Through the Ages

Components

For 2–4 players, taking about 2–4 hours, ages 14 and up. Each player runs a civilization from Age A through Age IV, growing technology, population, and strength. Whoever has the most culture points when the game ends wins.

Setup

1. 1Place the civilization, science, culture, and military boards in the center, and set your player board in front of you.
2. 2Place all 16 blue tokens in the blue bank, and distribute yellow tokens: 18 to the bank, 6 onto your starting technology cards, 1 into the worker pool.
3. 3Place 4 white tokens and 2 red tokens beside (not on) your Despotism card. This is the starting player's baseline for civil and military actions.
4. 4Set your 4 rating markers to science 1, culture 0, strength 1, and happiness 0, and your 2 points counters to science and culture 0. Place your tactics standard in the common tactics area to show you have no current tactic.
5. 5Choose a starting player (this never changes). Shuffle the Age A military deck, deal players+2 cards face down to the current events space, and return the rest to the box unseen.
6. 6Shuffle the Age A civil deck and deal 13 cards face up to the card row. Keep the rest of this deck and the other decks nearby.

A turn — Politics Phase → Action Phase → End-of-Turn

1. 1Start-of-Turn Sequence: replenish the card row (skipped on the first round), resolve any declared war, and move any exclusive tactic to the common area.
2. 2Politics Phase: you may take at most one political action — prepare an event, play an aggression, declare a war, offer or cancel a pact, or resign (skipped on your first turn).
3. 3Action Phase: spend your civil and military actions in any order and combination — take cards, develop technology, build buildings or units, increase population, and more.
4. 4End-of-Turn Sequence: discard excess military cards → Production Phase (score science/culture, resolve corruption/consumption, produce food/resources, unless facing an uprising) → draw military cards → reset all action tokens.

The Action Phase — civil and military actions

Your action totals come from the white (civil) and red (military) tokens granted by your government and other cards in play. Growing your population does not grant more actions — only cards do that. Population only lets you place more workers onto farm, mine, urban-building, military-unit, and tactics cards.

Production Phase — scoring science and culture, corruption and consumption

The Politics Phase — events, aggression, war, pacts

If a prepared event later reveals a territory, every player may bid in a colonization auction, clockwise from whoever revealed it. Bids may not exceed the colonization force a player can actually send, and the last bidder remaining must sacrifice that many military units to claim the colony.

Age transitions and discarding

1. 1If replenishing the card row empties the current age's civil deck, the next age begins immediately (A → I → II → III → IV).
2. 2When a new age begins: cards from any older age are discarded from hands, and antiquated leaders, unfinished wonders, and pacts are removed from play; each player loses 2 yellow tokens.
3. 3Shuffle the new age's civil and military decks to become the current decks. Age IV has no new decks at all, and you draw no military cards in Age IV.
4. 4When Age III ends and Age IV begins, the game is winding down: if it happened during the starting player's turn, this round is the last; otherwise the next round is the last.

Final scoring — it all comes down to culture

1. 1When the last round ends, resolve every remaining Age III event in the current and future events decks, in any order.
2. 2Apply any end-of-game bonuses (cards with a 'you immediately score' effect that triggers at game end, such as Bill Gates).
3. 3The player with the most culture points wins. Tied players share the victory.

Culture points are not a single end-game calculation — they accumulate automatically every Production Phase, equal to your culture rating. Building theaters, libraries, leaders, and wonders that raise that rating earlier compounds over the remaining turns. Age III wonders also often score a one-time bonus the moment they are completed.

Strategy tips

• Ignoring strength entirely risks losing special technologies or resources to aggressions and wars. It is not just a scoring path — keep at least a minimal defense.
• As your banks drain, corruption and consumption losses grow. Watch bank headroom whenever you add farms or mines.
• Your culture rating is scored automatically every turn, so theaters, libraries, and leaders taken earlier compound over every remaining turn.
• Cheap card-row spaces on the left are tempting but about to be discarded. Cards you don't need urgently can be left to get cheaper over a few turns.
• You can hold only one leader at a time, and taking a leader blocks any other leader from that same age. Time your swaps carefully.
• Declaring a revolution changes your government instantly, but it costs your entire civil action total, leaving little else to do that turn.

Player-count adjustments and editions

This guide covers the 2015 'A New Story of Civilization' edition, CGE's full art and rules overhaul of the game. It differs in card composition and some rules from the original 2006 'Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization.' CGE's own file server hosts an official Korean rulebook for the new edition, confirming a Korean localization exists, but this research could not confirm which domestic distributor sells it (⚠️ unverified). A mobile app (iOS/Android) launched in 2017 and a Steam version in 2018.

Frequently confused rules

History and editions

The game was designed by Czech designer Vlaada Chvátil, also known for Codenames, Galaxy Trucker, and Mage Knight. The original 2006 'Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization' won the 2007 International Gamers Award (General Strategy) and 2010 Polish Game of the Year, and held a top-five BoardGameGeek ranking for years.

In 2015, CGE re-released it with fully reworked art and rules as 'A New Story of Civilization' (the edition this guide covers). A 2017 mobile app was nominated for Best Mobile Game at the New York Game Awards, and a 2018 Steam version followed.

According to Namuwiki, the original 2006 edition received an official Korean release in 2012 through Boardpia under license. Which distributor, if any, handles the 2015 new edition in Korean was not confirmed by either wiki checked (⚠️ unverified, as of 2026-10-11). This guide can only confirm that CGE's own file server distributes an official Korean rulebook for the new edition.