Renaissance

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.

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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.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the city of Rouen is the main French port. The city's wealth depends on fishing and the trading of salted fish. Salt produced in the mines has to be loaded onto ships and used to preserve herring and cod fished in the Atlantic Ocean. Every week ships full of salt barrels leave Rouen for the fishing grounds of the Atlantic Ocean, and once back, the goods are sold in the city markets. The players represent city merchants, and they invest in ships and city buildings to try to get rich. Who will be the richest merchant of Rouen, when Francis I, King of France, comes to visit the City?

In Upon a Salty Ocean, players start the game with one caravel loaded with three salt barrels, a salt mine and 10-16 money. From this, they must build a shipping empire! The game lasts five turns, with each turn being divided into three phases.

In the event phase, players adjust prices on the market based on the current event tile, take into the account the weather and environmental conditions that will affect them the remainder of the round, and reveal the event tile for the subsequent round.

The action phase lasts a variable number of rounds depending on how many actions players want to take and can afford. Eight actions are available and they're divided into four types:

City: (1) buy a saline and (2) buy a building
Navigation: (1) travel to the ocean and fish and (2) travel to Rouen
Harbor: (1) build a ship and (2) move goods
Market: (1) sell to the market and (2) buy from the market

On a player's turn, he can take any one of the either actions or pass; the cost of an action is the number of times this type of action has been performed previously during this round. For example, the first use of a City action costs 0, while the next use (whether to buy a saline or a building) costs 1. A player who passes can take an action later in the same phase. The action phase ends once all players pass. A player can go into debt during a turn, paying one coin in interest when doing so; as long as the player is in the black once the action round ends (by selling to the market), no further payment is due.

In the turn end phase, players produce salt, may use special buildings, pay interest (if needed), reset the cost of the actions to zero, and so on. A player can have no more than 40 coins at the end of a turn unless he owns a banque, and the limit is 80 coins without owning Salle des Coffres. This limit is important as the player with the most coins after five rounds wins. Some buildings provide endgame bonuses to which the coin limit doesn't apply.

Il Vecchio is set in the 15th century, when Cosimo de Medici – also called "Il Vecchio" ("the Elder) – and his family ruled over Tuscany and its capital Florence. The players represent the heads of Florentine families trying to rise their families to power. To achieve this, they send out their family members to locations in Tuscany to perform various tasks, specifically to recruit followers (knights, assassins, abbots) and collect money as both are needed to take control of provinces in neighboring regions; controlled provinces provide power and a bonus action. Another task is to gain the favor of the squirearchy as these favors are indispensable when it comes to getting an official position in Florence, e.g., a seat on the town council to enhance actions in Tuscany, or a noble rank to gain power at the end of the game.

To complete these tasks, however, a proper middleman must be present at a location, and as these middlemen travel a lot, they are rarely met. That's why it is so important to have one's family members in the right place at the right time – to save on time and money while achieving one's goals.

At the beginning of the game, each player has four family members in Tuscany. Players take turns performing exactly one action. Before his action, a player may pay money to move one of his own family members to another location. The available actions are to:

Take a location-specific action in Tuscany. This requires both a middleman and one of your own standing (active) family members at that location. After the action, this family member is laid down (inactive).
Travel to another region and take over a province, which costs both followers and money.
Travel to Florence where you'll spend scrolls (and possibly money) to claim a city council or nobility tile.
Introduce a new family member to the board.
Raise all lying family members on the board.

The game ends when the "Power of the Medici" has faded, as indicated by a diminishing pile of crest tiles. Certain actions require you to remove such a tile, and the game ends when they're all gone. Players then sum their power points – earned for gained tiles and majorities in the regions and Florence – for a final scoring, and the player with the most power wins.

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.