Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

In the full game, turns proceed clockwise from a fixed starting player. Replenish the card row, resolve a war you declared last turn and make tactics available, take at most one political action, perform your Action Phase, then resolve turn end. In the first round, players receive only one, two, three, or four civil actions in order, with no military actions, and may only take cards from the row. Skip the Start-of-Turn Sequence and Politics Phase.

During the Action Phase, spend available white civil and red military actions in any order. Non-wonders cost one, two, or three civil actions by row position and enter your hand. Your civil hand limit equals your civil action total; you cannot take a duplicate technology, and may take only one leader per age. A wonder enters play unfinished and costs one extra action for every completed wonder; you cannot take one while another is unfinished. A yellow action card taken during this Action Phase cannot be played immediately.

Increase population for one civil action and the food cost shown by the rightmost occupied section of your yellow bank, moving one yellow token into your worker pool. Build a farm, mine, or urban building with one civil action, its printed resource cost, and an unused worker; military units instead cost one military action to build. Developing technology does not automatically add workers or production. Urban buildings of each type are limited by your government. Upgrade a worker to a higher-level technology of the same type by paying the resource-cost difference, without increasing population again.

Developing technology normally costs one civil action and science points. A government may be developed for its higher science cost, or through a revolution using all civil actions and its lower science cost. Playing a leader costs one civil action; replacing an existing leader refunds one spent civil action. Wonders are built in stages, normally costing one civil action and the indicated resources per stage, and take effect only when complete. Acquiring a wonder does not finish it.

A political action can prepare an event, play an aggression, declare war, and more. Preparing an event puts it in the future deck, scores culture equal to its level, and reveals the current event; it does not immediately resolve the event just prepared. Aggressions target weaker rivals. Defenders may play defense bonuses or discard other military cards face down for one strength each, using at most their military action total in cards; matching strength stops the aggression. Wars compare strength at the start of the declarer’s next turn, without military bonus cards for either side. No wars may be declared in the last round, and two-player games omit pacts.

At turn end, first discard military cards exceeding your military action total. Then check for an uprising: if discontent workers outnumber unused workers, skip the whole Production Phase. Normal production scores science and culture, pays corruption using the leftmost uncovered negative number in the blue bank, produces food, pays consumption using the leftmost uncovered negative number in the yellow bank, then produces resources. Corruption loses resources first, then food for any shortfall. Each food missing for consumption costs four culture, without dropping below zero.

After production, draw one military card per remaining military action, up to three, then reset all actions. An uprising does not skip military draws or action reset; Age IV has no military cards to draw. Blue tokens on farms or mines represent food or resources at that card’s printed value, rather than always one each. Technologies requiring workers contribute through workers actually on them. Depleting the yellow bank increases food and happiness requirements; unused workers can cover missing happy faces.

Ages I, II, and III end when the last civil-deck card is dealt into the row, starting the next age. Apply antiquation to the age preceding the one just ended: discard the relevant old hand cards, leaders, unfinished wonders, and pacts, and lose two yellow tokens each. Age III ends into IV. If this happens on the starting player’s turn, finish that round; otherwise play one more full round, ensuring equal turns. Score all Age III events in the current and future decks and endgame bonuses. Most culture wins, with shared victory on a tie; do not use the simplified first game’s additional broad scoring table.