The theme is to develop its civilization from its own characteristics indicated on your individual tray, so initially directing your game to the civil, trade, military or scientific. Everything will then only through development maps without shared game board and especially simultaneously, each with 7 cards in hand in which he must draw one and spend the rest of his neighbor (left or right it depends tricks ).
These cards can be resources needed to build other cards, buildings directly offering victory points, military troops to grow at the expense of its two neighbors, scientific developments whose association will value, opportunities for unpublished or trade finally guilds that offer bonuses, sometimes significant forts, victory points depending on the subject you have chosen.
Unfortunately it is not advisable to base his game on these cards that appear in the last phase of the game, since your opponents will not hesitate to make them disappear if you are too advantageous!
This is the only strong interaction between all players, in fact the purchase of missing raw materials is made only from your two neighbors as well as military adventures are only made against them. This means that regardless of the number of players you interact in practice with two other players, part of the price we must pay for the exceptional fluidity of the game. However, it must make sure that the development strategy you have chosen is not too selected by other players to avoid the card shortage in this area!
Finally it is very difficult to estimate the score of the other players in real time given the multiplicity of mechanisms precisely to score. As for the theme is simply plated on the game and does not develop a next "RPG" which sometimes makes you love a game despite its flaws!
The fact remains that it is a nice game, not aggressive which made for a good time.