Citadels

Citadels is a modern game. As leaders of medieval cities, players have to build the most beautiful quarters possible. The game ends when a player has managed to build a fixed number of quarters, generally 8.
To be successful, strategy, ruse and bluff have to be used in order to become rich and thwart enemies' plans. One thing that makes the game original among others is its turn system.

Quarters

The cards in the game are called quarters. Each quarter represents a building, which a player can construct in their city. There are 5 types of them:

The first four yield money when you play with the adequate character. Prestige quarters don't earn you money but often give additional points or special powers that you can use at your turn. If there is a power, it is usually usable once per turn, as long as the quarter stays built; if the quarter is destroyed, the power it brings is lost at the same time.

Building a quarter in your city costs between 1 and 6 gold coins. You can only build one quarter per turn (except with the architect).

You can read the cost and the power (if there is one) of a given card by pressing the D key when it is selected in the menus of the game.

Game turns

At each turn, each player chooses to play one of the available characters. Each character gives a specific power, which the player will be able to use when their turn comes.
Some of the characters are ideal to become rich and build quickly; some others are perfect to make up a new hand; and still some others are the best to prevent your opponents from progressing towards the victory.

A complete turn of the game is played in two phases:

  1. First, each player chooses which character they are going to play this turn.
  2. Then, each player plays their chosen character; the characters are always played in a fixed predefined order.

The player who owns the crown, initially a player designated at random, begins.
They discard a certain number of concealed characters at random, then draw and show one of the characters to everybody; this latter one won't be played this turn.
They take the remaining character cards into their hand, choose one of them, keep the corresponding card, then pass the remaining characters to the next player.
The last player always has a choice between two options, so that no one can exactly know with certainty who took which character.

The original characters of the 1st edition of the game, in the order in which they are played, are the following:

  1. The murderer: at their turn, they can choose to kill another character, who will have their turn completely skipped.
  2. The thief: they can rob another character; that latter one will have to give them all their gold when their turn arrives.
  3. The wizard: they can exchange their cards with those of another player or with the draw pile.
  4. The king: at the beginning of his turn, he takes the crown and thus becomes the first player to choose his character at next turn. Each of his noble quarter built yields gold.
  5. The bishop: the warlord can't attack him; each religious quarter in his city gives him gold.
  6. The merchant: They automatically earn one gold, as well as one for each of their commercial quarters.
  7. The architect: they draw two additional cards and can build up to 3 quarters at their turn.
  8. The warlord: He can destroy a quarter in the cities of his opponents; each military quarter yields money.

The different characters play in the above order. When the turn of your character comes:

  1. You start your turn by taking either one card or two gold. If you decide to draw a card, you can in fact choose between the two first at the top of the draw pile, the one you don't pick is discarded.
  2. You can then use the power of your character, the one of a prestige card previously built, or build a new quarter; none, one or several of these actions, in any order, depending on your possibilities and will.

It is very important to not reveal to other players which character you have chosen before it is actually played. By choosing always the same character, you have chances to become rich and win faster (with the character corresponding to the quarters you have built), but it will be much easier for the others to prevent you from playing (by killing or robbing you).
One of the keys of winning, besides trying to guess what your opponents are going to do and break their strategy, is effectively to be as unpredictable as possible.

You can get a quick reminder of the characters and their respective powers by pressing the D key when one of them is selected in the menus.

Victory and end of the game

The game ends when a player has reached the number of built quarters fixed at the beginning of the game, usually 8; 6 or 7 for quicker games, up to 12 or even 14 for longer games or with fewer players.
The round currently in progress is run to its end and points are then counted. The warlord can't destroy a building in a completed city and therefore can't postpone the end of the game.

Each built quarter is worth as many points as the number of gold coins needed to construct it. Some of the prestige quarters give extra points.
The first player to reach the victory obtains a bonus, as well as the one who has built at least one building of each of the 5 types.
The winner is the player with the greatest number of points and thus the one who built the richest quarters, not necessarily the one who built the greatest number of quarters.

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