Games That Don't Suck: Innovation

(For a list of games in this series, click here and scroll down.)

Civilization-building games tend toward massiveness. The 2002 board game version of Sid Meier’s Civilization included hundreds of plastic playing pieces and weighed about ten pounds. Seven Wonders provides a more elegant playing experience but still requires an array of equipment and at least a medium-sized table to play. Roll through the Ages has a compact footprint, but its clattering dice make it less than ideal for a crowded or quiet play environment. Few game designers have managed to create a civ-builder that is light, easy to set up, and covers (unlike RttA or 7 Wonders) the whole of human social development. Fewer still have developed a game that allows for deep play and a variety of strategies. Innovation may be the only offering that combines all of these advantages. The game has its quirks, but its persistent strengths keep my partner and I returning to it again and again, not just at home but on the road.

Innovation travels well. The physical game is itself very compact: four small play mats (which experienced players don’t need) and a deck of 110 playing cards. Five of these are special achievements (see below); the rest are civilizational advances, which form the game’s heart, soul, and musculature. Each of the 105 core cards bears the name of the technology it represents; a description of its unique special power or “dogma”; two to four symbols (castles, leaves, crowns, etc.) from a set of six, representing the classes into which the dogmas fall; the card’s color, which governs how many face-up cards one may have at a time; and the card’s age or era - Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and so forth.

Each player, on his/her turn, may perform two actions from this list: draw a new card, meld a card from their hand - that is, place it face-up in front of them - use a face-up card’s power or “dogma,” and/or collect a numbered achievement. Melded cards go onto one of five face-up stacks, sorted by color, and cover any previously-melded cards of that color beneath them. A covered card essentially represents an obsolete technology, and (unless it somehow returns to the top of the stack) one cannot use its dogma again. The new top card will generally have a dogma the player prefers to the old one, and often that card will belong to a later age, which is to say a higher-value draw pile. The age of a top card matters because it determines from which pile one draws new cards: one takes them from the draw pile corresponding to the latest (highest-value) top card in one’s play area. If that pile is empty one draws from the next-highest age. It pays to draw cards from later ages, as they usually have more uses than low-age cards.

Dogmas, or powers, represent the game’s core play elements. When used they allow a player to draw new cards, meld multiple cards from one’s hand, score cards from one’s hand or play area, or inflict damage on another player’s hand, play area, or score pile. Each dogma has a symbol associated with it that determines its power. A player uses all of the visible symbols of the appropriate type, from all the cards in his/her play area, to power a dogma.* The number of symbols used can strengthen the dogma’s effect. It also determines whether the dogma can affect other players. A demand (or attack), identified on the card by the boldface words “I demand,” affects only players who display fewer of the dogma’s associated symbols than the player making the demand. A non-demand dogma, on the other hand, may be shared by any other player with as many or more of the dogma’s associated symbols in his/her display. If another player does share the dogma, they use it themselves, and the active player then draws a card for each sharing player. Essentially, they have traded the use of one technology for the acquisition of another.

In discussing dogma symbols, I use the word “visible” deliberately. Normally, only can only use the symbols on the top cards of one’s stacks to power dogmas. However, some dogmas let players splay a stack of cards - spread them rightward, leftward, or upward, to display the dogma symbols on the lower cards. Splays can dramatically increase the number of visible symbols in one’s play area, especially upward splays (most cards concentrate their symbols on their bottom edge). Splaying represents civilizational investment or development: one is essentially “bringing up” buried dogma symbols like seeds growing into mature plants.

In addition to acquiring and melding new cards, splaying card stacks, burying cards (a dogma action that lets one put cards at the bottom of a stack), and attacking other players, one can use some dogmas to score cards. To score, one takes a card from the top of the relevant draw pile (specified in the description of the dogma one used) and places it face-down in one’s score pile. A scored card is worth a number of points equal to its age - between 1 and 10 points. One may then use the score pile to purchase achievements, analogous to the Wonders one finds in other civilization-builder games. At the start of the game the players create a line of nine face-down cards from the first nine draw piles, which represent the “ordinary” achievements. Each costs five points times the achievement’s age, or from 5 to 45 points total. A player must have sufficient points in his/her score pile to buy the achievement and must spend an action to do so. Score piles are not depleted through the purchase of achievements, and achievements may not subsequently be taken from the player, though a bad result with the Nuclear Fission dogma might destroy them.

Innovation also includes five special achievements, which a player automatically acquires upon achieving their listed conditions: having three visible symbols of each of the six types, for example, or splaying all five of one’s stacks upward or rightward. One does not spend an action to acquire these specials. The first player to acquire a total of six achievements - five in a three-player game, four in a four-player game - wins the game. Everyone else reverts to drooling barbarism.

Actually, that’s not quite the only way to win Innovation. Some of the higher-age cards contain special victory conditions that fire off automatically when a player uses that card’s dogma. A player can win automatically with the Empiricism dogma, for instance, if s/he has at least 20 light-bulb symbols displayed in his/her play area. One might call this the “Rapture of the Nerds” (or Singularity) victory. Some dogmas let the player with the smallest score pile win – if, for instance, a combination of Software, A.I., and Robotics are ever in play. (Presumably, this sets off the Robot Apocalypse.) If the players somehow exhaust all ten era decks without someone winning through achievements, the player with the highest score takes the win.

Innovation sounds like an exhaustingly difficult game to learn. It is not a good offering for beginners, who may find its terminology off-putting and who may struggle to interpret some of the cards. (The manufacturer has a free FAQ file online covering all of the cards in the base game.)  Much of the complexity of the game, however, lies in its strategy and the choices players can make. As in other civilization-building games, Innovation requires players constantly to balance different resources and adjust their strategies to take advantage of opportunities. Players might work on building up their civilization’s “stock” of symbols, by finding dogmas that splay their stacks and melding new cards to those stacks. This can take time away, however, from adding cards to their score piles and using the points to buy achievements. Building up a score pile, in turn, can distract players from acquiring the combinations of symbols or actions that let them acquire special achievements. Focusing on one's score pile and achievements takes time away from advancing up the "tech ladder" with dogmas that let one draw and/or place cards from later ages. Players must also keep an eye on each other's symbol “strength,” since this allows their rivals to “borrow” valuable dogmas or (worse) to attack their civilizations. There are a lot of choices, and none of them are trivial.

I have played Innovation nearly one hundred times, most of them with just my significant other, and no two of our games have been the same. Every game has commanded our attention and all of our mental faculties. The only tacit agreement we have with one another is not to trigger a nuclear war. Nuclear war, we have decided, is kid’s stuff.

Real gamers always go for the robot apocalypse.

* One can thus have a six-leaf dogma, a nine-factory dogma, and so forth, even if the dogma’s own card has only one or two of that symbol.