Since we played Age of Steam last week, we played the pre-empted game Princes of the Renaissance. What is sad is that I have owned this game for 2 1/2 years. Sigh. Anyways, I am glad that I played since it turned out to be an interesting game.
In this game, players are one of six families in Italy. You can bid for personalities that correspond with one of the five cities on the map. These personalities may give you income (in gold or influence), and/or special abilities. You then purchase army units. These army units are used when a fight is chosen by a player between two cities. Everyone then bids influence to be able to fight as the offender or defender in the battle. The results of this battle will move the winning city up and the loosing city down in the prestige levels and give the victor a victory counter (worth triangle points). At the end of the game, cities are then ranked by prestige and assigned point values. For each personality tile you own, you add up the corresponding point value. You can also get points for 1st or 2nd gold, 1st influence, and event tiles.
Normally, if you had a strong army, you would not want to be the defender of a city that you did not own personality tiles in. And conversely, if you had a weak army, you would want someone stronger to defend that city. However, in our game, I realized that you do not have many opportunities to initiate a battle (which would allow you to move one of the cities that you favor over one that someone else favors). And, since victory counters are worth triangle points (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, …), this caused us to really bid for one side or the other in a battle. Even when it was not in our best interests.
I hope to play this game again soon!