Only 7?

1.      Easy to learn ~ 7 Ages: the Collector’s Edition has only 10 pages of standard rules, 9 if you exclude the full-page conflict resolution example and only 8.6 pages if you count the line where the standard rules start and end.

Yet those 8.6 pages of rules encompass the entire expanse of human history in a depth and subtlety never yet encountered and you will never get more game per rule than 7 Ages. You can download the rules from the download section of the ADG site.

One of the reasons card-driven games are the apogee of boardgaming is because you can offload the vast majority of rules from the rulebook to the cards and players only need to know that rule when they have that card in their hand or someone else is playing it. There is no upfront overhead to impede play or your fun in the game and you can’t fit much of a rule on a card so they are always simple.

2.      Easy to get into ~ If you have ever played Australian Design Group’s World in Flames you will know you will be lucky if set up takes less than 2 hours. I know this is an extreme but what is the average setup time for your average family game, 5 minutes? 10?

Not 7 Ages, unfold the map and deal out 7 cards. You are now ready to start the game. Doesn’t even take 30 seconds meaning more play time, less chores.

3.      Totally flexible play time ~ Start when you want and end when you want. Each turn you get glory so if you can only play for an hour or two, as you have only spent 30 seconds setting up you can get through a few turns and the winner is the player with the most glory

4.      Game can start any age ~ The player who goes first can lay down any empire and that fixes the start age of your game (like throwing down the jack in bowls determines the length of the green for this chucka (close enough)). If they lead with an age 7 empire you know you are in for a sprint.

5.      Players can join the game anytime ~ ever had the experience where one of your friends turn up late and you all have to wait, start again or they just sit there doing nothing? Not a problem in 7 Ages, when they turn up deal them 7 cards, put their glory marker with that of the player with the least glory and off you go.

6.      Players can leave anytime ~ Someone in your game has to rush off, no worries, discard their cards and remove their civilisations from the map  (replacing them with kingdom units if playing with the Ancients & Kingdoms expansion) and keep playing. These last two are great for cnventions when people don’t have much time and people are coming and going.

7.      Players can now play solitaire ~ Although it’s more fun to play with friends and we will be offering a vassal version free after release to allow online play anywhere in the world, we have added a new solitaire conflict system (option 13, everyone against everyone, no decision apart from whether to commit your tactical leaders or not) and for solitaire trade you choose the player’s card you are trading with randomly (more or less how I play anyway). You still have to play every hand (but we are exploring possible AI support of solitaire play).      

8.    Unique game system ~ just about every game on the market is I go U go, ie player based each player following a sequence of play to do their turn before the next player’s turn. That’s ok for a 2 player game, you’re only not involved half the time, but what about a 7 player game like 7 Ages Deluxe? Of course YOU are really quick running your 3 civilisations but everyone else is soooo slooooow. When’s it my go again?

After 6 and a half years development all of a sudden I had my eureka moment.  Why not rotate the game 90% on its axis so instead of it being player based with a sequence of play we turn it into an action based game using a menu of actions.

(1)        Start empire

(2)        Production

(3)        Trade and progress

(4)        Manoeuvre

(5)        Destiny

(6)        Civilise

(7)        Discard empire

Now, instead of one go in 7 you get 3 actions (one per each of your empires) during the 7 actions, and as in most turns no one is doing one or more of the actions, you are now involved half the time. Thus you are either in the thick of it now OR you should be planning what your empire is doing next action (who’s your neighbours? Is their action expended? What could it be if not? What cards have you got that can help? Who should you be diploming with?). To keep your people safe, your tasks are endless and there is no downtime in 7 Ages.

What other 7 player game has the ability to turn itself into a 2 player game in terms of the amount of interleaved interactive game play between the players while still needing  all the diplomatic and social skills of a 7 player Game of Thrones?

9.      Fast interactive play ~ which leads me to the next bonus. Not only are you involved in half the actions but in most cases you can do them at the same time as everyone else doing that action due to the almost magical (and by far the best) rule in the game

“To speed play, if the player before you won’t affect your action (e.g. you are Trading in America and they in Asia), feel free to do yours at the same time.”

This simple sentence reduces the game (and down) time by half. While the first player is setting up their empire you can be doing exactly the same. Even if you want to set up near them and want to see what they do first you can still get out all your counters in preparation for a quick set up yourself and if they are not near you just go ahead while they are doing it.

Needless to say things like production everyone can do at once and most other actions if they are doing it somewhere else, go ahead.

10.   Depth of Card interactivity and situational play ~ In most games a card is either good or bad throughout the game, its value doesn’t change. In 7 Ages it changes all the time. You want to play a glorious glory card to double everyone’s glory this turn? That’s great if you are top not so great when not. Same with empires, Rome is one of the great empires of the game and very valuable in age 2, worthless in age 4.

Similarly each card is now balanced such that good events are on high value empires weaker events on weaker empires (but the lowest value events have been buffed by 100% and the average has gone from 22.2 to 38.9 money equivalent) while the artefacts are designed to have different ages to the empire to maximise the age spread of the empire and the artefact on the cards (events are playable in any age).

The civilisation average span is 2.5 ages while artefacts are now up to 4.4 so the combined is 6.9 ages just under the 7 Ages for a complete spread. Of course there is some cross-over so the gap is a bit wider than that but we have done our best to make each card as valuable as possible as long as possible.

What this means when you get your 7 cards you have to weigh up all the possible combos. Do I want to use it for the (trade) value, the empire, the artefact or the event? With 4 possible ways to use each of your 7 cards, you have 2401 potential combinations of playing your cards. Many might only have 3 ways to play (because the empire and artefact don’t overlap) in which case lucky you only have to work out 243 possible combos before your action comes around. And that’s just your first 7 cards.

When I pick up my cards I often say ooh I love that I gotta play that then and by the time then comes around I’ve already played it for something else in a rush of blood without realising and I’m stunned it’s no longer in my hand.

The game is very simple to learn but the winners will be those who best unlock the potential of the rubik’s cube that is somewhere there in your every hand, to maximise the benefit of every card.

11.   Depth of research ~ We have spent the last 7 years building a 61,495 cell s/s of every major civilisation, their glory, leaders, special abilities, money, their hopes and dreams etc as well as every artefact and every event including when the events can be played and the value of each event. All this data is aggregated with statistical analysis applied to ensure every card is balanced, and has the most elements useful for the greatest length of time to make each card more valuable than the last.

As you can see, if we reach US$100,000 in our Crowdfunding campaign then all pledge backers will get it as well as the rest of the 7 Ages Virtual companion, for free. 

12.   The game evolves over time ~ many games are fun but the mechanisms are the same for the whole game making it a bit wash, rinse, repeat and you get bored after a while.

Not 7 Ages. All the empires change and improve with different objectives over time while the artefacts themselves go from buildings like the Great pyramids in age 1 to ideas in later ages like the industrial revolution, United Nations and Universal suffrage. These changes effect everything from your economy to your unit types to your religions, your range, your glory, just about every factor is moving over time. This makes an age 1 game entirely different to an age 7 game and you need to be nimble footed enough to change along with the times so you can surf your historical wave to a glorious future. 

13.   Infinite replayability ~ Stephen Fry one said on the BBC’s QI (Quite Interesting) that if every human since the dawn of the universe to now shuffled a deck of 52 cards and dealt them out each minute then no two shuffles of cards would ever be exactly the same. That’s because the number of possible combinations of 52 cards is 52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x … x 2 x 1 = 8.07 x 10^67.

Now let’s compare that to 7 Ages Deluxe. Here we have 165 cards and each can be played in one of four ways, its value for trade, or its empire, its artefact or its event. Thus the number of possible combinations of just one shuffle of the cards is 660 x 656 x 652 x 648 x …. x 12 x 8 x 4 = 1.19 x 10^395.

The number of stars in the universe is 10^24. The number of grains of sand in the Universe is 4 x 10^92. Thus if every grain of sand in the universe was its own universe and every grain of sand in those universes was its own universe and every grain of sand in those universes was its own universe there would STILL be more different ways to play one shuffle of the 7 Ages deck than all the grains of sand in all those universes. You might shuffle the deck half a dozen times during the game. The possibilities are utterly beyond our comprehension.

When you play 7 Ages, you are not a gamer, you are an explorer, the pathfinder, and you can rest assured that the path you explore will never see another player’s foot even until the end of time.

14.   Infinite fun ~ As you can see from all the above, although so easy to learn and play, 7 Ages has so many billions of strategies and paths to victory (and even more to defeat) that your game will be constantly evolving and changing over time.

7 Ages becomes such an immersive experience you can burst into tears and hold a funeral when your favourite leader who has kept your people safe and happy for decades finally shuffles off the mortal coil due to old age (your empire enters a new age). But then burst into song a moment later when you replace them with an even greater one!

15.   Infinite expandability ~ We provide the framework, the foundations, the structure, all the plumbing, electricity and facilities, you provide the curtains, the paintings and the furnishings and the structure itself is designed to have as many wings and extensions added as you like.

We have already produced 5 expansions, and as you can see from our 7 Ages launch page we are also already asking you to vote on the next 8 expansions and we talk about a 9^th Tech tree system that would be a super expansion (it will require some design work before it gets the green light). I’m sure you can easily think of a few more.  

That’s the first 15 off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s plenty more.