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Sometimes getting your gaming group together is hard, but that doesn't mean that you can't play Viticulture. These rules provides rules for playing Viticulture solitaire against an artificial opponent called the "Automa".


Object of the Game

Have more victory points (VPs) than the Automa at the end of the game, which consists of 7 years.


Setup

Set up your own vineyard as usual.

  1. Choose a player color for the Automa and place that VP marker on the win space on the victory point track.
  2. Place 1 glass token on each row of the wake-up chart.
  3. Shuffle the Automa deck and place it next to the wake-up chart.
  4. Remove any visitor cards that only give you a benefit if another player takes an action. Alternatively you can keep them in the deck and just redraw when you draw one of them.


Game Play

The game plays out season by season using the 2-player action spaces (the far-left space on each action).

Wake-up Chart

Place your rooster token as usual except that you can only place it on a space where there is a glass token. Remove the glass token and place it to the side of your player mat. This becomes a bonus action token.

Note: The "Organizer" summer visitor card action can not move your rooster to row 7.

Automa Cards

At the beginning of each season where you are to place workers, first draw 1 Automa card from the deck. Then place either o, 1, 2, or 3 Automa workers on action spaces on the board in the current season as indicated on the Automa card.

To maintain compatibility with the extended board from the Tuscany expansion, Automa cards have the four seasonal colors.

In Viticulture, yellow and green correspond to summer and red and blue correspond to winter. Additionally, some actions are specific to expansions from Tuscany. These are marked with a "T" on the Automa card and they should be ignored ifyou're not using the corresponding expansion.

Automa workers do not actually take any actions, nor do they gain bonuses. They simply block action spaces to simulate an opponent.

Bonus Action Tokens

Whenever you choose your wake-up slot at the beginning of the year, remove the glass token from the slot and place it to the side ofyour vineyard mat. You may accumulate these Bonus Action Tokens from year to year.

You may spend 1 of those tokens per turn when you place 1 ofyour workers on the board. Discard a Bonus Action Token and in addition to taking the action, also gain the bonus action of that action. If you do, you may take the action and the bonus in any order.

Year End

In addition to the usual end-of-year upkeep, retrieve all Automa workers from the board.


End of the Game

The game ends at the end of the 7th year. You win if your VP marker is ahead of the Automa VP marker. If they're on the same space, the game is a draw, and if the Automa is ahead, you lose.

Example: If you draw this card during summer place Automa workers on the "Draw @g.jpg", "Build one structure", and "Plant @g.jpg" actions in that order (the order only matters at the hard and very hard difficulties). If you drew it during winter place one on the "Make up to two wine tokens".






Campaign Play

You can play the game in campaign mode to add variation and challenge. The campaign mode consists of eight challenges, you must beat the Automa in each one to complete the campaign. Each time you lose, restart with the same challenge and begin with a number of bonus action tokens in hand equal to the number of consecutive times you've lost.

Your score is the number of games you played to complete the campaign (lower is better). Each campaign challenge plays like normal except for a small tweak to the rules. Play these 8 challenges in this order:

  1. You don't get a Mama card, instead select any 3 and plant them as part of the setup. You can ignore the structure requirements of these 3 . Reshuffle the deck after you've made your choice.

  2. You can't have more than 2 (not counting or ). Use the middle action spaces instead of the leftmost action spaces, except when you're placing the grande on an already occupied action. You can't use bonus action tokens.

  3. You must have 6 workers by the end of year 3 or you lose the game.

  4. Start at . When you use the harvest action, you can harvest up to three fields.

  5. You can't use bonus action tokens. Play 8 years, where each year you can choose any wake-up chart row you want.

  6. You don't score VP during the game. Instead at the end of the game you get for each wine in your large cellar and for each wine in you medium cellar. If you play the aggressive variant you should skip this part of the campaign.

  7. Start at game7__.jpg and .

  8. You can't fill (this includes filling orders via visitors). Wine can be used to gain VP in all other ways, though. Mama cards that give you can be redrawn.




Adjusting The Difficulty

Difficulty Levels

You can play against the Automa on five different difficulty levels:

Very Easy: Add an eighth year. In this eighth year you can choose any wake-up chart row and you get a bonus action token.

Easy: Start at .

Normal: As described in the rules above.

Hard: Keep drawing Automa cards and place workers until the Automa has placed at least 2 workers in the current season. Place workers on all the spots listed on the extra cards, but don't place on actions where there's already a worker. If the Automa places its sixth worker, it doesn't place any more. If you run out of Automa cards, then reshuffle the deck.

Very Hard: Same as the hard difficulty level, but the Automa starts at .




Aggressive Variant

If you want to add tenseness to the game you can let the Automa score victory points each year, and if you're not ahead of it at the end of a year, you lose immediately.

This "aggressive variant" can be played at easy, normal, and hard difficulty levels. At the beginning of each year place the Automa VP marker at the position on the VP track listed in the table below, and make sure that you end the year ahead of this number.

Year1234567
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