Grow your fledgling civilization from scratch and outmaneuver opposing civilizations in Roll Through the Ages: the Bronze Age! Outsmart your opponents as you build cities and research developments. Complete great monuments before they do. Avoid disasters while sending pestilence and revolts to your opponents. End up being the most powerful empire in the Bronze Age by winning the technology and construction race in this exciting dice game!
Roll Through the Ages can be an empire-building dice game thematically based on the Through the Ages game which in turn is founded on the hit computer game Sid Meier’s Civilization (which in turn is based on the initial Civilization game!) This dice game – with each game lasting about 50 % an hour – is known as a quick and easy option to the Through the Ages game which has somewhat more complex mechanics and may take up to 4-5 hours.
Roll Through the Ages has a set of 7 dice unique to the game, 4 pegboards, colored pegs and a collection of score sheets, which is all you need to play the game. The overall game mechanics are also pretty easy to pick up: a turn starts with a new player rolling dice to see what resources they get. Goods and food are collected and workers are fed. The workers build cities and monuments, and then you get to buy a development. That is the basis of the overall game, and players repeat these actions before game ends, which happens when all the monuments have already been built or any single player has 5 developments. The ball player with victory points wins the game.
The first action in the turn is rolling the dice to see what resources you obtain. The number of dice you roll depends upon how many cities you have, and the dice produce either food, goods, workers, coins or skulls. Workers are used to build new cities and monuments, while food must feed the workers. Goods and coins are used to buy developments. Skulls are bad, representing disasters that occur to either you or your opponents.
You can roll each die up to 3 times (except skulls which can not be re-rolled). This allows one to influence the dice to produce resources closer to what you need that turn. More workers will be handy if you were attempting to expand or build a monument, when you would want more food if your food stores are running low as well as your people are about to starve. Once all of the dice are rolled, any food and goods collected are marked on a pegboard which records the stuff you have in storage. Based on just how many goods you roll and how much stock you have, several types of goods with differing coin values are added to your stock.
The next action is to feed your cities. Having more cities means you get to roll more dice, but it addittionally means you have to produce more food to help keep them from starving. Unless you produce enough food and you also have insufficient food in storage, your workers will starve and you’ll be penalized with negative victory points. Disasters (based on skulls on the dice) are resolved now aswell. Depending on just how many skulls turn up, either you or your opponents will incur negative points or even lose all of the goods in storage.
The next thing involves assigning the workers you rolled this turn to building cities and/or monuments. Each available city or monument has tick boxes inside them on the score sheet, indicating how many workers are needed to complete them. Once all tick boxes in a city or monument are filled, they’re completed. Completed cities offer you yet another die to roll but cost an extra food each turn. Monuments haven’t any effect other than providing you with victory points. There’s urgency in building them though, as the first player to perform a monument will earn double the points of those who are slower. In addition, among the endgame conditions is when all of the monuments have been built.
Lastly, you can buy developments utilizing the goods in your storage sufficient reason for coins rolled this turn. These developments provide victory points but additionally convey beneficial effects. For instance, the Agriculture development gives a supplementary food for each food die you roll, while the Religion development causes the Revolt disaster to affect your opponents instead of yourself. The better developments will cost more, but also provide more victory points once the game ends. Another of the finish game conditions is when any player has 5 developments.
The strategies available are nearly limitless. Do you want to concentrate on growing your cities first and thereby get to roll more dice? Or do Tungsten Dungeons and Dragons want to sacrifice growth in order to rush-build monuments for double points before others have to be able to complete them? Or can you prefer to go on the offensive and make an effort to create disasters that will cripple your opponents? Or will you invest the first game in getting goods and coins for powerful developments? With the developments, you might also need a choice in concentrating on commerce-related developments, or ones focusing on food or disasters. As you can imagine, there are so many ways to play this game.
The only real drawback is that the overall game is really quick (around around 30 minutes) and doesn’t feel as epic being an empire-building game should. The developers have taken this on board, and also have released a free of charge mini-expansion called The Late Bronze Age which contains adjustments to the game mechanics and objectives. This expansion could be downloaded from their website, possesses new mechanics such as shipping and trading goods with other players. This adds more complexity and player interaction to the overall game. The endgame conditions may also be adjusted, with games now lasting a far more fulfilling one hour.
Roll Through the Ages is really a simple and elegant game that captures the feel of an empire-building game, but with only a fraction of that time period investment. And since its name contains the words ‘The Bronze Age’, it really is fair to assume that more expansions will be coming along to create you through the Medieval, Industrial and Modern ages for more empire-building fun. Roll Through the Ages is ideal for you if you want empire-building games like Through the Ages or Endeavor, but prefer a thing that is quick and simple.