Nations Review: Build your own Civilization and Make History!

Based on these resources, you can pick one of the 4 actions below when it's your turn:

You can buy a progress tile with either money or strength, and that's the core of the game: the Progress Board stores all the tiles that will evolve your nation.

Each of the tiles above gives you upgrades and some benefits immediately after you get them:

After you pick them, your individual board will reflect how your nation is, and how much you evolved in terms of upgrades. So, this means that, bit by bit, during your own turn, you'll be able to evolve and take advantage of the benefits you get, as well as create more opportunities to grow.

After you pick one of those four available options, the player to your left will play their turn, and that continues until it's your turn again, and you play another action. Then, when everyone passes their round, it's the end of the round, and a few things must take place:

After that, a new era begins (a new round). That's basically a turn in Nations!

At the end of the 4th era (4th round), the game is over. This is how you calculate your score:

After you calculate your scores, whoever has more victory points wins. If there is a tie, the order of the players defines the winner (the 1st player beats the 2nd player, and so on and so forth). It's that simple!

In Nations, your dice and your choices matter throughout the entire game. So, as everyone starts with basically the same resources, spending everything straight away and not investing in your dice pool is not a good idea.

Invest, as much as you can, on progress tiles that give you more dice. I confess this is a bit painful, considering that, if you just spend everything straight away, you might get excellent tiles that will give you lots of points. However, you'll also struggle to get resources later on because you got points and not resources.

I strongly recommend you get resources first and then invest on getting points. Otherwise, your turns will not be productive because you won't have many resources. I know it's hard, but resist temptation and invest in what will give you more points in the future.

Basically, this means you'll only build wonders in the last-case scenario because, to build them, you need multiple stones, so it's another reason why you need to invest in resources. For instance, you get 3 points from wonders in the 1st era, but you'll get more in later turns. In the 4th era, wonders will give you up to 8 points. Investing in resources is always the best option.

You can also reroll your dice since the beginning of the game, and some advisors let you do that more times, so use this in your favor. Rerolling dice makes all the difference in the world because it mitigates your bad luck.

You can also spend any 2 dice resources to create a stone, money, or food. This will mitigate any bad luck you have, but don't do this constantly because you'll spend 2 dice to get 1 - it's very expensive. Only use this if you truly need to.

Investing in knowledge (books) is great and will give you a good number of points throughout the game. The nation that has more knowledge gains points for each nation that has less knowledge than they have. Knowledge is power!

Saving food dice is an option because, at the end of every turn, if you have enough food, you can get a good number of points. I confess I don't really use this strategy a lot because when you do save food dice for later, they're only useful as points and don't give you any new resources. I basically only use this strategy in the final rounds, which is when feeding your people gives you more points.

Saving some strength dice to guarantee military power is critical; besides giving you victory points, you get to alter the order of the turn, and obviously, the one who plays first always picks the best tiles on the Progress Board.

The order of the turn is so important in Nations that, besides giving you better opportunities throughout the game, it is a tiebreaker criterion at the end of the game. So, consider it wisely.

Follow these tips, evolve your civilization, and win in Nations!

Check out this Unboxing:

Learn the rules:

Watch some gameplay:

If you're looking for a fun, fast game that forces you to work on your math skills, resource management, focus, strategy, and also gives you a history lesson, Nations is perfect for you!

Nations is an excellent and very fast game, which helps you stay on track if you have trouble with games that take longer. This is actually one of its greatest strengths. Combine that with a few other factors, and you'll learn a lot from this game without even realizing it.

This game encourages you, at all times, to work on your math skills, as you'll need to calculate how many resources you need to get a tile*, how many you'll have on the next turn, and more. You'll eventually see yourself working on these skills as you play the game, and that's what makes this civilization game a "hidden" math lesson.

At the same time you calculate what you must spend, you'll also be working on your resource management skills. If you decide to get a few tiles, you'll have to consider what you'll have in the future and what you'll do with it later on. You'll be in the present, but thinking about the future!

And, for all of this to work, obviously, you'll need to focus completely on what's happening in the game, and this important immersion will encourage you to work on another essential ability, strategy. It's critical for this game and also your life.

Finally, this game features buildings, wonders, territories, and real characters from history, as well as beautiful illustrations of them. It is a history lesson in game-form.

Nations is truly a great lesson!

I highly recommend Nations for your collection!!!