Note, too, that each slot on the focus row has a terrain type attached to it. The tougher/more valuable terrains are further up the focus row and will affect the actions you can take. Taking Turns

Then reinforce each of your control tokens that is in or adjacent to a space containing a friendly army. These districts bring an undeniable advantage, but they can’t be triggered at the drop of a hat. A redesigned event dial now features the district icon, allowing you and your opponents to trigger all of your districts whenever this icon is selected. These reformed event dial also indicates when players can use another new addition to the game in Terra Incognita: changing their form of government. Economy - Move your caravans up to a specified number of spaces, only entering spaces matching the slot's terrain or lower. Civilization: A New Dawn isn’t an overly complex game to play, however it might take a couple of turns before everything falls into place. This is partly because I think the rulebook makes things look a little more complicated than they really are. However, it does handily provide a map tile layout to use for your first game as you walk through the first few turns.

The Plan In Action

It would be unfair if I only examined one end of the balance scale. Even though I am not a fan of how districts messed with the flow, I can’t ignore the benefits it brings to the table. These five districts hone in on the five main areas of the game and allow you to cultivate your civilization to a particular strategy, something missing in the base game. Like sending your lovely caravans throughout the world? You can build a Commercial Hub so you can get more trade tokens for each mature city. If you got a barbarian problem, then an Encampment is your answer since they eliminate rival pieces every few turns like some sentient bug zapper. It Keeps Going

According to the old adage, Rome wasn’t built in a day. However, in this box, you’ll have all you need to build (and potentially ruin) it in the space of just a couple of hours. Here’s what you get: As mentioned before, the artwork and design is great, with time and effort being put into making this feel like a tribute to its gaming ancestor from the 90s. Having eight different races to guide through the ages adds variety each time you play and the unique focus card play system is refreshing. The tech dial upgrades give you the sense of improving your choices as you progress too. Once you’ve grasped the basics, you spend minimal time browsing the rule book looking for clarification on things, so again another plus. Additionally, the game comes with several double-sided multi-hex map tiles to create a large and diverse terrain. Besides the landscape, spaces also include neutral city-states, barbarians, and resource spawns. Each of these interacts with the player in a somewhat expected way. A player can send a trade caravan to city-states, conquer the barbarians that harass them, and place control tokens on the board to expand their empire and control resources. Advance your tech dial a number of spaces equal to this slot's number, plus 1 for each type of resource you have (including resources on natural wonder tokens). A big pull for A New Dawn is the player action system. You have five terrain slots with a focus card under each, ranging from the first slot as the weakest to the fifth being strongest. You select an action from a focus card in front of you and once it’s played, that card is moved into the first slot and the rest are shuffled up one place.

The Drive to Explore

When resolving a focus card, if you have a diplomacy card from a city-state of that focus card's type, resolve it as though it is 1 slot farther to the right. Straight out of the box, the components and artwork stays true to Sid Meier with that old school feel but with fresh revamps in places. With a mixture of plastic tokens as well as cardboard ones, it’s a nice balance and looks pleasing once set-up. Be warned though, invest in some plastic grip seal bags to keep the tokens separate as only a few are provided in the box and it helps with faster setup times.

Underneath each slot is a Focus Card, each one representing a different element of your people's development: Before 1 of your caravans explores, you may place a water token touching that caravan's space. [2 caravans] Selecting your form of government is a crucial new addition with this expansion, and it has the potential to make your focus cards much more powerful. Depending on the government that you choose, you can resolve a specific type of focus card as if it were further to the right than it currently sits on your focus bar. To give a few examples, Democracy rewards you for devoting yourself to the sciences, while an Autocracy is ideal for military endeavors, and Communism lets you pour your energy into industry. You must choose carefully, however, because you cannot change your government at will—only when the event dial shows the designated icon.

Overall, Civilization: A New Dawn is an enjoyable and complete 4X strategy game. It’s a solid empire-builder, requiring a lot of thought and foresight to play well. The focus bar mechanic, in particular, is a really interesting concept, which encourages a much more long-term and patient style of play. Whether you’ve built countless civilizations from the ground up, or this is your first time guiding your people through the ages, the Terra Incognita expansion is something that you won’t want to miss. With new leaders and map tiles alongside the addition of districts, governments, exploration, and so much more, this is an expansion that’s unlike any other. A leader may choose to create a peaceful civilization defined by artistic and intellectual pursuits. For artistic pursuits, the culture focus cards allow players to place control tokens, which can expand their territory and claim resources. The card’s focus row slot also determines which types of terrain on which the player can place control tokens. For the intellectual, the science focus cards advance a player’s tech dial, allowing the player to discover new technologies. The dial advances spaces equal to the number of the science card’s focus row slot. Science - Move the pointer on your Tech Dial a number of spaces equivalent to the numerical value of the slot the Science card is in when played. By moving the Tech Dial, you can gain access to more powerful versions of the Focus Cards.