Tag: City Building

In City Building games, a player acts as the planner and leader of a city and is responsible for the city’s growth and functionality.

Cyclades

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In this latest collaboration between Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, players must buy the favor of the gods in their race to be the first player to build two cities in the Ancient Greek island group known as the Cyclades.

Victory requires respect for all the gods – players cannot afford to sacrifice to only one god, but must pay homage to each of five gods in turn. Each turn, the players bid for the favors of the gods, as only one player can have the favor of each god per turn – and each player is also limited to the favor of a single god per turn.

  • Ares allows the movement of player armies and the building of Fortresses.
  • Poseidon allows players to move their navies and build Ports.
  • Zeus allows his followers to hire priests and build temples.
  • Athena provides her worshipers with philosophers and universities.
  • Apollo increases the income of his worshipers.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction/Bidding
  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.82

Tiny Towns

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Tiny Towns

Tiny Towns

You are the mayor of a tiny town in the forest in which the smaller creatures of the woods have created a civilization hidden away from predators. This new land is small and the resources are scarce, so you take what you can get and never say no to building materials. Cleverly plan and construct a thriving town, and don’t let it fill up with wasted resources! Whoever builds the most prosperous tiny town wins!

In Tiny Towns, your town is represented by a 4×4 grid on which you will place resource cubes in specific layouts to construct buildings. Each building scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. When no player can place any more resources or construct any buildings, the game ends, and any squares without a building are worth -1 VP. The player with the most VP wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • City Building
  • Grid Coverage
  • Pattern Building
  • Player Elimination
  • Puzzle

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Tenpenny Parks

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Tenpenny Parks

Tenpenny Parks

A game of Tenpenny Parks is played over five rounds, called months. Each month players take turns placing workers on the gameboard to take actions like removing trees, building concessions and attractions, and buying more property in order to make their growing theme parks as attractive to visiting people (VP tokens) as possible. At the end of each month, rewards are given to the player with the fairground that best exemplifies certain raw emotions, and after five months the player with the most VP tokens wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

Shaolia

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Shaolia

Shaolia

Shaolia is a board game filled with deadly strategy and countless possibilities to build your own kingdom.

  • Build your very own kingdom with various building & character cards
  • Utilize creative tactics to take the lead with highly dynamic game play
  • Dive into the world of Shaolia through fantastic artwork and storylines

There are two ways to win in Shaolia. You can either deal 12 damage to your opponent’s palace and destroy it, or you can achieve 18 culture score.

The game is played through multiple rounds.
A round consists of 3 different phases.

  • Purchase Phase: Purchase cards and resources.
  • Building Phase: Build the purchased cards on the territory board.
  • Action Phase:  Roll the dice and activate cards built on the territory board, using dice.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Santa Monica

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Santa Monica

Santa Monica

In Santa Monica, you are trying to create the most appealing neighborhood in southern California. Will you choose to create a calm, quiet beach focused on nature, a bustling beach full of tourists, or something in-between to appeal to the locals?

Each turn, you draft a feature card from the display to build up either your beach or your street. These features work together to score you victory points. The player with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tableau Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

San Francisco

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San Francisco

San Francisco

For San Francisco, the first half of the 20th century is an era of dynamic growth and new opportunities. It’s also a chance for you — junior urban planner — to take part in a contest for the most amazing reconstruction plan of the city. Sit down with your sketchbook and create a project that will make you stand out from the competition. Design a beautiful city in this game by Reiner Knizia, world-famous board game designer.

In the board game San Francisco, you become an urban planner whose goal is to create the greatest redevelopment plan of the famous city in California. Design districts in each of the five types, racing against all the other planners. Choose the right moment to take on new projects — but be careful, if you take on too many projects it’ll be harder to gain more. Earn more prestige by cleverly designing a system of cable car connections. Lay foundations and carefully design the nearby landscape, allowing you to build new skyscrapers. Create a new vision of San Francisco that will gain the most rewards, and win through fame and recognition.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Queendomino

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Queendomino

Queendomino

Build up the most prestigious kingdom by claiming wheat fields, forests, lakes, grazing grounds, marshes, and mountains. Your knights will bring you riches in the form of coins — and if you make sure to expand the towns on your lands, you will make new buildings appear, giving you opportunities for new strategies. You may win the Queen’s favors … but always be aware of the dragon!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Quadropolis

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Quadropolis

Quadropolis

Each player builds their own metropolis in Quadropolis (first announced as City Mania), but they’re competing with one another for the shops, parks, public services and other structures to be placed in them.

The game lasts four rounds, and in each round players first lay out tiles for the appropriate round at random on a 5×5 grid. Each player has four architects numbered 1-4 and on a turn, a player places an architect next to a row or column in the grid, claims the tile that’s as far in as the number of the architect placed (e.g., the fourth tile in for architect #4), places that tile in the appropriately numbered row or column on the player’s 4×4 city board, then claims any resources associated with the tile (inhabitants or energy).

When a player takes a tile, a figure is placed in this now-empty space and the next player cannot place an architect in the same row or column where this tile was located. In addition, you can’t place one architect on top of another, so each placement cuts off play options for you and everyone else later in the round. After all players have placed all four architects, the round ends, all remaining tiles are removed, and the tiles for the next round laid out.

After four rounds, the game ends. Players can move the inhabitants and energy among their tiles at any point during the game to see how to maximize their score. At game end, they then score for each of the six types of buildings depending on how well they build their city — as long as they have activated the buildings with inhabitants or energy as required:

  • Residential buildings score depending on their height
  • Shops score depending on how many customers they have
  • Public services score depending on the number of districts in your city that have them
  • Parks score depending on the number of residential buildings next to them
  • Harbors score based on the longest row or column of activated harbors in the city
  • Factories score based on the number of adjacent shops and harbors

Some buildings are worth victory points (VPs) on their own, and once players sum these values with what they’ve scored for each type of building in their city, whoever has the highest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21

NEOM

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NEOM

NEOM

NEOM is a modern city-building game featuring simultaneous drafting and tile placement that takes inspiration from games such as 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, and Sim City. Players compete to build the most impressive city utilizing a tree of 17 different goods (from three different tiers) that can each be unlocked, allowing the placement of increasingly powerful tiles as the game progresses. Tiles also feature roads which must be connected without being rotated, meaning that players must always plan their city layout with an eye to the future.

At the start of each game, players draft cornerstones — powerful, unique tiles that heavily change what is most valuable from game to game.

NEOM has been in development for seven years and the rules and tile set have been iterated on over the course of more than 3,500 games logged in a custom online prototype, leading to an exceptionally well balanced game with a wide variety of viable strategies.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Closed Drafting
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60

Nanty Narking

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Nanty Narking

Nanty Narking

Immersed deeply in the world of Dickens’s and Doyle’s literature, Nanty Narking moves you into the realities of the myths and legends of the Victorian era. The events in the game are tied to real and fictional characters and places in Victorian London The same London which inspired so many stories…

The action takes place on the city map, with players placing their agents and buildings on the board through card play. Every card is unique. The cards bring the game to life as they include most of the famous characters who have appeared in the various books. The rules are relatively simple: Play a card and do what it says. Most cards have more than one action on them, and you can choose to do some or all of these actions. Some cards also allow you to play a second card, so you can chain actions.

At the beginning of the game, each player draws a secret personality with specific victory conditions, which means that you can never be sure what the other players need to do in order to win. You need to fulfill your goal while also trying to prevent others from winning!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Bluffing
  • City Building
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Roles
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.27