Cities

The Game

Cities by Martyn F was published in 2008. I have heard of it before but have never tried it. I recently borrowed it from Allen to give it a go. After trying it, it gave me a feeling that I had played a game from a very different era. 2008 wasn't that long ago. It's just that we don't get many games of this style in recent years. 

Cities is a tile-laying game, like Carcassonne. However everyone builds his own city, and not a shared city. Also the edges of tiles do not need to match up. The scoring rules incentivise you to lay your tile in specific manners, but there are no hard rules limiting your placement. The only restriction is your city is a 4x4 grid and you cannot place tiles beyond this 4x4 limit. 

Everyone has an identical set of 24 tiles, and each tile is numbered. You also have 7 tourist pawns. When a game starts, pick a leader, who will randomly remove 8 of his tiles from the game. He then shuffles his tiles and stacks them face-down. He draws three of them, and reads aloud their numbers to everyone else. The other players then find those same tiles from their own sets. Everyone now starts his own city by placing his three tiles, with only the corners touching, like in the photo above. No peeking at others. 

Every round, the leader draws a tile, then reads the number out to everyone else, so that everyone will be adding the exact same tile to his city. Although everyone uses the same tiles, there are may ways to place tiles, and players will usually end up with very different cities. 

After placing a tile, you may decide to take a tourist action. You may place a tourist in one of the four sections of the newly-placed tile. If you have no more tourists in your supply, you may take an on-board tourist and place him. The other tourist action you can take is to have one on-board tourist move one step. That is slow, but he can walk in any direction and need not go to the newly-placed tile. The only rule is he may not jump into a lake. 

There are four terrain types. Tourist attractions are yellow. Parks are green. Terraces are orange. Lakes are blue. Tourists on attractions, parks and terraces will score points for you, in different ways. The rulebook comes with three sets of scoring rules, from beginner to advanced level. I will explain just the advanced rules. Experienced players should start with the intermediate scoring rules, and once you have warmed up, go for the advanced rules. 

If you have a tourist at an attraction (yellow), the tourist will score based on the size of the attraction. E.g. the tourist at the bottom right scores 5pts because the attraction size is five squares. In addition to that, each adjacent terrace scores 1pt. This attraction has 2 attached terraces, so that's an additional 2pts. In total this attraction gives 7pts. 

The parks (green) score in the same manner. Let's take the tourist at the top right as an example. He scores 4pts for the size of the park, and also 4pts for the number of adjacent terraces. Total 8pts. 

If any tourist is at a terrace, he scores points based on his line of sight. This works differently from the attractions and parks. The tourist looks in all four directions, and scores points for every square of lakes and parks he sees. Let's take the tourist at the top left as an example. To the north he sees 1 lake. To the east 1 lake too. To the sound 1 lake and 1 park. Total 4pts. His line of sight is blocked by other terraces and attractions. 

Once everyone completes his city, the game ends, and the highest scorer wins. This is a game where you do not interfere with your opponents at all. This is literally multiplayer solitaire. You are just competing to see who has done the best placement. 

The Play

I started with the intermediate rules, and immediately moved on to the advanced rules after one game. I find it clever and necessary that the initial three tiles only touch in the corners. This creates challenge, without which the early game may be too easy, and players may lay tiles in too similar a fashion. During play, I don't look at others' cities and only focus on my own. There's certainly enough to keep me occupied. Anyhow, it's not like I can do anything about others' cities, other than annoying them with my suggestions. 

There are only 13 rounds in a game. After you place your initial three tiles, there are only 13 more tiles to be placed to fill up the 4x4 grid. You have 7 tourists, which means about half the time you will be placing a new tourist to help you score points. The game is all about creating situations conducive to your tourists scoring points. Most of the time you will be placing a tourist on the new tile. I rarely get my tourists to walk, but walking is a powerful option because sometimes you get to build multiple large regions or lucrative terraces. You are limited to placing one tourist on your new tile. So sometimes you have to ask a tourist to walk to a better spot, or drop one a few steps away from an ideal spot and ask him to walk. 

One thing I do when playing is I set a benchmark for scoring. It is just an arbitrary number at first, like 5pts or 6pts, but it helps me judge whether it's worthwhile to place a tourist on my latest tile. Naturally this benchmark will differ depending on which scoring rules you use. You need to set a much higher benchmark when using the advanced rules. 

This was one of Michelle's completed cities. After we completed our cities, we realised she had misunderstood the rule for terraces (orange). Terraces don't score based on region size. You can see she had created a few large terrace regions above. We restarted our game. Thankfully it's a short game. 

That attraction (yellow) region at the top right scores many points. The attraction itself is size 7, thus 7pts. There are 7 adjacent terraces, which means 7pts more. Total 14pts. The tourist sipping tea at the terrace (orange) on the top left is doing well too. To the north, 1pt (lake); to the east, 1pt (lake); to the south, 4pts (lake, park, park, lake). 6pts is decent. 

The attraction (yellow) at the top right is a lucrative one (11pts!). It is not big, just size 4, but it has many adjacent terraces (orange). Not surprising I guess. Sometimes the tourists traps are more profitable than the actual attraction. There is a decent tourist spot at the bottom right. Unfortunately I couldn't move that tourist into the attraction region in time. The tourist at the terrace scores 3pts. If he had walked just one step and entered the attraction region, he would score 5pts. 

The Thoughts

Cities is a game with an adjustable difficulty level. The basic level is good for casual gamers and new gamers. When you use the more advanced rules, there will be enough challenge for experienced gamers. There is no aggression. It will work as a family game. It feels a little like Kingdomino. It is also a little like Bingo. There is little player interaction, so if you need player interaction, this won't meet your needs. It is a light game. For old gamers, it will be mostly a filler.