Each age runs for six rounds of simultaneous drafting. At the start of each round, every player looks at their hand privately and chooses one card to play. Once everyone has chosen, all players reveal and resolve their cards simultaneously. Then each player passes the remaining hand to a neighbor — left in Ages I and III, right in Age II.
On your turn you have exactly three options for the card you selected:
- Build the structure — pay any resource costs shown on the card (your own production, coins paid to neighbors, or chain symbols from earlier buildings) and add it to your city
- Build a Wonder stage — place the card face-down under your Wonder board to complete the next unrebuilt stage, gaining that stage's bonus immediately
- Discard for coins — place the card into a shared discard pile and take 3 coins from the bank
Card types create overlapping systems. Brown and gray cards produce the raw and refined materials you need to construct everything else. Crucially, resources are not spent or removed when you build — your cards produce their output fresh each time you want to pay a cost. You just need your total production to cover the requirement. Blue cards award flat victory points. Red cards add military shields. Green cards earn science symbols — matched sets and triples of the same symbol score points on an escalating scale. Yellow cards generate coins and ease trade with your neighbors. Purple guild cards (Age III only) grant points tied to what your neighbors or you have built.
At the end of each age, every player compares their military strength (total shield count) against both immediate neighbors. Win a conflict and take a positive token; lose and take a -1 defeat token. Strengths that tie produce no tokens.
