With the new edition there will be two minor changes of the game rules:

1. Any nation which achieves all eight progresses may trade any resource by a 2 to 1 ratio with the bank.

In the old version it was a 1 to 1 ratio. That made it irrelevant which cities a nation owns and what it produces. And it lead to instant inflationary mass production of military units. A nation, weak on iron and strong in gold, could boost its military production from one moment to another. It is more interesting to let it remain important which type of cities are owned. It is more thematic either (How on earth could you build units out of gold/marble? But you may trade these units!)

2. Any nation which achieves all eight progresses receives an ancient personality of free choice from the bank.

Some newbies had problems with the endgame. It was difficult for them to sack temples quick and easy, which often was the only way to get additional ancient personalities. Instead of destroying temples, they went into trench warfare.
The new rule will not change much for experienced players, who usually end the game by sacking temples before getting all eight progresses (we mostly do).
But for newbies stuck in their endgame, this rule will change everything: They will be offered an alternative way to get additional VPs and will be able to end the game in a reasonable time. In a situation where only generals are left, there will be at least one nation who only needs one additional personality to win. This nation now could win alternatively along the progress track. This would be a better fix than just reducing the necessary number by one.

Thematically, an ancient nation who owns all possible progresses is very attractive to any skilled people of their time. All in all, the endgame now offers more choices and variations. The old way will still be offered as professional variant in the rules.

Mac

This looks like it'll make the game accessible to more ppl. Yeah some do complaint of the sacking temple problem which resulted in massive cold war stand-off.

But experience players then tend to sack temples sometimes earlier.

Now with these rule changes, it's going to be more like a race to the finish w/o having to resort to warfare. Will hope to play with this new rule and see how it goes.

I like the first change. Trading resources was too strong at one-for-one, and removing the perfect transmutation is an improvement. I wasn't a fan of having all the technologies confer any advantage. The techs are powerful enough without the transmutation bonus.

As far as the second change, I really don't like it. Firstly it only encourages the already-overly-influential tech. Secondly, it is too powerful for blocking other players.

How many times have you seen a player putting full effort into getting the last leader of a given type? Suddenly the person who gets all eight techs gets the ability to trade, a VP (or two VPs if they were first to get the last one), and can block their strongest opposition from what may be their only way to win. Taking the last king, citizen, or mariner is a major blow to someone who may have been counting on those VPs. I don't mind losing the last mariner to another guy buying boats who beat me, but losing it to someone who already got VPs from buying techs?

From our group's gameplay experiance, this change would unify, rather than diversify tactics. It seems like it would lower the number of tense (read exciting) endgames.

I know it's just an option, but I'm moving the opposite direction. I'm more tempted to prohibit transmutation and raise the price of first techs by a gold.

-Greg

Agreed. As for the second rule change, it has to be an ancient personality from the stack with actually the highest number of personalities (usually, but not necessarily a general). This should limit frustration, while helping newbies just as well.

All in all, the scientific progress strategy now is weakened. Before, trading resources 1 for 1 gave a huge advantage, enabling the owner of all tech to overrun his enemies and easily sack several temples. Now the advantage is limited to only 1 VP, and a nation specialized in gold production will have more difficulties to build huge armies in the endgame in comparison to other nations.

Oh! Well that isn't so bad afterall.

-Greg

So I can chose to play the game with the rules as originally published? Good. Because the rule changes seem to me to pander to those players that hadn't studied their Sun Tzu.

The 1-for-1 trading towards the end helped accelerate the endgame IMO, as it is VERY difficult NOT to sack a temple when you've got all 8 developments and enough units on the board, no matter how things are defended. It also helped that players didn't need to muck about collecting Iron if they were going to attack, as well as allowing the Gold and Gold/Marble approach players o quickly catch up in the military might stakes with players who have pursued Iron all game.

And the "take a personality when you get all 8 developments" is sonething I would NEVER see myself doing. If you didn't plan how to get the required number of VPs, then you didn't play the game right; throwing extra VPs at these players only encourages them to play poorly. Or avoid conflict altogether, which is just as daft given the number of Generals in the game.

Antike is a game about collecting the available VPs in the fewest actions using the least resources. Have a route to victory, and pursue it. Watch the board position, turn order position, and rondel position, and play to achieve victory with those factors in mind. When the players understand this, there is no "endgame" problem (save for the 3-player version, but you've already fixed that with the reduction to 10 VPs).

We have found that with competent players in 5 and 6 player games, all of whom are similarly efficient at exchanging actions for VPs, that invariably the VP cards/personalities will be exhausted before a winner is determined.

Yes the VP cards may get exhausted but then the next player to sack a temple wins (not needing the General card in this case). So there's still a proper end-game.

Quite, and that means that the endgames are then always the same process: a carefully calculated defence of temples with every player working out the permutations for every other player until finally somebody slips.

Would these newly updated rules be available online?

Two months too late, but here are the latest rules:

http://212.227.153.71/antike/antike_rules_060809.pdf