Board Game Analysis – Citadels

This is my analysis of the board game Citadels.

In this game the player hires different characters each round to help them build a city and collect gold. The characters have different ability’s and they represent different colors and they have a number from one to nine. Each round, every player secretly chooses a character that they think will benefit them. When someone builds their eight district the game ends and the player with the highest score by then wins. Score is calculated by the combined gold cost of all the districts that the player has built. So by placing down your eight district card doesn’t automatically mean you will win, someone with less district cards might still have a higher score

In the beginning of the game one player starts as the king, the king gets to choose a character card first each round and therefor can choose freely from all the characters in the game. and then he passes the remaining characters to the next player and so on so forth, until the last player only gets left with a very small number of characters.

After that the round goes on to the player whose character has the number one, that player uses his characters ability’s, earns two gold coins or picks up two district cards from the deck and discards one, and optionally builds a district card by placing it in front of him for all to see and pays for it with his coins. Then it continues with number two etc., if no one chose a specific number you skip to the next character. When you have gone through all nine characters the round ends and the king starts the next round by shuffling the character cards and choosing one again.

There are five different colors of district cards and the characters each benefit different colors. For example, a player with very many green district cards would benefit more from choosing the merchant character because he gives extra gold for each green district you have built. On the other hand the other players might guess that you choose the merchant because they know you have built a lot of green cards, so someone is likely to use the Thief character to steal your gold. this results in a lot of mind games because the thief have to select a character he wants to steal from, but he can’t know for sure in advance who chose what character. Unless someone makes it very obvious what character they choose of course.

The good

Its very fun to choose a character each round, you have to think and plan ahead, and try to remember and guess what characters your opponents might have chosen by seeing what characters are left in the deck when it’s your turn to choose.

Playing one versus one is feels completely different than if you are playing with more people. It’s faster paced which is a fun contrast to the slower game you normally get. I think it’s very good that they managed to balance the game to work very good both one versus one and all the way up to eight people.

The different Characters feels overall well balanced, and so does the district cards.

The bad

The characters with very high numbers, like 8 or 9 seem less popular simply because they get to play last in the round. Same goes for the ones with number one and two, they are almost always preferred over the other cards. Like for example the assassin with number one. He gets to kill another character that he chooses, and then hope another player plays the card he chooses to kill. But he has no drawbacks. The worst case scenario is you don’t get a kill. And because he is a number one card you get to play first, and that means you reveal that you are the assassin and therefore the thief who is number two and plays after your turn, cant steal from you either because he to have to guess his target.

The characters abilities are not fully described on the card itself so you have to look for them in the rule book to learn exactly what they can do.

Most interesting system

I think the bluffing part of the game is the most interesting system. I feel it is what makes the game fun. It’s very strategic and you have to actually think before you act which I think is a very good thing. It makes it so much more interesting to play. And you get a really good feeling when your plan of deception actually worked the way you intended. Or when you fool everyone into thinking you have one obvious character and you actually don’t.