Review

New residents are fastidious, too

Dilluvia Project

somewhat different worker placement

Publisher Spielworxx is well known for the complex games it brings out, the motto of the company „challenging, demanding games for the games gourmet“ is absolutely justified by their games. As the games are in general very different from each other, not every game will please every player. With Dilluvia Project, the company publishes a game that is a combination of Worker Placement and Construction. Players are builder entrepreneurs, build together to develop the future town of Dilluvia and compete with each other for the best building sites. In a prosperous town like Dilluvia citizens are used to the corresponding wealth and luxury. Therefore, only those players will attract residents who construct the most prestigious buildings on their sites. And this is the topic of Dilluvia Project: You will win, if you can boast the highest resident population number at the end, that is, numbers of residents equal victory points. However, residents are fastidious, you cannot simply collect them, you must use prestige to motivate them to decide on you.

Dilluvia Project is played over seven rounds. The first six of those seven rounds are played following the same procedure; in the seventh round, there are some slight deviations from the procedure. During those seven rounds player acquire building sites in Dilluvia, collect resource cubes for construction materials and use them to construct buildings or gardens on their site, all this is enabled by placing workers on action cases. With the buildings, players receive income during the game; gardens only give prestige at the end of the game, but are as important as your own building, all the same.

The board on which Dilluvia is meant to be created is not suitable for small game tables, because eventually it is designed to be a big, beautiful town, and that needs quite a lot of space, which, all the same, can get scarce towards the end of the game. The board must be big also because you need space, besides the terrain areas in a grid of squares which will hold the future city, also for the action cases, a market, the rounds track and a scoring track. Some space is saved with the scoring track, because it doubles for use in carrying not only the population marker for each player, but also their prestige markers. The multiple use made of scoring tracks is one of the characteristics of the game which is even more prominent in the player boards and which will probably make any casual game despair. But let us return to the game.

At the start if each round, after preparations for the round have been completed. All players will visit the market. The market is represented by a grid of 4x4 cases, each of those cases carries a market tile; at the start of around, the market is refilled to capacity. For the last round, no market tiles are put out, the values printed on the cases apply instead - in other words, the selection on the market in the last is identical in every game of Dilluvia.  

Players place their markers, which is a very nicely designed zeppelin, in turn order at the beginning of a row or column. This gives a clear advantage to the starting player, as he can choose his position freely; all other players can only select a position, where there is no zeppelin yet and they also must not select a position opposite to a zeppelin already placed. Then those positions, again in turn order, are resolved. This order should be considered already when placing the zeppelin, as you can already make an assessment, which market cases might be cleared by players that come before you in turn order. The starting player begins and can now acquire any number of market tiles in his row or column, only one or up to all four tiles. There is only one drawback - this can get expensive! As you need money for payment, players begin the game with a starting capital, the amount is related to the turn order.

The market tile in the case adjacent to the zeppelin, costs one money unit, the next one costs two, the next but one costs three, etc. In order to acquire a complete row or column, you would have to spend ten money units, or to use the currency of Dilluvia, ten Aero. But a player has complete freedom of decision which market tile or tiles he wants to acquire from row or column, he can even decide to take none of them. You take the market tiles that you acquire and can use them. In general, we distinguish between market tiles that must be resolved instantly, for instance those which give you resources cubes, market tiles that you can use once later in the game, market tiles that be used once per round, market tiles that have permanent effects and market tiles which can be changed into victory points at the end of the game. Later in the game, more valuable market tiles are introduced, which cost you a fixed price of five Aero.

The same rules apply for the next players in turn; it can, however, happen, that for them not all cases of the selected row or column still carry market tiles. Of course, you cannot acquire a tile from those cases, but as a compensation you receive one Aero per empty case, albeit only after you have completed your buys.

After the Market phase is finished, the most important phase is resolved, the Action phase, which is again resolved in turn order. The game order is depicted by a separate track on the board, positions on this track can be changed by using the separate action case for this. Now, players place their workers on the action cases on the board and immediately resolve the respective action. The active player decides on one of the action cases and places a worker; this is continued until all players have placed all their workers. Passing is not allowed, if it is your turn and you have a worker left, you must place this worker.

Besides this classic standard worker placement mechanism there are a few special rules in Dilluvia Project, which change the basic mechanism: Each action case has several equivalent spaces for placement, only one of them can used by a player once and they are filled from left to right. An unusual detail is, that players can stack several workers onto such a placement space and therefore resolve the action several times. If it his turn again, he can again select this action space, but must put his worker or workers on another placement space. If you decide too late on a specific action, can cost you money in case of some of the action cases, where the placement on the last or last but one placement space costs you one Aero. If money is scarce for you, it can happen that you cannot do a specific action this round.

For each player, there are eight „common“ workers and a special worker of another color. Players, however, start the game with only five common workers plus the special worker, the remaining three workers must be acquired during the game.

When a player uses the special worker, also in combination with other, common workers, and if he is the first player to make use of a special worker on the respective action case, he receives a bonus, which varies with each action case and is marked next to it. This can, for instance, upgrade the basic action or give you additional victory points, etc.

Four action cases are governed by those roles, the other four action cases come with different rules. On those cases, you are allowed only one worker per placement space and, with three of those action cases, the placement spaces are color coded for players and can only be used by the respective players. Those action cases, however, always come with one color neutral placement space, which can be used by any player, provided he has already used the placement space of his color and that the color neutral space is still empty.

All action options that players need to develop the town of Dilluvia are available to all players. You can use actions to acquire money, to collect resources for constructing buildings, acquire building sites, construct buildings, build gardens and also influence turn order or influence your own income or acquire a tile from the market as an afterthought.

The action cases are depicted on the game board, surrounding the area of the town; within this area, players acquire building sites to construct buildings on them. The individual action cases are very clearly indicated and represented by symbols, so that it it easy to orientate oneself. Each action case also fives information on the kind of advantages there are for the placement of several workers or of the special worker.

Money plays a very important role in Dilluvia, as it is necessary as payment for various actions. One of several options to acquire Aeros is the use of the corresponding action case. Basically, this represents a 1:1 exchange. For each worker that you place on the placement space of this action case, you receive von Aero. If you use three or more workers, you receive on Aero bonus, and this also happens when the special worker is among the workers you used, albeit only if nobody else has done this here before.

For action cases are used for urban development:

To be able to construct something, you first need a distinctive building site. This site is acquired by buying it with Aeros und you mark the chosen cases on the terrain area on the board. However, there are some restriction rules for this: You must buy a site adjacent to your own real estate in town, which can be a site, a building or a Propeller case. The newly acquired terrain sites must be in the same geometrical arrangement as indicated on the action case - you can, for instance, acquire an area of 2x2 cases for three money units.

If you have complied with this, you now need the correct resources to construct a building on your terrain site. Those resources you collect in the guise of resources cubes in four distinct colors, by acquisition via an action case, where there is one row of placement spaces for each color. Here, too9, the 1:1 acquisition applies: For each worker that you place you receive one resource cube of the color of the row where you placed your worker.

If you have taken care of both these action in the current or a previous round, you can finally busy yourself with constructing buildings. The related action allows you to construct one building per each placed worker, on empty terrain that you own. In addition, you may claim a propeller for each worker. Propellers are area cases in the town map terrain, which cannot be built over. To use them, you do not have to acquire them beforehand, either. Propellers have two functions in the game:

To acquire a propeller, you must pay for it, the price varies for each propeller. This buy earns the buyer prestige points once and instantly. As the player now has claimed this propeller case for his own, he can now buy terrain cases adjacent to this propeller case.

But let’s get back to the buildings: The game features several types of buildings, the main body of which only becomes available during the game. There is a special type of building for each round, apart from the last round. Furthermore, there are buildings of Type 0. Always, at the start of the round, the buildings corresponding to the type of the round are introduced to play, and those types of buildings always have, again in all rounds but the last round, two distinctive characteristics. Of course, you can, in a round, also construct buildings from former round, but this comes with a disadvantage: Only if you construct a building of the type of the current round, you are credited with two residents for the new building on your scoring track. All the same, you should not always go for this advantage, especially for buildings of type 0. These buildings are not associated with a round and therefore never give you resident population, but they are the only type of building that give you an additional worker of your own as “income”.

Furthermore, buildings have other important characteristics:

• Buildings of Round 1 have a size of exactly one building site case; buildings of round 6 have a size of four building site cases, so that there is a constant rise in size.

• Each type of building demands a specific combination of resources for its construction, this begins with three distinctive resource for buildings in Round 1 and advances to a demand of seven resources for the biggest buildings in Round 6.

• When someone constructs a building, he marks his ownership with one of his wooden marker cubes on the building. For those cubes, there are two different sites for placement, which result in different income for the rest of the game, usually a combination of money, resources and/or prestige. Thus, a player must select one of the two sites after constructing the building.

• The two different versions of building type do not differ in building size, they do, however, differ in size of income. Both version also demand the same resources for constructing them.

• Buildings of type 0 are the only buildings that can provide an additional worker for income, but, of course, never give you the bonus of two resident population for constructing them, as there is no Round 0 in the game.

Players will usually construct mainly buildings on their terrain sites, but they could also create gardens. For creating a garden, you must again use the corresponding action. A garden always costs one Aero, does not have any use during the game but gives you prestige in the final scoring. However, gardens always belong to the town, so that, at the end of the game, each building adjacent to a garden scores prestige, not only those belonging to the player who created the garden.

Should you, however, have none of the above options planned for a round, or only some parts of them, you have three more options for the placement of your workers.

One of those options is the action case to determine the turn order; whoever places a worker there first, will be the starting player of the next round. Even here it is an advantage, to place your special worker, the foreman, you acquire victory points equal to your current position in turn order.

If as player, during the action phase, might want to acquire an additional market tile, maybe because he has found some money in the meantime, he can use the corresponding action case. Here, all market tiles have a fixed price of three Aeros, even those tiles that have a fixed price of five Aeros printed on them.

And finally, last but not least, a player can decide to shift the wooden cubes on the income cases, on up to two of his buildings, to the respective other one. In this way, for instance, you can shift your income from more money at the beginning of the game to more prestige later in the game. This action is very coveted during the final rounds of the game.

As I have already mentioned, you cannot acquire a lot of victory points, that is, population, directly in Dilluvia Project. The main body of population is acquired indirectly from collecting prestige points. How you go about acquiring them is definitely worth mentioning!

Each player has his own player board laid out, which features a scoring track with positions 1 to 36. This track is used in four ways by each player, that is, with four different markers on the track. Three of those markers use the scoring track directly - the money/income marker, the resources/income marker and the prestige/income marker. Always when a player has constructed a building and has decided on an income case on this building, he adjusts the positions of the corresponding markers accordingly. The positions are also adjusted, if you modify your income on your building with the respective action. The fourth marker, a wooden house, wanders along the track on his own cases, to the next house depicted on the track.

How, then, does a player population out of this movement? This happens in the last phase of each round, the income phase. At that point, players receive money, prestige and resource cubes in relation to the position of their markers on their scoring tracks; for resources cubes, he can choose at will from all resources. Prestige is marked by advancing the prestige marker on the scoring track on the board; if he reaches or tops 10 or any multiple of 10, the population marker on the scoring track on the board is advanced by as many cases as is indicated by the case on which his marker sits on the scoring track on his personal board.

In the last round, the income phase is amended with the final scoring of the game. When all players have received the income, the market tiles are scored for the prestige points that they yield and the gardens give prestige points to the owners of buildings adjacent to the gardens. At that point, too, the rules are applied that govern the acquisition of population via prestige points, as described earlier. Whoever has now managed to entice most residents, that is, population, to settle in town, is the winner of Dilluvia Project.

Dilluvia Project is a combination of the mechanisms of a tile placement game and a worker placement game using special rules that make this mechanism a lot more attractive. The placement of more than worker for an action and the placement of the special foreman worker induce more and different consideration than those that happen in a “classic” worker placement mechanism. Here, you must not only select your actions, but also in which quantity you want to do it and which action will be the one best suited for the placement of the special worker. This can often give you the last missing resource that will enable you to construct a building in the current round after all, or an additional building at the optimum location to then construct a garden. Despite having won more freedom for actions, you need to keep an eye on your fellow players all the same - you can lose an advantage that you planned on for your special worker very quickly, when another player is faster and places his special worker on your intended action. Or you can also slow down your own game yourself, at one time or another, when suddenly no placement space is free without cost at the action you planned for. And it can, of course, also happen that all placement spaces on the intended action case are taken.

To really enjoy Dilluvia Project, you must also like the tile placement mechanism. The selection of building sites is by far not as complex as the tile placement mechanism in Ein Fest für Odin, but all the same you must take care not to close down chances for yourself, be it for big buildings or for an optimum placement of gardens, or be it that you should pay attention not to be walled-in by your fellow players and can only save yourself with the acquisition of propellers, even if they are good as they yield prestige points.

What construes the allure of the game? Of course, the special worker placement mechanism plays a very important role, but also the permanent aspiration to always construct the buildings corresponding to the type of the current round, to juggle the income cases on your buildings, to make the optimum use of garden placement and of course to manage your finances in a way that you can afford the the most expensive projects whenever possible. Finally, let me say, that you must never neglect the market tiles - the acquisition of the right selection of market tiles can give you enormous advantages during all the game.

All in all, Dilluvia Project is a game that I will love to play again and again, and which I can see me to get on the table even in coming years now and then for a challenging game.

Bernhard Czermak

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 120+

Designer: Alexandre Garcia

Artist: Harald Lieske

Price: ca. 60 Euro

Publisher: Spielworxx 2015

Web: www.spielworxx.de

Genre: Worker placement, tile placement

Users: For experts

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Modified Worker placement

Very little chance

Very strategic

Compares to:

Ein Fest für Odin

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Bernhard Czermak:

I like Dilluvia Project, because it offers many option in its Worker Placement part to place markers and this results - in combination with a development game mechanict - in complex connections.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0