History of the World

History of the World is a game of epic conquest set amid the rise and fall of mighty empires. Each game spans the dawn of civilization to the twentieth century as you take command of historical civilizations and spread your influence across the globe. The more territories you claim, the more points you’ll score, but you’ll have to drive your rivals out if you want to build the largest empire. Originally released in 1991, this redesigned version of History of the World maintains the thrilling gameplay of the original game while bringing it into the modern age with a beautifully illustrated board and gorgeous new components. Marshall your forces and defeat your adversaries. At the end of the game, only the player with the most points will have their immortal name etched into the annals of history! 

You’ll choose one  historical empire to control during each of History of the World’s five epochs and they all come with their own strategic considerations. Each empire has its own number of starting armies, a starting territory, and unique abilities that help determine your course of action during that epoch. You might focus on securing resources to build monuments as the Egyptians, or you could become the Carthaginians and trample your opponents beneath the thundering feet of your war elephants. Whichever civilization you choose, your actions in one epoch echo into the next. Whoever can make the best use of their civilization’s unique attributes will position themselves to rule through the ages. 

  History of the World – differences in the new version.

• A new basic dice system which is then coupled with a ‘without dice’ system which can be used instead.

• Conquest dice system (optional rule) – similar to over-run system of Brief History of the World.

• Gold collection is for lands of the current Empire only (making this a speedier process)

• Area tokens are selected by players each epoch and these enable players to collect gold later in the game (in that area) for previous Empires.

• One Area token is placed on the Endgame space for that epoch. These will be used by all players to collect gold for that area (in the usual way) at the end f the game. This finale means that each player’s map position at the end of the game is important.

• Paired Area tokens (optional rule) enables each player to collect gold for two areas once during the game.

• Honour tokens are awarded during the game and played during an Empire’s turn to provide benefits that were previously on Event cards (Recruit, Fortify, Urbanize, Fleets, Catastrophe) and  two new benefits (Bonus for buildings and Bonus for lands).  

• Several new Event cards have been introduced (e.g., Liberate, Revolution, Sea trade).  Event cards that were previously for ‘kingdoms’ have now been paired together (e.g., Zimbabwe and Ethiopia).

• Distribution of Empire cards and Event cards has been simplified to make for speedier play. 

• Optional rules are included to enable the game to be played with the distribution of Empire cards and Event cards as used in Brief History of the World.

• Monuments are now built as a result of occupying two allocated power icons (orb, sceptres crown, chain).  One of these is invariably in the start-land of the Empire, meaning that most Empires will build at least one monument. The key difference though, it that all lands have importance in this respect and not just those that previously contained a resource symbol.

• Each player has their own array for organisation of Empire and Event cards, Leader and playing pieces. In addition the array includes a stack for each player’s set of ten Honours and an Honour track that organises the way Honours are awarded and played.

There are a number of other modifications to rules which arise from some of these main differences.

All questions regarding the game production and components should be addressed to Rio Grande Games.

 2-6 players

30 mins per player

14 years+