Civilization

In this latest collaboration between Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, players must buy the favor of the gods in their race to be the first player to build two cities in the Ancient Greek island group known as the Cyclades.

Victory requires respect for all the gods - players cannot afford to sacrifice to only one god, but must pay homage to each of five gods in turn. Each turn, the players bid for the favors of the gods, as only one player can have the favor of each god per turn - and each player is also limited to the favor of a single god per turn.

Ares allows the movement of player armies and the building of Fortresses.
Poseidon allows players to move their navies and build Ports.
Zeus allows his followers to hire priests and build temples.
Athena provides her worshipers with philosophers and universities.
Apollo increases the income of his worshipers.

Early Italy, 600 BCE – Five city states are vying each other for superiority in the region: Roma with their Roman inhabitants, Velletri with the Volscian inhabitants, Reate with their Sabin inhabitants, Veii with their Etruscian inhabitants, and Alba Longa with their Latin inhabitans. Each player controls a city state and tries to be the first to have 16+ population and 10 monuments. This city state is destined to be a glorious power of the Ancient World!

A game of Alba Longa offers a fine combination of dice selection, city management, and worker assignment (inside your own city), and is spiced up with the ingredient of city combat (soldiers and heroes)! Inside the box are three big variants – Assisi, A Job Well Done, and Spoils of War – which can be added and combined at your will and which add even more longevity to this game!

In prototype form, under the name The Great Pyramid, this design was one of four winners of the 2009 Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société, a design competition run by Centre National du Jeu in France. Here's what the jury said about the game: The Great Pyramid is rich with an astonishing number of possible strategies but manages to convey the clarity of the whole mechanism. The choices offered to the players are numerous and present a contentious interaction too rare in this kind of game.

In Archipelago, players are Renaissance European powers competing in the exploration of a Pacific or Caribbean archipelago. They will explore territories, harvest resources, use those resources in markets both internal (for their use and that of the natives) and foreign (to sell it in Europe), build markets, harbors, cities and temples, and negotiate among themselves (and maybe betray each other) – all this to complete their secret objectives. They will also need to guess the secret objective of the other players to be able to benefit from them.

But players also need to be careful of the natives; if they make them too unhappy or if too many of them are unoccupied, they could revolt and declare independence. Then everyone will lose!

According to the author, what he's tried to create is a "German" economic worker-placement game, but without the two things he dislikes in them: the superficial theme and the lack of interaction. Indeed this game includes a very present theme and a lot of negotiation and potential backstabbing.

The game includes three sets of objectives, enabling players to choose between a short, medium and a long game. Solo play is also possible with an expansion.

Cyclades: Titans, the second expansion for Cyclades, includes a new game board with large islands on which ground attacks can be carried out as well as the Titans of Greek legend, who can conduct attacks without the help of Ares.

Madeira is an island officially discovered early in the 15th century by Portuguese seafarers. Madeira, the Portuguese word for wood, refers to the dense forest that covered its wild, fertile landscape. This, and its strategic position far into the Atlantic Ocean made the island one of the most significant Portuguese discoveries. Madeira served as a “laboratory” for what would become the Portuguese Empire.

Wheat plantations were the first means for survival on the island. After that, when D. Henrique decided to increase the economy of the Empire, sugar became the core business of Madeira. Once sugar started coming from other places in the world, such as Africa and Brazil, profits from sugar were no longer enough, and production of the very famous Madeira wine became the most important economic product of the island.

Players try to adapt themselves to these constraints, working to find better fields for farming the right goods and for obtaining precious wood, essential for erecting new structures in the cities and for building ships. In turn, the ships are crucial for trading in foreign markets, as well as for taking part in new expeditions to discover other countries.
Madeira has been established just as it was in the original administrative division of the island under 3 captaincies (Funchal, Machico, and Porto Santo), where the ultimate goal is to develop the Island, gaining the most prestige under and for the Portuguese Crown.

The Crown of Portugal has a series of requests regarding expeditions, urbanization, opening trade routes, increasing wealth, and controlling the guilds on the islands. Three times during the game, the players gain prestige for fulfilling certain requests by the Crown. At two other times, the Crown requests that the islands change the focus of their agriculture due to the changes in the world.

Players must carefully choose the correct timing to show their achievements. Too early and you don’t gain as much prestige, too late and you risk someone else stealing the best opportunities. Will you have what it takes to excel in all of these endeavors?
Beware, wheat may become scarce, money is never enough, the population is hungry, and the shadow of piracy looms large….