ECO RULES
General Turn Overview
Every player starts with their own map consisting of 3 tiles:
1 keystone and 2 split biome tiles.
Every turn you will do 2 things: place a tile, and place an
animal. You will select 1 of 4 possible tile/animal pairs from the
'pool' (on the left of the screen). The pair you select will have
a tile with 1-2 biomes and 1-3 possible animals that can be placed
on that tile along with the paired animal tile to be placed.
When placing tiles, you can play them anywhere adjacent to any
tile you already have. You can also rotate the tiles.
All players will take turns drawing pairs from the same pool,
but playing on only their own board.
Scoring rules for animals change from game to game, so pay
attention to current scoring rules!
Every player gets 20 turns. The winner is the player with the
most victory points (VP)
Tiles
Every hex tile is comprised of 2 biome halves. There are 5
biomes possible: Mountains, Forest, Plains, Wetland, Water. Hex
tiles with the same biome on each half are called 'keystones' and
have some special rules discussed later.
When playing a tile, there are no special rules for where you
can play it so long as it is adjacent to any other tile in play.
This means that you do not need to, for example, place a Forest
tile next to another Forest tile. However, you will receive more
points at the end of the game for having larger contiguous biomes.
So it is highly advisable to place a biome next to other tiles of
the same biome. More on this later.
Every player plays their tiles on their own map.
Keystones
Keystones are hex tiles that have the same biome for each half.
Scoring a keystone only counts as having one of those biomes, but
they get a special bonus when playing an animal on them. A keystone
is completed when an animal is played on them. Completing a keystone will get you +2 VP (victory points) and 1 token. Tokens will be explained later.
Animals
Each tile can have between 2-3 animals that can possible inhabit
that tile. The possible animals that can inhabit a tile are
indicated with a smaller animal icon on that tile. Keystones are
an exception. All keystones have exactly one possible animal that
can inhabit them.
Only one animal can inhabit a tile. So you must pick carefully
between the possible choices when placing an animal.
If you cannot place an animal or do not wish to place an
animal on your turn, you may instead choose to sacrifice the
animal. This will earn you 2 VP along with a token.
Picking Pairs
When picking a pair on your turn, it is important to
consider A) the tile biomes, B) the possible animals on the
tile, and C) the animal that comes in the pair.
For example, if you picked the top pair in the pool to
the left, you would be placing a tile with wetlands and forest;
it would be possible to place deer or fish on that tile at some
point in the game (not necissarily this turn); and this turn
you would need to place a deer on any tile on your map that
can accept a deer.
Notice that you cannot mix and match a tile with another
pair's animal to be placed!
On your turn, you will first click the pair (tile and
animal) that you want, then you will click where on your
board you want to place it. Do not drag the tile, just
click where you want it to go. You may then click the
rotate buttons in the bottom right of the screen as needed.
Then click 'Submit tile' in the lower right of the screen.
At this point, the next tile on your map that you click will
be given the selected animal. You do not (and can not) select
an animal again, you are forced to use the one that came
with your tile pair.
During tile placement, but before pressing 'submit tile',
you may place the tile in other positions by clicking on
any other space. You may also change to a different tile pair.
Tokens
Tokens are gained by either sacrificing an animal or completing
a keystone.
A token may be redeemed on your turn to refresh the pool of
pairs with an entirely new set of pairs. Use this if you have no
good options for pairs. However, using a token will cost you 1 VP.
It is up to you to decide if the gamble is worth it.
Your token count is
displayed in the upper left of the screen below the token symbol
(a green coin with a leaf on it).
Beginning a New Game
Begin by clicking on the game menu in the lower left of the
screen.
Select the team you want to play as. It is important that every
selects a unique team number and that there are no gaps between
team numbers in the game. As in, if there are 4 players, the teams
must be 1, 2, 3, and 4 (not 1, 3, 4, 6 or something else). Failure
to follow these rules will prevent the game from working.
If you find the text hard to read, you can toggle larger and
smaller text using the 'ENABLE LARGER TEXT' button in this menu.
The player on team one can click again on the game menu to start
a game for the appropriate number of players. You can also play a
single player solitaire version of this game if desired.
Scoring
Scoring is carried out by hand. However, sacrifices, completed
keystones, and used tokens are tallied in the upper left section
of the screen. This can help partially scoring the game.
Automatic scoring is complicated and will not be automatically
computed in this game.
A score sheet can be found here
Scoring template
Every animal has a random scoring rule automatically generated
for each new game. This means that every game has different scoring
rules. It is important to read them at the beginning of every
new game!
Click the animal square icons on the right side of the screen
to see what the current scoring rules for this game are.
Start scoring by counting the size of the largest group of biomes
for each biome type (count your largest mountain range, body of water,
etc...). You receive 1 VP for each contiguous biome in each of your
biomes largest groups.
The player with the largest contiguous biome overall gets an
additional 3 VP. Split any ties.
For each biome type, the player with the largest contiguous
biome for that biome gets 3 VP; second place gets 2 VP, and third
gets 1 VP. In cases of ties, split the VP of the tied positions.
Example biome scoring:
In the example to the left, you can observe there are multiple
groupings of many of the biomes. It is important to remember that
only tiles that are connected to the largest version of their biome
will actually score points. You can see that there are 6 water tiles
connected together, along with 3 more above them that aren't connected
and a couple other individual water tiles even further away. Only the
largest 6 connected water tiles actually score point, the other tiles
get no point.
In the case of the wetlands, there are 2 groups of 2 wetlands.
You only get to score one of them.
Branching, like seen by the forests, is perfectly fine.
Keystone biomes only count as 1 tile.
In the case where a corner touches, but not an edge, like in the
far left for the mountains, tiles that do not share an edge of the
same biome do not count towards the total size.
In the example scoring to the left, the player entered their
scores into the 'player 1' column for tile scoring. The other
3 players of this game entered their scores as well. After
all biome sizes for each player have been entered, +3 VP are given
to the player with the overall largest biome (in this case, player
4). Additionally, +3 VP are given to the player with the largest of
each biome. +2 to the second largest, and +1 to 3rd largest. Ties
for largest of each biome (and 2nd or 3rd place ties) are split.
If two players tie for 1st place, combine the rewards for first and
second place (3+2=5) and each player gets half of those points (2.5).
Likewise for a tie for 2nd place (1.5 each). For a tie for 3rd place,
each player gets 0.5 VP.
Although it has not yet been scored, it is worth noting that
player 1 has completed 2 biomes for 4 VP total. They have also
sacrificed 3 animals for 6 more VP. You can always count how many
animals have been sacrificed by counting how many tile do not have
an animal inhabitant and subtracting 3.
Scoring Animals
Scoring the animals can be the trickier part. Hopefully you have
been keeping track of the scoring rules during your game.