Won't we have to defend ourselves legally against "the simpsons" industry if we call the game Doh?

one escape might be 'THE dawn of history'

Or imho something closer to
Dawn of History
An game of strategy inspired by Advanced Civilization™
Where "Dawn of History" is the name and "An game of strategy inspired by Advanced Civilization™" is the tagline.

[BTW, our current tagline is "An unofficial variant for Avalon Hill's out of print game Advanced Civilization", but I'm not overly fond of it.]

The shorter a title is, the better, catchier, more powerful.
Any word that can be left off, should be left off.

The 'out of print' can be left off.
That it's a 'game' is obvious
'Avalon Hill's' might be left off if it's clear when using 'Advanced'
'unoffical' give the game less credit than it deserves.
So beter in my opnion is:

Dawn of History
A variant for 'Advanced Civilization'
or (as line 1) A strategy Game inspired by 'Advanced Civilization'

That's why the Title should be just "Dawn of History"

For published materials (such as the game box and homepage) one can add an optional tagline.

However, what you say about the title is probably also true about the tagline, so I agree with your conclusion.


Game may be a noun, but it's not a name, so not capitalized. And while name is capitalized, you usually don't quote them. Also Advanced Civilization™ is a trademark, so don't forget the ™ mark...

Ergo, you get
A strategy game inspired by Advanced Civilization™
Which imho is even better than my suggestion.

ok

I was just lazy to find the trade mark on my keyboard

teh capital G in game was also a typing error.

This counts for both title and tag.

I'm doubting the word 'inspired by' covers the subject.

I believe many many games are inspired by AC *while not even looking alike), where this one IS Advanced Civilization.

Since we are talking branding again, and Flo has announced that he is done with the Civ cards and trade cards, I think it is time to ask my well worn question again. What art is left in the game that we don't own? Most of the token/city/boat art comes to mind. Is there anything else?

The copyright of the counter graphics has mixed ownership. Some is property of WotC (Wizards of the Coast, the successor in interests of Avalon Hill), some is webhunted (and thus of third party ownership), and some is contributed by varying community members.
However, I have got an email offer to remake them (actually to pay a professionals artist to remake them), so I had planed to wait and see if that pans out before asking Flo if he would be interested in remaking them.

The copyright to the playermat illustrations are also WotC property, and would need a remake to make legal, but is imho no priority, as they work as is, and could be dropped (the illustrations, not the playermats) if a legalization had to occur.

We also do not own the main and historical numbers for the commodities. They are also of poor quality, having gone through a jpeg filter at some stage (though you'll most likely not notice it on the printed cards, as the distortions is distorted by the irregular backgrounds). And the historical symbols isn't even of roughly the same size in the different stacks, which does make the cards look out of place when putting cards from different stacks next to each other. These could certainly use Flo's skills if he is looking for something else to do. Otherwise the current graphics will do until someone else comes along.

The commodity card backgrounds (even the new ones by Flo) also isn't legally ours to use, as they are a copy-and-past job from multiple online sources. However, remaking those properly (eg not by webhunting) requires a very different skill-set.
If there is any resourceful photographers with a strongly magnifying lens out there who don't mind lots of hard work without any pay, I'd love to hear from you!

Other than those the copyright to graphical components should belong to a community member (Martin, Flo and myself). The textual components, except for the core rulebook, are also coming along nicely. Quick Charts, advancements cards, optional rulebook and scenario handbook all have copyright belonging to community members (Velusion, Busybody, Gerart, Flo, and myself).

The core rulebook is still a huge beast to tackle. I'm fairly certain I could do it myself, as I know the rules by heart, and would basically only have to write them down with my own words, and then edit the resulting beast into something resembling sanity. It would take many hours of work to do so however, and atm I simply don't have the time.

There is, however, another question to ask in the same context: What items are of poor quality or completely missing?
I recently got us a logo (though not a very good one), and a non-Avalon-Hill trade card back, but they could both use a replacement (which is what (re)started this particular discussion in the first place).
We are also still completely missing some other branding components. First and foremost would be the booklet covers (for core rulebook, optional rulebook and scenario handbook). The current parchment front does look somewhat cheesy, even though it does, imho, look more professional than the map section we used in earlier versions. As Flo noted earlier we are also missing box cover art (though we would probably have to figure out just how huge the box will be before creating that).

So there is still work to do if anyone is interested, though what we have will work as long as we stay a hobby project and don't try to get published...

P.S. Regarding box size:
I see two options for box size. The map is the deciding factor. Either you use a single map piece, with the same 8-part folding as my AdvCiv map, which would give you a box dimension of 500x530mm (3/4 B2) and an approximate box height of 60mm, or you do three B1-sized map pieces, each folded into four parts, which would give a box dimension of 353×500mm (B3) and an approximate box height of 90mm. You could also fold each B1-sized piece in 8 parts, giving you a box dimension of 250x353mm (B4) but that would give an approximate box height of 180mm, which imho is a bit too thick.

I see no use in changing those. the symbols are for instance cuneiform scritp, and that has no patent.
Anyway, why has this not been opted before, say, a month ago, or when we were working on the cards.

For the player-tokens. I came into my mind before, when I came in contact with Craig Johnson. He's doing new artwork for the tokens now, and I'm looking forward what that brings.
Ofcourse, he's not doing it for nothing, but maybe he's willing to lend his work as long as the project is free.
Just like me, I'm not claiming any money for my work, but only whenever money is made with the project.

Maybe Craig is willing for the same.
I'm not so eager to redo the tokens at this point. now when Craig is doing this.

You can always use tokens without symbols, if this should be a problem.

What I AM about to do/create is (all optional tools, not nescesarily part of the project)

1. A Standalone Census mat for magnetic tokens
2. A Standalone AST mat fot magnetic tokens
3. Standalone trade cards stack mats
4. I'm using one mono-color playermat, and copy this 18 times. I maybe will create a new one for Civproject only.
5. The stratgy explorer with and without credit symbols
4. A goodlooking Calamity quickchart (as the current works, but is not looking nice in my opnion)
5. Same for the advacnes quickchart maybe
6. Scheme cards for dividing the trade card stacks
7. starting position cards (done)


I really believe these are free to use, as they are just edited (Photoshoped) samples of close ups of photographs.
I'm not sure, but maybe, there is someone, who's in this business who can tell.


I think this is something that's really the very final step or so. Don't bother yet. Photographs of the game and just graphics will always do.


Final stepping. Don't bother yet. Any publisher wil have rules, claims, idea's on this. Many publishers have standard box sizes.
Money is a thing. A one-piece is board is out of the question when you want to publish. This can only be done when it can be downloaded and manualy printed like now. It might even end up, the board being decreased in size to fit any standard sizes.
The same for trade cards, advances, rules, player mats, tokens. THe siezes are not def. As mentioned, Money is a thing. Just how many part will fit on a printing sheet (talking A0). Professinal people will be deciding this. Not us, hobbists.


There is much work to do whenever the game is published. just let me remind, that the civilization advances' layout is now mad ein photoshop to have no need for indesign or whatever vector program. The result will only look fine on photo-printers.
Whenever you print these cards on an offset press, someone has to redo all the cards in vector-text and lines.
But please don't bother yet, or you'll do useless work. Any great deal has these things involved, as it'll be no hobby no more at that point.

For example, at my work, we produce DVD's in small numbers (internal and external use by our clients) and use a photo-printer for inlays and dvd-prints.
Sometimes a client decides to provide his film to all his customers and orders, say 1500 dvd's. We're running in a whole new track at this point and redo all artwork and DVD-master especially for mass-production.
On a photoprinter and DVD-burner you'll see no difference, but on the big presse you certainly will.

Cuneiform isn't patented (and if it was, the patent would have expired a few thousand years ago). However, the Avalon Hill drawings of cuneiform script is copyrighted


Because I didn't think of it at the time, only now when McBeth asked what was missing. They are no big problem graphically (only legally), even though they could be slightly better.


Actually, it is exactly because of that they are a problem. The photographer owns the copyright of his photographs, so we would have to identify and get permission from the photographers of all 45 backgrounds to be able to use them legally...

IANAL, but to my knowledge, as long as we are doing this as a not-for-profit hobby project, and don't derive anyone of their incomes by doing so, under Swedish law the punishment for copyright infringement would probably end up a fine of SEK 0.00...
(Some people think that every download is a lost sale, but if no one is even trying to sell, I think that can successfully be disputed in court if necessary, which is why I'm not afraid of infringing upon the WotC copyright on Advanced Civilization as long as we stay an unpublished hobby project).

Oh yes.

Well, Whenever we get a deal to have the game published, this doesn't mean we have to stick to our current looks. I think we should forget this for now, cause it only is a subject when money is made, or when an official claim comes in.

You see, when money is made, a lot more is possible. Publishers have networks too. There's always a phtographer to make a deal with, and otherwise, you can always make serious moves doing it yourself, when backed up with a good deal.

Dawn of History, a march through the ages of mans advances to a more civilized world.

I also think you will be hard pressed to find a publisher to print this. There will always be legal reservations from a publisher over this, and demand is not that great, plus the cost is much higher now with the 18 player version. Small on-demand printers (like myself) will be your best bet.

I will have the counter template done this weekend and will upload a 300dpi file to Jonno. How long he takes with it, I'm not sure. He may have issues with some of the colors I came up with, etc. I will sell the printed, laminated, and cut counters for $6.00 per set from my website. There is a lot more work in the cutting aspect than I planned.

For those that insist on making their own counters, I have an account with the die maker and can order circular punches in bulk and sell them out in sets (I'm suggesting 2 punches for the best cut & look) to anyone that wants them. I will eventually post them on my website.

"A march through the ages of man's advances to a more civilized world" is quite a good tagline, but it's somewhat long, and feels somewhat contrived. Also, it does not honour the legacy of Advanced Civilization. Personaly I have no problem with that (it can be honoured in other places, such as in an authors forewords), but seems other people want the Advanced Civilization connection to be more prominent.


I have no illusions of finding a publisher anytime soon, but if all legal issues clears, I'll try to find a printing house and publish it myself.

Also, it's quite trivial to reduce it to a 9 player game around just the Mediterranean (eg. "The West") with AST, Census and Tradecard Stacks on a separate board (similar to AdvCiv). Any fist printing I would publish would have to be the "9 players edition", because of the costs.


I've got the files, and my first impression is good, but I haven't had the time to go through them properly, due to real life issues that came up unexpectedly.

Thinking about the name, it started with "Civilization", and later "Advanced Civilization" came. What we have made is an "advanved Advanced Civilization". Many other games replaces "advanced advanced" by "expert", so we can givt it the name "Expert Civilization".

When publishing it, I think it is a good idea to seperate the game into two parts, an east part and a west part. Both parts can be played alone and have a maximum of 9 players. If someone buys both parts, those parts can be put together in order to create our 18 player game. Maybe we can split it into an 8 player game and a 10 player game, giving the commodity cards from the 5th, (E-W) shared set to the 10 player game only.
Maybe later we can create other standalone maps, for example of Africa, which can be added to one or more parts...