A printable Through the Ages log lives or dies on the one record nobody keeps: what the first game's final scoring actually added, and why, because Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization does not end with the culture track alone but with a fixed first-game bonus list, and the game ends when the player to the right of the starting player finishes the last turn, after which every player works through that list step by step. Nobody at the table argues about the game they played; they argue about whether an Age II technology was worth one point or two, whether a government counted once or twice, whether a colony paid three or six, and whether production was counted before or after corruption. The only evidence is the log: a line for every bonus category, with the count and the rate written beside it, or a single victory-point total that was written at the end and can be defended by nobody.
Age I technologies score one culture each and Age II technologies score two each, and the government counts twice, so a player with four Age I technologies besides the government, an Age I government, and three Age II technologies scores twelve from technology alone: four, plus two for the doubled government, plus six. Score the Age II technologies at one each and three points vanish, which is exactly the kind of quiet error that turns a win into a tie nobody can explain. A log that lists each technology with its age beside it makes the rate checkable; a bare technology count does not, because the count alone cannot tell you which rate applied to which card.
Science rating, strength rating, and happiness rating each score culture equal to the rating itself, one point per point of rating, with no doubling and no age multiplier. A science rating of nine is nine culture, a strength rating of seven is seven, a happiness rating of five is five, and the three together are twenty-one. The trap is not the arithmetic but the substitution: players who have just spent an hour managing military strength sometimes score strength twice, once as a rating and once as a technology, or score happiness from happy faces on cards instead of from the happiness rating. The log needs one line per rating, each labelled with the word rating, so a doubled line stands out on sight. Production is counted gross, and that is the third trap Food and resource production scores culture equal to the combined production, counting how much food and resources the workers produce during the production phase while ignoring corruption and consumption. Six food plus eight resources is fourteen culture, even if corruption would have eaten part of it, because the rule says to ignore corruption and consumption for this line. Net the production down by a corruption of four and the total drops by four on an error that looks like prudence. A log that writes the gross food figure and the gross resource figure separately, before any subtraction, is the only version that survives the argument, because the subtraction is the mistake and the gross figures are the proof.
Each colony scores three culture and each completed Age II wonder scores six, so one colony and one completed Age II wonder together are nine. Price a colony at the wonder rate and three phantom points appear; price a wonder at the colony rate and three real points disappear. Both errors are common because both are endgame bonuses that arrive in the same step of the list, and both look like round numbers a tired player could defend from memory. The log must carry the words colony and wonder on separate lines with their rates written out, because the names are the only thing keeping the two rates apart at midnight.
Take a first game that ends with A on 84 culture on the track and B on 90. A's bonus is 56: technology 12, science 9, strength 7, happiness 5, production 14, colonies 3, wonders 6. A's final total is 140. B's bonus is 47: technology 13, science 10, strength 4, happiness 6, production 11, colonies 3, wonders 0. B's final total is 137. A wins by 3, despite trailing on the track by 6, because A's wonder, production, and strength lines outweigh B's track lead. Forget A's wonder and A falls to 134, a false B win by 3. Score A's Age II technologies at one each instead of two and A falls to 137, a false tie. Price B's colony at the wonder rate and B rises to 140, another false tie. Three different single-line errors, three different wrong results, and only the line-by-line log shows which one happened.
This fixed list applies only to the first game. In the full game the first-game list does not apply at all: instead, Age III events remaining in the current and future events decks are evaluated one by one at the end, each awarding culture as its own text describes, and only then are the scores final. A log built for the first game and carried into a full game will add bonuses the full game never awards, and a log built for the full game will leave a first game unscored. The header of the log should therefore name the version in plain words, first game or full game, before any number is written, because the version decides which list the numbers belong to.
A Through the Ages scoring log that a buyer prints, fills in, and trusts is not a sheet of blank lines but a checklist of the first-game list in order: Age I technologies at one, Age II at two, government twice, science, strength, and happiness ratings at face value, gross food plus gross resources, colonies at three, completed Age II wonders at six, each with its count and rate beside it. That is the download worth selling: not the arithmetic, which any player can do, but the structure that stops the arithmetic from drifting, one line at a time, until the winner changes.
Disclaimer: This log is a player aid for Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization and is not affiliated with Czech Games Edition. Final scoring rules vary between the first game and the full game; check the rulebook for your version before play.
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