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The Great City of Rome
60m - 60m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 10+
To rebuild the Eternal City, the Roman Emperor summoned the most talented builders of antiquity. Each of them is trying to draft the best city — but talent is not enough. Only those who know how to please the Emperor, cleverly exert their influence, and invest at the right time will succeed in City of Rome.
In more detail, the game lasts fourteen rounds, and in each round, players draft one of the building cards in play and add it to their hand. The drafting order depends on how closely you stand to the emperor. At the start of a round, you reveal a new "action strip" that has three bricks and two cogs in some order, then players take turns placing their figure on one of these five spaces; the closer you are to the emperor, the earlier you draft, but the fewer resources (bricks and cogs) you receive. (With only two players in the game, each player places two figures on the action strip and takes two complete turns each round.)
After drafting, you can take one build action and one produce action. To build, you must pay the cost in bricks — paying two coins for each missing brick — then place the card you’re building adjacent to another card of yours already in play. You start with two building cards in play, so you’ll have at most sixteen cards at game’s end. These cards must fit in a 4×4 square, so plan carefully since you’ll want to place some buildings next to other ones to earn the most points and to get the most out of a produce action. Some buildings give you a special action or influence tokens when you build them.
To produce, you must have two cogs — paying one coin for each missing cog — then use the production action of each building in your city once.
Every few rounds, an influence card is revealed, and whoever has the most influence tokens at the end of that round collects the card, then discards their tokens.
At the end of fourteen rounds, players score points for their residential buildings, temples, aqueducts, coins, and influence cards and tokens. whoever has the most points wins!
| Ages | 10+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
| Play Time | 60m – 60m |
| Designer | Brett J. Gilbert, Matthew Dunstan |
| Mechanics | Pattern Building |
| Theme | City Building, Environmental |
| Publisher | ABACUSSPIELE, Z-Man Games, Inc. |
Red22jlj
Just ok. City tile building game. Too similar to other games. The other games are better in my opinion.
JoSch
I like tile-laying and citybuilding. City of Rome features both. On their turn, players position themselves on an initiative track, then choose one of the available tiles and either play it directly to their 5x5 city grid by paying the associated cost or play another tile from their hand. VPs are gained at game end depending on the tiles and their relations as well as during the game in a few "military battles". While this sounds fine, the game breaks down in the details. Once a player gets his production engine up, there's zero incentive not to place as early on the initiative track as possible, relegating the essential system of the game to luck of the draw when it's a player's turn to choose first. The resources are too easy to come by and eliminate what should have been one of the challenges of the game. Having the necessary tiles come up at the wrong time will have a strong influence in the later turns and can easily decide the game. Mediocrity in a box combined with astonishingly drab and boring artwork = zero reason to look at this again. I'll be looking twice in future before I play a game by Dunstan/Gilbert.
tool
This is the sort of thing I generally like, but this is a really uninspiring take on it. The buildings don't interact in interesting ways and the fact that you can only build once per turn means that the only possibly interesting decision most turns is which card to take. That isn't enough to make a game.