Last excavation phase = 12 tiles?

[Peepser]

I don't understand a couple things in this game and they are not mentioned in the rules. First: every excavation round, the rounds seem to get longer. First it was 7, then 8, then 9, then 10. The last one had 12 tiles. (2 player game) First player placed one cube, then I placed one in the museum. All of a sudden the game goes into survey phase, gives a cartouche to one player, another to neutral player, and announces 'game over'. Why is that? Shouldn't we doing 12 rounds of excavations? What was the point of laying out 12 tiles in the final excavation phases if we were only allowed 'one' chance to place cubes?

[MaBi]

There is no fixed number of turns: the excavation phase ends as soon as all players have passed. Moreover, when there is only one player left he can take only one action and then is forced to pass, so ending the phase (and here this is carried out automatically).
In your 2 player game in the last season you both took an action in round 1, then in round 2 the blue player passed, you took your action (booking a room in the museum) and then you were automatically forced to pass (only one action allowed to last player) and the excavation phase ended.
If you click "View game log" you will see all the sequence of actions in the game and what happened should be more clear.

[Peepser]

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. It really helps to be able to see the game log.