Players: 2-4
Time: 75-100 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

The Components

Louis XIV comes with:

• 12 game boards
• 64 influence markers
• 90 cards
• Cardboard Bits:
  • 60 coat of arms
  • 34 mission chips
  • 32 gold coins
  • 1 start tile
  • 1 Louis XIV figure
• 1 rulebook

Game Boards: The game board is made out of 12 small cardboard squares, which are put together in a checkerboard pattern, as shown in a nearby picture. The cardboard is thick, untextured, and printed full-color. Each one shows a picture, a name, and some iconography which displays how you win that tile, and what you get for it. Overall the iconography is quite good, and easy to make out during the game, other than the fact that it's printed gold-on-gold, which is harder to read from across the table.

The game boards are all double-sided; they get flipped during gameplay revealing different winning conditions for each board.

Influence Markers: 16 wooden cylindrical markers in the four player colors. These are the newly popular octagonal cylinders which means they don't roll, a real plus.

Cards: Half-sized, full-color cards. They're medium-heavy, though untextured. There are four different card types, each identified by a clear and distinct primary color: 12 red intrigue cards, 30 green influence cards, 40 blue mission cards, and 8 yellow gold cards.

The gold tiles simply list a gold value and a destination for Louis XIV each turn.

The influence cards depict the portraits from the 12 game boards and helpfully remind you of the reward for each.

The intrigue cards also depict the portraits from the 12 game boards, but contain icons reminding you that they're worth 1 or 2 influence markers.

(I often get the words "intrigue" and "influence" confused during this game, a minor component issue.)

Finally, the mission cards each show the mission tokens that you need to collect for that mission, clearly list a phase when the completed mission's special power can be used, and also list the special power both textually and iconically. The text provides good explanation, but the icons are well done enough to quickly remind you of what each card does once you've read it. The mission cards are divided into three types, easy, medium, and hard missions. Each one has a different shade of blue on its back, but they're a little too close in color for casual inspection.

Cardboard Bits: The rest of the pieces are all printed on medium-weight, untextured cardboard. They're largely gold or brown in color, which makes for a slightly boring pallette. The different pieces are different shapes, which makes it easy to differentiate between them. You have circular coins in two denominations, square coats-of-arms, and octagonal mission chips. They all have individual icons that are easy to distinguish.

The start-player marker and the Louis XIV marker are just reminders of who's going first and where Louis XIV is currently located; they're helpful.

Rulebook: As with all of the Alea rulebooks, this one is delightful, featuring main text, but also sidebars which pull out the important elements, and remind you of everything. They're illustrated, full of examples, and great to learn from and use for reference.

Box & Tray: Louis XIV comes in a medium-sized box that's very size appropriate for the game. It has a tray intended to keep all the pieces separate, but somehow all my pieces always end up mashed together, even when I don't put my box on the side. I think it has something to do with the fact that there's no heavy gameboard keeping everything in their individual spaces. As a result the tray is one of the more annoying ones I own. i should just pull it out, since I have to bag everything anyway.

Overall the components of Louis XIV are good quality, though not great (which tends to be the case for all the Alea games). The artwork is all attractive. I personally find the layout of the game with the 12 individual boards to be annoying and unaesthetic. Your mileage may vary. Very good work has been done on the utility of tis game, filled as it is with intuitive and easy to follow icons. On the whole I give Louis XIV a high "4" out of "5" rating: quite good. It'd raise to a full "5" in my estimation if the components were slightly higher quality or if there was a central board (though that would mess up gameplay as the game stands now).

The Gameplay

The object of Louis XIV is to win the influence of members of Louis' court so that you can conduct secret missions for the Sun King and, uh, collect litle coat-of-arm pieces.

Actually, the theming is paper-thin even for a Euro-game, but you'll be fulfilling missions shown on those blue mission cards with items you win by controlling majorities on the 12 game boards over four rounds of play.

Setup: The 12 gameboards for Louis XIV are laid out in a checkerboard pattern. All the markers are laid out in and around the board, to keep them convenient. Four gold cards are randomly selected and shuffled. The influence, intrigue, and three types of mission cards are likewise shuffled.

Each player is given two mission cards (one easy, one medium). Each player also gets his 16 influence markers; some are placed in the "general" supply and some are immediately available to use in each player's personal supply. Finally each player gets 5 gold.

The Game Boards. The game boards determine what can be won in the game, and how you win win it. There are three potential ways to win: "gold", "1st place", and "influence markers". There are also a number of things to win. Most important are the 5 mission tokens: crosses, scrolls, helmets, rings, and the wild-card crowns. The regular tokens are won on the central boards (1-4) while the crowns can be won on spaces 5 or 9 or at Louis' current location. Other boards give you intrigue cards, influence cards, shields, gold, or special token placements when they're won.

Mission Cards. Mission cards list a mission you're trying to complete, marked by a pair of mission tokens. Easy cards require one specific token and one other token. Medium cards require two specific tokens, and hard card require a matched set of specific tokens. They all give the same victory points (5), but mission cards also give special powers which will help you out during additional rounds of play, and as you'd expect the hard mission card powers are the best.

Order of Play: Each round of play is separated into four broad phases which all players participate in:

1. Supply
2. Influence
3. Scoring
4. Mission

The Supply Phase: The next "gold" card is flipped up. It gives each player 2-5 gold, and also determines where Louis XIV sits that turn. He's placed on one of the four central boards.

The Influence Phase: This is the heart of the game where most of the action occurs. Each player is given a hand of 5 influence cards. These either show a specific board (1-12) or else curtains, which are a joker card.

On their turn a player plays an influence cards, takes up to three influence markers and places them on the board depicted on his card. Then he can move up to two of those to a (diagonally) adjacent board. Then he can move up to one of the pieces on that board to another adjacent board. Alternatively a player may play a joker and put two influence markers on any board, then move up to one. These markers must all come from a player's private supply.

Alternatively a player may play a card to move 2 or 3 influence markers from his general supply to his private supply (allowing him to play them on a later turn).

Play goes round the table, with each player playing one card at a time. When a player only has one card left, he discards that and is done with his influence phase.

On later turns of the game a player may have extra influence cards (won in scoring) or may have completed missions that let him skip a influence turn. These both can be extremely valuable because they let a player go after his opponents.

The Scoring Phase: During the scoring phase each of the twelve boards is evaluated to see who's won the most influence there. Three types of scoring are possible: first place, gold, and influence markers.

For "first place" scoring whoever has the most markers on the board gets the reward and everyone else gets nothing.

For "gold" scoring whoever has the most markers on the board gets the reward and everyone else with at least one marker there may buy it for a depicted gold cost.

One of the central boards, which all require "first place" or "gold" scoring, will also contain King Louis. For that board the first place person gets the depicted reward (a mission token) and a crown token, the second place person gets just the mission token, and everyone else either gets nothing or may buy the mission token (depending on if it was a "first place" or "gold" board).

On all "first place" and "gold" scoring, ties are unfriendly, knocking everyone down to the next level.

For "first place" and "gold" scoring, whoever came in first has to put their markers from that board into their general supply, while everyone else gets to take theirs back to their private supply.

For "influence markers" scoring everyone with the appropriate number of influence markers on the board (typically 2-3) gets the reward. Then everyone gets their markers back for their private supply.

Every board that had someone collect the reward through a first place finish or through the special influence marking scoring gets flipped, which changes how you collect the reward (e.g., from "first place" to "gold") for the next round of play.

This is all easily the most complex part of Louis XIV, but comes naturally after you've played a round.

Intrigue Cards. A player can play one of these special cards (available only as a reward for board #12) just as a board is scored. It lets him place 1 influence marker from his general supply or 2 from the private supply on the depicted board just as it's being scored, presumably giving him a plurality. There's 12 cards total available, 1 for each board.

The Mission Phase: Finally all the players complete the missions that they can based on the mission tokens that they've collected. Besides points this will also give them powers to use in later rounds of play (such as getting free gold, getting free tokens, skipping an influence placement, placing an extra influence token, etc.)

You refill your mission cards as you complete missions, and you can thus complete quite a few of them on your turn if you have enough tokens.

If you had remaining mission tokens afterward you must now discard all but one, but you get rewarded with a coat-of-arms pieces (also winnable on some board spaces) for each one you give up.

Ending the Game: The game ends after four rounds of play. Players get bonus shields for resources they had at the end of the game, such as influence cards, final intrigue cards won, extra money, etc.

Each person now flips up their coats of arms. They're divided into several different types, and everyone with the plurality of tokens in a class gets a bonus token.

Now players figure their final scores: 5 points per complete mission plus 1 point per coat of arms. The person with the most points wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Louis XIV is the 15th Alea Game release. These all tend to be fairly strategic, serious German games, really intended for the gamer's games audience. Other games that I've reviewed by them include The Princes of Florence (big game #4), Hoity Toity (originally big game #5, now rereleased by Uberplay), The Traders of Genoa (big game #6), Puerto Rico (big game #7), Mammoth Hunters (big game #8), and San Juan (small game #5). This is #1 in their new "medium game" size.

Beyond that, Louis XIV is a majority-based area-control game. This is the same category that includes classic El Grande and recent-release Tower of Babel. Louis XIV shares a common characteristic with most majority control games: placement of majority-control pieces is arbitrary, controlled by cards drawn by the player. It also notable distinguishes itself in one major way: scoring is based upon items won through majority control, as opposed to being based on majority control directly.

Finally, Louis XIV is by Rudiger Dorn who generally designs pretty serious, somewhat complex and dry games. This new game meets the general criteria, though it's a bit lighter & faster than the aforementioned Traders of Genoa or his major release last year, Goa.

The Game Design

Louis XIV is overall a deep, strategic game. Though there is some randomness in draws of mission & influence cards, there's also a deep tactical basis: you can make interesting moves as you spread your markers across the board, and can react as other players do the same. There's considerable variety of gameplay thanks to the flipping of the board, an element which I found Stylistically unaesthetic, but which adds considerable Substantial depth to the gameplay. There's also a multitude of paths to victory, thanks to the ability to go for easy or hard missions, to take missions or grab shields, to improve board position for future rounds, etc.

Some people dislike Louis' random elements, particularly the "shield lottery" which occurs after the gameplay is complete. I generally find them perfectly well balanced with the rest of the gameplay.

On the other hand, Louis XIV can be a little dry since the theming is so thin. Ultimately it also doesn't feel like it has the full depth of some of Alea's other games, such as Puerto Rico, but there's still considerable room for interesting gameplay here, and it all works well. Thus, on whole, I've given Louis XIV a high "4" out of "5" rating for Substance: very good.

Conclusion

Louis XIV is one of the better gamers' games of 2005. It's an interesting tactical game with some strategic depth and some possibility for multiple paths to victory. Some people dislike the level of randomness, while I sometimes find the game a bit dry, but overall Louis XIV is a good companion to the other Alea games for serious gamers.

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