Ancient Knowledge

The Game

This is a card game about a human civilisation on earth before our current human civilisation. You are scientists and scribes of that lost civilisation, and as your civilisation declines into chaos and oblivion, you do your best to record and safekeep the knowledge of your civilisation, in the hope that one day when a new civilisation rises, this knowledge will come to light again. 

The most important mechanism in this game is the decline. Every round, monuments decline one step, until they eventually crumble, and any knowledge on them not yet properly recorded is forever lost. When you build a monument, you place knowledge tokens on it. During the game you do your best to remove these knowledge tokens before the monument expires. Otherwise any knowledge still on the monument becomes lost knowledge, which means you lose victory points. Monuments have point values and also unique abilities. You will be making use of them. 

There are two rows above your player board to place monuments. Every round they are shifted one step left, until they eventually move off your board. They become monuments in your past. Only these monuments score normally. The game ends when one player has 14 monuments in their past. Any monuments still standing only score 1 point each. 

You have 5 slots on your player board for artefacts. Artefacts have all sorts of nifty powers. They, together with monuments, give you ongoing abilities. Monument abilities are active as long as they have not yet fully declined. 

These are the third type of cards - the technologies. These have one time effects. Some can be claimed as you like, some can only be claimed if you fulfil a certain criteria. There are Level 1 and Level 2 techs. The Level 2 techs only score points. 

This is one of the artefacts. Whenever you learn a new tech, you get to remove one knowledge from any monument. In this game you must carefully manage the knowledge on your monuments and do your best to remove them before the monuments crumble. 

The Play

Choosing which monuments to build is an interesting puzzle. The monuments and artefacts have all sorts of powers, and it is fun to work out good combos. When you can do that, you will be removing knowledge tokens efficiently and also scoring efficiently. There is a default position for all monuments. If you want to place them somewhere else, you need to pay. So space is something you need to manage. Every round the monuments are shifted one space left, which means some spaces will become occupied and others freed up. 

Hand management is important. Cards are a precious resource. One action in the game is to simply draw a card, but ideally you never want to take that action. You should be making use of the powers of your monuments, artefacts and techs to draw cards. One action to draw one card is a bad deal. 

There is also an action which lets you remove one knowledge token. Again, this is an inefficient way to remove knowledge. You want to make use of the powers of your cards. This game is very much about setting up systems that auto run or are triggered by events.

Managing your monuments is challenging. The march of time is merciless. One interesting situation is lost knowledge is not always bad. Some cards have abilities which only activate if you have lost knowledge. One particular monument only activates if you have 20 lost knowledge (which is a lot). When it activates, you remove 15 lost knowledge. That effectively means you are scoring 15 points. If you have this monument in hand, you can freely build monuments and let them decline leaving tons of lost knowledge, only to do a major clean-up afterwards using this monument. 

Techs you have learned are placed on the right. They might help you score points at game end. Monuments which have fully declined are stacked and placed on the left. Along the top are your active monuments. 

You can always examine the monuments in your past.

The monument card specifies which position it should be placed (number at top left), knowledge tokens which come with it (scroll) and point value (star). 

The Thoughts

Ancient Knowledge is a delightful tableau game. Every card has a different power. It is fun to work out synergies and to manage your portfolio of declining monuments. The decline mechanism gives a feeling of urgency and inevitability. You feel doomed, and you are doing what you can given the limited resources and time. Such is life! You must prioritise and you must know how to plan. Not an easy job, but future mankind will thank you.