Advanced Civilization
DOS - 1995
Description of Advanced Civilization
Advanced Civilization is another one of Avalon Hill's classic board games of which they made a faithfull conversion.
Unless one has actually played the board game and realizes what's going on, however, the can seem confusing, abstract, and dry. In contrast, if you have actually played the board game, then you will find this a fun and playable recreation of it. It keeps the same details right down to those lovable trading deals full of deceit and treachery.
One word of warning for the people who play this game (one that appears on the Civilization board game box itself): Advanced Civilization is NOT a wargame! It is an economy/empire managing game where trading has more of a place than warfare. With each of your cities you get a trade card representing a good (like salt or grain), and with it you barter for mutually beneficial deals which increase your value in points. With points you can get advances (such as roadbuilding or architecture) that make your empire management easier. Along with these trade cards come calamity cards, so you never know whether you are getting salt or barbarians [G].
The AI can be tricky, especially for newcomers, but is far from impossible. For those of you who have played Civilization, and even some who haven't, I found this game to be a very fun and a perfect conversion of it's predecessor that is definitely worth the hefty download.
Review By HOTUD
External links
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
Vikingneil 2023-09-04 1 point
Oh, you can email me back at vikingneil@yahoo.com for the answer to this question. One thank you very much for making this available. How can I get this to play on my iPad? So that I’ll be able to save my game? It’s one of my favorites.
Dev Rossik 2021-11-20 1 point
Thank you for having a copy of this game to download! I own the original board game version, as well as the computer game version, but I couldn't get it to install properly in DOSBox from the CD. This download works perfectly, and it brought a beloved game back to me!
This game has a fascinating history. For one thing, there was a messy legal battle over the rights to the computer version of this game, which played a central role in the downfall of the late and much lamented Avalon Hill.
Some notes:
* This copy of the game is patched to the last released version 1.1, which fixes a few serious bugs, so that's great.
* The included image file for the civilization cards is for the cards from the original Civilization game, not Advanced Civilization. I think the rules on the cards are the same for both sets, but the color coding was changed, which might conflict with certain descriptive text in the game, so use them with caution.
daffy 2020-05-17 9 points
What makes this game so amazing for me is that it seems to really convey an alternate history. It seems to capture perfectly what it took to manage a civilization from the neolithic into a proper bronze age empire.
Your task is simply to achieve the technological advancements into the iron age. To do this, you must purchase tech through trade goods. You get trade goods by building cities. The number of cities you have determines the value of the goods you are able to get. So having three cities will get you one card with a value of 1, one card with a value of 2, and one card with the value of three.
Each value has two different goods. So the one value has ochre and hides. The two valued cards are iron and papyrus, and so on.
The value of the trade good goes up exponentially the more of it you have. For example, Ochre has a value of one by itself. Having two Ochres gives a value of 4, or 2 squared, while three ochres is 9 points (3 cubed). Some tech increases the value of certain goods, while other advancements give other uses for the goods. Such as grain being used to offset famines.
Trade goods are also finite, which limits the amount you can hoard.
Lastly, you may get a calamity instead of a trade good. This can range from slave revolts to floods or famines.
There is a trade portion where you can trade 3 goods with another faction. You do this by either offering goods up, or responding to another civilization's offer. The twist is that you (or your opponent) are allowed to lie about one of the goods offered. This can be replaced with either a lower valued good or a calamity.
And this is where the game becomes interesting. you need cities to get goods, but this exposes you to disasters. You also need to trade to increase the value of your goods as well as to offload disasters onto your competition. Additionally, your cities are counted at the end of the turn rather than at the beginning, so it is ok to lose a couple of cities to disasters. So civilizations have this ebb and flow, where there is a constant shift in power. It is also impossible to eliminate any civilization, or to conquer the map. The idea is not to avoid disasters, but rather to recover from them as quickly as possible.
This leads to great replay value as well as challenging and rewarding play. It does punish mistakes rather mercilessly, but in a way that you can learn from it.
Kukko 2020-04-25 0 point
Yovzub,
check boardgamegeek.com for Civ and the Advanced expansion manuals
admin 2019-11-12 0 point
Tricky disk image KC, as you are using a Mac, mounting the ISO will display the Mac contents. Mounting the disk in VirtualBox + WinXP will show the actual installation files, which work.
KC 2019-11-08 0 point
I downloaded the ISO version using Boxer. Boxer states there are no MS-DOS files and will not convert the game into a playable format. I then downloaded the other version below, and it did load into Boxer and seems to work fine. I do not know what the problem is with the ISO version, but in reading the other comments it does not seem like I am the only one with a problem with this game.
KC 2019-11-08 0 point
I downloaded the ISO version using Boxer. Boxer states there are no MS-DOS files and will not convert the game into a playable format.
EbonyShadow 2019-08-13 1 point
How do you tell the game where the CD image is located? I keep getting the error "Unable to locate the Advanced Civilization CD."
Yovzub 2019-06-12 0 point
Hi
I have this old game called “Civilization”, the first part of "Advance Civilization" and I lost the Instruction Manual.
Someone knows where can if find them or how do I replace them.
Thank you for the information.
Martin 2019-03-10 0 point
We have played this game quite often as a board game 20 or 25 years ago.
If you know the number of cards on each deck, you can forsee at which card a catastrophic event will strike. And at advanced play it is about managing that your opponents get those events.
Thanks for rescuing a part of gaming history.
Fernando 2018-11-08 0 point
I've been playing this game for weeks now, I mean, I regularlly play it. It's been very hard to win, but at least I've been able to understand the general idea of the game, play it comfortably and have fun for many hours. I think that the easiest AI is kinda complicated.
urghavenger 2016-08-18 0 point
I had this since when it came out for the PC, so many years ago. I still have it, and the original box and everything. Haven't been able to make in work on my newer PCs but I'll try DOSBOX again, some day.
Chris 2015-11-04 1 point
This is still one of my favorite beer and pretzel kill an evening games. This is one I would love to see remade for my tablet.
admin 2015-01-13 0 point DOS version
@PERSON hmm, it works on pc, mac :/ This must be an error due to your chromebook
person 2015-01-13 0 point DOS version
froze at the "Avalon hill" advertisement screen when you start it up. maybe my computer cannot withstand it. (btw using a samsung 5 chromebook with a native dosbox app) (yes ik that all chromebooks suck)
admin 2014-09-28 0 point DOS version
@Not Registred Yet : extracted it just fine with 7zip, will upload a rezipped version though
Not Registred Yet 2014-09-26 0 point DOS version
I was trying to replace my Advanced Civilization game and found this site (and one other). I downloaded the advanced civilization files and went to unzip, using my registered winzip program. It shows 2 ".exe" files in the list but when unzipped, they do not appear. I tried unzipping JUST those 2 files, winzip tells me "there are no files to extract."
I have no clue why this is and as the other site I found this game on does the exact same thing, I am wondering if it me or you.
Thanks for any help.
-Al
MstrFool 2014-05-27 1 point DOS version
Wow, this could actually be playable. I remember playing the board game once. We were at it for several months. It took up the entire room, and after a few months of playing for 5 hours a sitting once a week, we still hadn't made it to 20 turns. But it was a lot of fun.
Babylon 2014-02-01 -1 point DOS version
How do I install/run this program on a mac?
I have managed to run the demo through Boxer but cannot run the original with CD and all neither through DosBox nor Boxer?
cato 2013-10-10 0 point DOS version
How do I open the application? When i open it windows says that it does not support full screen mode and then forces me to close it...
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DOS Version
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Various files to help you run Advanced Civilization, apply patches, fixes, maps or miscellaneous utilities.
13 MB
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