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StoneAge - Online Guide
Starting The Game
With /join 2-4 players can join the game. With /start the game begins. Alternatively, you can use the Game Tool!
Object of the Game
StoneAge is a development game with a Stone Age theme, offering many different methods and tactics for winning. Whether you get points early from buildings or invest in civilisation cards, you should never forget to produce enough food to feed your people, or you'll be penalised many points.
This online guide is not exhaustive and will mainly explain the interface. An English translation of the original game rules can be downloaded as a .pdf from here.
Game Board
- Player Dashboard
- Raw materials area for hunting (Food)
- Raw materials area for lumber (Wood)
- Raw materials area for clay (Bricks)
- Raw materials area for quarrying (Stone)
- Raw materials for prospecting (Gold)
- Village Smithy (Tools)
- Village Nursery (Hut)
- Village farm (Food)
- Status indicator (Whose turn is it with which action?)
- Building cards
- Civilization cards
The raw materials (wood, clay bricks, stone, gold) are indicated directly below the player's name.
Tools are shown on the left side. Used tools are marked in red.
In the middle, above the wooden wheel, you can see the actual score (without civilisation cards!). The actual number of people is shown on the right border, below the hut. The number in the green circle below the people shows the food currently in stock.
If you move the mouse over your player dashboard, you can see the civilisation cards you have collected: symbols of culture on the left, on the right the symbols for farmers, shamans, hut builders and toolmakers (top-down). Only your own cards are visible for you.
Flow of the game
Each round consists of three phases
- place your people
- let your people act
- supply your people with food
Phase 1: place your people
Every player starts the game with five people he can place on the circles on the playing field. The starting player begins and places one or more people into one area. He does this by clicking on the desired area. If he chooses a raw material area, he can add more people by clicking as long as he stays with the mouse over the field and the green arrow is shown. To end your turn you move the mouse away from the field until the green arrow disappears. Then all other players take turns to place one or more people in one area. Players who have already placed all their people are skipped. This phase ends when every player has placed all his people on the playing field or no more people can be placed.
The following rules apply for placing people:
The Raw Material areas (food, wood, brick, silver, gold) have seven available spaces for meeples. Exception: the hunting area (food) is unlimited! Once you have played meeple(s) of your colour into one of these zones, then it is no longer possible to place any more of your meeples there. In the game with three players you cannot have more than two colours on any Raw Material area (except hunting/food). With a two player game, you can only have one colour.
Only 1 meeple may be placed on the Village Field or Tool Forge at any time. Two meeples must be placed in front of the Nursery . In a 2/3 player game, only two of the three village spaces (field, nursery, forge) can be used.
Only one person can be placed on the Civilisation cards and building cards
Phase 2: let your people act
After all people are placed, the starting player lets his people act by clicking on the group. He can freely choose in which order the groups act.
Acre: the food supply is increased by one (see phase 3)
Tool maker: The player gets one tool. The first three times the player gets a 1-tool. The fourths to sixth time the 1-tools are changed into 2- tools, afterwards the 2-tools into 3-tools and finally the 3-tools into 4-tools. Each player can own a maximum of 3 4-tools (Exceptions: tools to be used only once aquired by civilisation cards). The tools are used to harvest raw materials more efficiently (see raw material areas).
Hut (loveshack): the two people in the hut create offsprings: The player has one more person starting the next round. Each player can have ten people at most.
To harvest raw materials on the raw material fields the player throws as many dice as there are people of his own colour on this area. The total is divided by the value of the raw material: food (2), wood (3), clay bricks (4), stone (5), gold (6). If for example red casts three dice and gets a total of 13, he harvests 13:4=3 clay bricks.
If the player already ownss tools, he can use them to increase the yield. He can use as many tools as he want to increment the total accordingly. Each is used according to his full worth and can be used only once each round.
In this example red has already used one of his 2-tools. He can increase his 13 to a 16 if he both remaining tools to get 4 clay bricks instead of 3. He selects both tools and clicks OK. If he does not want to use tools he clicks on OK without previously selecting any tools. The combination of numbers below shows the total and the value of the raw material. The big number on the raw material shows the current yield and the small number shows what is of the total dice sum.
All building cards are divided in four stacks consisting of seven cards each at the beginning of the game. However, only one stack per player is used. The raw materials needed for the building are shown at the bottom of the card. In the upper left corner you can see the number of points you get for the building. The number in the upper right corner shows the number of cards left in the stack. The building cards are described in detail in the appendix
If a player has placed one person on a building card, he can build it, provided he has the needed raw materials.
You click on the raw materials shown on the cards to select them and clicks OK. If by accident too many or wrong raw materials have been chosen, you can put them back by clicking them again. If you don't want to put up the building, click on the crossed out wooden wheel without selecting any raw materials. If a player hasn't got the needed raw materials, this action is skipped automatically.
There are 36 civilisation cards in the game. If you have placed a person on one of the four civilisation cards, you can pay for the card, take it and carry out the action. The price of a card depends on its position. The card on the right costs any one raw material (except for food!), the card to its left two, the next card three and the card on the left costs four raw materials. Civilisation cards are divided into two areas: in the upper part of the card you can see the advantage the card brings immediately, the bottom is important for the final scoring (see final scoring and appendix )
To take a card, click on the number of raw materials needed in the pop-up window and click OK. If you don't want to take the card, click on the crossed out wooden wheel.
At the end of each round the cards are replaced. First the cards are moved to the right and then the free spaces are filled with new cards from the deck.
Phase 3: Supply your people with food
Now you have to supply your people with food. Your current food supply number is added to your total food in stock. Then the number of persons is subtracted from the total. If you do not have enough food in stock, all your food is used. Afterwards you have the option to replace missing food with raw materials by clicking on the raw materials in the window. Every raw material counts as one food, regardless of its value. If you don't have enough raw materials or don't want to use them, ten points are subtracted from your score. Your score can become negative this way.
After this phase the next player becomes starting player and a new round starts with phase 1.
End of the Game
The game ends when one of the building stacks is empty (the current round is finished) or when at the end of the round not enough civilisation cards are left to fill the free spaces. Now the final score is calculated
Final Scoring
To get the final score, the civilisation cards are scored. Different "green" civilisation cards with culture symbols are multiplied by themselves. For example, if you have collected 5 different culture symbols, you score 5x5=25 points. If you have 2 of these symbols twice each, you score an additional 2x2=4 points.
To score points for the brown civilisation cards their total number is multiplied by the associated value
- the number of farmers is multiplied by the number on the food supply counter
- the number of toolmakers is multiplied by the total number of all tools
- the number of hut builders is multiplied by the number of buildings
- the number of shamans is multiplied by the number of people
Additionally, players score one point for each raw material they own.
The player with the highest score wins the game. In case of a tie the player with the highest sum of food supply, tools and people wins.
As an example, lets calculate the civilisation card scoring of Ungeheuer.
Six different culture symbols (astronomy, pottery, transport, medicine, music, weaving) score 6x6=36 points. He has pottery and weaving twice, which adds an additional 2x2=4 points for a total score of 40.
On the right he has one farmer, multiplied by the number on the food supply counter (1x6=6). The five shamans are multiplied by the number of persons (7)(5x7=35).
The five hut builders are multiplied by the five huts (5x5=25)and the two toolmakers by the four tools (2x4=8).