Mosaic: A Story of Civilization

To set up, place the game board in the center of the table, ignoring regions not in play based on player count. Randomly place face-down cash tokens on corresponding board spaces, then flip them face-up and remove any with an 'X' symbol. Place double-sided fish tokens on port symbols. Mix trade goods tokens face-down and place one on each empty hex space, then flip them face-up and remove any with an 'X' symbol. Create supplies of stone, food, ideas, and money. Arrange wonder, golden age, and civilization achievement tiles face-up in rows beside the board, with their matching hex tokens. Stack government tiles face-up on their board space. Prepare the population, tax & tariff, and build decks by removing their Empire Scoring cards, shuffling the remaining cards, dividing them into two equal piles, shuffling the Empire Scoring card into one pile, and placing the other pile on top. Deal two cards face-up from the population and tax & tariff decks, and five cards face-up from the build and technology decks. Each player chooses a color and collects their player board, 10 cubes, military unit tiles (infantry, cavalry, siege engine), farm and manufactory town tokens, port and city tokens, and population tokens. Place one cube on the '0' position of each production track on your player board and five population on your player board. The player to the right of the first player collects leader cards, chooses one, and passes the rest clockwise until all players have a leader. Each player is dealt five face-down starting technology cards, chooses one to keep face-down, and passes the rest left until all players have five chosen technology cards.

The objective of Mosaic: A Story of Civilization is to guide your ancient civilization to become the most influential culture in history. This is achieved by accumulating the most victory points by the end of the game. Players will engage in various actions to develop their civilization, including gaining new technologies, increasing population and production, building military might, and exploring regions, all contributing to their final score.

On your turn, you will perform one of eight possible actions: Technology, Work, Population, Build, Wonder, Military, Government, or Tax & Tariff. The Technology action allows you to pay five ideas to gain a face-up technology card from the offer. If you meet its pillar of civilization requirements, you can activate it immediately for its benefits; otherwise, keep it face-down for later activation. The Work action lets you choose one of the three non-money currencies (stone, food, or ideas) and add its production value to your population, gaining that amount from the supply. The Population action involves selecting a population card from the offer, paying its food cost, gaining the indicated population tokens, and replacing the card. The Build action allows you to construct cities, ports, or towns either by paying a fixed cost without taking a card or by claiming a build card from the offer and paying its cost. The Wonder action lets you select a wonder tile, pay its increasing cost, and place its token on the board in a valid city-controlled region. The Military action enables you to recruit new military units by paying money or move existing units to adjacent regions for one money each. The Government action allows you to select an available government tile, pay its cost, and place it face-up in front of you for ongoing benefits, potentially clearing an offer area once per game. The Tax & Tariff action involves selecting a card from the offer, gaining money based on population/government symbols (for tax) or unique trade goods/cities/tariff production (for tariff), and replacing the card. Additionally, activating face-down technology cards is a free action that does not count as your main turn action.

At the end of the game, victory points are tallied from several sources. Players score points for wonders, golden ages, and civilization achievement tiles they have earned. Project cards award victory points based on the number of specific pillars of civilization symbols the owner controls. Face-up technology cards also provide any victory points listed on them. Each city a player has on the board is worth two points, and each town is worth one point. Manufacturing town cards can award additional points based on unique trade goods. Finally, any positive unrest remaining from tax and tariff cards will deduct victory points from a player's score. The player with the most victory points wins. In case of a tie, the player with the most wonders wins. If there's still a tie, the player with the most money wins. If a tie persists, the tied civilizations peacefully share the victory.

The game ends immediately when one of two conditions is met. The first condition is when the third Empire Scoring card is revealed from any of the four decks (Tax & Tariff, Build, Population, or Technology). The second condition is when all tiles are collected from any two of the three categories: Wonders, Civilization Achievements, or Golden Ages. Once either of these end-game triggers occurs, the current player finishes their action and turn. Then, an additional Empire Scoring phase is performed. After this, the current round is completed, meaning all players will take turns until the player seated to the right of the start player has taken their turn. Finally, each player gets one more turn before proceeding to the final scoring.