Tycoon
Tycoon Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
- 1 game board
- 4 private planes (in 4 colors)
- 72 hotels (in 4 colors, 18 hotels per color)
- 20 factories (in 4 colors, 5 factories per color)
- 54 flight tickets, of which 18 are scheduled-flight tickets and 36 are charter-flight tickets
- 24 loan cards (14 cards worth 10 million and 10 cards worth 16 million)
- 100 banknotes (30 of 1 million, 20 of 5 million, 30 of 10 million, and 20 of 50 million)
Setup and Objective of the Game
You are the owner and manager of a company. You establish flight connections and fly all over the world to put up hotels and factories. Your goal is to become the most important and most successful entrepreneur. The success of your company is measured in money. The winner is the player who owns the most money at the end of the game.
The game is played over three rounds, each of which ends with a payday. Whoever owns the most money after the third payday wins the game. The amount of money you receive on a payday is determined by:
- The number of cities in which you have established yourself (spread).
- The number of factories you have built.
- Whether you are the largest, or the second-largest, entrepreneur in a city (majority).
Game Material Explained
The Game Board
On the board you see 9 world cities and a table. In the world cities you can build hotels and factories. Above the name of each city you see 4 grey spaces. The two spaces on the left are landing strips for the planes. They also show the building cost for a hotel in that city (see Illustration 1). The building plots for these hotels are the spaces around the picture. The two grey spaces on the right are factory sites. The building cost for a factory is shown on them, and you place your factory on these spaces.
The table has two columns. In the left column you look up the number of cities in which you have built. In the right column you then see the number of millions you receive on a payday. Example: after the first round of play you have built hotels in 3 different cities. It is now payday, so you receive 5 million.
The Flight Tickets
The flight tickets show which cities you can fly to and what the flight costs. Whoever buys a flight ticket establishes a flight connection with a city and can fly once with that ticket. The planes and routes drawn on the game board have no bearing whatsoever on the course of the game and are purely decorative. There are two kinds of flight tickets: scheduled flights and charter flights.
Scheduled Flights
A scheduled-flight ticket can be used in two different ways: you fly to the city shown on your ticket, or you may make the number of stops shown by the small squares. If you are in a city and you have a scheduled flight with a stop, you may fly horizontally or vertically to an adjacent city. If you have a ticket with more stops (more squares), you may make more moves. Each square therefore stands for one move.
- Direct destination: from any city, and from your home bank, you can fly directly to the city shown.
- The price you must pay for the ticket.
- Number of stops: from any city you may make the number of moves shown.
Example: the scheduled-flight ticket "Cairo / 2 stops; cost = 5." To acquire this ticket you must pay 5 million to the bank. You may now either fly directly to Cairo from wherever you are, or use your stops instead. You do not need to be in Cairo to use the stops — you can use them from anywhere. For instance, if you happen to be in Hong Kong, you could use this ticket to fly to Mexico City, to Cape Town, or to Monaco.
Charter Flights
A charter-flight ticket is cheaper. You may only fly between the 2 cities shown on the ticket. For example, if you buy the ticket "Mexico City–Cape Town," you must pay 2 million to the bank, and you may fly either from Mexico City to Cape Town, or the other way around. To fly on a charter, you must therefore already be in one of the two cities shown.
- You must be in one of the two cities, and can then fly to the other city with this ticket.
- The ticket costs the amount printed on it (for example, 3 million).
Preparation
Before the game begins, do the following:
- Choose a private plane and place it on the table in front of you.
- You start with 6 hotels and 5 factories in the color of your plane. Place these in front of you as well.
- At the start of the game, every player receives 15 million. Throughout the game, everyone must lay their money down clearly visible to the other players.
- Make 2 separate stacks from the flight tickets: one of scheduled-flight tickets and one of charter-flight tickets. Shuffle both stacks. From the scheduled-flight tickets, lay two cards face up next to each other; from the charter-flight tickets, lay out six. Place the face-up cards and the two stacks next to the game board.
- Bank. One player is the bank and manages the play money and the loan cards.
Game Sequence in Brief
The youngest player begins. On your turn, you must undertake one of the following 3 actions:
- Take out a loan. Every player has a home bank. This is the space in front of you next to the board. This is where you begin the game, and where you return if you want to take out a loan. If you want to borrow, you fly back to your home bank and choose a loan. That is then the end of your turn.
- Build a hotel (or renovate). You do this either in the city you are already in, or in another city you fly to. You may only ever put up one hotel per turn.
- Build a factory. You do this either in the city you are already in, or in another city you fly to. You may only build one factory per turn.
In addition to putting up a hotel or factory, or taking out a loan, you may take 2 other actions, namely buying flight tickets and flying. You must choose one of the first three actions; buying flight tickets and flying are unlimited and not mandatory.
The Individual Actions
Action 1: Taking Out a Loan
You do this at your home bank, in front of you on the table. Before you fly off at the start of the game, or if you have no money left, or if you don't want to build on your turn, you can fly back to your bank and take out a loan. You don't need a flight ticket for this. You take your private plane and place it in front of you on the table. You may take out only one loan per turn:
- 1 card worth 10 million (repay 12 million), or
- 1 card worth 16 million (repay 20 million).
You take a card, lay it face up in front of you on the table, and are paid the money by the bank. When it's your turn again, you may stay at your bank and take out another loan, or fly to a city with a scheduled flight. If you take out a loan, you cannot take any other action. Anyone who cannot or does not want to build must return to their home bank to take out a loan. You don't need a flight ticket for this, incidentally.
Actions 2 and 3: Building a Hotel or a Factory
Whoever wants to build flies to a city and lands on an empty landing strip. These are the two spaces at the top left. To be allowed to build a hotel or a factory, you must land on one of these two spaces. If the first space is occupied, you fly to the second. Then you choose what you want to build, a hotel or a factory.
Only two factories may be built in a city. You pay the price shown on a factory site (that is still empty).
Many more hotels may be built. For a hotel you pay the price on the space where you landed. Each turn you may always build only one hotel or factory, and only in the city where you are at the end of your turn. You may remain there on your next turn and build again. If you are on the more expensive space, you may not switch to the cheaper space — that is only allowed if you first leave the city. So if both spaces at the top left are occupied, you may not build in that city. You may still use the city as a stopover on the way elsewhere.
Whoever builds the first hotel in a city places it on the first space (the "0" space) of the U-shaped chain. The next hotel, regardless of which player it belongs to, is built on the building plot immediately adjacent to it, and so on. The last building plot may not be built on. See Illustrations 1 through 3.
Renovating
A hotel does not last forever. Every time someone builds on a "red" building plot, the first hotel — no matter whose it is — must close. It is removed from the building plot and placed in the middle of the city. This hotel no longer counts on paydays, neither for spread nor for majority. The hotel placed first is always the first to close, then — at the second red space — the hotel that was built second, and so on. The building plots that are freed up remain free.
However, the owner of such an "evicted" hotel can bring it back into the game by traveling to that city again. He then lands his plane on a free landing strip and may renovate his hotel free of charge. This means the player places his hotel at the end of the hotel chain, on the next free building plot, as though he were putting up a new hotel. Whoever renovates a hotel may not build another hotel or a factory on that turn.
In Illustration 3, a building belonging to BLUE closes. BLUE thereby falls back to third place in that city and receives no money for majority on payday.
Buying Flight Tickets
There are therefore always six charter-flight cards and two scheduled-flight cards laid face up. You may buy as many as you like. You take one or more flight tickets and pay the bank. You don't have to use the tickets right away — you can hold onto them and use them later as you please. After your turn, new flight tickets are turned face up so that the next player can always choose from 6 charter and 2 scheduled flights. If there are no longer enough flight tickets laid out, the cards that have been set aside are shuffled and used as a new stack.
Flying
You take a ticket you already had, or one you just bought, and fly with your private plane to the city shown on your ticket. There you can stay and build a building or factory, or you can travel on to a further city with another ticket and build there. During your turn you may fly as much and as often as you like.
Example: you fly with a scheduled flight to Rio de Janeiro, and from there with a charter flight to Cape Town. From your home bank you must depart with a scheduled flight. To fly back to your home bank you need no ticket — that costs you nothing. Used scheduled- and charter-flight tickets go straight onto the discard pile next to the game board after the flight.
Payday
When a player has put up all the hotels he had in front of him, the round is finished out so that all players have had their turn equally often. Then it is payday. You receive money for spread, for a majority holding, and for the number of factories built.
- Spread. Look at the table on the game board. Whoever owns hotels in 2 cities receives 2 million, for 3 cities that is 5 million, and so on up to 9 cities, for which you receive 40 million.
- Majority. Each city is settled separately. Only the players who hold first or second place in a city — that is, who own the largest or second-largest number of hotels — receive money. For each city, the amounts paid out are always those shown by the next unbuilt building plot. In Illustration 2 that is 20 million for the player in first place and 10 million for the player in second place.
If several players own an equal number of hotels in a city, whoever built their first hotel in that city earliest is decisive. In Illustration 2, BLUE and YELLOW each have 2 hotels. Because BLUE put up his first hotel before YELLOW, BLUE is first in this city and YELLOW is second. Had RED put up the next hotel, he would have been first and BLUE second.
Factories
A factory basically always earns as much money as second place in the majority payout. In Illustration 3, BLUE and RED receive 12 million. However, in the city with the longest hotel chain, a factory earns as much money as first place in the majority payout. In Illustration 3, BLUE and RED would in this case receive 24 million. The length of a hotel chain is always determined by the last hotel in the chain ("empty" building plots at the start of a chain count too). If there is more than one city with the longest chain, you are always paid the first-place amount for every factory in these cities.
Continuing After a Payday
Repaying or Extending Loans
After a payday, every player must decide — starting with the player who went first — what to do with their loans. You can repay your loans or extend them. You decide separately for each card. If you repay a loan, you return the card to the bank and pay the bank the repayment amount shown on the card.
If you extend a loan, you turn the card over. You don't have to repay anything to the bank right now. Repayment is not due until after the next payday, but then at a higher cost, namely the amount shown on the other side of your card. A loan can only be extended once; after that you must repay it in any case. However, you can apply for new loans at any time by flying to your home bank.
- If you extend the 10-million loan, you must repay 16 million at the next payday.
- If you extend the 16-million loan, you must repay 30 million at the next payday.
Settling Up
After every payday everyone settles up. You count your money, and subtract from that amount any loans you still have outstanding. This way you can calculate who owns the most money at that moment.
Then all players receive 6 new hotels from their supply. You add these to any hotels you may still have left. Factories are not replenished — you have 5 factories for the whole game. The player who started first also starts the second, and then the third, period.
End of the Game
After two paydays, the third round ends when one of the players has built all 18 of their hotels. Now you finish out the round, so that every player has had their turn equally often. The third payday marks the close of the game. At this point all loans must also be repaid.
The winner is the player who owns the most money.
Illustration Notes
Illustration 1: A City (New York)
- These are the two landing strips for the planes. Your plane must land on one of these spaces if you want to put up a hotel or factory. For a hotel you always pay the amount shown by the space you landed on. Whoever is on the first space pays 4 million; on the second space you pay 5 million.
- Whoever builds a factory places it on one of these spaces. For the first factory you must pay 8 million, for the second 10 million. Only two factories can be built in a city.
- Nothing may be built on this space!
- The red spaces on the game board are the darker ones here.
- This is the U-shaped hotel chain.
- The first hotel is placed on this space.
- The second hotel is placed on this space.
- Whoever builds on a red space immediately places the first-built hotel in the middle of the city. This hotel no longer counts on a payday, neither for majority nor for spread.
Illustration 2: 5 Hotels Have Now Been Built in New York
The numbers on the space after the last-built hotel show how many million are paid out for first and second place. In this case BLUE would receive 20 million and YELLOW 10 million. BLUE and YELLOW both have the most hotels, but BLUE built his first hotel before YELLOW.
Illustration 3: The Game Has Already Progressed a Good Way
More hotels and factories have now been put up in New York. The first two hotels (RED and BLUE) have been "evicted." While RED has renovated his evicted hotel and placed it back in the hotel chain, the blue hotel is still outside the chain and does not count on payday.
If it were payday now, YELLOW would receive 24 million and RED 12 million for the majority in this city. For their factories, BLUE and RED receive either 12 million or 24 million, depending on whether this hotel chain is the longest or not.