Board game analysis: Citadel

Hello Peons.
This past two weeks we’ve been playing board games. Going back to analyzing systems and to understand the systems.
Me and my group have been playing Citadels, a game where you try to raise the most magnificent citadel with beautiful districts.

Citadels
Board game

In Citadels, the players take rounds to build and erect a city, in order to do this player’s takes aid from different characters to lend their different abilities. The goal in citadels is to erect the most magnificent city, to outshine the other cities in the land. In order to do this the player needs to outsmart and outplay his opponents with the different abilities that the characters offers, a wide range of different abilities, some abilities are used to murder a other character, other abilities are used to steal all the other players gold.

Rules

The District cards
to be able to build the city the player needs district. These are made up by the district cards. Each district card has a color and a certain numbers of coin on them. These coins describe how much each district

The Character cards
each game of Citadel contains eight character cards. These cards will influence the round with giving each player a number, this number gives tells in what order the players are going to play. The characters also have abilities that aid the player in certain ways, for example; the assassin card takes out another character for the following round, other characters helps the player gain more gold during the round.

The Gold
Gold is used to build the districts in the players city, and to pay characters like the warlord (You receive one gold for each military district in your city. You may pay to destroy one district of your choice.) to destroy another districts. Gold is gained through the action phase or the different abilities.

The King
In the start of the game the king Is chosen by age. The oldest player always starts with the crown. From then the player with the King Character card receives the crow until the following round.

The game consists out of two types of cards, gold tokens and the king token. A round starts with the king to remove a random card from the character deck and to place it face down on the table, next the king draws a second set of cards and place them face up on the table (this depends on the number of players)

Next the players will choose a character card from the remaining cards in the character deck. The player chooses a card and then passes the deck to the next player on his left. This is done until the last player shall choose a card, this player have the opportunity to take a look at the card that was faced down earlier.

The round starts with the king shouting out the different ranks of the player characters, from the number 1 to 8. The order of the players is decided by what character they’ve chosen for said round.
When a character is shout’ed how the players turn start. Within the turn for the player one can decide out of the actions, either take two gold from the bank or draw two district cards from the decks. One of the card is put in the players hand and the other is discarded. After these actions have been chosen the player may build something with a district card.
Districts is built by paying the required amount of gold on the card. Gold is gained through character abilities or through the action in the start of a players turn.

Then if its stated by the abilities on the character the player may take the action stated.

After all players have played their round the sitting king collects all character cards and the round starts all over again.

cost and how much they’re worth in the end of the game. The color has a number of uses where more of one color adds more point in the end of the game, character abilities may as well use the districts for the players benefit.

System
the game is in the core as simple but heavy on the tactics, for a smart player needs to figure out what every other player chooses as the character of their current round, as well as picking a character that can counter their character. This is the mind game from Citadels; it’s a big part of the game to read your opponent trough probability, “poker face” and chance. Depending on your placement in the match you’ll always have to try and figure out what other character the other players have chosen, In order to do this you count from the two character cards faced up and the ones you see in the deck on your turn to figure out what the other players have chosen. If one may do this correct he’ll be able to control the flow of the game.
The districts in the game is important because they hand the player the points in the end of the game, when a player reaches 8 districts the game will end, that round that the last district is built will be the last. If there are players able to destroy one district before the round has ended the game will continue. District cards gathered and built during each player rounds, there are five different types of colors on the cards. Each color can provide income for the different character types or give special benefits that is describe on the card. These are the main focus of the game, to win the game the player needs as many valuable districts as possible. Having one of each color gives the player a bonus when the points is counted, having 8 districts gives the player a bonus, even more if the player was first with receiving the eight district.

Good part
The game requires and encourages the players to play mind games with each other. To gain an advantage the players need outsmart. For example if you a lot of gold from earlier round and another player sits on a lot of district cards on his hand, then the other player would want to pick the thief
( Announce a character from whom to steal. When the player with this card is revealed, take his gold ) in order to steal your gold. What the thief character need to do is to figure out what character you’re going to pick. Of course, nobody knows what character you’re going to pick but they can figure it out. Depending on what order the characters are picked and what characters were left on the hand when they had the character deck. For this it is needed to figure out what the other player needs to do and act against it.
For the player with the lot of gold the best way to defend himself would be to pick the assassin and assassinate the thief before the thief is able to steal the gold that the player possesses.

The Worst part
it’s quite easy to fall behind in this game. Playing the game and falling behind makes the game real hard. The player will spend most of his time trying to regain the gap that can be created by this. Same thing for the player who gains the advantage will have no trouble keeping the advantage. Maybe in order to make the game easier for the other players need to have more cards that can sabotage for each other, In order to make it harder and easier for players to regain the same level throughout the game.
Some characters have a decent drawback where the characters abilities work against the flow of the game. The Witch character card takes over the powers of another character that the player announces during his turn. The bewitched player can only take the action where the player chooses to take gold or draw district cards, after that the witch takes over and uses the players turn for her.
This character card takes too much power from another character, similar to the assassin the character abilities removes one of their turn. The assassin makes sure no one gets it, where the witch takes the other players power

The Audience
Suggested by the board game itself, is ages 10 and up. Most likely because that the rules of the game are fairly simple to the core and few different cards that is needed to keep track of. The fact that the game contains very little to nothing at all in violence and a simple core would give it the reasonable age limit for the game.
With this in mind, one would need to define what types of players that would be interested in playing this game. If one goes with the bartle test of players, one can see how the different parts of the game attracts the different personalities and individuals. The killers might enjoy thinking ahead of the other players and sabotage to gain victory, while the socializers might enjoy the whole experience of playing with the other players not focusing so much on the game itself. Achievers might play the game for the sole reason to build a city in different ways or simply to achieve victory over the others, the explorer might play it solely to explore the possibilities of a new game.

How it Correlates
with the character cards and the district cards the game works fine, having the characters in game adds another level of tactics that would be lost without them. Without the character cards the turns would go get boring. The rounds would only be about whatever the player needed gold or more districts for his city. The character cards add an element of tactics that gives the game the depth it needs to stay interesting.

Have a great weekend. 😀