ASCII Empires is a board game in which 1–7 players lead early Mediterranean civilizations through antiquity by advancing science and culture, constructing buildings and interacting through trade or conquest. The game is named for its use of text-based visuals inspired by the 1967 ASCII character encoding standard. The gameplay can be described as “roll-and-write”. Each civilization's progress in various fields and their production and use of resources are marked on a piece of paper, the Empire sheet. Each turn begins with rolling of five dice. During a brief round of diplomacy, some dice may be rerolled; the players then proceed to use the results to mark their sheets. When any of several possible game end conditions is triggered, points are calculated and the player with the most points wins. -description from designer