Imperium

Imperium nazwa oryginalna: Empires
Info
Typ	rozszerzenie
Ikona
Karty	300
Królestwa	242 (24 zestawów)
separatory	24
inne karty	13 Zdarzeń 21 Krajobrazów
Elementy dodatkowe
żetony	40 żetonów Długu 24 żetony 1 12 żetonów 2 20 żetonów 5
Motyw przewodni	Dług Stosy mieszane żetony Krajobrazy
Wydanie	8 lipca 2016 (oryginał) luty 2017 (polska edycja)
Oficjalne zasady	PDF

Empires is the tenth expansion to Dominion. The box contains 24 sets of Kingdom Cards. It introduces the Debt mechanic, Split piles, Gathering cards, and Landmarks. It also reintroduces tokens and Events.

Contents

Basic Supply Cards

• Empires is only an expansion, so no Basic Supply Cards are included.

Kingdom cards

Inżynier
Dzielnica, Władca, Królewski kowal
Obozowisko/Zdobycz, Patrycjusz/Emporium, Osadnicy/Gwarna wioska
Zamki, Katapulta/Głazy, Wyścig rydwanów, Czarodziejka, Targ rolny, Gladiator/Fortuna
Ofiara, Świątynia, Willa
Archiwum, Kapitał, Klejnot, Korona, Forum, Ogrodnik, Legionista, Dziki gon

• The pairs of cards separated by "/" are Split pile cards: 5 copies of the left card sit on top of 5 copies of the right card in the pile.
• Castles are a Split pile with 8 differently named cards in ascending order of cost.

Additional materials

13 Events (1 each):

Triumf
Aneksja, Datek
Awans
Zejście, Podatek
Bankiet
Rytuał, Solna klątwa
Zaślubiny
Gratka
Podbój
Dominacja

21 Landmarks (1 each):

Akwedukt, Arena, Fort rozbójników, Bazylika, Łaźnia, Pole bitwy, Kolumnada, Sprofanowane sanktuarium, Fontanna, Twierdza, Labirynt, Przełęcz, Muzeum, Obelisk, Sad, Pałac, Grobowiec, Wieża, Łuk triumfalny, Mur, Wilcze leże

Tokens:

• 40 tokens
• 56 tokens:
  • 24 1 tokens
  • 12 2 tokens
  • 20 5 tokens

Flavor Text

The world is big and your kingdom gigantic. It's no longer a kingdom really; it's an empire. Which makes you the emperor. This entitles you to a better chair, plus you can name a salad after yourself. It's not easy being emperor. The day starts early, when you light the sacred flame; then it's hours of committee meetings, trying to establish exactly why the sacred flame keeps going out. Sometimes your armies take over a continent and you just have no idea where to put it. And there's the risk of assassination; you have a food taster, who tastes anything before you eat it, and a dagger tester, who gets stabbed by anything before it stabs you. You've taken to staying at home whenever it's the Ides of anything. Still overall it's a great job. You wouldn't trade it for the world - especially given how much of the world you already have.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Rio Grande Games

Cards Gallery

Kingdom Cards

Castles

Impact of Empires

Empires was the first "normal-sized" 300-card set since Hinterlands, and yet managed to introduce the most unique cards (and card-like objects) of any set so far, due to Split piles, Events and Landmarks. This, along with its heavy theme of and tokens, makes it probably the most complex set released in Dominion. As Adventures before it was intended as a Seaside sequel, Empires acts a Prosperity sequel, and like its predecessor, offers a great deal of tools for engines and Alt-VP strategies.

Like the increasingly complex sets that came before it, Empires broke new ground in terms of card effects and properties, such as a few new costs (including a and a ), a Duration that stays out for three turns, a card that returns you to your Action phase from your Buy phase, a handsize attack that makes you discard down to 2 cards in hand, an Attack that changes how your opponents' cards work, a way to prevent yourself from being able to buy anything for the rest of the game, a way to bid, sources of negative other than Curses, and the first Action-Treasure in the game.

Debt

The Debt mechanic allows players to buy certain cards and Events earlier than usual, while spreading the cost across future turns. This can shake up openings, though most of the Debt cards are not particularly useful early in the game. They are, however, almost all quite powerful in the mid- to late-game, and players ignore them at their peril.

Victory tokens

In Prosperity, tokens were introduced via three fairly simple cards, but there was still a fair amount of design space left to use with them. Empires takes the idea and runs with it, with almost half the set using tokens in one way or another. These cards give players many more options to victory other than simply working towards Provinces, adding much more variety to the game than the simple addition of more Kingdom cards.

Split piles

While the idea of more than one different card in a pile is not new, having been used in Dark Ages, the Knights and Ruins piles were each essentially variations on a single theme. Split piles, with two completely different cards in a pile, adds a new dynamic to the game. Having only 5 copies of a potentially key card adds competition, particularly in games with more than 2 players, and having to get through half the pile before being able to access the typically more powerful bottom cards also livens things up.

Landmarks

Where Adventures added Events, buyable effects not tied to cards in your deck, Empires adds Landmarks, allowing new scoring rules to be added to the game. While some can be innocuous, simply adding a few here and there, others, in particular the penalizing Landmarks, can drastically affect gameplay, and how players choose to go about their strategies.

Engines

Empires adds quite a lot of cards and Events that are friendly to engines:

• Inżynier - gains engine components and can later remove itself
• Dzielnica - a powerful drawing Willage
• Władca - can emulate most engine pieces, and can be acquired early
• Królewski kowal - the most powerful static terminal draw in the game
• Obozowisko - an incredibly cheap Lost City
• Patrycjusz - does well in high-cost engines
• Emporium - rewards engine building
• Gwarna wioska - gives the highest consistent number of Actions of any village
• Wyścig rydwanów - does well in high-cost engines
• Fortuna - arguably the most powerful card in the game, able to double the output of an engine
• Ofiara - a powerful soft terminal trasher
• Świątynia - a good trasher that also gains
• Willa - allows for all sorts of engine shenanigans
• Archiwum - allows an engine to function with little to no trashing
• Kapitał - allows the early purchasing of expensive engine pieces
• Klejnot - allows the gaining of multiple like-costed engine pieces, particularly ones costing
• Korona - flexible, and allows for multiplying on more boards
• Ogrodnik - functions best within an engine
• Dziki gon - decent draw that also gains
• Triumf - rewards engines that gain many things per turn
• Datek - arguably the most powerful Event in the game, can get an engine going extremely quickly
• Awans - allows the early gaining of expensive engine pieces
• Solna klątwa - allows a player that is ahead to end the game quickly
• Gratka - rewards an engine that can draw your entire deck
• Dominacja - only realistically achievable with an engine
• Kolumnada - rewards engines that rely on multiple copies of an Action
• Labirynt - rewards engines that gain more than one card per turn
• Sad - rewards engines with multiple copies of different Actions
• Grobowiec - rewards trashing, which is usually essential for an engine
• Wieża - rewards engines that three-pile
• Łuk triumfalny - rewards engines with multiple copies of different Actions

Big Money

Empires has a few Big Money enablers:

• Zdobycz - can help a Big Money player get an extra edge in
• Legionista - a brutal Attack that rewards you for having Złoto
• Zejście - makes Srebrniki easier to get
• Zaślubiny - makes Gold easier to get
• Podbój - rewards you for getting Silver
• Akwedukt - rewards gaining lots of Silver and Gold, then greening early
• Fontanna - rewards having extra Miedziaki
• Pałac - rewards having extra Silver and Gold

However, Empires also has a couple Landmarks that actively penalize Big Money strategies:

• Fort rozbójników - penalizes having Silver and Gold
• Mur - penalizes bloated decks that don't trash

Empires Theme

Empires is in some respects conceived as a sequel to Prosperity and shares many of the same structural themes: like Prosperity, it includes Victory tokens, a large number of Kingdom Treasure cards, and relatively few Attack cards.

• 6 Debt cards: Inżynier, Dzielnica, Władca, Królewski kowal, Fortuna, Kapitał
• 9 Victory token cards: Zdobycz, Emporium, Zamki, Wyścig rydwanów, Targ rolny, Ofiara, Świątynia, Ogrodnik, Dziki gon
• 6 Split piles: Obozowisko/Zdobycz, Patrycjusz/Emporium, Osadnicy/Gwarna wioska, Zamki, Katapulta/Głazy, Gladiator/Fortuna
• 7 Special Treasures: Zdobycz, Skromny zamek, Głazy, Fortuna, Kapitał, Klejnot, Korona
• 5 off-theme cards: Czarodziejka, Willa, Archiwum, Forum, Legionista

There are also 13 Events:

• 5 use Debt: Triumf, Aneksja, Datek, Podatek, Zaślubiny
• 6 use Victory tokens: Triumf, Rytuał, Solna klątwa, Zaślubiny, Podbój, Dominacja

There are also 21 Landmarks:

• 1 uses Debt: Przełęcz
• 10 use Victory tokens: Akwedukt, Arena, Bazylika, Łaźnia, Pole bitwy, Kolumnada, Sprofanowane sanktuarium, Labirynt, Przełęcz, Grobowiec

Trivia

Donald X. stated a couple weeks before release that Empires has a Roman flavor in terms of theme. It is the first set to be released in the second edition layout style.

In other languages

• Dutch: Keizerrijken
• Finnish: Keisarikunta (lit. Empire - singular)
• German: Empires
• Polish: Imperium (lit. Empire - singular)

There are currently no plans to release Empires in French, despite there being French translations for every previous set.

Pre-teaser

A couple days before the teaser (which itself would come a couple days before actual previews), Donald X. dropped some news on changes in layout of cards.

Well this is unprecedented, but I'm not made of stone. Here are some spoilers about card layout.

• A bigger font is used on cards that don't have lots of text.
• "They" is used instead of "he."
• +'s in the body of text are now in bold.
• Card texts are more carefully centered than ever before.
  —Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion: Empires Announced!

Teasers

Dominion: Empires has:

• 76 pieces of card art.
• 60 symbols.
• 16 red hexagons.
• 10 uses of "Setup."
• 2 Duration cards.
• 2 ways to trash cards from the Supply.
• An Action-Treasure card.
• An Event costing .
• A way to double your money.
• A way to bid.
  —Donald X. Vaccarino, Empires Teasers!

Secret History

One evening on a vacation, I paced around, the only one awake, thinking about what the future could possibly hold for Dominion. Was there anything great left to do? I jotted down some notes, then typed it all up when I got home.

Of the stuff I came up with, a few things went together, to make a kind of Złoty wiek sequel. It would have more tokens, those seemed like they had a lot more life in them than just those 3 Prosperity cards. Some "bonus" cards of some sort would award at the end of the game, like Kingdom Builder scoring methods. There would be giant expensive cards that you could pay for later. There would be cards that effectively didn't cost a Buy to buy. Special treasures could be a focus again. And there were three or so other ideas that did not actually make it. I like to tell the whole story, but who knows, I might need that stuff someday. Anyway you can only fit so much stuff in an expansion.

Initially the big thing I wanted out of tokens was, cards you trash for based on the game state. So, they would count things that conventional Victory cards can't, like how many Actions you managed to get into play at once. So I tried several of those and well in the end there's Emporium (which just checks a threshold) and Triumph (an Event). The original concepts didn't work out, but there are a zillion ways to make in this set so it was not much of a loss. A key thing was to try to avoid "golden decks" - where you just make points every turn without pushing the game towards ending. So most of the token stuff is tied to gaining cards, or trashing cards, or will run out some other way.

I didn't try the "bonus" cards for a while. When I finally got to them, they initially didn't matter enough, but it was easy to make them matter more and that all worked out. I made more and more of them and in the end there are 21. It could have been 20 Landmarks, 12 Events, 2 blanks, but I had the extra cards so in they went.

I had Debt from the start (and it had been in the ideas file for years). The first version though was a word on cards, "Debt," that meant you didn't need the to buy the card, but went into Debt. The Debt tokens worked the same way as they do now. One day I thought of using a symbol, and the cards changed to things like "When you gain this during your turn, take [red coin with a 10 on it]." They were like that for a while, before finally I put the symbol into the cost. With Debt a significant concern was that you could just buy the card turn one, and if that was good it seemed like the game could be too scripted. So the big Debt cards always tried to not be good turn one, although it took a while to really get there. Originally the cards could all be bought with , and in the end some have costs too.

And cards that gave you +1 Buy when bought, I made a couple and then it seemed like, that was plenty.

One day Jeff Boschen complained that one of the Debt cards (an earlier version of City Quarter) was dominating games, that in particular you could always get all the copies you needed, even in a 2-player game. And I thought, hmmm, I could have piles that were only 5 cards. And then from there went immediately to, wait, 5 cards, then 5 of another card. And I tried some cards like that and it seemed pretty cool. You get to tie together the cards somehow. A big issue was making sure you would get through the top 5 often enough; not necessarily every game, but you know, not as some rare thing. So three are cheap cantrips, and Gladiator eats its own pile for you.

I had no plans to have any Duration cards in this set, then somehow tried one, and then a couple more. The original one didn't make it but there are two Duration cards. The objection all these years was the amount of rulebook space Duration cards took in Przystań, but in Adventures that rulebook space was small enough to not seem so bad to repeat.

Dominion is a medieval game; ancient Rome is not medieval. I remained wishy-washy on that issue, not quite wanting to go full-on ancient Rome. In the end the set is called Empires and has a bunch of Roman things. Roman empires were around for a while in various forms, extending into medieval times, so there.

Late in the going, Scott Colcord took it upon himself to get all of the recommended sets played. The recommended sets don't always get much attention and well these ones did make it to a table or two.

Empires started out as a kind of Prosperity sequel. And ended up as one; it has super-spendy cards (though you can pay for them later), more Treasures than other non-Prosperity sets, tokens, even a Treasure that makes and an Event that gets you 15. One of Prosperity's less-obvious themes is player interaction; it ups the non-attack interaction to cope with having fewer attacks (which in turn was to make sure Kolonia was reachable in enough games). Empires has that too. There are again only three attacks, but the 3 Gathering cards are all interactive, plus Chariot Race and Gladiator, plus Castles in that way piles can be; the split piles cause more competition for cards; and then some of the Events are interactive and many Landmarks are, and those don't even take up space in the usual 10 Kingdom cards.

I used every good Event idea that I had in Adventures. Still, why not try to make more? tokens helped a lot, and I ended up with 13 new Events.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Empires Cards

Recommended Sets of 10

Tylko Imperium

Basic Intro [obrazki]
	Zamki			Wyścig rydwanów			Dzielnica			Inżynier			Targ rolny
	Forum			Legionista			Patrycjusz			Ofiara			Willa
Dodatkowe karty
	Zaślubiny			Wieża

Advanced Intro [obrazki]
	Archiwum			Kapitał			Katapulta			Korona			Czarodziejka
	Gladiator			Ogrodnik			Królewski kowal			Osadnicy			Świątynia
Dodatkowe karty
	Arena			Łuk triumfalny

Imperium & Dominion

Everything in Moderation [obrazki]
	Czarodziejka			Forum			Legionista			Władca			Świątynia
	Piwnica			Biblioteka			Przebudowa			Wioska			Warsztat
Dodatkowe karty
	Gratka			Sad

Silver Bullets [obrazki]
	Katapulta			Klejnot			Targ rolny			Ogrodnik			Patrycjusz
	Urzędnik			Ogrody			Laboratorium			Targowisko			Lichwiarz
Dodatkowe karty
	Podbój			Akwedukt

Imperium & Intryga

Delicious Torture [obrazki]
	Zamki			Korona			Czarodziejka			Ofiara			Osadnicy
	Baron			Most			Harem			Huta żelaza			Oprawca
Dodatkowe karty
	Bankiet			Arena

Buddy System [obrazki]
	Archiwum			Kapitał			Katapulta			Inżynier			Forum
	Maskarada			Osada górnicza			Szlachta			Giermek			Faktoria
Dodatkowe karty
	Solna klątwa			Wilcze leże

Imperium & Przystań

Boxed In [obrazki]
	Zamki			Wyścig rydwanów			Obozowisko			Czarodziejka			Gladiator
	Wyławiacz			Przemytnicy			Strateg			Magazyn			Nabrzeże
Dodatkowe karty
	Podatek			Mur

King of the Sea [obrazki]
	Archiwum			Targ rolny			Władca			Świątynia			Dziki gon
	Zdobywca			Przystań			Wioska tubylców			Okręt piracki			Morska wiedźma
Dodatkowe karty
	Zejście			Fontanna

Imperium & Alchemy

Collectors [obrazki]
	Dzielnica			Korona			Obozowisko			Czarodziejka			Targ rolny
	Apothecary			Apprentice			Herbalist			Transmute			University
Dodatkowe karty
	Potion			Kolumnada			Muzeum

Imperium & Złoty wiek

Big Time [obrazki]
	Kapitał			Gladiator			Patrycjusz			Królewski kowal			Willa
	Bank			Płatnerz			Wielki targ			Kredyt			Królewska pieczęć
Dodatkowe karty
	Platyna			Kolonia			Dominacja			Obelisk

Gilded Gates [obrazki]
	Wyścig rydwanów			Dzielnica			Obozowisko			Ogrodnik			Dziki gon
	Biskup			Monument			Mincerz			Domokrążca			Talizman
Dodatkowe karty
	Platyna			Kolonia			Bazylika			Pałac

Imperium & Róg obfitości

Zookeepers [obrazki]
	Władca			Ofiara			Osadnicy			Willa			Dziki gon
	Odpust			Banda koniokradów			Menażeria			Błazen			Turniej rycerski
Dodatkowe karty
	Aneksja			Kolumnada

Imperium & Hinterlands

Simple Plans [obrazki]
	Katapulta			Forum			Patrycjusz			Świątynia			Willa
	Border Village			Develop			Haggler			Ill-Gotten Gains			Stables
Dodatkowe karty
	Datek			Labirynt

Expansion [obrazki]
	Zamki			Klejnot			Obozowisko			Inżynier			Legionista
	Cache			Farmland			Highway			Spice Merchant			Tunnel
Dodatkowe karty
	Pole bitwy			Fontanna

Imperium & Dark Ages

Tomb of the Rat King [obrazki]
	Zamki			Wyścig rydwanów			Dzielnica			Legionista			Ofiara
	Death Cart			Fortress			Pillage			Rats			Storeroom
Dodatkowe karty
	Ruins			Trait dla karty ' Shelters			Awans			Grobowiec

Triumph of the Bandit King [obrazki]
	Kapitał			Klejnot			Inżynier			Ogrodnik			Legionista
	Bandit Camp			Catacombs			Hunting Grounds			Market Square			Procession
Dodatkowe karty
	Trait dla karty ' Shelters			Triumf			Sprofanowane sanktuarium

The Squire's Ritual [obrazki]
	Archiwum			Katapulta			Korona			Patrycjusz			Osadnicy
	Feodum			Hermit			Ironmonger			Rogue			Squire
Dodatkowe karty
	Trait dla karty ' Shelters			Rytuał			Muzeum

Imperium & Guilds

Cash Flow [obrazki]
	Zamki			Dzielnica			Inżynier			Gladiator			Królewski kowal
	Baker			Butcher			Doctor			Herald			Soothsayer
Dodatkowe karty
	Łaźnia			Przełęcz

Imperium & Adventures

Area Control [obrazki]
	Kapitał			Katapulta			Klejnot			Korona			Targ rolny
	Coin of the Realm			Page			Relic			Treasure Trove			Wine Merchant
Dodatkowe karty
	Bankiet			Twierdza

No Money No Problems [obrazki]
	Archiwum			Obozowisko			Królewski kowal			Świątynia			Willa
	Dungeon			Duplicate			Hireling			Peasant			Transmogrify
Dodatkowe karty
	Mission			Fort rozbójników