Cloud City

To set up, first find the four starting tiles with birds in the center. The first player receives the tile with one bird, and subsequent players receive tiles with increasing bird counts in clockwise order. For a two-player game, the other two starting tiles are returned to the box. The remaining tiles with 'Cloud City' backs are shuffled into face-down stacks in the middle of the play area, and three are drawn face-up to form a row. Each player is dealt three tiles as their opening hand, kept secret. The different colored buildings (blue, green, brown) and walkways (various lengths and colors) are organized in the box as a supply. Players then place matching colored buildings onto the colored squares of their starting tile.

The objective of Cloud City is to develop a model city by strategically placing tiles and constructing walkways between buildings. Players earn council votes (victory points) for the walkways they build. The player with the most total council votes at the end of the game wins. The city council apparently favors super high and super scary long walkways.

A game of Cloud City is played over eight rounds, with each player taking a turn in clockwise order. On your turn, you perform four steps. First, you must pick any tile from your hand and place it directly adjacent to any other face-up tile in your city, sharing a full side. You can rotate the tile as desired, but once placed, it cannot be moved. Your city can never exceed a 3x3 area (or 3x4 in a longer variant). Second, you must add matching colored buildings from the supply onto the colored squares of the newly placed tile. Blue buildings are shortest, green are middle height, and brown are tallest. Third, you may optionally build walkways. You can connect any two buildings of the same color that are not blocked by another building between them, taking a matching colored walkway from the supply and placing it between them. Walkways come in various lengths, and each is worth a certain number of victory points printed on its center. Taller buildings block shorter ones of the same color, and buildings of the same height block each other. Shorter buildings do not block taller ones. You can never have more than two walkways per building, and a walkway cannot pass over an area without a cloud tile. Fourth, you draw a new cloud tile, either from the three face-up options or a random face-down stack, to replenish your hand to three tiles.

At the end of the game, players add together all the council vote values shown on the walkways in their city. The player with the highest total points wins. In case of a tie, the tied player with the most council votes on blue walkways wins. If still tied, the tied player with the most votes on green walkways wins. If there's still a tie, the tied player with the most votes on brown walkways wins. If a tie persists after all these tie-breakers, the tied players share the victory.

The game concludes after eight rounds, at which point every player will have a 3x3 city model in front of them. For a longer game with two or three players, the game can be extended to eleven turns, resulting in a 3x4 city model for each player. Once all turns are completed, final scores are calculated based on the walkways built and any applicable special request cards.