Age of Renaissance is a board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 designed by Don Greenwood

Don Greenwood

Don Greenwood is a board game designer. He worked for Avalon Hill from 1972 to 1998 and has done work for GMT Games. He was editor of Panzerfaust Magazine from 1967 until 1972 and of The General Magazine from 1972 until 1982. He is the founder of the Origins, Avaloncon, and WBC gaming conventions...

 and Jared Scarborough and published by Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...

 in 1996. The game is for 3-6 players and the box claims that the game should take 2-6 hours to play, though as with any serious multiplayer strategy game, this can entirely depend on the players. Age of Renaissance is somewhat of a sequel to Civilization

Civilization (board game)

Civilization is a board game designed by Francis Tresham, published in Britain in 1980 by Hartland Trefoil , and in the US in 1981 by Avalon Hill. The game typically takes eight or more hours to play and is for two to seven players...

. In 1997, Age of Renaissance won the Origins Award

Origins Award

The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...

 for Best Pre-20th Century Board Game of 1996.

Game play

In Age of Renaissance, each player takes the role of one of six commercial capitals of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

: Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

, Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. Initially each player controls one city, their capital. As the game progresses, each player's financial empire grows to a larger number of cities which provide income each turn. Each region where a city can be established also produces one of a number of different commodities

Commodity

In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....

: stone

Rock (geology)

In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...

, wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

, timber

Timber

Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...

, grain

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

, wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, cloth, metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

, fur

Fur

Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...

, silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

, spice

Spice

A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...

, gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, or ivory

Ivory

Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...

. Control of commodities doesn't do anything alone, but when a commodity card is played, every player with stakes in that commodity cashes in. Commodities and income from cities provide players with their two main sources of income. Players then use that money to buy counters to expand their empire, and to buy civilization advances that have various effects on the game.

There is a deck of cards that players draw from. Once the deck is depleted, a new batch of cards (and some of the used cards) are shuffled in and the game progresses to the second epoch. Once the deck is depleted again, more new cards (and again some of the used cards) are shuffled to form a new deck for the third epoch. Once the deck is depleted a third time, the game ends and the player with the highest score wins. Score is determined by adding up the values of a player's advances and cash, less a penalty for the "misery" of their people. The rules also suggest shorter versions of the game that end after either one or two epochs.

The game has many complexities and interesting rules that add to the gameplay. For instance, each player secretly bids for the number of units they want to control in a given turn. The player with the fewest units goes first, and the player with the most goes last. However, the rules for combat give a significant advantage in effectiveness to the players going early in a turn rather than later, leaving players with an interesting choice. Another noteworthy rule is the clever requirement that all diplomacy take place in the open at the table, which dramatically improves gameplay by keeping things moving.

Strategically, it is critical in a game of Age of Renaissance to recognize the player in the lead. There are many cards that can significantly hurt a specific player, and these are best used to keep the leader(s) in check lest they run away with the game.