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I purchased Origins at Essen and we just tried it out today in a three player game. Although the rules seem clear enough, we seemed to get very bogged down. Markers tended to clog up Innovation and Population got to the point where we would regularly fail our Stabilization. Here are some specific questions:

1) In Era 1 - does stabilization ever apply? You are not yet on to the flipped brain card so you don't have dark ages and golden ages.

2) How soon should you move to Era II? I believe we moved too quickly and didn't have the resources to fare well there. We had a lot of "nothing" turns while we waited to cycle through some cards that finally gave us something we could do. (This was also somewhat true in Era I but was even more agonizing in Era II.

3) If you are in the dark ages can you still suffer the effects of missing the stability roll? You can easily get into a cycle where you have only 1 action (1 innovation) a turn usually with nothing you can do to improve your situation and eventually you miss your stability roll again which sets you back by lose of men on the board and cards suppressed.

4) Can you gain face up cards while in the dark ages or does everything stay flipped over until you are in a golden age?

We have several more similar questions, but all this may be best answered with a detailed play by play example of several turns to clarify the flow of play and the consequences of various effects.

Thanks in advance for any help!

The trick to playing Origins is to maintain a healthy demography, with low birth rates and more young adults than children. As I say in the player's guide in the rules, one should avoid the demographies of modern African nations like Chad, where the median age is just 14, fecundity is very high but so is infant mortality, and stability is sub-marginal.

Often in Origins, one has a choice between "masculine"" values (territorial expansion, aggression, technology, infrastructure) vs. "feminine" values (pair bonding and marriage, stability, education, child care). The latter actions (represented by fecundity decreases) must be played periodically. Resist the temptation to increase one's maritime skills, etc. and instead play the right side of the card, if one is at less than 2 innovation actions. During our playtests, players following this guideline never suffered from turns in which he could do nothing.

The percentage of idea cards in Era I with fecundity decreases is 69%, in Era II it is 82%. In Eras 3 and 4 it is even higher, with doubles and triples possible. Whether by imitation or novel behavior, it is not difficult to maintain a healthy and stable demography through the use of fecundity decreases.

Except during pandemics, one can always avoid risking chaos by migrating rather than expanding population. There are times in the game one wants to fall into chaos, because often only through chaos can progress be made. In these instances, one should save cards with fecundity decreases on it, to keep the chaos from going into "deep chaos". An example of this is in the extended example of play in the rules.

To answer specific questions:
1) Stability Rolls do apply in all Eras, including Era I.

2) According to the strategy guide on page 2: "Don't advance to Era II until you have an Elder and a metropolis, plus a footprint of stage 2." Era II (the bicameral age) was mankind's least stable period, and Era II is the toughest era to play in the game.

Also, if one wants to keep a played card as a "state secret", one should play a second card (often a fecundity decrease card) on top of the first card played, to "bury" it so that it will not be easily imitated.

3) The effects of chaos do not differ if one is in the golden age or dark age. To avoid going into "deep chaos" (declines that last 2 or 3 turns), one should keep cards in reserve.

4) While in dark ages, one is vulnerable to revolution, but other than that there are no special rules for the dark ages. Thus one can gain face-up public cards while in the dark ages. Also, it should be noted that going into chaos during a golden age can advance a player into the next era, whereas going into chaos during a dark age merely stagnates the player.