Through The Ages: A Game for the Civilized

Through The Ages: A Story of Civilization is a civilization building boardgame, where the goal is to build up your own personal civilization from its humble beginnings to a giant cultural force, with an awesome economy and fancy technologies and artsy stuff and a military that can beat up the other guys.

Our group tried this one out recently (and we loved it).

Very busy box art. On the left is the distant past.  On the right is closer to the modern age.  In the middle is a spaceship clearly taking off from a train smokestack.  That must be the future!

Through the Ages basically plays very much like the Sid Meier's Civilization series of computer games.  If you aren't familiar with them, I highly recommend you check them out.  It's a nice way to sacrifice an entire weekend to sitting in front of your computer.

For those who are familiar with the Civ computer games, there is also a licensed boardgame version, not surprisingly called Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game.  It really does look very much like the computer version shoved into a cardboard box, though the game itself is not nearly as fun.  Kinda like from a distance Spam looks a lot like a chunk of ham, but it only tastes vaguely like it's parent cured meat.

Basically, this:

Looks kinda tasty, but requires heavy frying.  Not as 'glorious' as advertised.

That little detour could have been summarized briefly, as such:  I like Through The Ages much better than the licensed Civilization board game.  That is my opinion, and I will agree to disagree with those who think otherwise.  Because some people really enjoy Spam.

See also, Spam Totoros.  Just because.

But back to the game at hand.  This is what Through the Ages looks like at setup time for the most part.

Pre-game setup.

The Giant Meeple Man is not part of the game (sadly).  The board wouldn't lay flat and we needed an enforcer to make it stay down.

Colossal Meeple.  He is awesome.  Say no more.

Intermission:  I bought Jake this Colossal Meeple because I found it and it needed to be bought and I had no practical use for it.  Clearly it does have uses, though.  (I found it at MeepleSource, the same place I bought all the meeples for my marvelous meeple lamp). This red giant meeple's name is Stanley.  Jake didn't name him.  I did.  Just now.  Jake will find out when he reads this that its name is now Stanley.  And once something gets named, you can't change it.  My brother has a teddy bear who's name is Cheeseball, because I decided it was.  People have tried to change it, but it's too late.  The best the poor bear can ever hope for is to be called "the bear formerly known as Cheeseball." 

True Story.

Each player starts out with their own newly formed civilization.

"Yes... yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land."

You start out with some pretty simple things.  Some simple farms, some bronze mines, a warrior, a bit of philosophy to stimulate the mind, and the possibility for religion (although it hasn't really been started quite yet.)  Your player board has the yellow guys, which can be hired up to your buildings and the little blue guys, which will represent food and ore which are used for getting more population and building things.
Watch out though.  As your population grows, you have to feed them more and more.  And if hoard too much ore without spending it, it...rots or something.  It's called "corruption."  I don't get it but it happens and it is a pain.

Each turn, you have a limited number of actions you can take, based on your current government or other upgrades you've made along the way.
White thingies correspond to civil actions, which include building things or buying new cards.  Red thingies correspond to military actions, which include buying and upgrading military units.  The more thingies you can accumulate, the better, because it lets you do more stuff on a turn.

Every good government has to keep a balance between its white and red thingies.

Each player gets their own complete list of "Things you can do during a turn."  There are a lot of things.  There is a simple/beginning version of the game which has less actions available and takes much less time.  I actually highly recommend it for your first play, just to get the hang of things.  This seems like a lot to learn, but I promise you'll get the hang of it.  I have faith in you.

So much to do.  So few thingies.

Sorry you can't read everything in the picture above.  The glare from the alien mothership is obscuring some of it, and their signal jammers messed up the focus on my camera.  I swear. I accept no responsibility for any blurry photos from here on out.

You win the game by amassing culture, which is this game's version of points.

To get culture, you need to develop your civilization in various ways.  And to advance your civilization, you need to build stuff. You can build things with ore and research. Build what, you ask?

Build things like...

Upgraded mines and farms.

Upgraded farm.  Also known as "Take a biology class and learn about plants."

 Upgraded military units.

Swordsmen were the best I got.  At the end of the game, there were tanks available.  But I stuck with swordsmen.

Upgraded sciences and religions.  And entertainment buildings.

"Bread and Circuses" was the ancient equivalent of "Dinner and a movie"

Wonders.  These are very powerful, special buildings that are purple.

My civilization likes to mix up its architectural styles.

And you can follow some great leaders.

Smart people are cool.  Albert is a bro.

To top it all off, people can be mean and declare war on you.  Having a decent military in this game lets you bully people around, if you choose to be a meanie.  And while an awesome military won't win you the game, having a terrible military is just asking for everyone to steal your lunch money.

There are plenty of details and nuances to this game which aren't worth going into detail here.  Mostly because, again, there are so many things you can do to develop your civilization.

The game progresses through 3 different ages of time, with the upgrades and leaders getting progressively more awesome with each age.  After a few hours, the game table really shows you just how much stuff happens over those ages.

The blurriest picture ever.  Enlarged to emphasize the blurriness. 

My score cube is the yellow cube.  The yellow cube has the most culture on the culture track.  That means I am the winner.  Because I am very cultured.  A classy, classy fellow.

We played this game several weeks ago, and I forgot that I had actually won this one.  But there is photographic evidence!  Pics, therefore it happened.

I have played several civilization building-type games, and Through the Ages is by far my favorite.  The only problem I can come up with is that it runs a bit long.  I usually can't handle games that last several hours.  I also usually can't handle black beans.
But every once in a while a little extra fiber is a good thing.