Nova Roma

Konstantinople (founded around 660 BC as Byzantium by the Greeks and today known as Istanbul) was lavishly expanded in 330 AD by the Roman Emperor Constantine into his new residence and capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was meant to be his new Rome – Nova Roma. As patrician families, we're supporting the development to secure influence and prestige with the Emperor. On their own, the individual actions in this worker placement game are pretty straightforward, but the real depth comes from placing your workers on the central Forum board: place your figure and execute the action of both its row and column (the random tile setup at the start creates a ton of variety). And each of your own figures, plus the Emperor figure, boosts your action strength. Great mechanism, and the actions are really well balanced. Here’s the final score with 90:89:88, even though everyone focused on different priorities. Plus, the art by "The Mico" is awesome – it just pulls me back in every time!