Lost Cities

To set up this solo variant, gather all expedition and sponsor cards while removing the milestone cards from the deck. Shuffle thoroughly. Each human player is dealt a hand of 8 cards. The bot does not receive a starting hand of playable cards; instead, 7 cards are drawn from the deck and placed face-down near the main deck to form the bot's private pile, which the human player may inspect but not use. Five open cards are displayed on the board from the general deck to form the market or discard area, following the standard layout rules.

The main objective remains to accumulate the highest possible score by organizing and launching profitable expeditions across various colored paths, all while carefully balancing your card management against the bot's automated actions and restrictions.

During your turn, you must play one card from your hand either to start or continue an expedition or place it in the corresponding discard pile. Afterward, draw a replacement card from the general draw pile. The bot follows a specific turn structure: it first draws a card from the main deck and plays it according to general rules (prioritizing sponsor cards and valid expedition plays that meet its specific height requirements), always discarding to its private pile if a valid play cannot be made.

Expeditions are scored at the end of the game by taking the sum of the cards played on a path, subtracting a fixed base cost for starting the expedition, and adding bonuses for reaching certain thresholds or collecting sufficient artifact cards within that path.

The game concludes the exact moment the final card is drawn from the central draw deck, triggering the final score calculation where both the human and bot scores are tallied.