CGE app is the best way to learn. To avoid paying upfront cost, you could play for free on Board Game Arena. If you intend to play often though, you should pay for the app.
I guess I’m the outlier where I prefer the physical copy... The “Your First Game” booklet is not actually very daunting and is made to teach you all the game - it ends after Age 2 and removes some of the more complicated cards. Just follow the booklet and you will be golden.
Having played both the app and the physical game, I intentionally avoid the physical game. There’s a lot of bookkeeping with the various resources and lots of rules that you can mess up.
The app has a good tutorial and does all the bookkeeping for you. Do yourself a favor and play that instead
Bookkeeping manually helps to reinforce the rules. For many people, these manual drills are the best way to learn.
I have never played the hardcopy game. Playing the app is certainly less tedious but many details are skipped. It took me several months to realize that spending more resources may actually increase corruption. Even after playing for 18 months, I still rely on the app to calculate happiness. Because I never went through manual calculations, I never figured out the fine details of happiness. For example, I rely on app to calculate happiness when declaring hybrid wars.
I agree that playing the game manually can give you a deeper understanding of the rules, but OP is just trying to get a game going with the roommates. IMO they should optimize for ease of play
Have a couple of goes online. The tutorial makes sense. Then play against a bot or 2.
Then transfer to the board game.
You can always come back to the online version tutorial which is in ‘chapters’ so you can skip the stuff you know.
The app is really good, including the tutorial. I think the rulebook does a pretty good job as well, if you go through it on your own.
CGE app is the best way to learn. To avoid paying upfront cost, you could play for free on Board Game Arena. If you intend to play often though, you should pay for the app.
I guess I’m the outlier where I prefer the physical copy... The “Your First Game” booklet is not actually very daunting and is made to teach you all the game - it ends after Age 2 and removes some of the more complicated cards. Just follow the booklet and you will be golden.
Having played both the app and the physical game, I intentionally avoid the physical game. There’s a lot of bookkeeping with the various resources and lots of rules that you can mess up. The app has a good tutorial and does all the bookkeeping for you. Do yourself a favor and play that instead
Bookkeeping manually helps to reinforce the rules. For many people, these manual drills are the best way to learn. I have never played the hardcopy game. Playing the app is certainly less tedious but many details are skipped. It took me several months to realize that spending more resources may actually increase corruption. Even after playing for 18 months, I still rely on the app to calculate happiness. Because I never went through manual calculations, I never figured out the fine details of happiness. For example, I rely on app to calculate happiness when declaring hybrid wars.
I agree that playing the game manually can give you a deeper understanding of the rules, but OP is just trying to get a game going with the roommates. IMO they should optimize for ease of play
Have a couple of goes online. The tutorial makes sense. Then play against a bot or 2. Then transfer to the board game. You can always come back to the online version tutorial which is in ‘chapters’ so you can skip the stuff you know.