Civilization (1980 board game)

Civilization is a strategy board game designed by Francis Tresham, first published in the United Kingdom in 1980 by Hartland Trefoil and in the United States in 1981 by Avalon Hill. It seats two to seven players who each guide an ancient Mediterranean civilization through economic development, trade and the accumulation of advances on a map divided into regions, with games commonly lasting eight hours or longer. Civilization was among the first board games to introduce a technology tree governing the order in which advances could be acquired, a mechanic later adopted widely across both board and video games. The game is regarded as foundational to the strategy board game genre, frequently cited as an ancestor of both the grand strategy and 4X subgenres that followed in video games such as Sid Meier's Civilization. After years out of print, ownership of the Civilization brand passed to Hasbro, and the original board game was republished in 2018 by Gibsons Games.