Age of Civilization. Game Description and Impressions

 The game is a small gray box with meeples of four colors, a deck of small cards, wooden coins and dice, and several cardboard tablets for scoring, for a tech tree per player, and for the three public actions. The cards contain possible actions (eight pieces), civilizations (34 pieces!) and wonders of the world (10 pieces).

INITIAL GAME SCHEDULE

 We put a meeple on the division 0 of the winning points track. We choose five random maps of the wonders of the world, the rest will not be needed.

 We reveal five cards from the deck of civilizations.

 And in random order, we lay out eight action cards, placing above the first three tablets with three constantly available actions.

 We give each player a technology tablet. We give out three coins to everyone, and one more to the first player (yes, yes, why so, it will become clear now).

General appearance of the game at the beginning. Even the first player's token is visible.

FLOW OF THE GAME

 Players take turns, and the active player performs all three phases listed below at once. The next player will have the same actions as the first player. Thus, the interaction in the game is limited and is reduced to competition for peoples and wonders of the world and - at times - to a comparison of military power, which is simply the number of shields on technologies and civilizations.

1. The choice of civilization

 The active player chooses any of the open civilization cards, places it in front of him and takes the number of meeples of his color drawn on it. At the beginning of the game, this step is mandatory (without minions - nowhere), in subsequent rounds it can be skipped.

 On the map of the people, in addition to the population, two characteristics are indicated. The upper one is active while the selected civilization is active. The bottom one will work the whole game.

 If the player already has a civilization and he decides to take a new one, then he has two ways.

 The first way : update the civilization. The new card is placed on top of the old one, leaving only the bottom property of the predecessor. The player leaves exactly as many meeples as are indicated on the new card. Almost like in "Small World".

 The second way : to conquer a new civilization with its active people. The new card is placed under the active card so that only the bottom property of the subordinates is available. In this case, the player receives one meeple in addition to his own.

 Players place one coin on all four remaining nation cards. The money accumulated from the card will go to whoever chooses it later. A new civilization opens from the deck.

 The properties of nations are diverse. They improve standard actions, save money, add action cells, increase military power. Their combination is one of the advantages of the game.

 It is worth remembering that a player can have a maximum of four meeple and a maximum of three civilizations can be played. And there are six rounds in the game, and workers can easily die - see further. Therefore, it is necessary to choose a new people carefully.

2. Execution of actions

 The active player can now send his workers to available action cells in the classic style of worker placement. Unless, at the end of his turn, the player takes the miplov from the cells and blocks only himself from using the action again.

 Actions from the tablet above a row of action cards are always available to activate, and actions from the three cards below the tablet are also available. Some actions require sending two workers at once, many - additional payment in coins. Workers will not return to the player from some cells (red).

 Technologies can only be studied using the always-available Research action for four coins. Learned technologies are marked with cubes on the technology tablet. There are nine of them in total, the bottom three are available first, then the next ones will open according to the arrows. Almost like its big game brothers, only, of course, it's more of a stunted bush than a technology tree.

 It is possible to pay seven coins and send the meeples to the red window of the Wonder of the World to choose any of the open Wonders of the World cards. They will give a one-time bonus or extra points at the end of the game.

 There are few meeples, they can be replenished only by upgrading the civilization, and as we remember, only three civilizations can be played, so the choice should be made difficult. Money is needed, because without it many actions are not available, but at the end of the game, coins are useless. Do I send my meeples for two coins irrevocably to the Enslave action, expecting to grab a Chinese card with four meeples at the start of the next round? But the ability of the Chinese is too weak.

 There are usually six to seven actions available, a maximum of four meeples, so the action phase flies by quickly.

3. Return of workers

 Finally, the player takes his workers from the action cells. From the white cells, the meeples return to the owner, from the red cells, they go to reset. Currently, these three phases are conducted by the next player.

End of round

 When everyone has gone down, the first player's token is passed counter-clockwise. A tablet with always-available actions moves along a row of action cards to the right. The card that came out from under the faceplate on the left goes out of the game, but a new case begins. If it is a Mora card, all players lose a meeple. If there is a sword in the corner of the new map, then the players compare their military power, that is, simply the number of shields in their technologies and on the maps of nations. The weakest player in military terms loses a worker, if there are several of them, all the weaklings suffer.

 The sixth round, in which there is nowhere to move the tablet, is the last. We count the points and determine the winner!

EXPERIENCE FROM THE GAME

 We only played the prototype, which looks grey. Maps are small, illustrations are minimal. But all the information is well presented, the infographic is clear, the game is very compact.

 Age of Civilization does not compare and does not aim to compare with famous civilization building games. Having only coins and workers as resources, the player has to squeeze the main thing out of his subjects in six rounds - victory points. We have exhausted the current civilization, we are finding a new one. Too bad you can only get three, you have to hold back and plan. And this is the beauty of the game — in a short time and in a combination of the simplest actions, a lot of interesting game decisions are made that affect the entire course of the fight. It is interesting to select a "combo" of the properties of peoples and technologies, choosing between a card with a large number of workers and a card with a good property is difficult and therefore interesting. Yes, sometimes a strong combination of civilizations can come out and someone can easily win thanks to it, but the brevity of the party does not give this problem.

 The constant diversity of the game is also worth noting. Both the variety from party to party due to the large number of people cards and the random sequence of actions, and the variety within the party - each round one action goes and a new one is added.

USEFUL LINKS

Age of Civilization on the BGG portal

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/264647/age-civilization

Age of Civilization on the Game Theory portal

https://tg.in.ua/boardgames/1893/age-civilization

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