The players build up civilisations using cards that represent planets or developments. Each turn takes the form of one or more of five phases. Each turn the players choose one of seven action cards and reveal them. For the phases selected every player performs the phases actions, whilst the selecting player or players gets an added bonus.
"Develop", for example, each player may select a development from their hand to build. Each player then adds his development card to his civilisation discarding cards from his hand equal to it's cost. Each player who selected "Develop" pays one less card as the bonus. "Explore" allows players to draw cards and select which to add to their hand. "Settle" allows players to colonise a planet and add it to his civilisation. "Produce" allows those planets that produce goods to produce a good, represented by a face down card on the planet. These goods can be discarded for Victory Points or sold to add cards to your hand by selecting "Consume" Military planets can only be placed when you have sufficient military might to concur that planet.
To build a successful empire you must manage these tasks wisely as well as anticipate some of what the other players may be doing or require.
The winner is the player with the most victory points.
It is one of those games where the first game is really a means to learn how to play and I would suspect subsequent games would be more compelling as you now have some idea how the mechanics and strategies work.
I enjoyed this game, despite not fully understanding what I was doing as I still managed to get a healthy score at the end.
