The game contains twelve map tiles. Each map tile is made of one hexagon surrounded by six hexagons. Each tile will have a mixture of any or all of five types of terrain: grasslands, farmlands, mountains, woods, and hills. Each player gets a Player Aid card, selects a color of people tokens and places the era cube of the matching color on The Era Starting Box on the Progress Column part of the game board. A starting player is selected. Some tiles are placed contiguously on the game board (the number of tiles depends on the number of players) one at a time in turn order. Each player, in turn, places three of their people tokens on the game board contiguously. The game is now ready to begin.