Through the Ages for macOS

Launching it under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon

Through the Ages is an Intel binary, so it runs on any Mac with an Intel processor. On Apple Silicon Macs, it launches under Rosetta 2 without any extra steps. The download comes as a .dmg, and the developer recommends dropping the app into your Applications folder after mounting it.

Grabbing Moses or the Pyramids from a shared row

1. Pick your starting hand of civil cards. You draw from a shared row of leaders, wonders, action cards, and technologies. Every pick shapes the next ten turns — do you grab Moses for extra civil actions, or the Pyramids to lock in early culture points?
2. Assign your population to resource pools. Workers go onto food, ore, science, or culture tiles. More workers mean more output, but you have to feed them first. In the early game, one misplaced worker can stall your entire engine while your opponent grabs Colossus.
3. Spend civil and military actions. Civil actions let you take new cards, build wonders, or train specialists. Military actions are for drawing tactics cards and seeding the event deck with aggressions. You watch the military track constantly — falling behind invites a raid or an annexation.
4. Manage the corruption and happiness ceiling. As your civilization grows, waste and discontent grow with it. You build arenas, temples, and later cathedrals to raise your happiness cap, otherwise your workers generate nothing. The numbers are tight; every upgrade is a trade-off.
5. Move into a new age. When the card row runs out, you collectively advance — costs go up, better leaders appear, and the military pressure spikes. The Industrial Age introduces coal and railroads, which can triple your ore output if you planned ahead.
6. Resolve wars and events. In the late game, pacts break, wars trigger, and the event deck you seeded earlier comes back to haunt or help you. A well-timed War over Culture can swing a hundred points in the final scoring.

The whole session is a constant balancing act between your science output, your military strength, and the culture points that actually win the game. You can go all-in on science, rush through the tech tree, and drop a late-game wonder like the Internet, or you can press a military advantage and force your opponent to spend resources on defense instead of development. The interface stays out of your way — it's a direct translation of the board game's card layout and resource tracks, so the complexity comes from the decisions, not from fighting the controls.

• Intel processor; Apple Silicon runs via Rosetta 2
• Interface languages: Russian, English, German, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, French, Czech, Japanese