
             AVALON HILL ADVANCED CIVILIZATION
                      DEMO PLAY GUIDE

Below is a *basic* explanation of the rules of Avalon Hill's
Advanced Civilization (ACIV), enough to let you try out the demo
and decide if the game is for you.  ACIV is based on an AH board
game with a reputation as being an excellent pure strategy game
whose only disadvantage is that in order to play you need to find
4 or 5 like minded players willing to sit down for a marathon
session of 6-8 hours or more.  The game is no relation to Sid
Meier's Civilization, and predates it by 12 or 15 years, but does
have a few similarities, most notably the importance in the game
of obtaining advances (called TOOLS in ACIV) in the technical,
artistic, and philosophical sophistication of your culture.  It
is a good guess that Sid Meier had some exposure to AH's game and
that it influenced his design.

ACIV models the period of time from the Stone Age thru the Late
Iron Age, and takes place in the historical "Cradle of
Civilization" - the area around the Mediterranean Sea.  The
object of the game is to be the first civilization to move your
token to the right hand side of the "AST", a track showing
advances thru the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age.  You move on
the AST based on how many and what type "TOOLS" (such as
Astronomy, Law, Pottery) you have and how many "CITIES" you have.

At the start of the game you put down tokens to indicate your
population, which increases each turn, in territories on the map.
There is a limit as how many population tokens can be in each
area indicated on the area, and if you have excess at the end of
a turn you lose them.  In the first part of the game you want to
move your tokens (moving to adjacent areas) so as to carve out a
largish rural empire.  Later, you may move population tokens via
ships built using taxes you have accumulated (cities-see
below-yield taxes), with the ships having the ability to move
several areas along the coast (and further out to sea once the
Astronomy "TOOL" is acquired).  All conflict is resolved purely
by removing tokens in equal numbers from each side, with _no_
random elements.  Remember the object is _NOT_ to conquer the
entire map (token limit for each player prevents that in any
case), but only to give yourself some room to advance and...
build CITIES.

If you put 6 tokens in a area which is marked as a good city site
(red or yellow squares on the map), instead of losing the extra
token at the end of the turn, _all_ the tokens are replaced by a
*city*, _and_ at the end of the turn (for each city) you get a
TRADING CARD which is symbolic of some common trade commodity
from the period such as hides, wine, or gems.  The cards all have
values from 1 to 9, and are drawn from stacks sorted by value, so
that you will tend to get only low cards if you have only a few
cities and higher value cards if you have more.  You accumulate
cards and then trade them in on TOOLS (see above) each round if
you desire.  You can also trade the cards with other players,
with the condition that you must offer sets of 3 cards, telling
honestly what 2 of them are, and bluffing, if you wish, about the
3rd.  Trading of cards to make _sets_ is important, as sets have
numeric value over and above the the numbers on each card.  There
are also disaster cards, some of which can be dumped in trading,
which cause floods, revolts, etc.

There's a lot more to the game, but this should get you started
and let you experiment.  Remember the ultimate goal is to advance
your civilization, so direct your strategy toward acquiring trade
goods and converting them to TOOLS.  The demo is a "generous"
one, and will let you play over half of a full game, giving you a
score and rating when it ends.

Advanced Civilization is a truely superior strategy game with
lots of opportunities for various approaches depending on your
starting civilization, your territorial position, and your
approach to trade and advancement.  It has the further benefit of
being finely tuned and play balanced due to it's board game
heritage.

Demo Play Guide provided at request of Avalon Hill Game Co.


Bob Toole
Compuserve ID# 75677,3360
