Gamehelpimperialsteam

Players build railway networks out of Wien toward Trieste, hiring workers, raising factories, producing and delivering goods, and taking on contracts. Everything is paid for in guldens, and the player with the most money after final scoring wins.

Overview

The game lasts up to 8 rounds. It can end early: as soon as any player connects Wien to Trieste, the game finishes at the end of that round.

Each round you place Main Action hands on the 11 Main Action tiles, one per turn, taking that action. You start with 2 hands and gain one more each round until you have 5.

Almost everything you want to do costs one of three things: money, influence, or goods. Influence is the pivot — it sets turn order, gates which workers you may hire, and pays for share-price increases. Goods are produced by workers you place in factories, and are consumed by track building and deliveries.

Two things are worth understanding before your first game:

• Contracts are a bet, not a bonus. A contract you fail to fill costs you its full value at the end — but only if somebody connects Trieste. If nobody does, every contract in the game is void and nobody gains or loses from them.
• Delivery payouts shrink as the game goes on. The price you get for delivering a good is read off the Factory board, and each factory of that type bought by any player steps the payout down. Early deliveries of a type are worth far more than late ones.

Setup essentials

You begin with a train station in Wien — everyone starts connected there — an IS-3 steam engine with 3 freight cars, one good on each car plus a coal on the engine, 2 workers in Training Level 1, and 120 / 130 / 140 guldens at 2 / 3 / 4 players.

Your share board starts with its Share Value marker and one Investor on the 40 row.

Setup option

The table creator chooses how the map is laid out:

• Fixed (first game) — every City tile, Hub City tile, Shipment tile, Growth tile and State Railway sits at its predetermined place. The same board every time, and the one to learn on.
• Normal — a Normal Setup card selects the hub cities and some city tiles; the rest of the map, the shipment order, the growth tiles and the State Railways are drawn at random.
• Random (experts) — each map region gets one random Hub City tile and two random City tiles placed at random within it, and the number of State Railways is itself drawn from the setup deck.

Opening blind bid

Before Round 1 every player secretly bids guldens for influence. Bids are revealed in turn order; you pay your bid and advance your Player Influence marker to the topmost empty space of the column matching your bid. Equal bids stack in reveal order. Turn order is then reset by the new influence standings.

This is the single largest decision of the opening — it is real money spent on position, and Round 1 starts immediately afterwards.

Round structure

Round 1 skips phases 1–6 and begins at Phase 7.

Phase	What happens
1. Retrieve hands	Take back all your placed Main Action hands, plus the extra hand stored above the current round in Rounds 2–4.
2. Shipment arrives	Rounds 4–8 only: goods stored above the current round drop into the Shipment market, filling each column bottom to top. Overflow returns to the supply.
3. Take ordered goods	Goods you ordered last round are on your landing. Store them now; anything you cannot store is discarded. The landing must end empty.
4. Collect income	10 guldens per passenger car plus 10 per uncovered warehouse space.
5. Train workers	Working-area workers return to the Training area of the same level; Training Level 2 advances to 3, and Level 1 advances to 2. Workers who worked last round do not advance.
6. Determine turn order	Reset by influence, highest first.
7. Perform actions	In turn order, one action per turn, until all players have placed every hand.
8. Game end check	The game ends after Round 8, or immediately if anyone has connected Wien to Trieste. Otherwise advance the round.

Hands per round

Round	1	2	3	4–8
Hands	2	3	4	5

Repeat penalty

If you place a hand on a tile where you already have one or more hands this phase, you must first decrease your influence 1 step per own hand already there. Other players' hands are irrelevant.

You must be able to pay the penalty in full — if you cannot, that tile is not available to you. Pass is the one exception: it is always available when nothing else is.

Main actions

1. Build tracks

Place up to 2 tracks extending your network, which is contiguous and begins at Wien.

• Materials: 1 wood + 1 stone + 1 iron in total, whether you place one track or two.
• Bridges (gray connections) need a Bridge Engineer on staff and +1 stone each. Tunnels (orange) need a Tunnel Engineer and +1 iron each.
• Fees: pay 10 guldens to each player already on a connection you build on. If you cannot pay, you cannot build there.
• City limit: without your train station in a city, at most 2 of your tracks may touch it. With your station, no limit. Other players' tracks and stations do not affect your limit.
• Crowned State Railway connections cannot be built on with this action — see the free action below.
• One track per player per connection; several players may each build the same connection.

Workers: each city shows an Effort number. Add the Effort of every new city you are connecting, then assign workers from your Training areas whose levels total at least that number, moving them to the Working area of the same level. There is no credit for overpaying. A connection joining two cities already in your network uses only the lower Effort and grants no opportunities.

On connecting a new city you take its opportunities:

• Business token: take the topmost token of the stack and spend its printed value, 1 point per item, on any mix of: +1 influence step, +1 share price step, or permanently flipping one freight car to a passenger car. Reserved cars cannot flip. If the value exceeds what the caps allow, the remainder is simply lost.
• Influence hexagon: gain the printed number of steps.
• Construction sites for train stations and factories become available to you.
• Demand icons become deliverable.
• Trieste: on connecting it, immediately take 10 guldens per own track in your network. Every player who connects Trieste gets this.

Semmering token: the first player to build Mürzzuschlag–Gloggnitz takes it. It doubles your endgame income.

2. Hire

Hire any number of workers and engineers from the Worker board.

• Each column is a source in a hub city. All workers hired this action come from one column.
• You may only use a column whose hub city Influence marker is at or below your own influence position.
• Each worker costs the price at the Hiring Price marker's current row; the marker then moves up one row. Prices run from 10 up to a cap of 50, and escalate between workers within the same action.
• Engineers cost 30 guldens and may come from any eligible hub city, not just the chosen worker column. You may have at most one Bridge Engineer and one Tunnel Engineer.

New workers arrive in Training area Level 1. Maximum 15 workers.

3. Build a building

Build either a train station or a factory.

Train station: on an empty station site in a city connected to your network. Pay the printed cost and place a station from your player board, discarding the Unbuilt Train Station tile beneath it. This removes the 2-track limit in that city, opens a warehouse space, and adds 10 guldens to your income each round.

Factory: on an empty factory site connected to your network and valid for the player count. The cost is read from the Factory board — the upper-row cost immediately left of the leftmost remaining factory of that type. A site printed with a custom cost pays that instead; a site marked with the train-station symbol pays that city's station cost.

Then:

1. Move the factory to your player board.
2. Choose any one of your workers, from a Training or Working area, and place it on the site. Take goods of the factory's type equal to the worker's production number — Level 1 gives 2, Level 2 gives 3, Level 3 gives 4 — and set them beside the worker. That worker is committed there permanently.
3. Optionally slot the factory into a matching space on one of your Contract cards.

Factories may be rearranged among your contracts and player board at any time, including at game end.

4. Produce goods

Each of your workers on the map that still has goods beside it may produce 1 of them: move a cube to an empty storage space on your board.

A full store never blocks production. You produce first, then choose which cube goes to the supply — the new one or one you were already holding.

5. Buy or order goods

Either:

• Buy 1 good immediately from the Shipment market: take the topmost cube of a column and pay its row price. If the column is empty, the good is still available from the supply at the highest price, 40.
• Order goods (not available in Round 8): buy up to N goods, where N is the Shipment tile above the current round, at the same prices. They go to your landing and arrive next round in Phase 3. Your landing may never hold more than N cubes in total for the round, even across several order actions.

6. Buy or upgrade a train

Available engines are those at or left of the current round on the Round track.

Buy (only with fewer than 3 trains): pay the tile price, place the engine at the left of an empty train row, add freight cars equal to the engine level, take 1 coal from the supply onto the engine, and gain any influence the tile shows.

Upgrade: pay the difference between the new and old engine, add cars up to the new level, and gain any influence shown. The old engine's coal transfers; there is no free coal.

7. Secure a contract

Take a Contract card from the display. There are no refills — what is on the table at setup is the whole supply for the game.

The card shows required factory types; the number of factories equals the number of Reserved tokens and Investors depicted. The value in the upper right is what you gain if it is fully filled and what you pay if it is not.

1. Take the card. You may take it with none of the required factories, but you must be able to place all its Reserved tokens.
2. Place one Reserved token on each of your freight cars, any cars in any trains. Goods on those cars return to the supply, and those cars are permanently unavailable — they can never become passenger cars. Without enough free freight cars, you cannot take the contract.
3. Take its Investors onto the lowest empty Investor spaces of your Share board. If there is not room for all of them, take only those that fit.
4. Optionally slot matching factories onto the card.

8. Philanthropize

Pay any multiple of 10 guldens and gain 1 influence step per 10 paid.

9. Manipulate share value

Either increase your share value by exactly 1 step, paying the influence cost printed at the new row, or decrease it by any amount for free.

10. Fundraise

Take 10 guldens from the supply.

11. Pass

Do nothing. The repeat penalty still applies for each of your own hands already on the Pass tile.

Free actions

Take any number, in any combination, before, during or after your main action on your turn.

Sell a share

Requires an Investor sitting in a row at or above your Share Value marker's row — the row an Investor occupies is the highest price that Investor will pay. Move the topmost such Investor to your Shareholders area and take your current share value from the bank.

Every Investor in your Shareholders area costs you 10% of your final money at game end. Ten of them leave you with nothing.

Deliver a good (once per turn)

1. Spend 1 coal from your storage.
2. Move 1 good from beside one of your map workers onto a matching empty Demand space in a city connected to your network.
3. You are paid the value in the rightmost empty space of that good's row on the Factory board — which steps down every time a factory of that type is bought by anyone.

Each hub city demands 1 wood, 1 stone, 1 iron and 2 coal. The two coal demands cannot both be met by the same player. At 3 and 4 players some regular cities carry demands too.

Delivering coal to a hub city pays a City Key instead of money — the large gold key first, then the small silver one. No player can hold both keys of a colour.

Delivering to a hub city also raises that city's influence: the Nth cube delivered there advances it by the Nth number on its Growth tile.

Buy access to a State Railway connection

Requires your network to touch a crowned connection.

• If no other player has track there, pay the higher of the two endpoint cities' train station prices.
• Otherwise, pay each player with track there the lower of those two prices.

Place your track beside the crown. The connection joins your network and you immediately take the new city's opportunities.

Game end and final scoring

The game ends after Round 8, or at the end of the round in which any player connects Wien to Trieste.

1. Income: collect your Phase 4 income once more — and double it if you hold the Semmering token.
2. Goods: sell every good on your trains and in your warehouse for 10 guldens each.
3. City Keys: a gold key pays the gulden value printed directly below its hub city's Influence marker; a silver key pays the value in the small green flag nearest that marker.
4. Hub influence: count the hub cities whose influence is at or below yours — 1 pays 10, 2 pays 30, 3 pays 60, 4 pays 100 guldens.
5. Contracts — only if somebody connected Wien to Trieste. Otherwise every contract is void and this step is skipped entirely.
   • A contract fully filled with factories gains its value; any other contract costs its value.
   • If you hold at least one contract but your own network does not reach Trieste, you pay track usage once, regardless of how many contracts you hold: the shortest path from your network to Trieste is traced over other players' connections, and you pay 20 guldens per connection to the highest-influence track owner on it.
6. Shareholders: subtract 10% of your money for each Investor in your Shareholders area.

The player with the most money wins.

Reference tables

Steam engines

Engine	IS-3	IS-4	IS-5	IS-6	IS-7	IS-8
Price	30	40	50	60	70	80
Cars	3	4	5	6	7	8
Influence	—	—	—	+1	+2	+3

IS-3 is your starting engine and never appears on the Round track.

Share value

Value	40	60	90	130	180	240
Influence to move up into	start	1	2	3	4	5

Player count differences

	2p	3p	4p
Starting guldens	120	130	140
Contract display, per deck	3	4	5
Engines per Round-track space	2	3	4
Shipment goods per round (4–8)	1	2	3
Factories per row	6	9	12
Engineers of each type	2	3	4
Demands outside hub cities	no	yes	yes

Implementation notes

• Ties share the victory. The rulebook gives no tiebreaker, and the designer's official ruling is that tied players all win. This is deliberate, not an omission in the adaptation.
• Buying from an empty market column is allowed, at the dearest price of 40, taken from the supply. This follows a designer ruling rather than the printed rules, which are silent on it.
• Money is public in this implementation.
• A Business token worth more than you can spend loses the remainder. Influence stops at the end of its track, share value stops at 240, and a car must be free to flip, so a 3-point token can have nowhere left to go.
• You choose which factory a delivery draws from when two of your factories hold the same good. The piles look interchangeable but are not — production is one good per site per action, so emptying a site costs you a slot in every future Produce.