Through the Ages
Variants
There are three variants of Through the Ages: simple, advanced, and full.
The rules for the variants are marked as such:
- This rule always applies
- This rule applies only to the simple game
- This rule applies only to the advanced game
- This rule applies to both the advanced and full games
- This rule applies only to the full game
Set Up
Prepare Decks
Set aside Development of Politics from Military Deck A. Set aside
Civil Decks II and III and Military Decks I, II, and III.
Set aside the 4 war cards from Military Deck II. Randomly
select 4 event cards from Military Deck III and place them near the board.
Set aside the rest of Military Deck III and Civil Deck III.
Randomly select 2+(# players) cards from Military Deck A and set
aside the rest. For a 2 player game, set aside the pact cards from the
Military Decks.
Set aside any cards from the Civil Decks that do not match the number of players
(3+, 4+).
Set up the board
- Shuffle Military Deck A and place it on current events
- Shuffle Civil Deck A and fill the card row with them, placing the rest on
the board
- Shuffle Military Deck I and place it on the board
Set up player mats
Fill production/population banks, worker pool, and initial buildings/units (update science
rating and strength accordingly). Take civil and military tokens according to
your government.
First turn
- Starting player gets 1 civil action, next gets 2, etc. Take cards from the card row
- Maintenance
Normal Turn
The basic turn structure is
- Card row
- War
- Events
- Political action
- Civil/military actions
- Maintenance
Throughout the game, remember to look for adjustments to your civilization’s
culture and science rating after every action.
Card Row
- Remove cards based on number of players
- Shift cards down
- Deal new cards
- If the civil deck is exhausted, it’s the end of that age and cards from the
previous age become obsolete (e.g. the last card from Civil Deck I
obsoletes cards from Deck A). Replace the
Civil and Military
Decks with the ones from the next age. All players:
- Discard obsolete leaders, pacts, unfinished wonders, and cards in hand
- Set aside 2 unused yellow tokens from your population bank
The end of Age A does not trigger the end-of-age rules.
After the starting player’s second turn, the remaining cards from Civil Deck A
are set aside and replaced with Civil Deck I.
War
Resolve a previously declared war as a normal aggression except:
- You may not use defensive bonuses
- The defender can claim the reward if they win
Events
On the starting player's turn after the second round, the top current events card is revealed and takes effect.
Political Action
You may do one of the following:
- Play an event onto the future events deck, score culture points equal to its
age, and reveal the top current event. If that is the last current event,
shuffle future events and move them to current events, ordering them by
age
- To resolve new territory, players bid on the territory by sacrificing
military units and playing colonization bonuses. You do not have to
specify how you will pay unless you win. You must sacrifice at least one
unit, your total payment may exceed your bid
- When breaking ties for events (e.g. “the strongest”, “the most”), the tie is
broken in favor of the player who will go first
- Play aggression against a player.
- Offense may sacrifice units to double their strength
- Defense may then sacrifice units and/or play defensive bonuses
- If offense exceeds the defense strength, they take the reward from the
defense (not more than the defense has)
- Declare war against a player (to be resolved next round)
- Propose a (specific) pact to a (specific) player (replacing any existing pact
you have)
- Dissolve a previous pact
Unit sacrifices are not allowed in the last round.
Civil/military actions
Possible civil actions
- Take cards
- You have a hand limit equal to your maximum number of civil actions
- You can take at most 1 leader from each age
- Wonders you take go under construction immediately (limit of 1 under
construction at a time)
- It costs 1 extra action to take a wonder for each finished one you have
- You cannot take a Technology that you already have (in hand or in play)
- Increase population
- Build/upgrade/destroy buildings
- Mind your urban building limit
- Construct a stage of your wonder
- Play leader/technology/action
- You cannot play an action that you just picked up
- Special technologies with the same illustration replace each
other
- Declare revolution (takes ALL of your civil actions)
Possible military actions
- Build/upgrade/destroy units
- Play tactics (replacing previous one)
- Obsolete units reduce effectiveness of some armies
- Each army can have one air force unit, to double its bonus
Maintenance
The next player can start their turn now.
- Fill unmet happiness spaces with unused workers. If you do not
have enough workers to do so, it’s an uprising. Your turn is over
- Score science and culture points
- Produce food for each farm worker
- Consumption: return food to the supply according to your empty population bank spaces
- If you do not have enough food, it's a famine. Lose 4 culture points for each food you are
missing
- Produce resources for each mine worker
- Optionally return 1 resource to the supply
- Corruption: return resources to the supply according to your
empty supply spaces
- Discard military cards down to your maximum number of military
actions, then draw military cards for each unused military action (at most 3)
- If the military deck runs out, shuffle the discards from the current age to
form a new one
Then wait for your next turn.
Game End
When the last civil deck has been emptied and every player has had the same
number of turns, the game ends.
Except in the full game, where there is one more round.
- Each civilization scores bonus culture points:
- 2 points for each Level 1 technology
- 2 points for each strength
- 2 points for each happy face
- 1 culture point for each food and resource produced per round
- culture points equal to its science rating
- The 4 event cards from Military Deck III take effect
- All Age III event cards remaining in current and future
events take effect
The player with the most culture points wins.