Through the Ages (iOS and Android) by Vlaada Chvátil

Hunh… I barely remember that one but now I want to play it!

You’re very welcome. I hope it helps, though it’s aimed at introducing people to the game rather than teaching basic strategy. If you have any strategy questions, feel free to ask me.

Damn, I don’t want to be dumb! I better buy this.

It does look good.

The Age III events are intended as a sort of reward for having a well-developed civilization at the end of the game. They act as an incentive to not tear down everything you have in search of one more victory point, because what you have already will probably turn out to be worth a few anyway.

If you are losing a lot of ground when these resolve, it suggests that either you were unfortunate with which events were seeded or you devoted your economy to producing culture a little earlier than you should have.

The latter is exactly what happened, Rho. Thanks for the insight!

Took me 4-5 games to even start to learn the game. It’s so complicated! And so good. My name is “chariotrush” and I wouldn’t mind playing a multiplayer with someone, any pacing.

Anyone know what the yellow dot means?

This display is prompted by an Aggression (and/or War card?) card, yes? If so, the yellow dots represent idle workers those players currently have since it’s applicable to the Aggression card you’re considering playing.

Yes, aggression card. AHHH thank you.

So… did we determine if this has iOS/Android cross platform multiplayer?

Yeah, it uses its own accounts. No segregation of the player base.

Awesome, thanks!

Boy, I suck. I’ve yet to beat a single Easy AI opponent. Are there any good sources for strategy?

I sense a league forming soon…

Same… I’ve tried three times, it’s so depressing.

Perhaps we should play each other. I’m registered as tgb, if you want to send me an invitation.

A throwback to my teenaging rebel years: fuck you, Bill Gates ¬_¬

No email notifications in async games, apparently. That sucks.

It’s a mobile app, and it uses the Android or iOS notification system.

I can’t even think of a recent boardgame mobile port that uses email for notification.

psst, Twilight Struggle

Let me stick down some thoughts on basic strategy for 3- and 4-player games. 2-player works quite differently and I haven’t played enough of it to offer much insight.

  • There’s no one right strategy for all games. The randomness of the card row means that the most important skill to be a good player is adaptability. Your luck may vary, but you need to spot opportunities and seize them if they’re at the right price. Of course this requires a good understanding of how each card is useful.

  • Not all cards are created equal. Some are worth picking up almost every time you have the opportunity, others are only useful in rare situations. I’m not going to make a big list of cards and how useful they are, as I think you’ll end up more adaptable if you get a feel for cards by using them rather than learning values by rote.

  • As a rule of thumb, you should be working on improving your economy until late Age II or early Age III, at which point you should be looking to produce as much culture as possible, by whatever means.

  • A corollary of this is that any card before this time that offers you culture should be viewed with suspicion. That culture is probably there to attempt to balance the card having weaker utility in its other effects. For an example, compare the Pyramids with the Colossus. This is only a rule of thumb though: some cards are better than it might suggest (such as St Peter’s Basilica), and the value of a card is very situational to you.

  • The economy of the game is to a certain extent about balance. There’s no point having loads of food (and hence population), if it’s going to sit around doing nothing because you don’t have the resources to build the people into anything. There’s no point developing a shiny new building technology if you can’t find the population to staff it. There’s no point wasting resources because you don’t have the civil actions to spend them fast enough.

  • Early on you should be looking to improve your civil actions, and science and resource production, as these are the most easy to turn into development in other areas. Food and happiness, by contrast, need to be developed in tandem and anyway don’t improve your situation without the resources to improve the generated population.

  • Following this early strategy will tend to result in a big population crunch towards the end of Age I. You need to have a plan in place for fixing this before it becomes too much of a problem, or you will be left behind militarily.

  • Play to your civilization’s strengths. If you have more resources than you need, consider turning them into a wonder. If you have an unusually large amount of science, consider taking and playing civic techs. If you have lots of civil actions, aggressively pick up bonus cards to generate whatever you’re short of.

  • When you see an impending weakness in your setup, pick up cards so you are ready to fix the problem when it arises. It’s much better to hold irrigation and never use it because you got selective breeding at the right moment than it is to be stuck without a farm upgrade until late in Age II.

  • It’s very important not to fall too far behind militarily. This is the trickiest thing to get right, because your military potential is a combination of population, resources, military technology (costing civil actions and science), tactics and military actions. Of these, the key bottlenecks are usually population and military technology. You need to be ready to get stronger at around the end of Age I.

  • Be ready to exploit military weakness in your opponents. The trick is to watch out for the times when those bottlenecks are affecting at least one of your opponents but not you, and suddenly produce a relatively sizable military. This is an opportunity cost for you (in not improving your economy), but will force your opponents to either respond (costing them the same or more) or leave themselves vulnerable. It will also put you in prime position to get good results from events.

  • Improving your government is expensive but necessary. If you change by revolution, it costs an entire turn and it’s also tricky to avoid corruption. A peaceful change of government is much easier to manage, but the science cost is pretty prohibitive. Again, look to your strengths: if you’re short of science go for a revolution, and vice versa.

  • There are two major plans for governments:

    • Change to Monarchy early (often with a revolution) then wait for an Age III government
    • Change only once in the game, to an Age II government.
  • For much of the game, advanced farms, mines, buildings and military are really important because population is so limiting so you want to get as much out of it as you can. You can’t come close to improving them all every age though, so you’ll have to pick and choose what’s most important.

  • Similarly, wonders, civic technologies and governments are so valuable because they don’t cost population to run.