Each of the game turns occur at the same time, players do not each take a turn like traditional board games.

Instead, the game is divided in distinct phases :

1. Bidding on previously find tiles
2. Research for new land tiles
3. Acquisitions (take control of land tiles won in step 1 and 2)
4. Raiding by barbarians
5. Harvesting (Get rewards for fully manned tiles)
6. Recruiting (Get additional population on each under-manned tile)
7. Upgrading (Try to obtain one of the 3 upgrades - Cathedral, University and Mason Temple)

During the final phase, a vote can be taken to elect a prince and end the game.

To acquire new land tiles, players must bid population, money and votes to outbid other players and increase available resources.

However, the only way to fight off the barbarians is with a strong population, while the only way to win is with votes.

Player must risk using their resource to increase their future chances in the game, knowing well that the spend votes might cause them a victory or that population wasted on a big no longer protects against barbarian raids.

To make things worse, only fully manned tiles provide additional resources. Taking a population marker on a church might bring you one additional bid this turn, but that church will not produce a church vote for the next.

As if it wasn't enough, the only way to search for new land tiles is to send a search party, but to search for new land tiles, a player must not even attempt to bid, yet, most and possibly all of the found land will not be retrieved by the player but rather placed for bid on the next turn.

Every turn, barbarians attack one or more players. Players cannot officially attack each other, but they can recruit barbarians during game play and unleash them to increase the strength of an attack.

Any tile overrun by barbarians is returned to the center of the table where it will be once again available for a bid.

A carefully built city might be severely damaged by a barbarian wave supplemented by other player's recruited barbarians.

To make it worse, half or more of the tiles of a city must always be farm fields. Even if barbarians always start their attack on farm fields, the loss of a few fields might force flipping over valuable specialized tiles back to their field side.

 

 

To win, you simply need to be elected prince.

During the final phase of a turn, simply call for a referendum on your election. If you get the majority of the vote cast and a minimum number of votes, you win !

Otherwise, you lose all your votes...

You can also propose a council vote in which voting is more restricted, it is thus easier to win. In a council vote however, players with upgrades who voted yes in the referendum share the victory with the prince.

Of course, they also share the loss of their votes should the referendum fail.