At Gen Con ’22, I had the pleasure of playing Glenn Drover‘s latest release, Mosaic: A Story of Civilization, a big, yet streamlined, civilization-building game for 1-6 players that can be played in 2 hours, from Forbidden Games. Mosaic originally caught my eye when it was on Kickstarter (KS link) in May 2021. Then, after my Gen Con demo game left me wanting more, the kind folks at Forbidden Games sent me a review copy so I could continue building my civilization’s mosaic and play it more.
If you’re familiar with Empires: Age of Discovery or Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Boardgame, you’ll know this is not Drover’s first rodeo when it comes to civilization board games. And if you’re familiar with Raccoon Tycoon, you’ll know Drover knows a thing or two about designing a game with quick turns. Enter Mosaic: A Story of Civilization…
Mosaic: A Story of Civilization is a straight-forward action selection, engine-building game fused with a civilization-building game. In Mosaic, like many civilization-building games, each player develops an ancient civilization, starting with a single city and minimal resources, into a thriving, technologically advanced civilization with towns, cities, wonders, culture, military presence, and more.
The large game board for Mosaic features a beautiful mosaic map by Jared Blando, on top of a hex grid which is divided into seven regions differentiated by color. When playing with less than 4 players, there will be some regions not in play. There are spaces for the four decks of cards and their corresponding card offer areas (Build, Population, Technology, and Tax & Tariff), in addition to informative spaces for the other actions in the game which don’t have card decks (Work, Military, Wonders, and Government). You’ll create the four decks of cards by shuffling an Empire Scoring card into the bottom portion of each deck, noting certain decks are populated differently based on player count.
Game board all set up and ready for action…
During setup, you’ll flood the board with a ton of trade goods and cache tokens. You have to flip all of the tokens face-down, mix them, and place them on all of the hexes of the game board (cache tokens on cache token spaces, and trade goods on open hexes), then flip them over and remove any ‘x’ trade good tokens. It’s the most tedious part of the setup process, but it’s a minor gripe considering how streamlined the gameplay itself is. These tokens are goodies you can acquire throughout the game when you build cities, towns, and wonders on spaces with tokens.
Each player starts the game with a player board, a leader, a starting city on the board, five starting technologies which are drafted, and starting benefits from their leader. There are 9 different leaders included in the game and they each have their own special abilities you can lean into.
A few of the leaders
Mosaic is played over a series of turns in clockwise order, occasionally interrupted with an Empire Scoring phase, until the game ends and the player with the most victory points wins. On your turn, you may perform one of eight different actions. The game includes a handy reference booklet with all sorts of helpful information, but the actions are all printed around the game board and very straight-forward to execute.
You can take the Work action to produce one of the three non-money resources (ideas, food, and stone). You simply pick a resource, then add your current production of that resource to your current population, and gain that amount of resources. Everyone starts the game with five population, but as you build new cities, you ‘spend’ your population. Your production can increase for various resources by researching technologies and a few other ways throughout the game.
Player board with starting population
When you perform the Population action, choose one of the two Population cards available in the Population offer area, pay the amount of food shown on the card, and increase your population accordingly. Then discard the card and draw a new one to refill the Population offer area.
With the Build action, you can choose one of the five available Build cards paying the appropriate cost, if any, then place the corresponding card in your tableau and gain any benefits shown. Then refill the card offering with a new card from the Build deck. Farm and manufactory towns are always free to build, but if the card is a city, port city, or project, it’ll have a cost of stone and population for cities, and stone and ideas for projects. It’s also worth noting that you can always build a city, port city, or town for the usual cost without selecting a card.
Build card offering
As far as placement goes, a city can be placed on any open hex on the board. A port city can be placed on any open port hex (with a ship icon) on the board. Towns must be placed on an open hex next to one of your cities. If you build on hex with a cache token, you immediately gain the one-time benefit (typically resources) and discard the tile. If you build on a hex with a trade goods token, you take the token and place it on your player board. Some trade goods increase your production for different resources and there are a variety of benefits to having as many unique trade goods as possible, since this represents you building your trade network.
WondersAs you might expect in any civilization-building game, you can also build wonders. When you perform the Wonder action, choose one of the available wonders, pay the cost, and place the wonder tile in your tableau. Your first wonder costs 20 stone and 5 food, but it increases by 5 for both resources every time you build another wonder. After you pay the cost, place the corresponding wonder on an empty hex in any region where you have at least one city. Wonders are worth victory points at the end of the game per the condition on the wonder tile.
While building stuff and expanding into new regions is important, it’s also essential for your civilization to learn new technologies to stay competitive. To perform the Technology action, pay 5 ideas and select one of the five available Technology cards from the Technology offer area. You can place the card face-up in your tableau immediately if you meet the prerequisites (if any), or you can keep it in your hand until you’re ready and able to play it.
Slowly building up trade goods & technologies
Technology cards and other cards in Mosaic have pillars of civilization symbols on them. These symbols may contribute to end game scoring for you, special Golden Age achievements, as well as helping you research fancier technologies. The more pillars of civilization symbols you acquire, the more technologies you can learn.
Fierce military units in EgyptWhen you perform the Military action, you can recruit up to 2 new military units and/or move any number of military units that you have on the board to an adjacent space. The General leader and the Citizen Levy Technology allow you to recruit more new units than 2 if you’re going for a heavy military strategy. It’s worth noting, military units exist in regions on the board, but they don’t occupy hexes and cannot block the placement of new cities, towns, and wonders. You have to pay 5 money for each new military unit that you recruit and 1 money for each unit you move.
Considering the Military action costs money, you’re probably wondering how you get money in Mosaic. One of the main ways you earn money is by taking the Tax & Tariff action and choosing one of the two available Tax & Tariff cards in the Tax & Tariff offer area. You’ll gain money as shown on the card you choose and place the card in your tableau to keep track of your unrest, which is shown at the bottom of Tax & Tariff cards. At the end of the game, you total all of your unrest and deduct that many points from your score. Certain wonders, leaders, and technologies may help you ignore unrest.
Tax cards generate money based on population, the number of government pillars of civilization symbols you have, and your tax production on your player board. Tariff cards generate money based on the number of unique trade goods tokens that you have, the number of cities you have on the board, and your tariff production.
In addition to the money you earn from the card you choose, you might also be able to score some bonus money from the Holding Area on the board. Every time a city is built, you place 5 money from the supply in the Holding area. When a port city is built, you place a whopping 10 money instead. As players build more cities, money piles up in the Holding Area, which makes it very tempting to perform the Tax & Tariff action.
Tax & Tariff cards
The final action you can perform in Mosaic is the Government action. There are six government tiles available at the start of the game, and each has its own pillars of civilization symbol requirements as well as a cost in stone you need to pay to claim the government for your civilization. In addition, each government gives you a special ability and an additional way to score points.
As you progress through the game, taking cards from the various offer areas, eventually you’ll reveal an Empire Scoring card which will trigger Empire Scoring. During Empire Scoring, the two players with the most influence in each region score points. Influence is determined by counting 2 influence points for each wonder and city that you own in a region, and 1 influence point for each town and military unit that you own in a region, plus any bonus influence from technologies. The player with the second most influence points in a region scores 2 points, and the player with the most influence scores 3 points plus 1 point per city and wonder in the region, regardless of who owns them. Ties for most influence are friendly, so all players with the most influence receive the full amount of points for a given region. However, if there’s a tie for second place, the tied players don’t score any points.
Beefin’ up my forces (green) in Numbidia before Empire Scoring
A decent chunk of your score comes from Empire Scoring, so most of what you’re doing in the game is building cities and positioning your military units to make sure you can score points during Empire scoring, as well as prevent your opponents from scoring when possible. You never know the exact timing of when Empire Scoring cards will be revealed either, so you’re on your toes most of the game. However, this is not the only reason you’ll be constantly monitoring the board and keeping a close eye on what your opponents are doing.
Mosaic also has Golden Age and Civilization Achievement tiles players will be racing to claim until they’re all snatched up. There is a Golden Age tile for each of the nine pillars of civilization symbols and you can claim one if you have at least 6 symbols of a particular type in your tableau. Meanwhile, there are 15 different Civilization Achievement tiles, and each game you randomly choose 9 to play with. I love how much tension these tiles add to the game, especially since they’re worth 6 points each. It’s also great the that you play with a random set of Civilization Achievement tiles each game so you have to strategize around them, which is more exciting and challenging than if they were the same every game.
Civilization Achievement tiles
The end of the game will be triggered after the third Empire Scoring card is revealed, or if 2 of 3 of the Wonders, Golden Ages, or Civilization Achievements have all been taken. When either occurs, you perform a third and final Empire Scoring, then finish the current round, and play one more final round so each player gets one more action. In addition to the points you scored from the three Empire Scoring phases, you score points for your cities and towns, wonders, Golden Age and Civilization Achievement tiles, Project/Technology/Town cards, and subtract points for unrest on your Tax & Tariff cards. The player with the most victory points wins the game and will be remembered as the greatest civilization in history…at least until you play your next game.
A military technology card exampleIf you couldn’t tell from my description of the actions, Mosaic is a very accessible, streamlined civilization-building game. Every action is quick and fairly simple, especially after you’ve performed each action once. After you initially learn the rules, just about everything you need to know is conveniently printed on the board, and any extras are nicely summarized on the provided reference cards. Half of the actions are driven by cards, so you just choose a card and do what it says. Even placing cities and military units is straight-forward. There are no rules where your city has to be this far away from another city or anything like that. You simply pick a hex in any region that doesn’t have a city/town/wonder, and place your city. You aren’t getting bogged down with a million exceptions and special rules. It’s clean and simple, and I dig it. Plus, simple actions result in quick turns and minimal downtime, which is awesome.
Building up your tableau of technologies with the pillars of civilization symbols is very reminiscent of building your tableau with different tags in Terraforming Mars. It’s obviously not anything groundbreaking or new, but it’s simple and easy to understand. Plus, the race to claim the Golden Age tiles when you have 6 or more of the same type of symbol adds a lot of excitement to the game and keeps players actively engaged and invested in what other players are doing.
There’s a lot of player interaction on the board when it comes to building cities, towns, and wonders, and recruiting military units in the various regions, but the “combat” is very light. In fact, it barely exists, which some people might love and others might dislike. There are some military technologies that allow you to eliminate your opponents’ units, but there’s no combat system, so it feels more like a lighter area control game in that respect. Like most aspects of Mosaic, it’s really simple and easy to understand — you just read the card you choose, and do what it says. This also stirs up a lot of competition when it comes to grabbing cards from the board.
Between the different card offerings, the Holding Area piling up with money as players build cities, the Golden Age and Civilization Achievement tiles, and the anticipation of the Empire Scoring cards being revealed, there is so much to keep everyone engaged from start to finish when you play Mosaic. Plus, with the variety of Leader cards combined with different governments you can choose, the random mix of cache/trade goods tokens on the board, and the Civilization Achievement tiles, there’s a ton of replay value packed into this game.
If you’re ever trying to play Mosaic and no one’s around to join you, you’ll be happy the know there are solitaire rules included by Dávid Turczi, where you’ll play against an AI opponent Herobotus. I did not check out the solo mode so I can’t comment on how it plays, but it’s always a plus when there’s one included.
If you’re looking for a smooth, streamlined, civilization-building game, or if you simply enjoy solid engine-building games, be sure to check out Mosaic: A Story of Civilization. It is a bit of a table hog, but if you can fit it on your table, it’s worth checking out.
For those who are already fans of Mosaic and looking for more, the Mosaic: Wars & Disasters expansion, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter in November 2022 (KS link), is due out in 2023. The Wars & Disasters adds Disaster cards, national military powers, new wonders, new Technology, Build, and Leader cards, and more to spice up the base game and offer players new challenges and strategy options.
