Gaia Project

Gaia? Project is a heavy game with a colossal decision space and so many options on what you can do: each game, balancing expansion versus income gene...

**Gaia Project** ​is much better at a competitive level with strong players because there is a lot of responsibility to set up the map by the person last in turn order; with less skilled players they don't really know how to create it in such a way that makes an interesting game (understandably, it's a very difficult task). **Brass** (both versions) I find pretty bad when not played competitively. The game only gets really interesting when played at 4p by people that understand at least the basics of how to reach a rough equilibrium of strategies (for example, 2 cotton, 1 ports, 1 iron player in Lancashire or 2 beer, 1 cotton, 1 pottery player in Birmingham). At lower levels you'll get stuff like everyone going into beer needlessly or flipping their own ports and creates a less interesting and more similar feeling dynamic from game to game.

For hobby board games I would say **Gaia Project**. Maybe I just haven't played it enough but I don't see the need for an expansion, at least not one that would add any mechanics. Maybe some folks with hundreds of games played would want some new factions, I suppose.

The reason why Gaia Project and Through the Ages are both best-in-class for engine building is they do both of these things extremely well. Both of them balance short and long-term considerations, and in both games just building a huge engine is no guarantee of huge payoffs late in the game. Not guaranteeing huge payoffs also allows the game design to give the players a chance to run their full engine, which is a common complaint of weaker designs.

Leave them out on your table and they will flatten. Gaia Project took almost a week to flatten itself out but has been fine for years now. The box fits the base game, promos, and Branch and Claw expansion with a Plano organizer fine so you’re definitely doing something wrong with your storage.

But now this game is a consistent favorite, and one I consistently win (much to the chagrin of my husband)! :) Then we learned Gaia Project, and I think I struggled at first just because I was expecting a re-theme of TM, so I struggled to adapt to new rules and strategies. But now it's also a favorite for sure!.