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.

Lions of Lydia

| T3d-1978
Lions of Lydia

Lions of Lydia

The ancient world is changing. The kingdom of Lydia has minted the world’s first gold coin. Bartering and trading will soon be supplanted by coins as the dominant medium of exchange throughout civilization…

Lions of Lydia is a bag-management and engine-building game about the dawn of currency. As an influential leader, you send merchants out to barter for resources and increase your landholdings. When the nobles arrive, they bring their Lydian Lion coins into play—which have unparalleled buying power.

To achieve victory, you must manage the merchants in your bag and complement their abilities with the cards in your tableau. Traditional merchants produce basic resources, which are necessary to build your engine—but if you fail to convert your resources into coins, you will not be able to buy the most valuable cards! Thus, noble Lydian merchants—and their golden Lion coins—are the key to success. When enough properties are developed, the game ends, and a winner is declared!

Will you draft the best merchants to achieve your goals? Will you be the first to gain the most valuable properties? Will you master the new, golden currency: the Lions of Lydia?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Kingsburg

| T3d-1978
Kingsburg

Kingsburg

In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.

The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.

The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King’s Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.

Each adviser on the King’s Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.

At the end of five years, the player who best developed his assigned territory and most pleased the King through the Council is the winner.

Many alternate strategies are possible to win: will you go for the military way, disregarding economic and prestige buildings, or will you aim to complete the big Cathedral to please the King? Will you use the Merchant’s Guild to gain more influence in the Council, or will you go for balanced development?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Kingdomino Origins

| T3d-1978
Kingdomino Origins

Kingdomino Origins

Go back in time to the prehistoric era of Kingdomino!

Kingdomino Origins plays similarly to the original game but introduces new components for additional actions and new ways to score points. Regions in your territory will earn you points if they contain fire. Fire is either part of your terrains or earned by adding dominoes with volcanoes. There are three game modes to play:

  • The first one introduces fire and volcanoes.
  • The second mode uses wooden resources.
  • And the third one features cavemen tokens.

You earn points by collecting resources, with additional points when you have the majority of a type of resources. These resources allow you to bring cavemen to your territory, and each type of caveman has its own way to give you points based on their position.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Kingdom Builder: Big Box

| T3d-1978
Kingdom Builder: Big Box

Kingdom Builder: Big Box

In Kingdom Builder, the players create their own kingdoms by skillfully building their settlements, aiming to earn the most gold at the end of the game.

Nine different kinds of terrain are on the variable game board, including locations and castles. During his turn, a player plays his terrain card and builds three settlements on three hexes of this kind. If possible, a new settlement must be built next to one of that player’s existing settlements. When building next to a location, the player may seize an extra action tile that he may use from his next turn on. These extra actions allow extraordinary actions such as moving your settlements.

By building next to a castle, the player will earn gold at the end of the game, but the most gold will be earned by meeting the conditions of the three Kingdom Builder cards; these three cards (from a total of ten in the game) specify the conditions that must be met in order to earn the much-desired gold, such as earning gold for your settlements built next to water hexes or having the majority of settlements in a sector of the board.

Each game, players will use a random set of Kingdom Builder cards, special actions, and terrain sectors to build the map!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

Hadara

| T3d-1978
Hadara

Hadara

Hadara carries you off into the world of cultures and countries of this earth. Over three epochs, you will experience the transformation of your new world from a small settlement to a high culture. You want to populate this world with people who come from different cultures and continents as well as different ages. To bring glory and honor to your world, you should choose the persons and accomplishments skillfully. But you should not ignore agriculture, culture, and military power, otherwise one of your competitors might get bigger and more successful than you. Who will succeed first in creating a new flourishing high culture?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Funfair

| T3d-1978
Funfair

Funfair

Can you build the best theme park in town?

Choose and build an exciting mix of attractions in your very own theme park. Upgrade them to match blueprints, or just to stack up towering rides that pull in the crowds and make the most cash. Hire staff members and build super attractions to maximise your park’s strategy for the win!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

Flamecraft

| T3d-1978
Flamecraft

Flamecraft

Artisan dragons, the smaller and magically talented versions of their larger (and destructive) cousins, are sought by shopkeepers so that they may delight customers with their flamecraft. You are a Flamekeeper, skilled in the art of conversing with dragons, placing them in their ideal home and using enchantments to entice them to produce wondrous things. Your reputation will grow as you aid the dragons and shopkeepers, and the Flamekeeper with the most reputation will be known as the Master of Flamecraft.

In Flamecraft, 1-5 players take on the role of Flamekeepers, gathering items, placing dragons and casting enchantments to enhance the shops of the town. Dragons are specialized (bread, meat, iron, crystal, plant and potion) and the Flamekeepers know which shops are the best home for each. Visit a shop to gain items and a favor from one of the dragons there. Gathered items can be used to enchant a shop, gaining reputation and the favors of all the dragons in the shop. If you are fortunate enough to attract fancy dragons then you will have opportunities to secure even more reputation.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Dice City

| T3d-1978
Dice City

Dice City

The Kingdom of Rolldovia is in turmoil. Her royal highness, the Queen, has decreed that there will be a new capital after the old one was sacked by hordes of barbarians and bandits from the south. As leaders of one of the country’s influential noble families, players vie with each other to establish their provincial city as the best home for Rolldovia’s new capital. You must choose your city’s path in gaining the approval of all others in the kingdom.

Dice City is a “dice-crafting” game in which the locations in your city act as the changing faces of your dice each turn. Use tactics and strategy to press your claim!

You each have several ways to promote your city; create strong armies; construct wondrous buildings; or open up trade routes. The secret is to manage your city and its natural resources carefully to make the best of your fortunes.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.03

Cuzco

| T3d-1978

Cuzco is a new 2018 edition of Java from French publisher Super Meeple that moves the action to South America, which is in line with the other titles in the Mask Trilogy as well as the authors’ original plans for the design.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Cleopatra

| T3d-1978

Designed by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a fun and engaging game that includes a three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. Players strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra’s architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace.

Players, however, will be tempted to trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. While these corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, they come with a high price: the cursed corruption amulets honoring Sobek, the crocodile-god. When Cleopatra finally reaches her new palace at the end of the game, she punishes the most corrupted architects (i.e., the ones with the most amulets), depriving them of riches or giving them as a sacrifice to her crocodile! The wealthiest architect from among those still alive wins.

This new edition of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects has a new graphic design by Miguel Coimbra, a free-standing 3D palace, and rulebook updated by the designers for simplicity and fluidity, which incorporates these gameplay changes:

  • The combinations of resource cards to discard in order to build pieces of the palace have been reworked.
  • The player rewards for building the palace’s pieces have been recalculated.
  • The consequences of corruption have been reviewed.
  • The Great Priest is no longer activated in the same way.
  • The player count has changed from 3-5 to 2-4.
  • There is a new specific system to manage the character cards, which are no longer part of the deck, and are instead handled separately.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25