The Princes of Florence

The Princes of Florence is a German style strategy board game designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich, published by Alea in Germany and by Rio Grande Games in English, first released in 2000, in which two to five players take the roles of Renaissance Florentine nobility competing to attract artists, scholars and builders to their growing estates. Over seven rounds players bid against one another in an auction phase to acquire buildings, landscape features, prestige bonuses and the services of famous personalities, then use two action phases to construct buildings and place freshly hired artists onto their estate, balancing an artist's individual requirements for freedom, building type and landscape scenery to maximize the prestige points that determine victory. The game requires players to manage a shared limited budget across bidding and building even as available options change from round to round, giving it a strong economic planning core. The Princes of Florence won the International Gamers Award in 2001, the Meeples Choice Award in 2000, and multiple other European game prizes, and had ranked eighth on BoardGameGeek as of March 2008.