This is the the ultimate boardgamers game. Around 2 hours per person to play. The more poeple playing the better it plays (Recommend learning it with 2-3 players) but you have to have some fairly fanatical boardgamers for the 7 hander which lasts around 14 hours.

A very aggressive game, you can work out your frustrations on your enemies, and be generous to your friends. The fact that it has 2 very disparate parts to it, a wargame phase and a trading phase, diplomacy is always involved, as you can do more damage to an enemy in the trading phase, sending plague ridden caravans with very lucrative trades, that both infuriate and please an opponent.

The war gaming section, as you progress though the game, changes as your opponents get more "civilised", depending whether or not they become more warlike or try and better them selves with medicines and agriculture.

The only drawback can be that it tends to generate ganging up.. if someone is getting too far ahead, they suddenly find a coalition against them and it can get nasty (this may be your idea of the perfect game) so the last few rounds can suddenly take a very long time to complete. But in saying that, you really have to pay attention to every aspect of the game, being good at any one part won't win you the title.

9 out of 10 - because it is fairly tough to get 7 people to play for 14 hours

Henchman