Drogi do Rzymu Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Object of the Game
• The Turn
  • Riches
  • Scoring Roads
• Crossing a City
• Variants for 2 or 3 Players
• End of the Game
  • City Points
  • Riches Points
  • Road Bonus
  • Tiebreakers

Components

• 1 double-sided board (2 to 3 players and 4 to 5 players)
• 5 Player boards
• 125 Roads
• 5 Score tokens
• 40 City tokens
• 40 Riches tokens

Setup

1. Open the game board and set it up on your table so that all players can easily reach it. One side is reserved for games of 2 or 3 players and the other side for games of 4 or 5 players. This is indicated on the pommel of the sword in the lower left corner of the board.

2. Place each City token on its space, following the colour and value indications.

3. Turn the Riches tokens face down and shuffle them. Then place one at random, face up, on each City token.

   When playing with 4 or 5 players, you must use all the City tokens and all the Riches tokens included in the box.

   When playing with 2 or 3 players, you must only use the Cities indicated on the 2-to-3-player side of the game board. Before placing the Riches tokens, take two Riches tokens of the Gold Coin type and one token of each other type and put them back in the box. You can then place one of the remaining tokens on each City token of the board.

4. Each player then takes a Player board in the colour of their choice, as well as the Score token and the 25 Roads that match it.

5. Take the Score token of all players, shuffle them and draw one at random. The player whose Score token was drawn plays first.

6. Place the Score token of every player on the "0" of the score track.

Object of the Game

In L'Empire de César, players must build Roads to connect Rome to the other Cities shown on the map. For each new City you reach, you obtain a City token and a Riches token that will earn you additional points at the end of the game. The Road you built between Rome and that City also earns you points. The game ends when Rome is connected to all the Cities on the board. After adding the value of each player's City and Riches tokens to the points scored during the game, the player with the most points wins the game!

Once the first player has finished their turn, turn order proceeds clockwise.

The Turn

When it is their turn, each player must connect Rome to one of the available Cities by placing one or more Roads along the path of their choice. These paths are represented on the board by the dotted lines.

• Building a Road on this path requires 1 Road (a plain dotted line).
• Building a Road on this path requires 2 Roads (a dotted line with a wider segment in the middle).

Roads can be built either from an empty City space (in other words, a City whose City token and Riches token have already been taken) or from Rome. You can build a road from any empty City space even if none of your Roads is connected to it and even if you are not the player who reached that City first.

These Roads cannot be built on top of another player's Roads, and cannot cross an available City (a City that still has its City token and its Riches token).

When reaching a new City, the active player takes its City token and places it next to their Player board. They also take its Riches token and place it on their Player board. These tokens will let them score points during the final count.

Riches

There are 9 different types of Riches: Meat, Wheat, Precious Stones, Olives, Grapes, Wood, Oil, Wine and Gold Coins. You must place these Riches on one of the circular spaces of your Player board. Place each new type of resource you obtain in a different column. If you obtain a Riches token of the same type as one of the Riches tokens you already own, place it in the space just above it.

There is one exception: Gold Coin tokens must be placed on the spaces at the bottom of your board. These tokens have a bonus effect that activates when you pick them up.

During the game, you will build collections of Riches of the same type or of different types. At the end of the game, these collections will earn you the bonus points indicated by the numbers below the spaces for tokens, as well as those to their left. The points system is explained at the end of this booklet.

Scoring Roads

Once you have collected the City token and the Riches token of the City, you must count the points granted by the Roads that connect this City to Rome. Each of these Roads earns one point for the player to whom it belongs.

Example: it is the Purple player's turn. They connect Rome to a new City. Having done so, they take its City token and its Riches token. They must then retrace the path that leads back to Rome, looking at whom the Roads they use belong to: in this example, the Yellow player and the Purple player each gain 1 point.

If more than one path is possible between a City and Rome, only the path that includes the fewest Roads is counted. If several paths between a City and Rome have the same number of Roads, the active player chooses which path will be counted.

Warning! If you picked up a Gold Coin Riches token this turn, the points earned by the Roads are doubled for all players until the end of your turn!

Example: it is again the Purple player's turn. They connect Rome to a new City. Having done so, they take its City token and its Riches token. They then retrace the path that leads back to Rome. As they picked up a Gold Coin Riches token, the points awarded for each Road are doubled until the end of their turn. The Purple player therefore gains 4 points and the Yellow player gains 2.

Crossing a City

When you connect a new City to Rome, you may cross one or more empty City spaces.

The Yellow player wants to reach the blue City of value 3. To do so, they placed two Roads to pass through the red City of value 2.

As the latter was already captured in a previous turn, the Yellow player can build their Roads through it and thus connect the blue City of value 3 directly to Rome. Not only does this connect Rome to this new City, it also makes Yellow Roads part of the shortest path between Rome and this City, which means that only the Yellow player will gain points this turn.

Once a player has placed their Road, taken their new Riches token and City token, and counted their Road points, their turn ends. It is then the turn of the player to their left. Players continue to capture other Cities, each in turn, until none remain on the board. The final scoring can then begin.

Variants for 2 or 3 Players

You can use one of the following rules or even combine them in your 2 or 3 player games:

• When setting up the Riches tokens, shuffle them and place them as you would for a 4 or 5 player game. Put the remaining tokens back in the box. This will make some Riches more abundant, and others could even be completely absent from the game!
• During the final count, if you own all the City tokens of one colour, you no longer score only the points shown on the token with the highest value. Instead, you gain the sum of the points of all City tokens of that colour.

End of the Game

Once all the Cities have been connected to Rome, the final count of points can begin. Players must then add their City and Riches points to the points they gained during the game in order to determine who won.

City Points

Cities are divided into several colours. If you own several City tokens of the same colour, you only gain the points of the City of that colour whose value is highest. The other tokens of that colour earn no points.

Riches Points

Next, count the points your collections of Riches of the same type earn, then those of different types. The same Riches token can belong to several collections at once. Gold Coins are counted separately.

Collection of Riches of different types (except Gold Coins):

Number of different types	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Points	0	2	5	9	14	20	32	46

Collection of Riches of the same type (except Gold Coins):

Number of tokens	1	2	3	4
Points	0	2	10	20

Gold Coins:

Number of Gold Coins	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Points	0	4	9	16	25	36	49	64

Example: at the end of the game, this player would have counted their points as follows:

• Collections of Riches of the same type: 3 Grapes (10) + 2 Precious Stones (2) + 2 Meats (2) + 2 Gold Coins (4) = 18 points
• Collections of Riches of different types: one set of 3 Riches (5) + one set of 4 Riches (9) = 14 points
• Cities, counting only the highest value of each colour: 3 + 6 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 6 = 22 points

This means this player earns a total of 18 + 14 + 22 = 54 points, to be added to those scored during the game.

Road Bonus

The player who has the most Roads left gains 10 points. In case of a tie between two or more players, each of them gains 10 points.

Compare the final score of all players. The player with the highest score wins the game!

Tiebreakers

In case of a tie:

1. The player who owns the most Cities of different colours.
2. The player who owns the most Gold Coins.
3. The player who has the most Roads left.

I eagerly await news of your exploits. Alea jacta est!