Players are instructed to step onto the map in their assigned region when their year is reached. The visual effect works well, as the map explodes in population at the tail end of the lesson. North and Latin America, on the other side of the room, are rather spacious. Others, notably Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, are pretty meager. The official start of the planning round.
Players turn over their game cards and refer to the rules.
Many cards have symbols where the instructions should be. Teams get a look at a chart detailing who has what in terms of energy and food. Scarcity, it is now understood, will be a problem. That about sums up the chaos at the start of the game's first round. Players, unsure how to proceed, wave bits of construction paper and colored play money like an angry mob of Monopoly players.