Building the Eternal City
Establish your legacy in the great city of Rome
The Emperor of the greatest civilization in history calls for the finest master architects to rebuild Rome! Compete against your fellow architects for blueprints and materials, and manage your resources carefully to sculpt a city where any citizen can live and thrive. Order The Great City of Rome today from our website or your local retailer!
Impress the Emperor
The construction of a city is a complex endeavor, requiring meticulous planning, dedicated workers, and sturdy materials. Before the work can start, players must first travel to the court of the Emperor for blueprints and materials to enact their plan for the city. Using emissaries to earn the Emperor’s favor, players can claim spaces on a unique action strip to strategically prepare for the construction of their city plan.
Each round, starting with the first player, players will place their emissary onto the current action strip. Balancing priorities each round is key to victory. The emissary closest to the Emperor (the golden pawn) will get to go first, possibly claiming the most desirable card, but that player is sacrificing resources with their placement.
Here the orange player has the silver first player marker. They choose to place their emissary on the second space. Play continues clockwise to the purple player. The purple player could have placed their emissary on the first action space in front of the orange player, which would have put them closest to the Emperor. Instead, the purple player places their emissary further back on the strip, claiming more resources for their actions. The white player is fine going last because it gives them more resources, so they choose the last spot.
Once players have completed the emissary phase, the action phase begins. Since orange is closest to the Emperor, they perform their actions first. First, they’ll choose one of the faceup buildings and add it to their hand. Their emissary was placed on the second position on the action strip, gaining them one brick and one cog. Bricks are used to construct buildings, adding them to your city, and cogs are used for the produce action, which utilizes the abilities of each production building constructed in your city, such as a vegetable farm or vineyard.
Continuing down the action strip, the purple player goes next with two bricks and two cogs for their actions. Then the white player goes last with three bricks and two cogs.
Once the action phase is complete, a new round begins with new opportunities for players to entreat the Emperor. The action strip is flipped over and placed at the bottom of the stack, revealing a new order of options. Each strip has a front and back side with different configurations of three bricks and two cogs. Each round you’ll have to carefully choose between the best selection of building cards or having multiple resources for your actions.
Enact Your Plan
Once you have your blueprints and resources from the emperor, you have to enact your plan and construct the city. When you perform the build action, you can build one building from your hand and place it in your city. In the top-left corner of each building is the minimum number of bricks required to build it. Any excess bricks are lost and don’t carry over to the next round. Buildings will cost one, two, or three bricks to build. The build action is performed only once per round, so there is no benefit to having more than three bricks at a time.
When adding a building to your great city, you must place it so that at least one edge of the card is vertically or horizontally adjacent to one of your existing buildings. It must be built in an empty space, and buildings that are already in the city cannot be moved or replaced. As you continue to construct your city, think carefully about where to place the different building types. You can only have four buildings in any row or column, and certain buildings will score more points for your overall plan if you can connect them together.
At the end of the game, you score points for your buildings, coins, and influence. Residential buildings that are connected horizontally or vertically form a residential area. Residential areas will score more points when connected to public buildings of different colors. Aqueducts in your city will score you more points the more aqueducts you have. Temples are unique buildings that each have unique scoring requirements. For example, the Temple of Minerva will reward you with ten points if your city has sixteen buildings (a complete 4x4 grid).
Will you be able to establish your legacy and have your plan realized in brick and marble? Grab your copy of The Great City of Rome and impress the Emperor!
