Civilization

They came to this planet, and they chose you. They uplifted your people and promised great prosperity. They provided the wisdom and the resources to build your cities sky high. They taught you the ways of culture, science, and warfare. They promised knowledge for any willing to learn. Come, Archon, guide your citizens to victory, under the watchful eyes of the Builders, our benefactors from beyond the skies above.

In Origins: First Builders, you are an archon, guiding a population of freemen, influencing the construction of buildings and monuments, climbing the three mighty zodiac temples, and taking part in an arms race — all in an effort to leave the greatest mark on mankind's ancient history.

You start the game with a city consisting of just two building tiles: the Agora tile and the Palace tile. As the game develops, your city will grow in both size and strength as you add new building tiles, each of which has a special ability that triggers when it is first added to a city and when closing a district. Your placement on the military track indicates the rewards you receive when you attack and your chances of becoming first player.

Origins: First Builders is played over a number of rounds, with a round ending only after each player has passed. If a game end condition has not yet been triggered, the game continues with a new round. On your turn, you perform one of the following actions:

• Visit an encounter site with your workers to gain resources and additional citizen or speaker dice, advance on the zodiac temple tracks (and potentially gain zodiac cards), and advance and attack on the military track.

• Close a district, gaining victory points (VPs) and possibly gold for matching a district card's building pattern, additional bonuses based on the buildings you activate, and additional VPs at the end of the game based on the value of the citizen die you use to close the district.

• Build a tower level to increase your endgame scoring based on the tower heights and the matching color dice you use to close your districts.

• Grow your population.

• Pass.

The game finishes at the end of the round when one or more of the following conditions has been met:

At most three colors of tower disks are still in stock.
No gold remains above any district card.
No citizen die of the proper color can be added to the citizen offer.
A player has moved all three of their zodiac disks to the top space of each temple track.

The temple area is divided into three tracks: the sea temple, the forest temple, and the mountain temple. You score points only for your two least-valued temples, and once all the points have been summed, whoever has the most VPs wins.

"The time of small nations is past, the time of empires begins." — Chamberlain

What if all of world history had unfolded differently?
What if the great empires of our history had never come into being?
What if other forgotten civilizations had passed into posterity in their place?
The defeated could have been the victors, and the colonizers could have been the colonized — after all, empires are won and lost on a roll of the dice!

In First Empires, each player takes control of the fate of an ancient nation through a player board, meeples, and cards. The game lasts a number of rounds depending on the player count, and on a turn you roll dice based on how you've developed your empire board. The six sides of the dice correspond to the five abilities on your board. To expand to new territories or invade opponents, you need to unlock movement ability; to annex a territory, you have to outnumber the current occupant or have a "sword" result on the dice, with the inhabitants then fleeing elsewhere. The dice also allow you develop your player board by using the die face that corresponds to the improvement and controlling an associated territory. You can gain more dice and additional re-rolls, while also unlocking achievement cards.

At game's end, you earn points based on played achievement cards, points unlocked on your personal board, and the sum of cities under your control.

The world has been hit with mega earthquakes. The worst destruction devastated the San Francisco Bay area. It is a time of rebuilding to restore this area to its former glory.

Aftershock: San Francisco & Venice is an area control game. Players will spend money to acquire cards, which are used to increase population, build bridges, and determine where aftershocks occur. Negotiate with other players to score areas on the placement board.

Spend money wisely to acquire the needed cards that move people back into the demolished areas. Make deals to score points in Aftershock!

—description from the publisher

In CVlizations, you take the role of a leader of a tribe, and you are charged with the task of "writing" its CV (Curriculum Vitae - résumé). To do so, you choose which orders to give and which inventions, tools, buildings and ideologies to develop. The happiness of your people depends on you.

Gameplay is built around action selection. Each turn, every player chooses two order cards, and the strength of the action depends on how many other players have chosen that action. Players manage their resources to develop ideas, and in the end the one who collected the most happiness points wins.

From the ashes of war, nations rise to power in the atomic age. Each player takes control of a nation struggling for power in the latter part of the 20th century. They build up their nation’s industry, commerce, and government by acquiring resources, building structures, and tapping sources of energy. The price of oil is going up, and nuclear energy is the wave of the future. The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire is set in the same "universe" as The Manhattan Project, but it's a standalone game, not an expansion.

The major threat in Energy Empire is not war, but uncertain global impacts, that result from side effects of industrialization and pollution. Many actions come with a cost. So, as nations become more industrious, they also increase the amount of pollution in the environment. Careful use of science can mitigate the harmful effects of industry, and can also help avert global crises.

Energy Empire uses worker placement, tableau-building, and resource management mechanics. On each turn, a player can choose to either work or generate. On a work turn, a player plays a single worker on the main board, then uses workers and energy to activate cards in their tableau. Players may spend energy to use an occupied space on the main board, so no spaces are ever completely blocked. On a generate turn, players get to renew their supply of energy by rolling "energy dice" that represent nuclear, coal, oil, solar, and other forms of energy.