If you have less than 9 players and want to experience playing the whole board, try "Double Empires"
The result is a game with lots of calamities, higher income and the ability to buy and try those cards you either cannot afford, or do not get the opportunity to buy in the normal game - but takes about 9 - 10 hours to play.
About 12 months ago, we only had 9 players. My son desperately wanted to play the whole map (for 18 players) and we finally gave into him, expecting it to be a total disaster.
Double Empires is now our preferred way of playing Civilization: The Expansion Project.
The modifications to the rules we made were:
1. Each player had 110 tokens, 8 ships and 18 Cities.
2. Calamity Cards carried double damage - e.g. Epidemic inflicted 50 points of damage to the Primary Victim, while Medicine and Anatomy allowed up to 16 units less damage. Barbarian Hordes consisted of 30 tokens! etc.
3. Civilization Advance Cards cost the same amount - not double.
4. Trade cards were combined into one stack
5. You start your empire on two starting points
6. Allocation of trade cards was as follows. For cities 1 - 9 cards were taken from trade stacks 1 to 9. For cities 10 - 18 cards were taken from trade stacks 1 - 9 again.
i.e. A player with 10 cities received trade cards from stacks 1 to 9 plus another card from stack 1 (10 = 9 + 1).
A player with 15 cities received trade cards from stacks 1 to 9 plus 1 card from stacks 1 to 6 (15 = 9 + 6).
7. After one player was traded 6 calamities in one trade we introduced a rule that no more than 3 calamities could be traded in one trade.
8. City tokens in stock rather than unit tokens in stock are used to determine the beneficiary of a Calamity. This speeds up the game.
9. There are a couple of home rules including ensuring players have a minimum loss with epidemic and famine - even if they own the Civilization Cards that reduce the loss.
10. The number of Calamities per player is determined by the number of cities held at the end of the Trade Period. A player who has 0 � 3 cities may not be the primary victim of more than two major calamities and two minor calamities. A player who has 4 � 7 cities may not be the primary victim of more than three major calamities and two minor calamities. A player who has 8 or more cities may not be the primary victim of more than four major calamities and two minor calamities.
While the QuickCharts are great, I find with so many rules little things can be overlooked. With 51 Civilization Cards and it is hard to remember what effect each particular Civilization Card has on the calamities.
As an aid de memoir colour rule charts have been made, which are less detailed than the Rules but more detailed than the QuickCharts.
