well does it work for a player who is not into wargames, but who plays board games more generally?':

Well, after what I said above, I'm going to sound a bit confused, but Civ is not really a wargame. My wife doesn't really like "war games," since she doesn't really care about battle for battle's sake, but she enjoys Civ quite a bit. To her, it's more of a game of exploration and development than of warfare, so the inevitable battles aren't as much of a big deal. Mind you, now that she's getting a little more used to the interaction possibilities in Civ, i'm going to be a little more careful about starting a war with her...

As far as the "militaristic" flavor of the game, I would have to say that the computer Civ is far more militaristic. It seems to me that one of the primary forces of computer Civ is warfare, given that about half (going from memory here, don't hurt me :-) of the units you can create are military. Heck, the very first unit you get once you establish a city is a Militia! In board-game Civ, military operations are possible, but usually very expensive.

The other aspect of the warfare in Civ is that it is completely deterministic. If you commit more tokens to the battle than your opponent, then you will win. There are a couple civilization cards (the computer game calls them "advances") that change this, but you always now about them. The only issue is, you only know how many tokens your opponent will commit if he moves before you do...

In response to a question about the computer version of the game:

I have a little experience with the computer version, and somewhat more experience with the board version. All told, I probably prefer the board version, even though it is infinitely harder to put a decent game together.

As far as the "simulation" goes, the computer version is far more detailed. Where the computer version goes all the way up to modern times and beyond, the board version only goes up through the Iron Age. The board version doesn't include the Wonders of the World, nor any of the trade rules as they are implemented in the computer version (with caravans and trade routes between cities).

However, the board version is far richer in terms of interactive possibilities. About the only interaction you get in computer Civ is beating up on your opponenents, whereas in the board game, you trade commodities (and calamities!), plus engage in whatever sort of diplomacy you feel is necessary. (Like I said before, I doubt my group's next game will be much more interactive...) I think this more than makes up for the limited nature of the simulation; your mileage will certainly vary.

Hope this blithering helps. If you can scrape two or three people together (don't forget that you'll beed to block out 10-12 hours for a good game), I think you'll like Civ.