City of Gears

City of Gears is a competitive steampunk city builder that mixes worker movement, modular discovery, engine construction, and area influence. Every player begins at a personal factory with automatons and a small production engine. On a turn, production dice determine the resources available for moving workers, placing gears, activating connected city tiles, and improving the factory. The city itself is assembled from only nine of more than twenty possible tiles, so the useful powers, paths, and scoring opportunities must be discovered anew. Gears connect districts into working networks, ownership markers establish influence, and steam powers or sabotage can disrupt a rival’s plans. Factory upgrades make later turns more efficient, but players cannot simply build forever: Opening Day tokens are mixed into the gear supply, and drawing the third ends the game immediately. Prestige comes from ownership, activated districts, upgrades, and other public opportunities, so strong play balances long-term infrastructure with the risk that the city opens before one final engine cycle pays off.