City Building Games Vol IV. - Quadropolis and CitiesUP

Quadropolis is a 2 -4 players board game with a 30 – 60 minutes game play and rated for 8 + .

Quadropolis was further announced as City Mania. In Quadropolis every player builds his own city. The key element in Quadroplis is the connection of all players with their cities concerning shops, parks, public services and other structures. Each city / player is competing with one another for these tiles.

The game lasts five rounds. Every player places a 5x5 grid of tiles. These tiles are buildings which are connected via numbers with architects. These architects are number from 1 to 4. Every player owns these four architects. After that, the player claims the, from the tile, spelled resources. These resources can be inhabitant or energy. The energy and inhabitants can be moved at any time during the first four rounds. In the fifths round every player counts his score. The score is depending on the six different kind of building, which must be supplied with inhabitants or energy. Each of the six building types score differently. Eg.: A residential building scores depending on its height and parks score depending in the number of residential buildings next to it. The player with the highest score wins.

In contrast to Quadropolis, CitiesUP gives you a feeling of a actual demand of the city by the building cards, which are generating the demand of the city. Every player in CitiesUP can buy these buildings to fulfill the demand by supplying the purchased building with resources and services. These buildings are generating the score point. In addition, the specific bonus pattern of every card gives the players the opportunity to gain more tax income and score points. Every tax income point counts as a score point. The services are provided by civic buildings. One player purchases a civic building and make the services available to the whole city. But instead of just paying the upkeep for the building, the player also gets score points for the upkeep he pays to provide the service. This forces the players to buy and build civic buildings. In CitiesUP all players (2-4) are playing on one board (City board). CitiesUP is about buying and building, supplying resources, paying upkeep and generating tax income, all this about several round. The game ends when the last building card is faced up. The round will be completed and all players will take at the constantly used Finance board to the tax income and upkeep, which are forming the final score.

Progress on our CitiesUP Kickstarter Campaign

Hi Boardgamers,

it is time for an update.

The last couple of weeks headed to further progress concerning our manufacturing and shipping progress. Our american manufacturer sent us the final building cards, field cards, city boards and credit tokens. We received 23 packages full of components and they looking great.

One of our german manufacturers sent us the final box enclosures and the colors and fitting works great with the game box. As mentioned in our previous update, we expecting the last 250 boxes to arrive in the first week of July. As soon as we will receive this boxes, we will start our packaging process to ship CitiesUP around the world. 

We gave our rule book a major update and it is available for download now. We especially improved the game setup and the how-to-play sections.

Some of you have noticed, that we moved our website and store to another provider. We are now able to accept additional payment methods like PayPal. We happy to offer these additional payment methods and follow your request.

To celebrate the immanent shipping of CitiesUP and our new online shop we created a contest. The contest runs until Saturday, 18th of June. Participate to win a copy of CitiesUP. 

City Building Games Vol II. - Town Center and CitiesUP

In these upcoming articles we will take a further look on city building games and how CitiesUP differs and creates a special value for city simulation loving boardgames.

When you start to think about city building board games, you have not that many games which offer a rich and fun enviorement of having the right feeling and look as you expect from a city building game.

Some city building games use cards, some don´t , and some combining the card and token game play.

Town Center was originally published in 2012 by AoS Team & Ludibay and was created by Alban Viard. The usual play time is 30 minutes and involves 2 - 4 players. The recommend age is 12 + .

 Town Center is really about stacking cubes and building a city skyline. The players built the down town center of a city. Different maps are available for purchase. Town Center is about how your stack these different cubes together. There are many different types of modules (cubes) like flats, shops, offices, generators, lifts ... . To gain income from shops and parking lots these models must be supplied with electricity.After tens rounds the player with the highest city / most victory points wins the game. 

Town Center is a game with tiny cubes, which must be stacked wisely to gain more victory points. Supplying your cubes with electricity is nice element, which makes the game more than a puzzle.

In contrast to Town Center, CitiesUP is not about stacking cubes. All buildings in CitiesUP are ready out of the box. Every single cubes of a building is permanent attached to the others. 

The most striking thing in CitiesUP is the connection betweens the board and the building cards. These building cards are specifically attached to a specific building. The way the players place a building can affect the players income. Because the building cards offer a bonus pattern. These bonus pattern offer specific ways to arrange the building tokens on the city board. Every building in CitiesUP must be supplied with resources and services. In addition to the electricity in Town Center, the players also have to handle the demand of water. Services are demanded by most building as well. A service can be offered by e.g. a school or harbor.

The resources in CitiesUP can be purchased by every player and are attached to the buildings right on the building card.