SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME – 'Welcome to Suzerainty: A game of economic strategy for the whole family!' The rulebook is sumptuously illustrated and thick as a Graadian novel.
Suzerainty is a board game in Disco Elysium.
Description[]
A civilization-building board game where you get to choose a nation and set off to colonise and exploit other cultures. A star-shaped note on the box proclaims the game now includes a completely new Genocide option.
The game takes place on a board, where in the centre is the crown of Revachol. Radiating outward are her colourful vassals, each one supplying some raw material desired by the suzerain: Apricots from Safre, archaeological treasures from Ile Marat, sugar from the Semenine Islands, and magenta cocaine from Supramundi and Saramiriza. Each player has a bag of tokens and counters to keep track of their progress in the game. In addition to the worker and building tokens used by each player, there are also several piles of colorful resource tokens, each representing one of the game's four principal resources...
'Welcome to Suzerainty: A game of economic strategy for the whole family!' The rulebook is sumptuously illustrated and thick as a Graadian novel. The colourful illustrations depict cheerful workers picking apricots, hauling marble sculptures out of crumbling temples, and harvesting a strange, magenta-leafed plant. Everyone is smiling.
The instructions are opaque at first, and introduce many concepts most are not familiar with. Fortunately, there are many diagrams and examples throughout... The basic conceit is that each player represents an administrator for the *Suzerain of Revachol*. Your objective is to increase the suzerain's wealth and renown by accumulating *victory points*.
That's where the suzerain's vassals come in. The game features four vassal nations, each one home to an economically important resource (see above). There are many paths to victory, although good players commit to a single strategy.
Each turn the player collects resources from vassals where they've placed workers. They may then rearrange their workers, fulfil contracts for coin and bonuses, or build structures back in Revachol...
The actual scoring system appears infinitely complex, with a series of tables and appendices required to compute each player's final victory point total. You skip that part for now.
While the box promises Genocide, Suzerainty is a family game. The only 'atrocities' you'll be committing are against the social standing of your rival administrators, as you bring in ever more resources and power for the suzerain. Speaking of... You begin to suspect there may be a political agenda to this so-called 'family game'. Only one way to find out...
Uses[]
- Allows you to play Suzerainty with the Lieutenant. Although he is reluctant at first, you can convince him to play it as a mental exercise to help with the investigation. There are different outcomes to the game and usually, you will lose, either slightly or badly:
- Kim can be defeated by sticking to fulfilling contracts until the endgame (Rock and Roll baby!), then building a Victory Column, which will usually end up with a 35 score in this instance.
- Kim's score depends on your choices in the game, including the trade war. He can gain 26, 20, or 15 points. You can fail miserably and get minus five victory points or a decent 15 points (usually in the trade war scenario).
- You can also decide to ignore the scoring system and play the game without taking it into account. You can actually build a public education system for your workers, which will lose the game according to the scoring rules, but will definitively impress Kim.
