Are you ready to build the most glorious city in the world? Choose wisely which buildings and monuments you want to include in your slice of the world, and plan your roads accordingly to allow your city to flourish. Whatever you do, don’t let your rivals snag the best monuments out from under you! Let’s get building!

What Is It?

Action Points – Players get 7 gold each round to spend on whatever they need/can afford (buildings, roads, monuments, et cetera) one at a time. They can take out a loan for a boost of 2 gold if needed as well, but must pay it back (for 3 gold) before they can take out another. Each element has its own cost and buying a monument costs all of a player’s remaining gold for the round. So they can buy earlier to secure a specific one, or try to wait until later in the round to get them cheaper.

Tile Placement / Grid Coverage – As players buy roads, building tiles, monuments, or towers, they will place them around their boards, according to the various placement requirements. Players can earn points at the end of the game for building that are completely surrounded, and for not covering certain spots on their boards that contain natural resources.

Resource Tracks – As players buy buildings they’ll also earn resources, to be tracked on their personal boards, which will earn them end game points (for their least produced resource) and can help them increase their population for potentially more points.

Who Is It For?

  • 1 to 5 Players – Solo play is decent; scales pretty well at all counts, adds more building tiles at 4 and 5 players, which helps the market, but it is definitely longer with more players
  • Ages 12 & Up / Mid-Weight Gamers – Nice level of strategy in how to place things/plan ahead for more tiles and monuments. Not too light, but not too brain-burny either
  • Fans of tile placement + city building
  • Players who like figuring out the most efficient way to do things

Variants

Solo – Play against an AI deck, which takes certain items from the marketing depending on the card that flips. In easy mode, it scores the sum of all 3 of your resource tracks. In hard mode, it also adds points for monuments it collects.

It’s a very smooth solo mode, not a ton of upkeep, and no real additional set-up, just shuffling the deck. It’s definitely worth a try if you generally like solo games, especially if you’re already a fan of the multi-player game.

Advanced – During set up, put out 3 public objectives for players to compete for. These are things like longest road, most purple buildings, and more. First place player gets 3 points, and second gets 1.

These were super easy to add in, and gave players a little more to strategize around to try and grab additional points. I’d definitely recommend adding them in once you get a feel for the game.

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Everything looks great as you put it together on your board; good graphic design
  • Components – Nice quality across the board; the monuments are next level
  • Rules are clear/well-written
  • Turns flow very smoothly, usually pretty quick
  • It’s interesting trying to balance the costs of everything with your gold each round, and seeing how much you can try to do with only 7 “action points”
  • Variability in A/B side of both player boards
  • Tile board flips for scoring
  • Advanced mode is a nice variant for the game

CONS

  • Can last a bit long for what it is
  • A lot of set-up/clean-up
  • Some monuments did not seem nearly valuable enough for how much space they took up on your board, but that could be me missing the strategy of the larger ones
  • Only 3 reference cards for an up to 5 player game

Final Thoughts

The game is definitely a looker with some excellent production quality. I thought it had some interesting gameplay with choosing how to spend your gold every round, and it definitely had some room for strategy.

For me, I think it just felt a little “same-y” play to play; I felt that the strategies didn’t change much game to game, and everything was very linear, so to speak. The public objectives helped with that a little bit, so I’d definitely recommend adding those in. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be something I’m itching to play all the time, but would get to the table every so often.

If you enjoy tile laying and city building, though, definitely give it a play!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10

Designer – Zé Mendes
Artists – Odysseas Stamoglou, Tom Ventre
Publishers – Arcane Wonders, MeepleBR, MUNDUS
MSRP – $49.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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