Ancient Empires is an upcoming board game from Archona Games, the publisher behind titles like Philharmonix and Small Samurai Empires. It's currently being crowdfunded, and it aims to deliver a short paced, but strategic, experience for 1-4 players.
But there are probably already more board games out there about building up an empire than there have been empires in human history. What's the unique selling point of Ancient Empires that makes it worth taking a look at?
The game combines action programming mechanics with an area control 'dudes on a map' style war game. What this means in practice is that players place 'order tokens' for their units facedown into slots dotted around the edges of the board. Every one of these slots corresponds to an action that players take immediately, and then once everyone has placed enough tokens for the turn around the edge of the map, they flip their order tokens face up and then resolve them.
This makes forward planning really matter, as you need to account not only for the action that you'll want to take in the moment, but also what you'll want to do in the near future as well.
The game is split into three eras: theStone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. When the bronze age arrives, every player gets to pick a civilization. This unlocks a selection of bonuses that vary depending on which Ancient Empire you decide to embody.
On the Gamefound page for the project, the base game is currently available for $45 (£33), while the 'All-in Ancient Empires' tier is available for $79 (£58). The 'all-in edition' contains an additional map pack as well as deluxe components.
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