An Analysis of Citadels

Two weeks ago we received an assignment to play and analyze a board game as a group, and our group chose to play Citadels with it's expansion The Dark City. Citadels is a bluffing card game where the players compete to try to build the greatest city, they do so by building districts in their city. In the end each player get points for how expensive their city is and can get additional points if they have met a few goals with building their districts. The player with the highest score win the game.

The game is played in rounds; each round all players, starting with the player who have the crown token, secretly selects a character to play as. Then, the characters are called out one by one and if a player have the character that is called, he takes his turn. When all characters have been called and each player have had their turn, the character cards are all shuffled back into the character deck and a new round starts. When a player plays his eight district card the game ends after that round.

There are four components in the game: character cards, district cards, gold tokens and the crown token.

District cards:
There are five different types of district cards: noble, trade, religious, military and special. Each building cost a certain amount of gold the player must pay during his turn to build it. The special buildings have unique special effects that mostly have something to do about gold, district cards or score, the other districts have no special effects but can be used by different characters to gain additional gold.

Gold tokens:
Gold is the main resource in the game and is gained in a few different ways. It's mostly used to build districts but can also be used to destroy them.

Crown token:
The oldest player start with the crown token, later during the game this will be passed on each time a player chooses to play with character number 4. The player with the crown token always choose which character to play with first, there are no other perks.

Character cards:

The important thing about Citadels is knowing what the different characters does, otherwise it is not neither a strategy nor a bluffing game. So the 8 normal cards are:

1. Assassin: Names a character, that character may not take his turn this round.
2. Thief: Names a character (not number 1). When the named character is called the thief takes all that players gold.
3. Magician: May exchange his district cards (with another player or the district deck).
4. King: Gains extra gold from noble buildings and gain the crown token.
5. Bishop: Gains extra gold from religious buildings and gain protection from number 8.
6. Merchant: Gains 1 extra gold and gains extra gold from trading buildings.
7. Architect: Takes additional district cards and may build up to 3 district cards that turn (otherwise limited to one per turn).
8. Warlord: Gains extra gold from military buildings and can pay to destroy other players districts.

The absolute most interesting system in Citadels is the character deck and how the players choose their character. At the beginning of each round all the characters are shuffled into the character deck, then one of them is discarded at random and placed face down so that no one can see which character it is. Then, depending on how many players there are in the game, a number of randomly selected characters are discarded and placed face up on the table for everyone to see (number 4 cannot be discarded this way). Now the player with the crown token get the character deck and selects one character he will play with this round, then passes the rest of the characters on to the next person who does the same. The last person will have two characters he can chose from, he takes one and place the other face down on the table.

When all the players have their character the player with the crown token call each character, starting from number one. When a player have the character that is called, he takes his turn. This is very important, it's not the player with the crown who takes his turn first, it's the player who chose the Assassin character.

Example 1
Here is an example where I have the crown and it's the first round of the game. The Bishop has been secretly discarded (I know this since I can see the other seven cards) and the Warlord and the Thief have both been discarded faced up for every one to see. First I take a look at my 4 district cards and see if I have something I can gain extra gold from and that I can afford to build. I see a trade building that cost 5 gold, so if I pick the merchant and take gold as my action I have enough to build it and gain 1 extra gold from the bank. This is a great first round. However, that mean the Assassin is open for the others and when the second pick see that the Bishop and the Merchant are gone it's pretty easy to know which card I took and then assassinate me causing me to lose my entire turn.

So I think differently, maybe I should take the Assassin and be safe from attacks. The Merchant is a strong card and someone will surely pick it, it's a safe card to assassinate. But I do not gain bonuses from that, sure I cannot be assassinated but I gain two less gold and can't build as good of a building as I could have as the Merchant.

In the end I pick the King since I already have the crown and do not want anyone else to have it. It's also a lower possibility of getting assassinated as it's not an obvious choice over the Bishop, and lastly I have a noble building costing 3 gold which mean I gain 1 additional gold that turn.

The second player then get the rest of the deck and see that the King and Bishop are gone. He decides to take the Assassin because he doesn't want to get assassinated and even though he has a 50% chance of assassinating me, he chooses to target the Merchant since it's a much stronger card.

Example 2
Another example where I'm the player next to the player with the crown. It's in the later stages of the game and I have no district cards in my hand but an awful lot of gold. When I get the character deck from the first player I see that the Assassin and the Warlord are both gone. The Thief is discarded faced up so I do not need to worry about him.

Since I have no district cards, there are two great characters for me, the Magician and the Architect. With the Magician I can take another players district cards and with all my gold I can play one of them. The problem is I am two districts away from having 8 districts in my city. With the Architect I can draw 3 district cards from the deck and build all three of them if I can afford it.

So the obvious choice is the Architect, but the Assassin is gone and I do not believe the first player would pick the Warlord and leave the Architect to me so I consider. He have four district cards in his hand so he might assassinate the Magician in fear of losing his cards, but is that a risk I'm willing to take?

In the end I chose the King since I know I wont get assassinated as him, I also want to be the player with the crown next turn so that I can take the Assassin and be out of harms way. Also I have 2 noble buildings which allows me to build what ever district card I take this and the next turn.

The positives

I've already talked in detail about the depth of choosing a character, and that is the best part of the game, but not the only good thing. The characters and their relation to the buildings is very well balanced in my opinion as there are way more trade districts than other districts making the Merchant gain more gold than the other characters even thou it doesn't say it on the card. There are equally many religious and military districts and only a few, and expansive, noble districts. The fact that there are few noble districts is good since the King is already powerful with him taking the crown token, if he gained as much gold as the others that would have ruined the balance in the game.

The special buildings are also balanced in that they do not yield gold like the other buildings do, but their special ability makes them a bit stronger. There aren't as many special districts as there are normal ones, and they aren't so strong that you automatically win if you only draw special district cards. They are just as strong as they need to be for a player to feel good when he draws one.

Another great thing is the expansion that adds 10 characters to the game. This adds two characters with the number 9 and eight characters with numbers from 1 to 8. These bonus characters can be exchanged for the normal characters with the same number at the start of the game. This adds even more depth generally since each game can be different depending on which character you exchange. There are strategies that certain characters counter and when they are exchanged suddenly you are free to execute them without fear.

The negatives

There are a few minor bad things about the game, the first is the down time. In character selection you wait for the other players to take their characters and you have little to nothing to do in game in the mean time. Then when it's each players turn you do want to pay attention, but you can't effect what is happening until it is your turn. This is the games biggest flaw according to me.

Another thing is the characters numbered 1, the Assassin and the Witch. The Assassin is a risk free choice and the player that is assassinated gets huge down time. The Witch however is a risk picking since you lose your building phase, the reward is greater if you successfully bewitch someone and they do not lose as much as they would have if you'd assassinate them. They get to take their action but you get to use their special ability and build. I believe this adds more to the game and I almost always play with the Witch instead of the Assassin.

There is a rule I do not like; "Before the game begins, players may agree to remove one or two of the original eight character cards and replace them with the bonus characters of the same rank numbers.". The fact that I almost always exchange the Assassin for the Witch mean I can only add one other bonus character, and I have had great games with 5 to 6 bonus characters. I've never intentionally followed this rule, and I probably never will.

Another rule, this one is just annoying; "Before the game begins, players may agree to add 2-3 additional purple district cards to the District Deck (...)", (purple is the special district). This merely annoys me since it means you have to go through the whole district deck every time you want to play, remove the bonus district cards and then add the new bonus district cards. If you add all the bonus district cards the chance to get special districts is too high, but this is usually what I do anyway since I can't be bothered to go through the whole deck before each game.

The last big-minor bad thing about this game is the fact that you believe you know what the characters does by reading on their cards, but in fact you have to read about them in the rule book since there are a few unexplained things there.

That's all for me, thanks for reading and stay awesome!