How Culture Cards Resolve

By Sepimour2, in Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

Hi,

We had an interesting scenario week or so ago where 2 players were playing an advanced tie-breaker variant.

Player 1 and 2 both achieved their respective victory conditions during their City Management phases.

Player 1 managed to secure 15 coins and player 2 jumped to the top of the culture track.

During the movement phase Player 2 moved a figure forward one space to be withing range of a great person in one of Player 1's cities and then played a culture event card to destroy said great person, robbing Player 1 of the precious coin that the great person provided. Player 2 then played a culture card in response to destroy Player 1's figure arguing that this would counter his culture event, because with the figure destroyed Player 1's culture card would no longer be valid.

The question then was if you can play a non-counter culture card in response to another culture card. All we could see in the rules was that a Cancel can cancel another cancel card. There was no mention of which order culture cards resolve in.

Does Player 2 destroy the great person robbing Player 1 of his/her coin to win a culture victory or does Player 1 win by his card resolving first and then winning by the advanced tie-breaker calculation (which would have been the case).

Was a great game to be part of nonetheless :)

Hi Sepimour,

I don't particularly regard myself as an expert in Civ, having only played a few times, but I will do my best to help. At worst someone might see I'm wrong and correct me and we'll both learn something!

First, I assume that Player 1 (P1) wanted to play a card that interrupts movement*. I would say that this has to be played within a reasonable time of player 2 (P2) moving his figure. What "reasonable" means is really up to your group to decide. If P1 doesn't react to P2's movement despite having had adequate time to do so then I would say the opportunity is lost and he cannot play the card in response to P2's card (he wouldn't be interrupting movement, he would be interrupting the playing of a culture card).

However , if P1 has reached 15 coins at any time during his or her turn then P1 qualifies for an economic victory even if he or she has fewer coins at the end of the turn. Therefore it would still go to a tiebreaker and, if after losing his or her coins P1 is still ahead, he or she is the winner.

So far as I am aware this is an official ruling from Kevin Wilson, the game designer, and can be found on BGG in the rules forum under "The Civilization Bible of Rulings and Clarifications".

Hopefully this is helpful and if someone sees that I'm wrong then please let me (and you) know.

* If the card doesn't say it interrupts movement I think that you can only play it in your own movement phase. If it says any time then I'm not sure (I don't have the deck in front of me so I'm not sure if that situation could ever happen).

Thank you for the reply!

Your explanation makes perfect sense and we came to the same conclusion, but just didn't know about the economic victory still being valid.

"The Civilization Bible of Rulings and Clarifications" will be printed out and added to my game box.