Citadels - Tips & Strategies

CITADELS FOR A SINGLE PLAYER – RULES.

* Standard rules of Citadels apply unless stated otherwise.

* Do not use cards from the “Dark City” expansion.

* You play against a virtual “Fake Opponent and Enemy” (FOE) whose actions are described below.

* At the beginning of the game you get 2 gold pieces and 4 cards, and FOE starts with 4 gold pieces and no cards.

-> The turn starts:

* At the beginning of each turn you shuffle the character deck and place one character card face down for FOE. Then you reveal two card to yourself. Then you get two more cards to choose a character for you (this can be modified by King, see below). Then you reveal one more card to yourself (two remaining stay face down).

* If you play Assassin or Thief choose your target (you have a chance of 1/3…).

* Reveal the card of FOE. Play the turns in appropriate order.

* In your turn follow the standard Citadels rules with the following exceptions:
– Magician: you can discard any number of cards (including 0) and draw the same number of cards plus one.
– King: next turn you get three cards to choose your character from and reveal no more cards after that. You also get gold for yellow cards as usual.

* The turns of FOE are somewhat different as he has no cards in hand ever. First of all you use special abilities of FOE characters:
– Assassin: you lose your turn – no matter what.
– Thief: you give your gold to FOE unless you are Assassin.
– Magician: you discard the newest drawn card from your hand.
– King: next turn you are forced to get a character (you leave one for FOE, reveal 2, take next one for you and reveal 2 more cards). FOE gets one gold for each yellow card in his city.
– Bishop: standard rules apply.
– Merchant: standard rules apply.
– Architect: FOE gets an additional construction phase.
– Warlord: destroy the oldest building in your town unless you are Bishop. Foe gets one gold for each red cards in his town.

*After playing the abilities of FOE he enters the construction phase (twice if he is Architect). You do the following:
– Give 1 gold to FOE.
– Reveal a building card. If FOE has enough gold and does not have such building in his town add the building to FOE’s town paying the specified price. If the card can not be added to the town discard it. As FOE can not play the abilities of purple cards whenever a purple card is added to his town he earns 1 gold.
After the construction phase(s), if no cards are added to FOE’s town this turn, give him 1 gold (only once a turn!).

-> The turn ends.

* The game ends and scores are calculated as usual. You win only if you finish your city first and if your score (including bonuses) is higher than the one of FOE.

In a 3 player game feel free to try this house rule for an added depth in gameplay. It has added a whole new dimension to my groups gaming.

All standard rules apply, except the following:

Instead of selecting characters in the standard way, each players first character is dealt to them face down at random. They then choice thier second character in the standard way.

If you play too many district cards of one color you risk that other players will try to get the leader you need for themselves or assassinate that leader.

In contrast if you have districts of many colors you can get small benefits from multiple leader and other players have no clue which one you have chosen in the current round.

In a longer run small but frequent benefits from different colored cards are better than bigger but uncommon bonuses gained from focusing on one color.

My group love Citadels, and think it works so well with 6 players (although I see Faidutti himself prefers it with 5) that we never play it with more or less. One variant we’ll sometimes play is incorporating the alternate roles on each turn, at the whim of the King (or Emperor). We find that especially near the endgame, when players are jousting for lucrative roles, the King is selected less and less … so we up the ante by giving the King the option to swap one role card for another (of the same numerical value) every turn. This helps to add a little variability to the game, and gives the King role a little extra beef.

If your group is especially social, a more fluff/less crunch variant is to rule that the King/Emperor must be referred to as Your Majesty, or Your Highness. If not, the offending player is immediately assassinated. This might not be too popular with groups just coming to terms with the game, but I’ve seen this rule sway players to taking the King just for the prestige that comes with it.

For a little extra mystery we always add the Artist to the base set. When the roles are to be selected the first player shuffles the nine cards, randomly choose one to bury and one to plass to the player to the right. This works very well for 5 or more players and the last player doesn’t get crushed by the remaining roles handed to him/her.

Faster, nicer, more tense and absolutely matching the game;

Many of the tips here give advice on how to modify the game for a two-player match. The assassin and thief cards are a real annoyance when it is so easy for each player to figure out which characters his/her opponent has picked. For many, like myself, they add more frustration than tactical options. Check the two player tips here to deal with it, but at the end of the day the game really takes off with at least four players. These “attack” cards cause less frustration when they are not consistently targeting the same player.

Not that this change makes a huge difference to the overall game but it does make you harder. In the two player version of the game you usually pick a character and choose and discard another before passing to the other player. The change we have played with a few times is to randomly discard a character after choosing one. Again, this isn’t a hugely complex rule change but we did like it because then both players had no clue what was in the discard pile and it made the game feel more like a 4 to 7 player game.

One rule we put in place for two player games is that the roles removed each round were always determined randomly, this allows for a limitation on the meta gaming that is bound to occur in a 2 player game.

This relates to Azura’s tip. Even if player’s aren’t doing this intentionally, they can determine what you picked if you don’t reshuffle the cards before picking, as long as they remember the order the cards were in.