CONFUCIUS
First of all, this game has basically nothing to do with Confucius the person nor Confucianism. If you are looking for a game to test or use your superb knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics, you will be grossly disappointed. That said, this is quite an interesting and good game.
WHAT THE GAME IS ABOUT
Released in 2008, the game is designed by Alan Paull and can play 3-5 players. Based on our several 5 player games, the game lasts about 2 hours.
The game is set during the Ming Dynasty in China which ruled China from 1368 to 1644. This is the time in China where arts and culture flourished and Confucianism once again played a significant role in the governance of the country. It is also a time of great explorations, e.g. by the great Admiral Zheng He, and all sorts of enterprises such as reconquering “barbarian” lands and the rebuilding and extension of the Great Wall. It is a great time for China, enjoying great culture, trade and superb military and technological might.
The object of the game is to get the most Victory Points (VP). No surprises there and the game is essentially a worker placement game. You get VPs by controlling the Ministries, by invading other countries and by discovery of new lands. You also get points at the end of the game if you are the best in either having most control on the Ministries, most armies deployed to invade other lands or if you have most fleet for discovery of foreign land.
THE COMPONENTS
Great components. Thick, colourful and well formatted game board that opens completely flat on the table. The wooden pieces are of good quality, the cardboard chits are thick and sturdy and the card stocks are a bit flimsy but still feels good while held. All in all, very good component quality. It also comes with a play-aid for each player which we found very useful as a reference.
The game board is divided into three main sections. The first section at the top is the Action section where players place their action cubes. Flanking the Action section, on the left side are the boxes for the Imperial examination and on the right side is the VP track and below the VP track is the gift track. The middle section are the three ministries, the Bingbu – Ministry of the Army, The Hubu – Ministy of Finance and The Gongbu – Ministry of Public Works. The bottom section comprises of two sub-sections, the left side is the Invasion of Foreign Land and the right side is the Discovery of Distant Land.
The Rulebook is well written, easy to follow and well illustrated.
A note about money in this game. Unlike many other games, money in this game is printed on the card called the Confucius Card. On the card, the money is indicated but the card also indicate Licenses. You need licenses to send armies to foreign lands and also to discover distant lands. The interesting thing is the number of license is the inverse of the number of money so that they both always add up to four. If the card contains 3 monies, it will only contain 1 license and vice-versa. And you won’t get change if you do not have the exact number of monies or licenses when you pay.
THE GAMEPLAY
The game plays over several rounds. There are 3 endgame conditions and the game ends if any one of them is met, 1) when all the ministries have been resolved, 2) when the 9th piece of the Great Wall has been built and 3) When there are no more candidates for the Imperial Examination.
Each round consists of 5 phases as follows:
1. Count Gift Phase
2. Choose Chief Minister Phase
3. Action Phase
4. Court Phase
5. End Round Phase
1. Count Gift Phase
The most interesting mechanic of this game is the Gift Giving system (which I will discuss later). In this phase, each player counts how many gifts he has given and received. This will determine how many action cubes he can have, which ranges from 3 cubes if he did not give and receive any gifts, 4 cubes if he has given and received one or two gifts and 5 cubes if he has given and received 3 or more gifts. Notice that I used the word “and”, which means all the gifts given and received are summed up.
As you can see, the game encourages the player to give gifts, which also mirror the real world…. the more widely networked you are will enable you to do more things.
2. Choose Chief Minister Phase
At the beginning of the game, the Chief Minister is chosen at random. Thereafter, the current Chief Minister will choose another player and pass the role to that player. The advantage of being the Chief Minister is that it will have an extra action (i.e. Imperial Favor) at the end after all players have taken their actions and this Imperial Favor action can be played on a repeated box and the player does not have to pay two cubes (more on this later). However, the disadvantage is that the Chief Minister will always go last as the player on his left will play first. Turn order is very important in this game.
3. Action Phase
This is, as in most if not all games, the meat of the game. Each player can take as many actions as his number of action cubes allow and each player will take one action clockwise until all players passes. Players must use up all their available action cubes. No action cubes can be carried over.
However, there are two other actions that does not need action cubes. They are the actions allowed in the Emperor Reward cards (which you can get by invading foreign lands or by discovering distant lands – discussed later) and the “free” transfer action (discussed below).
Players take their action by placing their action cubes in the action boxes at the top of the board. Notice that some boxes contain paired actions (e.g. Bribe official and Secure official are both in the same box). If you want to take another action in the same box, you need to place two cubes instead of one. All actions can be taken more than once (by placing two cubes each time) except for the Commercial Income action which can only be taken once per round.
The actions that the players can take are as follows:
A. Bribe Officials - at the beginning of the game during set-up, 3 official tiles will be placed in each of the three ministries. Under the official tiles, there is a cost to bribe him. If you take this action, you pay the cost indicated at the bottom of the tile (minus one if you have a bribed official in Hubu). After you have paid the cost, you put your marker by its side to indicate that this is a bribed but unsecured official. It is important to know that to have an unsecured official is a risk because other players may remove your marker when some conditions are met (e.g. the other player’s candidate has won the Imperial Examination or when some Emperor’s Reward Card allows an action to remove unsecured markers).
One of the advantages of having bribed officials is that you get discounts, for example, if you have a bribed official in Hubu, you get to pay one money less when you bribe the next official. If you have a bribed official in Bingbu you pay only 4 licenses to recruit one army instead of 6 and if you have a bribed official in Gongbu your ships costs less (depending on the number of ships you buy).
B. Secure Official. Note that this is a paired action and if you want to play this action, you need two action cubes (unless you are the Chief Minister using the Imperial Favour action). Therefore, if you want to bribe and official and then secure him, you need to play a total of 3 action cubes. The cost of securing an official is the same as the cost of bribing him, that means, to secure an official, you pay two times the printed cost. Of course, you don’t have to bribe and secure the official consecutively. You can bribe this turn and then secure in the next turn (provided your unsecured official has not been removed!). Once you have secured your official, place the marker standing up. A player can only secure his own official. He cannot pay and secure other player’s officials.
C. Nominate Student - the player pays 2 monies and places one of his marker on the Imperial Examination box. The first player to do this places the marker on the red box (because in case of a tie, the player on the red box wins). This action cannot be played in the first round. Remember that!
D. Force Imperial Examination – normally, the Imperial Examination will resolve by itself if both the spots are occupied by players. However, if there is only one player marker there, the player can force an Imperial Examination by paying 2 monies. This will be resolved during the Imperial Examination resolution phase.
E. Buy Junks - The players buys between 1 – 4 junks (ships) and depending if he has a bribed official in the Gongbu, he pays the costs as indicated on the table in the rulebook/player aid. He then places his junks on his shipyard (corresponding to his player colour).
F. Start a Voyage – The player pays one License per junk to start a voyage and he can move as many of his available junks at his shipyard. Every fifth junk completes one voyage and the player takes the victory point chits of his liking, returns all the five junks to the supply and place his marker on that distant land. The player also received an Emperor’s Reward card (very useful! Don’t overlook this).
Do note that each player can only voyage to one distant land once. There are in total five distant lands, so the maximum a player can get in that section is only 5. Other players can still voyage to a distant land already discovered by other players. He won’t get the victory points but will still get an Emperor’s Reward card if that is still available. This is an important rule not to be missed.
G. Recruit an Army – The player pays 6 licenses (reduced to 4 if he has a bribed official in Bingbu) and places one army in his military colony space. One action recruits only one army, up to a maximum of 6 armies.
H. Invade Foreign Land – The player pay the cash indicated in the Foreign Land tile and move one army to an empty box on the tile. One action moves only one army. Each box can only have one army but several players can own different boxes on the tile. Victory points as indicated in the box is NOT scored yet until the invasion is resolved in a later round. Also, the Emperor Reward card is NOT taken yet until the invasion is resolved in a later round.
I. Buy Gifts – Now we come to the interesting and main uniqueness of this game. Players can now buy one not available gifts by paying the monies stated on the gift card and make it available.
J. Give Gift - Players taking this action can give one available gift to one player.
The power of gifts is significant because the player that has received your gift are obliged to you in several ways, for example, he is obliged to support your Imperial Examination candidate (unless the other competing player has given him a higher value gift than you), he cannot bribe more officials in any ministry than you (or if he has more, he cannot increase it), in the ministry resolution stage, if he is the minority, he has to lend you his support if you are tied in the leading, etc.
However, gifts can be canceled in several ways, for example, you can give the other player a higher value gift, give an additional two more Confucius card to support the player’s Imperial Examination candidate, support the player during the Ministry Resolution phase etc.
For more on gifts, please refer to the Rulebook which is clear.
K. Transfer Influence – The player replaces his marker with another player’s marker leaving the status as the same (secured or unsecured). This action cancels any gifts from the other player and this is a free action.
L. Petition the Emperor – this option is only for advance play.
M. Commercial Income – this is a very useful action as you this is how you earn more Confucius cards (for money and licenses). You pay up to 4 monies and get monies +1 Confucius card. E.g. you pay 2 monies, you get to draw 3 Confucius cards. If you pay 3 monies, you get 4 cards etc. The maximum is 4 monies for 5 cards.
You can only take this action once per round. You can’t even play this as an action with the Imperial Favour if you have already played this action.
N. Tax income – This is clear. Just take 2 Confucius cards.
O. No Action – put one action cube here if you do not want to take any actions.
P. Imperial Favour - this is for the Chief Minister. Take this action only after everyone else passes.
4. Court Phase
The court phase is when the following are resolved:
a. Build the Great Wall – this has two effects. Number one, it is a time marker because the game ends when the 9th wall is built. Secondly, it is also a marker for invasion to happen (explained in the Invasion step below).
b. Imperial Examination – Imperial examination happens under two conditions, either both the spots in the Imperial Examination box is occupied or if only one spot is occupied, a player played a Force Examination action. When the Imperial Examination happens, each player beginning from the player to the Chief Minister’s left will contribute one Confucius card to either one of the player.
If a player has received a gift from a player that has a candidate, then he is obliged to contribute to the player’s candidate, unless he has received a higher value card from the other candidate. If the gifts are of equal value, then he chooses which one. He can choose to cancel the gift by contributing two more cards, paying a total of 3 Confucius cards and the gift is canceled. All players MUST contribute one card if he is able to.
The player that has the highest monies in total will win the Examination and he can occupy an empty space on the ministry indicated on the candidate tile. If the tile says “Any Ministry”, then he is free to choose which ministry to go to. If the ministry is already full, he can choose to replace any unsecured minister tile.
c. Ministry Resolution – if any of the ministries are now fully bribed, then the ministry is to be resolved accordingly. The player that has bribed the most minister becomes the Minister and gets the Victory Points indicated. The second most become the Secretary and takes the Victory points indicated. If in a tied position, then the player looks at the other bribed ministers and see who he has given gifts to. The player that has received the gift from him will have to lend his support and after lending his support, the gift is canceled.
d. Invasion – There are two occasions when this is resolved, i.e. either all the boxes in the foreign land tile has been fully occupied or when the wall is built up to a certain mark. When the wall is built up to a certain mark (one soldier, two soldier and three soldier marks), if all the boxes on the tile is occupied by players armies, then all players will receive victory points indicated in the box. If one or more of the boxes are not occupied, then none of the players will get any victory points. However, the player that occupies the box that has the Emperor Reward card still gets the Emperor Reward card no matter what.
5. End Round Phase
This is essentially an admin phase. Place one more official tile on empty ministry spots, each player discards down his Confucius card up to a maximum holding of four cards only (DON’T forget this), and return all action cubes to the players.
Then a new round begin by counting action cubes, choosing Chief Minister etc. etc. until the endgame events are triggered.
Overall, the gameplay is smooth and quite intuitive. There are minimal downtime between players and because the actions options are not too many, Analysis Paralysis prone players won’t display that symptom much.
THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSIONS
I will say that this is a medium weight game, with interesting options. What stands out of this game is the Gift mechanics. Well and timely use of it is very important, especially the strategic gift-giving to achieve a certain objective. Gift-giving is of paramount importance if the player is going for the Ministry strategy, i.e. you aim to score lots of points during the Ministry resolution phase.
There isn’t much luck factor and whatever luck factor in drawing the Confucius card is mitigated by the nature of the card itself, i.e. if it is low on money, it is high on licenses. The game depends on your devising a strategy to obtain the most points and use the gift giving mechanic to achieve that objective. In our experience, it is important to have a rather consistent strategy. Also, yes, control of Ministries do get a lot of points but Invasion and Voyages also do get quite a lot of points, not to mention the very powerful Emperor’s Reward cards!
The game is very engaging with lots of player interaction. You always have to watch out who controls what or wants to control what and you must also watch who has given gifts to whom and the changes in the gifts that may get played etc. Like any good strategy games, you need to anticipate other players strategies and if you are a good student of Sun Tzu, you will know that the best way to defeat the enemy is to defeat their strategy.
Overall, a really good game to play with people who likes heavier, meatier and less forgiving games.
