Naturelich Games

One of my recent acquisitions via ebay was the out-of-print game The Princes of Florence (aka Die Fürsten von Florenz) by alea. Numerous reports and the Geek had reported the game to be pretty good. I therefore studied the rules in detail. Although The Princes is not a ligh-weighted game the rules are pretty straight forward. Maybe they are even a little bit over-explained at times.
But anyway, it was pretty easy to explain the rules. I played the game twice today. Both games were three player games but with different co-players (I also like to call them opponents). The second time I had to explain the rules seemed a little bit more fluent and I think there were little questions (which generally is a good sign with that particular group of players).

The Princes of Florence is about developing a renaissance palace to attract different personalities. As the title of the game suggests, the game seems to be set in Florence, although I did not notice any particular reason why it *had* to be Florence. Each player takes the role of a prince who can build parks, lakes and forrests to attract different great artists or personalities (e.g. philosophers, organists, architects, etc.). Secondly, artists enjoy certain freedoms, i.e. freedom to travel or freedom of religion. In addition, the prince can build special buildings, e.g. libraries, workshops, etc. These tiles need to be matched into a city grid. Each such tile has the potential to make artists happy - or in other words: inspire them. An inspired personality will create a great piece of art that makes the prince's culture more valuable (i.e. helps you earn victory points). To make it a little bit more difficult, each artist prefers different buildings and/or recreational activities. In terms of game mechanics, an artist's "happiness" is represented by "work" points in the game. These are gained by supplying a matching set of buildings, freedoms and recreational zones within your palace. This is actually pretty tricky, as each turn all artists seem to be developing a considerably higher aspiration levels as to when they will be inspired. By the way, this is probably quite a natural thing with artists, I guess.

The game was a lot of fun. It took one or two turns in the first game to understand what the basic game mechanics were supposed to be doing. With cadual players this timeframe might easily take a little bit longer. In the first game, MM was complaining a little bit about the high complexity but at the end of the game, I guess she pretty much liked it. The game immediately clicked for me and Kleki-Petra and we both had a lot of fun. Below, you can find the results of the first game.

The final score

Kleki-Petra's palace made it to second place

My first Princes of Florence end result. Small but beautiful...

In the second game with Raven and Shelak I tried a different strategy. I had discovered a promising strategy which involved getting the support of many many jesters. These add additional happiness to all the artists. Basically, my city consisted of a library and a forrest and many many jesters. There was probably some sort of big party going on, lots of alcohol, drugs and all the other things I would not want to talk about in this public forum (unless specifically requested). This strategy allowed me to win the best piece of art award almost every turn. I also converted a considerable amount of work points into victory points rather than money. This in the end might have overwhelmed my co-players a little bit. However, I must admit: their palace were much more impressive when it comes to cultural achievements (see images below). But who cares about these if there is a great party in the neighborhood, anyway?

Final results of the second game

Naturelich's jester strategy - A big party going on here at the winner's house - 62 prestige points

Shelak's Palace and Resort - A balanced place with recreational zones that every artist will enjoy - 51 prestige points

Raven's Palace - The Crowded House earns a lot of prestige - 48 prestige points