History of the World

Watching the Rise and Fall of Powers

History took a pretty long time to get to the current day¹. Some games try to cover the entire swath of it, like Civilization (the computer game, the board game is content to merely cover the earliest parts). Any design necessarily compromises some of the historical aspects to deliver a compelling game.

In Civilization, the conceit is that you start off with a single tribe in roughly 4000 BC and take that one nation in an unbroken line up to the space age, making your dynasty one that would cause Pandyans, Romans and Ethiopians feel like flashs-in-the-pan.

But in the real world, dynasties (even proud dynasties) not only Rise, they Fall. And if you watch enough empires come and go, you’ll get a sense of the ….

The Avalon Hill Version. Image by Gilberto von Allmen.

Gary Dicken, Steve Kendall and Phil Kendall’s (aka “The Ragnar Brothers”²) History of the World changes things up by having each player in charge of multiple empires. During each epoch, the players will draft the available empires and take turns having them rise up. Empires start in their location, might have a capital city, or some abilities. But they mostly have troops.

Once assigned, each player will run their empire, starting at their initial location and putting troops on the board until they run out. But if (as is often the case) those locations are occupied, you can attack into them. The attacker gets two dice, and the defender gets one. Highest (single) die wins.

There are a few modifiers I’m skipping, so it’s more complex than Risk, but not by much.

Once you’ve run out of troops, your empire is all tuckered out and finished. It scores based on how much it has spread out in various regions of the world (like Asia, Europe, etc). And then it does …. nothing.

But those Sumerians, Babylonians or Egyptians from The First Epoch don’t go gentle into the good night just because some new empires show up in Epoch II. They’ll never attack again, but they will stick around to score points until knocked off the board. In theory they could still be picking up a few points when the U.S. of A. shows up, but in practice it’s unlikely.

Another empire usually takes care of them much earlier, possibly aided by an event. Each player gets a limited hand of them that doesn’t replenish each empire, so deciding when to spend parts of your hoard and positioning yourself in the draft³ are important.

Because (like any multi-player “dudes on a map” game) bashing the leader is everyone’s favorite pastime. Overdo it and you may wind up throwing the game to someone else. History of the World’s big improvement is that it is difficult to decide who the leader actually is. Sure the points scored are publicly known; but you also need to examine the units on the board and decide how likely they are to score again (and again), which will depend on which empires show up next Epoch, and who controls them … and what events might still be lurking.

Some early game play, possibly with modified forts. Image by BGG User “Angus the Bull”

These improvements (and the fact that the game definitely ends after seven epochs, no matter how good or bad your dice luck is) helped History of the World become a Risk-like with broad appeal, on that history-obsessed wargamers, casual gamers, and even young children could play.

Hasbro republished History of the World in the same series (and box design) as its Axis and Allies reprint, which introduced the Ragnar Brother’s creation to an even wider audience, and keeps getting reprinted every few years.⁴ Other “empires rise and fall” games followed⁵.

I have the nagging feeling that I’m forgetting an earlier game with History of the World’s hook⁶⁷, but as always “first” is not necessarily “most influential” and the fact that I can’t remember it is a reasonable sign that History of the World is certainly a reasonable candidate for inclusion in The 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century. That may be a slight to the earlier, forgotten game. Let me know.

Just like historians, we revise our views as we go along.

1. As XKCD’s Randall Munroe frequently notes, “citation needed.”

2. Gary, Steve and Phil formed a company called Ragnar Brothers, hence the shorthand. Their company published this game (along with many others) although it gained broader notice when it was re-published by Avalon Hill.

3. I keep calling it a draft, but that’s a simplification. The ‘losing-est’ player draws an empire and may either keep it, or assign it any player who doesn’t have one and take the second card given. There are more empires than players, so not every empire will show up in every game. Also, there are enough editions of the game that some might have modified this rule, but you get the basic idea.

4. The most recent being A Brief History of the World, which shortens the game by an Epoch.

5. Including one game I just now realized is a candidate that I’ll need to write about. I’ll finish this … eventually.

6. Barbarian, Kingdom and Empire lets you take a tribe attacking Rome, and to discard your current tribe and start a new one. I vaguely recall it is similar, but I’ve never played and only heard it described.

7. Also, I’m annoyed that there is no BGG mechanism for this (at least, History of the World doesn’t have it, only “Area Influence,” “Dice Rolling,” and “Hand Management”).