Through the Ages

Through The Ages: A Story Of Civilization, commonly abbreviated to Through the Ages, is a Euro Game with a civilization-building theme.


 * Ancient Egypt: The Pyramids and the Library Of Alexandria are both buildable wonders.
 * Ancient Greece: Well-represented among the Age A cards: Alexander the Great, Homer, Aristotle and the Colossus all feature among the civil deck. Ancient Rome is less well-represented, its sole representative being Julius Caesar.
 * Bread and Circuses: A technology card, which, in line with the Trope Namer, allows you to assign workers to it to keep your citizens happy.
 * Pyramid Power: In this case, the power is to give you one extra civil action per turn. Probably not thematic, but nevertheless powerful.
 * Spiritual Successor: To the Civilization computer games. Also to the original Civilization board game.
 * Stone Wall: Mahatma Gandhi. You cannot play Aggressions or Wars while you have this leader in play - but other players must pay twice as many Military Actions to play them against you.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Bill Gates, Sid Meier and Elvis Presley are all Age III leaders in the original version. In later editions, the leaders that replace them are, respectively, Nikola Tesla, Alex Randolph and Rock and Roll Icon. Their properties, however, are unchanged.
 * You Require More Vespene Gas: There are several resources to keep track of. You've got food, "resources" (which is sort of an abstract of money, materials and energy), science, as well as yellow tokens representing potential citizens and blue tokens representing potential stuff. Building a solid infrastructure is almost always key to success; this Troper managed to win his first game, though, with only Bronze mines and lots of territories.