Critical Collapse

Table of Contents

Critical Collapse

A GAME OF CONSEQUENCES

The Rules Tutorial

If you have already read the general overview, you are probably eager to start playing. Because of the relative complexity of Critical Collapse it has been demonstrated through play testing that the best way to learn is to get some friends, sit down and start to play. The rules and definitions can be learned during the process. One thing to remember about rules, and that is to be flexible with each other when it comes to conflict and interpretation. My primary purpose for the development of Critical Collapse is to bring an awareness of the fragility of our world and ourselves and how regardless of our personal goals we must cooperate together in order to survive this dangerous opportunity. The secondary purpose of course is to have fun doing it! Although this game is an abstract of our world, it does accomplish both of these goals.

Critical Collapse can be played with 2 to 8 players, optimum 6 players. The game could be played solo, but one looses a lot of the flavor. The example given in this tutorial is with four of the players, they are Players A, B, C, and D. Player A will be our major focus for the first turn.

Phase 1) Starting Play, establishing player turn order and placement of Conditional Events.

The first thing each of the players do is roll a six sided die. The highest number is the player who will be leading the sequence of play during the first turn, each player following in sequence behind. Re-roll ties until every one is in a sequenced order. Sequence order is determined every turn on phase 1. Lead players will be responsible for rolling Conditional Events and the placing of Conditional Units, and World Market rolls.

Now that the player order has been established it is time to set up the board. On Turn 1 the Global Warming/Freezing Calculations chart shows that each of the poles on the game board will have 40 Ice Sheet Units, as seen above. Note: An error may show when inputting data in cells, simply re-entering the data clears this error.

The lead player drags out 80 Conditional Ice Sheet Units from the pieces pallet under ConditionalEvents. This task is simplified by holding the shift-key and right clicking or control-c to copy additional Ice Sheet units, several Ice Sheet units my be selected and duplicated in this manner. These will be placed on the board to form the northern and southern polar ice caps. You will notice that each space on the board has a coordinate (numbering) system, 01-01, 02-01. 07-14, etc. Place an Ice Sheet Unit on every space that begins in a 01- and a 02-. There are 40 of them. See the example below. This is the northern polar ice cap.

For the southern polar ice cap do the same thing but on the spaces that begin in 20- and 19-, like the example below.

Once the player is finished placing the Ice Sheet Units on the board for the polar caps, it is time to pick territories. The player is allowed to pick ten land territories (that is any space that is not water) the player may also chose any hex that is an Ice Sheet or Drought/New Land, however an Ice Sheet or Drought/New Land territory is not counted as Farmland and any Units on Ice Sheets require twice their Supply). The Player does this by placing a Nationality Unit on each of the chosen territories. The player can choose any land territory or Ice Sheet, on the first turn there are no Drought/New Land Units on the board yet. Each player follows in suit till all the players have selected their ten territories. The player's choice of the color/letter of the Nationality Units can be based on the original sequence order or just agreed upon by the players. The players record this information on their Player Record Sheets and Charts located in the Records button for each player. Note: The North and South Poles will continue to grow slowly until industrialization takes place and then they may or may not recede.

Phase 2) Calculate (EPGM) Economic Point Gold Modifier.

Now you are ready to begin phase 2 of the first turn of Critical Collapse. Next each player calculates their personal Economic Point Gold Modifier, since neither the players nor the World Market have any Gold yet the math will be easy, and if you are using the formulas that are included with this Vassal Module in the TOC document its a no-brainer, but you will need to install OpenOffice to use it.

The Economic Point Gold Modifier (EPGM) is calculated by multiplying the the amount of Gold Units in the World Market by -0.04 this result is the Gold Market Modifier (GMM) which will be the same for all players. For our first turn there is 0 Gold in the World Market so, [ (0 X -0.04) = 0 ] = GMM = 0. We need to add this to the Player's Gold Modifier (PGM), which is derived similarly. PGM is calculated by multiplying the amount of Gold Units each individual player has (this is unique to each player) by +0.04 and then adding +1. So again since this is our first turn and we have no Gold the result is; [ (0 X +0.04) +1 = 0 + 1 = 1 ] =PGM = 1. Now GMM + PGM = EPGM, that is; 0 + 1 = 1. Since every one is on equal ground on turn 1 every one's EPGM = 1 . Below is a screenshot of the OpenOffice spreadsheet.

Phase 3) Count Territories for base Economic Points, calculate new EP's.

Count the number of territories under your control, that is territories with your Nationality Units on them, (since this is the first turn every body has 10 territories with a base value of 10 EP's each this comes to a base value of 100 EP's each). As will be seen, turns that follow the first turn may be carring over EP's that were not spent. A player would be adding those EP's to the territorial EP's during this phase of the turn. Now that the players have established how many EP's they have they multiply those EP's by their EPGM derived in Phase 2. So, 100 X 1 = 100. Each player now has 100 EP's .

OK you are probably asking yourself why did we do this? What was the purpose? The purpose is that Gold stabilizes your Economic Points or better the value of your currency. This is why your EPGM is so important. Should the World Market have all 20 Gold Units, those same 100 Ep's that were calculated above would now be valued at only 20 EP's the EPGM would equal 0.2 instead of 1. Now the converse is also true if a player owned all 20 Gold units, that player's EPGM would be 1.80, making the same 100 EP's into 180 EP's. The other players would have an EPGM of 1 because the amount of Gold they posses indexed against the World Market would be equal.

The players can now record this information on their Handouts. In the Vassal Module of Critical Collapse you will find this under Records.

In the example below we see Player A's Record Sheet, one is graphical the other input values. On the graphical all of the necessary types of information that the player needs to record is available.

Continue on to Phase 4.

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