Wealth & Prestige

Players keep track of their current wealth using the paper money provided.

When not possessed by a player, all wealth resides in a generic bank to the side of the board. Unless a card effect specifically states otherwise, wealth is always taken from and paid to the bank.

Players continuously adjust their current prestige total by means of their colored cylinders on the numbered track that wraps around the board's central city grid.

A black number within a yellow circle indicates wealth: for example, "8 " is eight dollars.

A white number within a red circle indicates prestige: for example, & is two prestige points.

Action Point (AP)

Players spend APs to perform activities during their turn.

Event

Typewritten "events" appear in each of the four card decks. Events occur as they are revealed during the game.

Planning deck events are afterwards placed in the discard pile and can occur multiple times. Contract deck events are one-time affairs and are removed from the game once they occur.

Elections & Payouts

If a newly-revealed card has a ballot box icon at the bottom, it can trigger an election for one of the politicians.

If a newly-revealed card has a wealth or prestige value at the bottom right, it can trigger an immediate wealth/prestige payout.

Permits

Permits are a sort of commodity in the game; they are collected via planning cards then spent to build contracts. Permits appear on cards as tall page icons.

Vocation

Vocation markers provide for both immediate and future gains in wealth and/or prestige. Many building contracts have one or more "NAME-VALUE" combinations underneath their permit cost (superimposed on brickworks).

When such a contract is built, a vocation marker of the same NAME is placed face up in front of that player, followed by a vocation payout (equal to the VALUE) for vocations of the same name owned by all players.

Building

Buildings are the colored tiles of various sizes and shapes placed within the city grid during play, usually as a result of a contract card being built. Parks (green) are also considered buildings for all rules purposes.

Control

A player controls a building if he has one of his cubes atop it (usually placed at the time the building is placed in the grid). A player controls a vocation marker if it is face-up in front of him (usually acquired at the time a contract is built).

A player controls the Contractor or a politician if its tile is face-up in front of him (usually acquired during an election). A player controls all planning cards face up in front of himself (usually acquired via the expenditure of APs).

Zone

There are four zones in this game, each represented by a color-coded icon: red "CIV"ic, gold "COM"mercial, blue "IND"ustrial, or purple "RES"idential. There also exist park [green] buildings: Parks are "neutral" buildings and thus do not belong to any zone.

Water & Wilderness

The blue (water) and green (wilderness) edges of the board's city grid. Some cards refer to one or the other in their text effects.

Blocks, Lots & Adjacency

Within the city grid on the board, a "lot" is any of the smaller squares. A "block" is defined as a group of 4 lots entirely enclosed within streets.

Lots (and any buildings in those lots) separated only by a street are still adjacent to one another-both orthogonally and diagonally. Lots along the outer edge are adjacent to water and/or wilderness.

Row

Within the city grid, a "row" is defined as everything within the confines of two parallel streets. In some cases these streets need not be next to each other as is the case with the double-wide "1", "2" and "3" prestige rows, for example. Thus a row is always made up of either 6 or 12 contiguous blocks.

Value

The "value" of a block is the sum total of all wealth and prestige numbers along both of its rows (horizontal and vertical). The value of a building or lot is the same as the block in which it resides.

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