Between Two Cities Solo

Between Two Cities: Automas
SOLITAIRE RULES FOR BETWEEN TWO CITIES
Designer: Morten Monrad Pedersen | Assistant Designer: David Studley

Additional Components:

1 AUTOMA RULEBOOK
20 AUTOMA CARDS
3 NAME CARDS


There are two solitaire modes: “Full Mode,” which works by introducing rules that simulate two other players, called Automas, and “Simple Mode,” which is much easier and requires you to read less than half of the solitaire rulebook to get started.
In both Simple and Full Mode you play with a total of three “players” who build three cities as in a three-player game. This means that the two Automas, named Autommaso and Automarta, share a city that you’re not a part of, and you share one city with each of them.
As in the standard 3-player game, you’ll still be playing the following three rounds:
Round 1 - Building Tiles
Round 2 - Duplex Tiles
Round 3 - Building Tiles
All rules from a standard 3-player game not overridden in this document are played as normal.

AUTOMACITY
The city shared by the Automas is called Automacity and is governed by special rules.
It’s not constructed as a 4x4 square as normal.
Instead the tiles are simply laid down in rows by type (how the tiles are chosen by the Automas is explained later on).
Tiles in Automacity are scored “maximally”, meaning that:
• Shop tiles are scored as if they’re optimally placed, e.g., if there are 6 shop tiles, then 16 + 5 = 21 points are scored.
• House tiles are scored as if none of them are adjacent to a factory.
• All offices get the +1 bonus if there’s at least one tavern in Automacity.
• Taverns are scored in the optimal way, so if Automacity has drink , music , and 2x food, then it’s scored as drink, music, food and foood for 9 + 1 = 10 points, not as drink, food, music, food and for 4 + 4 = 8 points.
• Park tiles are assumed to be placed in separate pairs and thus the Automas aim for scoring maximally in Automacity, but they may fail: for example, if they end with 3 parks, they score less than they could (10 points instead of 12).
• Factories are scored normally. It’s possible that Automacity will score more points than it could if the tiles where placed optimally in a 4x4 square.

Below is an illustration of how Automacity can be set up to ease scoring. Notice the two duplex tiles that are partially overlapping (factory + shop and shop + tavern).
Assuming this city has the third most factories the scoring is:

CALCULATION SCORE
PARKS 8+2 10
TAVERNS 9+1 10
SHOPS 16 16
FACTORIES 1*2 2
OFFICES 1+1 2
HOUSES 3*5 15
TOTAL 55

TERMS
In the multiplayer game tiles are placed directly into cities, but in the solo game this is split into two steps:
1. A tile is assigned to a city (put it below the city to denote this).
2. An assigned tile is later inserted into the city (adhering to the standard 4x4 restriction if it’s one of your cities).

SIMPLE MODE
The Simple Mode streamlines the tile drafting allowing you to focus on the core city-building rules. This is great for learning or for being able to play the game in just 10 minutes.
1. Assign one building tile at random face up to each city (place it below the city).
2. Draw three building tiles and place them face up in front of you.
3. Assign one tile of your choice to each of the three cities (place it below the city).
4. For each city, do the following with the two tiles assigned in steps 1 and 3: AUTOMACITY: Insert the two tiles into the city as described in the “Automacity” section.

LEFTVILLE AND RIGHTOWN: Insert the two tiles as you see fit into the 4x4 city square according to the normal rules.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until a total of six tiles are in each city.
6. Repeat steps 1-4 using duplex tiles instead of building tiles.
7. Repeat steps 1-4 until a total of six additional building tiles have been inserted and your two cities each form a 4x4 square.

FULL MODE
We suggest that you stop reading now and play with the Simple Mode until you’ve learned the rules of the game well.
To play with the Full Mode Automas, use the same steps as a normal three-player game, with two Automas taking the place of two human players. There are some rule changes to handle assigning and playing tiles for the Automas, as explained below.

Setup
1. Shuffle the deck of Automa cards and place them face down within reach.
2. Draw two duplex tiles and insert them into Automacity before any building tiles are assigned.
After setting up, you play the three normal game rounds with the changes described in the following sections.

Round 1 - Building Tiles
A hand of seven building tiles are drawn for each of the three players as normal, but they’re all placed face up on the table. You can place the cards labelled “Autommaso”, “Automarta”, and “Me” to indicate which hand belongs to whom.
The Automas each choose and assign/insert their tiles one by one using the following steps (first Autommaso completes the steps, then Automarta):
1. Draw a random Automa card and place it face up.
2. Assign a tile to the city the Automa shares with you (place it below the city) based on the symbols in the “Player-shared” column of the card (see the next section).
3. Assign and Insert a tile into Automacity based on the symbols in the “Automacity” column of the card (see the next section).

Notice that the Automas insert into Automacity immediately after they assign and thus the choice of Autommaso must be taken into account when Automarta makes her choice. On the other hand, the Automas only assign tiles to the player-shared cities (place them below the city until they’re inserted into the city by you during step 5 below).

After steps 1-3 have been completed for both Automas, take the following steps:
4. Assign a tile from your hand to each of your cities as usual.
5. Insert the two tiles assigned to each of your cities as you see fit into the cities they’re assigned to while following the normal 4x4 restriction.
6. Pass the hands around as usual (to the left during round one and to the right during round three); you can do this by swapping the name cards on the table.

Choosing a Tile
When it’s time for Autommaso or Automarta to choose a tile for a city, go through the symbols in the applicable column of the Automa card from the top to the bottom looking up the symbols in the rules below until the first one is found that determines the tile to choose.
: Choose a house tile if the Automa has one in its hand; otherwise, go on to the next symbol on the card.
: Choose a factory tile if the Automa has one in its hand; if not, go on to the next symbol on the card. >: Choose the tile that scores the most points given the current configuration of the city. This includes resulting score changes for other tiles. For the player-shared cities, this should be based on the highestscoring placement of the new tile in the current city configuration:
• If a new tile type could be added to a city, the extra point scored by each house should be included.
• Similarly, office-tavern bonuses for previously placed tiles should be factored in.
• When considering assigning a factory, increased scores of previously placed factories should be taken into account. For example if a new factory would take the city from having the second most factories to having most factories, then the 1-point increase of each already placed factory also counts.

• If a factory can’t avoid being placed next to a house, then the decrease in value of the house must be deducted from the potential score increase.
If multiple tiles with different symbols are equally applicable according to the rules above, then choose the leftmost symbol in the list at the bottom of the Automa card (this ordering is the same on all cards).
>0 : If the city has at least one house tile, then choose a tile of a type that is not currently in the city if the Automa has one in hand; otherwise, go on to the next symbol on the card. If there are multiple options, take the one that adds the most points to the score of the city as described above.

Round 2—Duplex Tiles
For the Duplex Tile Round do the following:
1. Draw three duplex tiles.
2. Assign one to each of your cities.
3. Discard the remaining tile.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 once.
5. Place the duplex tiles in the cities they’re assigned to.
Note that duplex tiles were already assigned to Automacity during setup.

Round 3—Building Tiles
Perform the steps outlined in Round 1 again, after which all cities should have 12 building tiles and two duplex tiles.

DIFFICULTY LEVELS
You can vary the difficulty level by giving Automacity a scoring bonus/penalty.
Difficulty 2 is a good place to start while learning the game. When you’re beating difficulty 2 consistently, try moving on to difficulty 4.
DIFFICULTY AUTOMACITY SCORE CHANGE
1 -6
2 -4
3 -2
4 No Change
5 +2
6 +4
7 +6

Example

First, Autommaso must assign to Leftville using the “Player-shared” column. The first symbol is a factory, but since there’s no factory in Autommaso’s hand, that symbol is ignored and you move on to the next one: “>”. This means that you need to check how many points each of the three tiles in Autommaso’s hand will score.
The tavern would score 1 point plus 1 for each of the 2 offices plus 1 for the house for a total of 4.
The house in his hand would score 2 points, and the shop will score 2 points plus 1 point for the house in the city for a total of 3 points. Thus, Autommaso will assign the tavern to Leftville.
The right column on the card is then used to insert a tile into Automacity. The city has a house, so the first symbol might apply, but none of the remaining tiles in hand are of a type that’s not already in Automacity, so the first symbol is skipped. The second symbol is a house and since Autommaso has a house in hand, it must be inserted into Automacity.
Let’s consider what would happen if it was Automarta who had drawn the card instead of Autommaso.
First, the factory icon at the top of the “Player-shared” column tells us that she would assign her factory to Rightown.
Second, the “Automacity” column indicates that, since Automacity has a house, she must check to see if she has a tile type in hand that isn’t present in the city. It turns out that she has such a tile, an office, and she therefore inserts that into Automacity.

Playtesters are listed in the main rulebook; proofreaders for this rulebook are:
Matthew Gravelyn, Brent McLennan, Bobby Schafer, Julia Ziobro

Campaign
Between Two Cities: Automas can be played in a campaign of three games, each played at the same difficulty level and game mode.
After each game, score Campaign Points (CP) equal to the score of your lowest scoring city.
Then score a bonus for that city based on one of the six tile types. Each tile type can be chosen for the bonus at most once during a campaign.
1. Factories
2. Houses
3. Offices
4. Shops
5. Taverns
6. Parks

You get bonus CP equal to the points your city scored for that type if you didn’t win the game and twice the number of points from that tile type if you won.
These bonus CPs are not used to determine the winner of a game (that’s done as normal), but they’re added to the other CPs you scored for your city.

A campaign ends after three games and you then tally the CPs you scored in these games. A high score can be kept for all campaigns played and compared to high scores of other players.
For a longer campaign, you can play six games using all six tile types.