Through the Ages Review

If you're over 22, Civilization board games get caught in a nasty version of Catch-22. Give in to the epic sweep of history that such a game demands, and it'll take 22 hours to play on a huge global map. Cut it back, and you lose that sense of grandeur that separates Civ games from common or garden "dudes on a map" games. It's a conundrum that's rumbled along ever since Francis Tresham's original Civilization. And it took a genius like Vlaada Chvatil to solve it. The answer, it turns out, is to take away that map.