Splendor

Splendor is a strategy game inspired by the history of the Renaissance. Players take on the role of wealthy merchants, acquiring rare gems and recruiting highly skilled artisans to craft exquisite jewels—thereby attracting customers and amassing vast wealth and prestige. The game features a comprehensive tutorial to help players quickly master the mechanics. Players can jump into a match at any time, choosing between single-player and online multiplayer modes, and use their strategic acumen and wits to outmaneuver opponents and claim victory. Furthermore, the game is set to release additional DLCs and gameplay optimizations to ensure an even more enjoyable experience for players.

Gameplay of Splendor:

Splendor is an engine-building and resource management game in which two to four players compete to collect the most prestige points. The game has the following components:

40 gem tokens - seven each of emerald, sapphire, ruby, diamond, onyx, and five gold (wild). These are represented by poker-style chips.[3]

90 development cards

10 noble tiles

Each development card falls into one of three levels (•, ••, •••) indicating the difficulty to purchase that card.

Every development card also contains a gem bonus (emerald, sapphire, ruby, diamond, or onyx), which may be used for future development card purchases.

Before the game begins, n+1 Noble tiles are dealt face up in the center, where n is the number of players. Four cards from each level (•, ••, •••) are dealt face up, visible to the players, and the rest are kept in separate decks of their corresponding difficulty levels.

Turns

A player's turn consists of a single action, which must be one of the following:[4]

Take up to three gem tokens of different colors from the pool.

Take two gem tokens of the same color from the pool (provided, before the turn, there are at least four tokens left of that color).

Take one gold gem token and reserve one development card (if, before the turn, number of reserved cards held by that player is less than three)

Purchase a development card (from the table or the player's reserved cards) by spending the required gem tokens and/or using the gem bonus of the cards purchased previously by the player. Spent gems return to the pool.

After this action:

If the player has earned enough development card gem bonuses to obtain Noble prestige points, that player is "visited" by the Noble, and takes that Noble tile.

A player can only be visited by one noble in each turn; the player chooses between the eligible nobles.

Player keeps the Noble until the end of the game.

Noble tiles are not replenished.

If player possesses more than 10 gems, player returns enough gems to limit total count of gems in player's possession to 10 or fewer.

If a development card is purchased, the empty slot is replenished from the respective deck. If the deck of that rank has run out, the slot stays empty.

End of game

When one player reaches 15 prestige points, the players continue playing the current round until each player has taken the same number of turns. Once this occurs, the game ends.

Scoring

Once the game ends, whoever has the most prestige points wins; in case of a tie, whoever purchased the fewest development cards wins. If this fails to break the tie, the player with fewest reserved cards wins. If all else fails, the players will then share the victory.[5]

Features of Splendor:

Fast and easy to learn, yet hard to master.

Lavish graphics and cards, true to the original game.

“Renaissance” graphical and musical ambiance.

Solo mode, pass & play and online multiplayer (2 to 4 players).

An exclusive game mode: scenario-based “Challenges”.

Historically-accurate background stories for Challenges set in the 15th to 16th centuries.

Multiple types of Artificial Intelligence, based on unique strategy behaviors instead of difficulty.

3-minute step-by-step interactive tutorial to learn the game and digital interface.

Worldwide leaderboards and rank system by connecting with a Days of Wonder account.

Two expansions available: set off to discover the greatest cities in Europe with The Cities, or refine your strategies and counter your opponents with The Strongholds. The expansions are available to buy from the game store!

Useful Tips of Splendor:

Reserve Strategically: Your ability to reserve cards is one of your most powerful tools in Splendor, one that you can easily misuse or time incorrectly. While reserving desired cards grants a wild gold token, which can be incredibly effective, you should aim to reserve cards that align with your strategy but are also likely to be taken by opponents. Pay particular attention to cards that multiple players might be working toward based on their visible gem bonuses.

Watch Your Opponents’ Tableaus: On the note of other players, you should also consider monitoring, and occasionally disrupting, your opponents’ strategies. Keep track of which gem colours your opponents are collecting and which bonuses they’ve acquired. This awareness allows you to potentially block them by taking gems they need or reserving cards they’re clearly working toward. However, use this competitive strategy carefully, focusing too much on what other players are doing (and trying to stop them) might slow your own progress.

Manage Your Token Economy: Your hand can only hold ten tokens at a time, therefore efficient token management is crucial. When approaching this limit, consider purchasing a card (even a less optimal one) rather than discarding tokens. Similarly, avoid collecting three of the same gem when you only need one or two for your immediate plans, as this can quickly lead to a backlog of unusable tokens. Remember that gold tokens, while flexible, count toward this limit – don’t hoard them unnecessarily.

Keep an Eye on the Nobles: While the path to 15 prestige points might seem straightforward through card purchases alone, nobles offer significant “free” points that can dramatically shift the game’s outcome. Even low value nobles are the equivalent to a high-tier card, but they require no gem expenditure once you’ve built the right tableau. If you notice your gem bonuses naturally trending toward a particular noble’s requirements, it may be worth adjusting your strategy slightly to claim that bonus. Sometimes securing a noble requires just one strategic card purchase, which can be the difference between you or an opponent winning this round.

Player Comments of Splendor:

I never played the board game but I have been a bit curious about it for some time. I'm really glad that I picked up the computer version. The game seems to be one of those elegant games that are easy to learn, but tough to master.The idea is that you collect gems that you can use to purchase cards. Cards give you bonuses towards purchasing other cards, but also can give you victory points. To be fair to the person who goes last, the game ends at the end of the round whenever a person accumulates 15 victory points.You also can earn 3 victory points by gaining a noble -whenever your total bonus matches the numbers on a displayed noble, you earn that noble (assuming no one else has beaten you to him). Earning a noble also gives you a gold gem, which is like a wild card.The game is certainly casual and light, as strategy games go. But it's fun. If you want a strategy game that you can spend 15 minutes or so playing, to kill some time now and again, but will still satisfy your brain, then I highly recommend it.

Splendor is a beautiful game with a very well done electronic version. My only complaint is this: I recently had an internet outage; for three days, I had no connectivity. I could still play Steam games, including Splendor. However, even though I have purchased all of the available add-ons (e.g., Cities, Strongholds, Trading Posts), the only mode that the game would let me play was Classic mode.I have the other modes. I paid for those other modes. Why would these modes be unavailable to me? I mean, EVER!?

I enjoyed this quite a bit for a while, right until I realized that the AI is playing against the player and not each other. Once I started looking, I realized that the AI would take moves that would make no sense for a player who was trying to win and did not even target the leader (another AI). Once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it happening all the time and that was no fun. If you are using this to play other humans though, it's a pretty solid if bare-bones implementation. I'm rating this overall as a recommended, but be aware of the potential issues around AI players.

Summary:

Try to accomplish that by finding your place in the world with easy and quick gameplay to learn, but hard to master abilities. Find yourself completely immerged on that time, with its music and ambiance. History couldn’t be more accurate than this! Become a game expert by achieving 48 different challenges in your routine, travel to Madrid, St. Petersburg, Rome and many other locations and find what you are looking for, including many great historical figures.