Mare Nostrum

From Bruno Faidutti's web site: I've known Serge Laget for about twenty years, and these last twenty years he has been working on this game, his Opus Major, his life's achievement. The idea is as simple as it is ambitious: a playable Civilization. Since I've never been very fond of Civilization, I didn't take part in the numerous test games of this hackneyed game, and I decided at last to play it only when I heard that it will, at last, be published. Serge claims that his Civilization has only two pages of rules and can be played in two or three hours. I can testify that there are, indeed, only two pages of rules. Our game lasted almost five hours, but it didn't feel that long. The game is bursting with clever and simple systems. Victory can be achieved through military conquest, through trade or through diplomacy and politics. Three games in one, but they are related: politics helps trade, and an army with no economic backup has no real use. Twenty years of fine tuning makes for what is probably the best one in the numerous family of big games played on a map of the Mediterranean and figuring the politic, military and economic rivality between the empires of the antiquity. A winner of the 2001 Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société. Expanded by: Mare Nostrum: Mythology Expansion