Francis Tresham - RIP
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:05 pm
Francis Tresham, founder of the board game company Hartland Trefoil and designer of the original board game Civilization and the 18xx series of railroad building games, passed away yesterday. He was old.
After college, I settled in with a younger gaming group, inherited from a friend who went off and joined the army. Diplomacy was a little too abstract and required soft skills many in the group lacked, but the AH publication of Civilization became a staple played probably 100 times or more in the ensuing years. We also played 1830...I enjoyed the group dynamics in that game as well, but record keeping bogged things down and games were longer than they should have been.
The later Advanced Civilization and 1830 both were ported to the PC in the old DOS days. I seem to recall Advance Civ having a nasty bug that was usually a show-stopper, but 1830 was terrific, and difficult! With the automated record keeping, games went from a 6 hour board game to a 20-30 minute computer game. The AI shamelessly colluded among itself, making it difficult for a single player to win. I don't know if either of these games resurfaced in playable form in modern times, but I'd like to play them again.
After college, I settled in with a younger gaming group, inherited from a friend who went off and joined the army. Diplomacy was a little too abstract and required soft skills many in the group lacked, but the AH publication of Civilization became a staple played probably 100 times or more in the ensuing years. We also played 1830...I enjoyed the group dynamics in that game as well, but record keeping bogged things down and games were longer than they should have been.
The later Advanced Civilization and 1830 both were ported to the PC in the old DOS days. I seem to recall Advance Civ having a nasty bug that was usually a show-stopper, but 1830 was terrific, and difficult! With the automated record keeping, games went from a 6 hour board game to a 20-30 minute computer game. The AI shamelessly colluded among itself, making it difficult for a single player to win. I don't know if either of these games resurfaced in playable form in modern times, but I'd like to play them again.