The result is a board game that feels suitably epic in scale and deep in its strategy, without being a bear to play.

To get a Culture Win, players need to dedicate their cities to art and build wonders, which generate culture tokens. Our 4-player game using the advanced rules took *eight* hours to play through, making it a game that you can't just whip out for a quick evenings bash. Perhaps its comparative obscurity is in part because Tresham, unlike Meier, kept his name off the box, leaving the generic mononym. The next problem that I had with this game came with being able to easily recognize what was going on. Nobody can develop "Feudalism" (for example) until "Code of Laws" and "Construction" have been developed.Next time that I'm in the mood to play a game like this, I think I'll just wind up playing Sid Meier's Civilization V or Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. You’ll gather commodities, build cities, trade with neighbouring nations, create alliances and even go to war to acquire aspects of your increasingly advanced civilisation such as literacy, astronomy and engineering. Fantasy Flight is not known for their amazing boxes or inserts and honestly is the one biggest thing they need to improve about their games. So you and the defender both roll a die, then you add to that number whatever space your military card is on.

Each player plays a historic civilization and starts in the area where appropriate for that civilization, and attempts to grow and expand their empire over successive turns, trying to build the greatest civilization while minimizing the effects of calamities and war. The same can be said for this game but it wasn’t so much “fun” as it was more like I had a ton of stuff going on so working all the angles took some focus. This was presumably to cut production costs, and it means that players who have military forces roaming the map are obliged to put a Flag Bearer of their color with their forces so everyone knows what belongs to who. However, all cities start off unproductive and unhappy (cities that produce wine or gems are always happy however).At the end of battle, both players calculate their combat bonus and the player with the higher bonus wins the battle. A modern-classic from the 80s, Civilization is widely thought to be the first game ever to incorporate a "technology tree". From celebrated British board game designer, Francis Tresham, Civilization is a modern-classic game of skill and strategy for 2-7 players. It doesn’t take up all that much space and all that’s on the board are your little city minis and the little control tokens that are used to show what land you have under your control.

The defending city usually has a bigger default bonus than the attacking army, so the attacking army must be prepared to win the battles.Since any given area only supports so many population tokens, players need to spread out, eventually meeting the civilizations of other players. Those unfamiliar with the video game series will find Civilization: The Board Game a great way to enter into the world of Civilization. Besides the main game, it included two shorter variants, one eliminating trade and one that includes only trade. It really becomes stale after a few plays even though I know the terrain has to be that way to work with the utterly cool focus bar. Players may have up to two cities (three with a technology), which are built at the present location of any of their scout units, subject to building restrictions.