Meet The Malay: A Civilization of GMT’s Ancient Civilizations of East Asia
By Mark McLaughlin & Fred Schachter
Hopefully, this series is engendering your interest and enthusiasm regarding this third offering of the “Ancient Civs” Series: Ancient Civilizations of East Asia. Here’s a glimpse into one of the game’s nineteen Civilizations: The Malay of southeast Asia.
The geography of the Malay Archipelago encouraged and rewarded the Austronesian people who lived there to become fishermen and maritime traders. The numerous independent kingdoms comprising the Malay Civilization of Ancient Civilizations of East Asia each carved a homeland out of the jungles that covered their islands and the larger Malay peninsula. They eventually coalesced, through naval commerce, into a greater civilization famed for its social, cultural and governmental traditions.
The above illustration provides a vision of how life was in the Ancient Malay Civilization and if a reader clicks its link, other related, and intriguing, images will reveal themselves. For more regarding Malay, see: History of Malaysia – Wikipedia.
It should be noted that for the purposes of the ACEA game, which spans centuries via its four Epochs, Malay’s various Kingdoms and Empires have been consolidated into a singular player Civilization.
To represent the importance of the sea to the Malay, at the start of each Growth Phase this Civilization gains one tael (the money in the game) for every four Sea Areas they occupy. Note that as a primarily commercial civilization they need only occupy, not control, these Sea areas with but a single disk, and can thus co-exist peacefully with other civilizations (and even barbarians!)…at least until they, or someone else, places a second disk in that Area (which triggers Competition, or, as a famous wascally cartoon wabbit would so famously put it: “This means war!”).
This commercial power means, at least potentially, that the Malay player could receive considerable tael wealth each turn for use in mitigating the effects of opponent inflicted evil Karma Cards and to triumph in Competitions (since, in most situations, a tael can “buy off” a disk loss).
That wealth could alternatively be used as Resources to acquire Cultural Development Track Display advancements. For more regarding this Ancient Civilizations of East Asia game’s feature, see: An Overview of Ancient Civilizations of East Asia’s Cultural Development Tracks – InsideGMT
When it comes to Cultural Development, all citified ACEA Civilizations have an at start level playing field. The ACEA Design & Development Team have observed games where the Malay, due to their wealth generation advantage, can shine indeed!
Note how the four Sea areas Malay initially controls contain four extra disks, which when combined with its turn one Growth Phase allocation of 4 disks (one for each two disk Settlement and two more for the four Sea areas) and a tael, provides at least 8 disks for expansion or to create VP generating Cities.
The Philosophy the Malay player selects and proximity of neighboring Civilizations (particularly any which are “Jungle Attrition Immune” as the Malay are) will guide that player’s strategic choices… which are diverse, challenging, and potentially rewarding.
Next up in this “Meet the Civs” Series, we return to the mainland and the Ancient Chinese Northern Wei Civilization!
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