Roll Through the Ages Dice Game Review

[Micheal Jack]

Grow your fledgling civilization from scratch and outmaneuver opposing civilizations in Roll Through the Ages: the Bronze Age! Outsmart your opponents as you build cities and research developments. Complete great monuments before they do. Avoid disasters while sending pestilence and revolts to your opponents. Become the absolute most powerful empire in the Bronze Age by winning the technology and construction race in this exciting dice game!

Roll Through the Ages is definitely an empire-building dice game thematically on the basis of the Through the Ages board game which is on the basis of the hit computer game Sid Meier's Civilization (which in turn is on the basis of the original Civilization board game!) This dice game - with each game lasting about half an hour - is considered an instant and easy alternative to the Through the Ages board game that has considerably more complicated mechanics and will take up to 4-5 hours.

Roll Through the Ages comes with a set of 7 dice unique to the game, 4 pegboards, colored pegs and a pile of score sheets, and that is all you need to play the game. The game mechanics are also pretty easy to grab: a change starts with a player rolling dice to see what resources they get. Goods and food are collected and workers are fed. The workers build cities and monuments, and then you can purchase a development. That's the basis of the overall game, and players repeat these actions before the game ends, which happens when most of the monuments have already been built or any single player has 5 developments. The player most abundant in victory points wins the game.

The very first action in the turn is rolling the dice to see what resources you get. The amount of dice you roll depends how many cities you have, and the dice produce either food, goods, workers, coins or skulls. Workers are used to build new cities and monuments, while food is required to feed the workers. Goods and coins are used to buy developments. Skulls are bad, representing disasters that occur to either you or your opponents.

You're able to roll each die as much as 3 times (except skulls which can't be re-rolled). This lets you influence the dice to make resources nearer to things you need that turn. Metal Dice More workers would be handy if you were attempting to expand or build a monument, as you will need more food if your food stores are running low and your people are planning to starve. Once most of the dice are rolled, any food and goods collected are marked on a pegboard which records the stuff you have in storage. Depending how many goods you roll and how much stock you have, several types of goods with differing coin values are added to your stock.

The following action is always to feed your cities. Having more cities means you can roll more dice, but it also means you will need to make more food to keep them from starving. If you don't produce enough food and you have insufficient food in storage, your workers will starve and you will soon be penalized with negative victory points. Disasters (based on skulls on the dice) are resolved now as well. Depending how many skulls generate, either you or your opponents will incur negative points or even lose all the goods in storage.

The following phase involves assigning the workers you rolled this turn to building cities and/or monuments. Each available city or monument has tick boxes in them on the score sheet, indicating exactly how many workers are essential to accomplish them. Once all tick boxes in an area or monument are filled, they are completed. Completed cities give you an additional die to roll but cost an extra food each turn. Monuments haven't any effect other than providing you with victory points. There's urgency in building them though, as the initial player to accomplish a monument will earn double the points of those people who are slower. Furthermore, one of many endgame conditions is when most of the monuments have already been built.

Lastly, you can buy developments using the goods in your storage and with coins rolled this turn. These developments provide victory points but also convey beneficial effects. For example, the Agriculture development gives an extra food for each food die you roll, whilst the Religion development causes the Revolt disaster to affect your opponents rather than yourself. The better developments will definitely cost more, but offer more victory points when the overall game ends. Another of the end game conditions is when any player has 5 developments.

The strategies available are nearly limitless. Do you want to give attention to growing your cities first and thereby get to roll more dice? Or do you want to sacrifice growth to be able to rush-build monuments for double points before others have an opportunity to complete them? Or do you like to go on the offensive and try to generate disasters that'll cripple your opponents? Or will you invest the early game in getting goods and coins for powerful developments? With the developments, you might also need a selection in concentrating on commerce-related developments, or ones concentrating on food or disasters. As you can imagine, you can find so many approaches to play this game.

The only real drawback is that the overall game is really quick (around half an hour) and doesn't feel as epic as an empire-building game should. The developers have taken this on board, and have released a totally free mini-expansion called The Late Bronze Age which contains adjustments to the overall game mechanics and objectives. This expansion may be downloaded from their website, and contains new mechanics such as for instance shipping and trading goods with other players. This adds more complexity and player interaction to the game. The endgame conditions are also adjusted, with games now lasting a more fulfilling one hour.

Roll Through the Ages is a simple and elegant game that captures the feel of an empire-building game, but with only a portion of the time investment. And since its name contains the words 'The Bronze Age', it's fair to believe that more expansions will soon be coming along to create you through the Medieval, Industrial and Modern ages for more empire-building fun. Roll Through the Ages is fantastic for you if you like empire-building games like Through the Ages or Endeavor, but prefer something that is quick and simple.