In the 12th Century, in the north of Italy, there were strong cities, ruled by themselves with their own territories and army and each one with own characteristics. They were called COMUNI. The relationship among them was a more or less a pacific coexistence but the cultural, military and Economic competition was always very high.
In this game each player rules a particular COMUNE and has to increase the wealth of the city. To do this he must build structures that are the core of the Economic, Military, Cultural and Religious life.
At the same time all the player must be aware of the invasion that can come from outside and if necessary must be able to collaborate to defeat them.
Comuni is a game of strategy. The core of the game is trying to acquire "projects of buildings" (cards) that can be automatically transformed in buildings and protection walls (and subsequent upgrades).
The acquisition of the projects is made through a bidding system.
The buildings can be of four types (Economic, Military Cultural and Religious) that give different resources. The resources give different advantages during the game in the bidding phase, when you transform projects into buildings etc....
The projects cards are divided in four different decks, at the end of each of them, an invasion comes, each time stronger. The invasion hits all players and during the invasion each player must defend his city. The players also can (and have an incentive to) collaborate to fight the aggression together.
At the end of the four invasions the game ends.
The key element of this game is the ability to plan a successful strategy predicting what will be the situation several turns in advance.
- compact version retaining core mechanics
- essentially a reskin; less novelty
- AO Original
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- tile drafting / reskin — essential drafting and scoring mechanics are retained as a compact version
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- what could make original AO very cutthroat and brutal was your ability to try to force your other player to get a huge chunk of tiles they don't want
- AO original is best at two players
- it's slower down game you'll have more turns it's a little more thinky
- twice per round across the first four rounds you're going to be collecting these pieces for your roof
- there's a sixth patent row and it makes a big difference
- the bottom row it's so hard to fill