Cities: Venice

From the back of the box:

Venice, the 1400's. You are a young merchant trying to make your name in this legendary port of vibrant commerce. Trade in spices, silks, gems, iron, and grain can bring great wealth... if you can bend the market to your will. Buy goods as they enter the city docks and sell them to the tradesmen who need them. Increase your profits by buying shares of the shops that use the goods in which you trade. Gain gold and prestige by fulfilling the orders of the Guild Hall craftsmen.

But Venice is a city of fickle demands and mercurial politics. Spend your ducats wisely and look for help from powerful people such as the Guildmaster, the Harbormaster, the Tax Collector... or perhaps a Thief. Even the humble Gondolieri have powerful connections in Venice. In the end, the most important thing to remember is the simple rule of commerce... buy low and sell high! Only those with the most gold and the highest prestige can truly become... Masters of Venice!

Three or four players try to gain the most influence by building palazzos in Venice. Influence is placed face-down into city sections. When all is placed, they are revealed in a predetermined order. Having the most influence in a section allows a player to build the most houses and also give control over the adviser for that section. The adviser can be placed somewhere else in the city and adds influence in a later vote. Houses can be traded for Palazzos, and the player with a Palazzo in every section wins the game.

Part of the Goldsieber large box series

Serenissima is the new Ystari edition of the 1996 game (Méditerranée in France). The rules have been updated and the game is more fluid.

In Serenissima players represent a merchant family during the Renaissance. Players attempt to balance the need of trading and open commerce versus the cut-throat economic piracy of the day. Players create a fleet of ships to purchase and move various commodities around the Mediterranean while also keeping well manned ships to attack and defend against other player's fleets.

(block of information submitted by user in comments not included in game entry)
Board
The maritime areas are bigger and there are fewer of them. Starting ports are different too: Alexandria is one of them in the new version.Resources and Trade
One of the resources has changed (marble replaces gems) and the ports produce different resources compared to the 1996 version. In the 1996 version, when buying goods from a port owned by another player, you had to bargain. It could be hard. Now, you just pay them 1 ducat, instead of paying the bank.
Wine is now special: one port with wine in its warehouse is worth more VP at the end of the game.

Game Flow (big point)
In the 1996 version, all the players used to bid for turn order. Then, they all played the phases according to this order: they loaded, built and bought, then they all moved their galleys, they fought and finally they took over free ports and made money.
There's no bidding anymore. Now, the galleys you build are numbered, and when it's the turn of one specific galley, its owner can perform their actions (load, move and fight, or build), before the next galley is the active one. If your galleys have successive numbers, you can play several times.
The little flags that used to be awkwardly fixed on the galleys are now useless, and the men have to be in the player's colour (instead of being a nice bunch of nice Sailor Smurfs).
This is a major difference, the game is radically altered.

Counts and Victory Points
There are several counts in the game, and not only one at the end of the game. What's more: another kind of count can bring players money if they have wine in their warehouse. All of that depends on the drawn cards at the end of a galleys' turn. The pace of the game may be altered by those cards, too.
There is no card in the 1996 version.
In this old version, the only way to have your port well valued at the end of the game was to have its warehouses full. It's now different too: a port with one good is better than one with none, but worse than one with two, etc.

Other Changes
There's a building more: basilic. It brings more VP.
Galleys are easier to build but the price is not the same.
Combat rules are very different, the fort has a different power. Dice are different too.
Port limits to recruit sailors are different.
2 and 3 players rules are different.
...and this list is all but exhaustive.

In the card-driven board game Rialto, the goal is to earn the most victory points (VPs), which are awarded for a variety of things. The game board displays the six districts of Venice, and players earn VPs for placing council members into these, for building bridges and placing gondolas to connect the districts with one another, and for building advantageous buildings.

The game is played over six rounds, with each round consisting of three phases:

1. Acquire cards: Each player takes a set of cards.
2. Play cards: Players use cards to perform certain actions.
3. Activate buildings: Players may take advantage of their buildings and use their powers.

In phase 1, sets of eight cards are displayed (with six cards face-up and two face-down). Each player takes one set, then reduces his hand to seven cards. A card shows one of six specific characters (Architect, Merchant, etc.) or is a wild card.

Phase 2 consists of six sub-phases in a fixed order, one for each character. In each sub-phase, players choose whether or not to play one or more cards of that specific character. Each card allows them to perfom that character's action, for example:

Take one piece of gold for each Merchant card you play.
Place one council member into the current district for each Council card you play.
Take a building with a value equal to or lower than the number of Architect cards played. The higher its value, the better its function.

Whoever plays the most cards in each such sub-phase receives a bonus of one free action of that type. In case of a tie, whoever is farthest along the "Doge" bar gets the bonus – and of course to advance on the Doge bar, players need to play Doge cards.

Finally, in phase 3, players may take advantage of their buildings. For each piece of gold paid, a player may use one of his building's ability.

Players collect VPs both during the game – from special buildings and by building bridges between districts – and at the end of it – for majorities of council members in each district. The value of each district evolves during the game: Each district is adjacent to four other ones, and at the end of the game, they will be connected either via bridges or gondolas. A bridge increases the value of the adjacent districts by 3-6 victory points, whereas a gondola increases this value by 1 point. The player with the most council members in a district earns VPs equal to the district's total value, the player with the secondmost council members earns half this value, and so on. While it's important to establish majorities in the districts, it's also crucial to control their values by cleverly placing those bridges and gondolas.