Civilization (board Game) - Overview

Overview

The Civilization board depicts areas around the Mediterranean Sea. The board is divided into many regions. Each player starts with a single population token and grows and expands his empire over the course of turns. Each player tries to build the greatest civilization.

As each nation grows, adding more and more population to the board, players can build cities in regions they control. Each city grants a trade card to the owner, which allows trade with other players for any of eleven commodities, such as iron, grain and bronze. Along with trade come eight calamities such as volcanoes, famine and civil war, which destroy population and cities. Trade cards are combined in sets to purchase civilization cards, which grant special abilities and give bonuses toward future civilization card purchases. The civilization cards grant access to abilities such as agriculture, coinage, philosophy and medicine.

The goal of Civilization is to be first to advance to the final age on the Archaeological Succession Table (AST). The AST contains fifteen spaces and players are advanced on the AST each turn. The AST starts at 8,000 B.C. and ends at 250 B.C. At several points, however, certain conditions must be met (such as, the civilization must have a certain number of cities) in order to advance. Since most civilizations do not meet the advancement criteria at all stages on the AST, games usually last more than fifteen turns.

Civilization is unusual in that it does not focus on war and combat as many games of its genre do. Instead, players are encouraged to trade and cooperate in order to advance. War and combat are entirely permissible, however, and are sometimes inevitable. In fact, the game is designed to limit player's geographical expansion possibilities, forcing them to deal with other civilizations militarily, diplomatically or otherwise if they wish their own civilization to reach its full potential.

Trade (via trade cards) is the most important activity in Civilization. Trade cards give the player's civilization wealth, which ultimately help the civilization advance on the AST. Cards are more valuable the more of one type the player possesses. For example, one salt is worth 3 points, two are worth 12 points, and three are worth 27 points. If a player possesses all the cards of one type, he effectively corners the market and gains the most value for his cards. Many "trade sessions" can become quite vocal and exuberant as players try to out-trade one another. Trades are done in groups of three or more cards. Since players are only required to tell the truth about one of the cards and the total points value they are trading, calamity cards can be slipped into a trade, thereby avoiding receiving the primary effects of the calamity.