# Course of the Game

The game is organized into rounds in which each player takes one turn. Play order remains the same throughout the game, as depicted by the civilization overview panel on your player screen: The civilization on the top takes its turn first; the bottom civilization plays last.

## A Normal Turn

Your turn is divided into phases. During your Politics Phase, you interact with other civilizations and world events, usually via certain military cards. During your Action Phase, you use your civil and military actions to build your civilization.

Your first turn is an exception. In all other turns, the game guides you through the steps in the following order:

### Start-of-Turn Sequence

- The card row is replenished.
- The end of an age might occur.
- Any war you declared on your previous turn is resolved.
- Any tactics card you played on your previous turn becomes available to everyone.

### Politics Phase

During your Politics Phase, you can take one political action. The following actions are possible:

- Prepare a future event.
- Play an aggression.
- Declare a war.
- Offer a pact.
- Cancel a pact.
- Resign.

You can also choose to take no political action by tapping the Skip Politics button.

### Event Evaluation Phase (Digital Rules)

In the digital rules, several events require you to make a choice “on your turn.” These choices are made after your Politics Phase. Any pending decisions are depicted in the upper left corner of your player screen. You can tap the icons to read the texts of the pending effects.

If multiple such events have occured since your last turn, the choices are offered to you in order. So it is possible that after revealing a current event card you will first have to resolve several pending decisions of other past events before making the decision described by the current event.

### Action Phase

During your Action Phase you can spend your civil actions to:

- Take a card from the card row.
- Develop a technology.
- Build a farm or mine.
- Build an urban building.
- Upgrade a farm or mine.
- Upgrade an urban building.
- Destroy a farm or mine.
- Destroy an urban building.
- Build a stage of a wonder.
- Play a leader.
- Change your government peacefully.
- Change your government by revolution.

You can also spend your military actions to:

- Build a military unit.
- Upgrade a military unit.
- Disband a military unit.
- Play a tactics card.
- Copy a tactics card.

You end your Action Phase by tapping the End Turn button.

### End-of-Turn Sequence

If necessary, after you end your turn the game will ask you which military cards you want to discard. But all the remaining steps of your turn happen automatically.

- If you exceed your military hand limit:

- Choose military cards to discard.

- If there is no uprising, the game automatically performs your Production Phase:

- Culture and Science points are scored.
- Corruption is evaluated.
- Food is produced.
- Food is consumed.
- Starvation is evaluated.
- Resources are produced.

- Finally, you automatically receive cards from the military deck, one for each unused military action, up to a limit of 3.

## Start of the Game

When the game starts, the order of play is selected randomly. Each civilization starts with:

- 2 Age A farms on the Agriculture technology.
- 2 Age A mines on the Bronze technology.
- 1 Age A infantry on the Warriors technology.
- 1 Age A lab on the Philosophy technology.
- The age A temple technology, Religion, developed.
- The government Despotism.
- 1 idle worker.

Beginning with the topmost player in the civilization overview panel, the players take their first turn.

## First Turn

The first turn differs from the other turns of the game:

- The players begin with a limited number of civil actions:

- The first player has 1 civil action.
- The second player has 2 civil actions.
- The third player has 3 civil actions.
- The fourth player has 4 civil actions.

- The cards in the card row are not replaced at the start of the turn, and they do not slide into empty spaces to become cheaper.
- There is no Politics Phase.
- During the Action Phase, players are not allowed to do anything except choose cards from the card row.
- Players have no military actions and thus draw no military cards.

## End of an Age

You can't go through the ages if the ages don't end.

### End of Age A

Age A ends at the beginning of the second round, after the card row is replenished with cards from the Age A deck. The Age A civil deck is replaced with the Age I civil deck. This means that not every Age A wonder and leader will be available during the game. At this time, the Age I military deck also comes into play.

Note: If players take a lot of cards in the first round, it is possible to deal out every Age A civil card. If there are still empty spaces, they will be filled with cards from the Age I deck.

### End of Ages I, II, and III

These ages end when the last card of the civil deck is dealt to the card row, which can happen on any player's turn.

At this time, some cards may become antiquated, which means that they are from the age before the age that is now ending. For example, Age A cards become antiquated at the end of Age I.

The following types of antiquated cards are automatically removed from play:

- Any antiquated civil or military cards in players' hands.
- Any antiquated leaders that are in play.
- Any antiquated wonders that are still under construction.
- Any antiquated pacts that are in play.

All other cards in play remain in play regardless of their age.

At this time, players also lose 2 yellow tokens from their yellow banks. This makes their populations more difficult to feed and keep happy. It is a new age, and the people have become more demanding.

Note: By the end of Age III, you might have all your yellow tokens turned into workers. If there are no yellow tokens left in your yellow bank, you will not lose any.

Once these things are dealt with, the new age begins. At the beginning of Ages I, II, and III, the civil and military decks are replaced with those from the new age, and any remaining spaces in the card row will be filled in by cards from the new civil deck.

At the beginning of Age IV, there are no more decks. Age IV triggers the end of the game.

## End of the Game

When the last civil card from Age III is dealt to the card row, the game enters Age IV. If this happens on the first player's turn, then it is the last round. If it happens on another player's turn, players finish the round, and the next round is the last one.

During Age IV, no new cards can be added to the card row and no military cards can be drawn.

The game will inform you when you take your last turn. Also, the sky will change to indicate that this is the twilight of the game. After the last player takes his or her final turn, the game moves to final scoring.

### Final Scoring

At the end of the game, the final scoring window appears.

- Any Age III events remaining in the current or future events decks are evaluated one by one.
- Any end-of-game bonuses are scored (for example, Bill Gates).
- The player with the most culture points is declared the winner.
- If there is a tie, the tied players share the victory.

### Resigning

Hopefully this won’t happen to you, but sometimes everything just goes wrong. If everyone else is stronger and your economy is not good enough for you to catch up, you might find yourself falling further behind every turn, an easy target for every aggression, war, or negative event until the end of the game.

Of course, the game can still be fun even when you are losing. You will not be forced to quit. But it is possible to honorably resign. You admit you lost the game and you let the others compare their strength against each other, rather than compete to see who can harvest more from your weakness.

You can resign as your political action in the Politics Phase of your turn:

- Enter the pause menu (tap the button in the top right corner of your player screen).
- Tap Forfeit the Game.
- Choose to resign.
- Confirm.

Your civilization immediately leaves play. You have lost. You get 100 experience points for each age you have survived.

- All your cards in your hand and in play are removed from the game.
- All pacts to which you were a party are canceled.
- All wars declared against you are canceled, and the other player involved in the war scores 7 culture points .
- If there is only one player left in the game, the game ends and that player wins.
- If there are still two or more players, the game continues as a two- or three-player game.
- Civil and military decks for later ages (not including the current one) are set up according to the number of remaining players.
- Evaluation of events is adjusted according to the number of remaining players.

Exception: You cannot resign in Age IV.

### Abandoning the Game

When you find yourself unable to continue in your game (e.g., due to lack of time) and you don’t want your opponents to wait until you time out, you can decide to abandon the game.

- Enter the pause menu (tap the button in the top right corner of your player screen).
- Tap Forfeit the Game.
- Choose to abandon the game.
- Confirm.

The game ends for you. You have lost.

- Your civilization is handed over to an AI that will finish the game for you against the remaining players.
- Abandoning a game is practically identical to letting your time run out. When you need to leave the game while you are in a fairly good position and you don’t want your opponents to wait, you should always pick this option instead of resigning.