Score the most points after three ages by building structures, upgrading your wonder, and balancing multiple scoring paths.
Give each player a wonder board, deal an age hand to everyone, and prepare coins and military conflict tokens.
Randomly give each player a wonder board and the matching starting resource it produces.
Give every player 3 coins and place military victory and defeat tokens near the table.
Sort the cards by age. For Age I, deal 7 cards to each player.
For Age III, include the correct number of purple guild cards based on player count before dealing.
Choose a first age hand and begin drafting at the same time.
Choose 1 card from your hand, reveal it, resolve it, then pass the rest of the hand.
From your current hand, secretly choose 1 card to build, use to construct a wonder stage, or discard for 3 coins.
Pay the required resources or coins, then place the card in your tableau, under your wonder stage, or in the discard pile if you sold it.
All players pass their remaining cards at the same time. Hands pass left in Ages I and III, and right in Age II.
Build a resource base early, read what neighbors need, and pivot into the scoring engines your tableau supports.
Early brown and gray resource cards make later expensive cards much easier to build without overpaying neighbors.
Watch both neighbors closely: they are the only players you trade with and the only ones you fight militarily.
Science can explode in value if you commit early, but scattered symbols usually score poorly.
Guilds and yellow cards reward good timing. Leave flexibility for Age III rather than locking every plan in Age I.
Discarding for coins is often better than forcing a weak build you cannot support later.
Everyone chooses and reveals cards together each round. You only keep 1 card from each hand before passing the rest.
A card can be built by paying its resource cost. If you lack resources, you may buy them from adjacent players for coins.
You can only buy resources from your immediate left and right neighbors, usually for 2 coins per resource unless a commerce effect changes the price.
Instead of building a chosen card, you may tuck it face-down under your wonder board to build the next available stage by paying that stage's cost.
At the end of each age, compare shields with each neighbor separately. Winners gain victory tokens; losers take defeat tokens.
Some cards can be built for free in later ages if you already built the linked prerequisite shown by the chain symbol.
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