History of the World

Doug (Blue), Scott G. (Gold), and Tim (Red) battled for dynastic dominance across 7 Epochs in our game of History of the World!

The neat twist to History of the World is that you play successive empires across multiple Epochs. Each Epoch sees new empire rising to replace the old as leaders of the world. Each player has a color that represents historic empires, but each Epoch has unique figures (an Egyption in the 1^st Epoch, a Roman Legionary in the 3^rd Epoch, and British infantryman in the 7^th Epoch in each in a player’s color, as examples). Players score VP each round based on the success of their current empire and on the elements of old empires that survive. Timing can be important. An empire that is successful in one Epoch and had gone near the end of an Epoch can score those points again if they are allowed to go in the subsequent Epoch before the historic empires are conquered. Scott pointed out that the game usually plays best with four or more players, since a three-player game can leave players’ who draw bigger empires unscathed for a few turns and just let them accumulate points. It is really at its best with a full crew of six, since that keeps new empires coming up all of the time (there are some player variants that allows all seven empires to be played).

The Civilizations are the core of the game. Players draw empires for each Epoch from lowest to highest VP. A player can choose to keep the empire drawn (unless someone has assigned the drawer an empire already) or pass it to another player (but not to a player has already been assigned a civilization by another player). The Civilizations vary in a few ways. The more successful a civilization was historically, the larger its army will be. Some civilizations will have capitals and fleets across multiple seas or oceans. If an active empire captures sufficient resources, it can build a monument. As noted above, timing is important in the game. The stronger empires tend to go later in the Epoch. So, if a player’s historic empires are wiped out, a player might not generate the most points possible during an Epoch despite having a strong empire. At the same time, other players are tempted to give a player who just had a strong empire one of the weak empires if drawn. However, that may mean that the player can score more points off the Epoch even with a weak active empire, just because that player’s historic empires are still so strong (see Scott in Turns 3 and 4).

The game includes Lesser and Greater Events that can give empires additional weaponry, cause plagues, and found smaller empires and kingdoms. Combat is straight forward, with the attacker having the advantage in most cases. However, terrain and forts (empires can build these) can improve the odds for the defenders.

Congratulations to Scott for an overwhelming victory! Doug barely managed to pass Tim – only thanks to having some strong civilizations the last few turns of the game. Even with all of those, he squeezed into 2^nd place by 1 point. Tim was much more efficient than Doug in the army to VP ratio.

Each player’s civilization for each Epoch (the number in parentheses being the armies / total armies through that Epoch) and total score at the end of the Epoch are below. The bottom row repeats the final score from Epoch 7 and notes the total armies of each player’s civilizations:

 

	Scott G.		Doug		Tim
	Civilization (Armies)	Score	Civilization (Armies)	Score	Civilization (Armies)	Score
1	Indus Valley (4 / 4)		Minoans (3 / 3)		Aryans (5 / 5)
2	Carthaginia (7 / 11)	23	Assyria (8 / 11)	26	Vedic City States (6 / 11)	29
3	Romans (20 / 31)	67	Hsiung-Nu (5 / 16)	39	Celts (8 / 19)	68
4	Khmers (5 / 36)	104	Huns (14 / 30)	64	Goths (10 / 29)	91
5	Holy Roman Empire (8 / 44)	152	Mongols (18 / 48)	94	Chola (7 / 36)	122
6	Ming Dynasty (9 / 53)	203	Spain (12 / 60)	135	Timurid Emirates (8 / 44)	152
7	United States (9 / 62)	259	Britain (16 / 76)	210	Russia (10 / 54)	209
Final	62	259	76	210	54	209