Age of Steam

Age of Steam setup involves placing the board in the center, positioning the management player boards, and organizing money, dice, and track tiles by type. Players each take 25 player discs, set their initial tracks on the income and locomotive tracks, emit two starting shares for funds, and determine initial player order by rolling dice. Goods cubes are randomly drawn from the bag and placed on cities according to map rules.

Players embody railway entrepreneurs competing to build the most profitable network, transport goods cubes, and earn victory points by game end while managing finances, loans, and share issuance carefully.

Each round is divided into 10 phases: I. Share emission, II. Player order auction, III. Action selection, IV. Track building, V. Goods transport, VI. Income collection, VII. Expense payment, VIII. Income reduction, IX. Goods increase, and X. Turn marker advancement.

End-game scoring awards 3 victory points per dollar of final revenue, subtracts 3 points per issued share, and grants 1 point for each completed track segment and connected route section.

The game concludes after a specific number of rounds dictated by player count and track progress, moving straight to final scoring without tie-breakers.