2 Bucks an expansion is a steal! The "real" versions are about $10 each. I'll be picking up both of these tonight!
It's a great boardgame but I think one would be hard pressed to compare it in any way to Carcassonne other than they are both great real world board games that port well to the iPad (with the only slight caveat being that this is only the 2 player version of the game, be it 2 humans, 1 human vs. 1 bot, or 2 bots). It might best be seen as Risk with a near endless variety of race/power combinations to fight it out with and minimal randomization in the conquests (the vast majority of the battles are resolved automatically without a die roll). The only real randomization is in which race/power combinations show up in the game (some of the random combinations the come up are pretty humorous like "Merchant Trolls" or "Commando Wizards").
Other than the fact that it, like Carcassonne, is loosely classified as a Euro game, it isn't similar. Small World is a light war game that can be played by 2-5 players. On the iPad, it is 2 players only, though one of those players can be a computer player. It is just as fun, though a different kind of fun. This is about conquering and controlling territory and deciding when you should have your current civilization go into decline so you can start a new one. Carcassonne doesn't have so much fighting for territory, though you can fight with someone over control of a city, farm, road, etc. I wouldn't classify Carcassonne so much as a wargame as a game of strategically controlling elements at the time they score. You aren't directly killing enemy pieces, though they may claim you are.
A lot quicker expansions than Carcassonne..hmm not sure about that you gotta remember Small World came out April 3rd when ipad launched. I got both expansions $4 well worth it. Checked and they're in Japanese too. One thing I'd like is ability to click on their race/power combo and read and pause their action while I read about their abilities. I was trying to read what Gypsies were doing. Had to wait till game was over then read about them. Listen to music. It just plays one song then stops ...ok I admit was listening to an audio book and played just one chapter then quit. So perhaps keep on playing is my suggestion.
Thanks for the feedback people, I'll pick this up, but in September. Looks a great app. I've just never played the game of Risk, so find it hard to understand, even though I love turn based games like Advanced Wars on the DS.
To be honest then, you might want to move on if you found Risk too much to keep track of. As much as I like this game, I fully admit that it is all about trying to make the most out of constantly shifting rules and no storyline to explain the new twists you'll be facing as soon as you or your opponent take on new races. Imagine playing Chess when suddenly your opponent's pawns gain the power to teleport to any space and your queen can now move twice each turn. Okay, maybe a BS example but this game takes pretty basic gameplay and twists it around constantly via a seemingly endless combination of races and powers (some useless, some always great, and others perfect if used at just the right moment). On a side note I sooooo NEED this latest expansion from the real game in there even if they charged $10 just for that expansion, Tales and Legends! http://www.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/tales-legends/ It is a randomness obsessed dude's wet dream!
I got the feeling after to have read many posts that the AI is a bit weak and will quickly be not that fun for single play, too bad.
Where did it come off that the AI was weak? It's consistently kicking my ass (but I may just not be very good, admittedly). Are the iTunes reviews speaking of weak AI? I'm actually pretty impressed with it myself and have seen the AI take advantage of it many power/race combos in clever ways as well as having enough foresight to not ALWAYS just take the top choice but occasionally search down the line for the best combo. It grabbed up the Berserker Gypsies in our last game and devastated me! What I would be willing to surmise is that the AI will probably have a fairly limited bag of tricks with each possible combination and while what they do with each of the combos, even if pretty solid strategy, might become fairly predictable (not to me yet but, again, I'm not that good). I mean what is clear is the AI is DEFINITELY not treating all of these combinations the same way, i.e. if it gets bonus victory coins for holding mines then you can bet it will place a higher priority on mine spaces. Heck, I haven't even seen an obvious pattern to its use of declines. In some games it will stick with a race for quite a while and in others it will move on from them fairly quickly but then again leave them at a point it makes sense (not much more it could do with the current race and it could afford to take the lost turn to switch).
I have to admit with this game seemingly adding AI as what (to me) appeared as such an afterthought (not important enough to have in the release version) I had little faith it would be anything more than some half-assed trainer until you could find another human player but instead it appears that it may not have made it out on release since they were so busy adding polish to it. I also LOVE the latest addition of a Hall of Fame! Now I finally have some stats for my best wins (and sadly much more frequent embarrassing losses)!
Yep! The main point, besides some minor fixes and a local leaderboard seems to be including the first 2 expansions of the real boardgame, "Grand Dames" and "Cursed!" (going for $2 each). So for $4 you get 5 new races and 7 new powers to mix into your game (or you can even opt to just include 1 or 0 of the expansions). For a decent evaluation of the new races and powers check out these two mini reviews: Grand Dames (3 races, 2 powers): http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14673.phtml Cursed! (2 races, 5 powers): http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14674.phtml
How does the game setup change with the expantion packs ? Do you have to chose the expansion you want to play during setup , or are they all in one , depending on which expansions you have ?
When starting a new game you simply click on a little on/off toggle for each of your current expansions (so it would appear they're already making room for more). Curse, one of the new powers in Curse! (believe it or not) is just too cute! It is completely USELESS. It comes with 0 armies and requires you, when selecting a new race/power combo to pay 3 coins (as opposed to the normal 1) just to skip past it (on the flipside, as the reviewer stated, it is a great source of collected coins if you decide to take it later after everybody else has passed it by in a game).
Ha ok thanks guys for the enlightenment so if I get it the AI is bad because it isn't well tune and is too strong. Too bad. In posts I read a first guy mentioned the AI was weak, he didn't knew the game and beat it 2 times then I think one post confirmed and non deny.
I guess he's better than us at it. There is definitely some luck to the game and if you get just the right race/power combo at just the right point (like either a race and power that work really great together or somehow end up being the perfect counter to what you opponent is using) and you can devastate your opponent!
Skill at these games definitely does vary. In another upcoming Euro game, Samurai, the AI is regularly kicking my butt. I'm sure at release that several people will chime in claiming the AI is too easy. Sometimes, a game just makes perfect sense to me and I can play it really well. Other times, not so much or it takes multiple plays to get the hang of it. This one falls somewhere in the middle for me. I think the AI is decent. It presents a reasonable challenge but not as much as many people that I play against with the actual board game. Of course, I wouldn't bother playing the board game with only two players. I really wish they would update this to allow more players either online or face to face with one iPad.
