Pax Renaissance: 2nd Edition Solo Variant

By Tom Builder

This solitaire variant uses an automated Opponent. No extra components are needed.

Setup
Remove all East and West cards with no specific location.

Remove all cards with a Vitruvian Man icon.

There are only five Vitruvian cards with specific locations:

● Academia - Hungary
● Artistic Geometry - Holy Roman Empire
● Cryptography - Papal States
● Romantic Realism - Papal States
● Sahn-i Seman Medrese - Ottoman

20 cards per draw deck. Place both comet cards at the bottom of each draw deck.

The Player and the Opponent can play as any of the bankers.

The Player starts with two florins. The Opponent goes second with three florins.

Turn
The Opponent has three actions to give you a challenge:
1. Buy the cheapest leftmost market card. If the leftmost cards cost the same, pick the
region that the Opponent is less invested in. For example, if the Opponent’s tableau has
one West card and Two East cards and both market cards cost the same, pick the West
card.
2. Play the card and enact the one-shot.
3. Run ops for that region in order of the newest cards first (leftmost in west region). For
each card, attempt to run the ops in top to bottom order. As soon as a valid op is
reached, it is played, and no more ops on this card are played this turn

OR

Play the trade fair with most profits if the Opponent has no money.
The Opponent buys and pays for cards and actions, and receives florins from actions and trade
fairs according to the standard rules.

Agent Placement
● Bishop: Place on the newest player card with this location, then on this card.
● Knights/Rooks: Place into any unoccupied city, fill top to bottom of location.
● Pirate: Place on Player Concession then unoccupied sea border. Prefer closest to
Emporium.
● Pawn: Prefer Player occupied (if affordable) then closest to Emporium, then land

Battles
Attack top to bottom of card.

Levy
Fill top to bottom of card

Victory
If the Opponent can declare victory (without combining religious prestige and
empires/republics), they should buy the appropriate card, if they can afford it, and declare
victory on the following turn.

Holy Victory
If player declares victory, all of the Opponent’s religious prestige icons are considered to be that
of the dominant religion. (i.e. Catholic, Islamist, Reformist are all treated interchangeably).
If Opponent declares victory, then there is no change to rules - each religious icon is considered
whatever it is.

Imperial Victory
If player declares victory, treat the Opponent’s Republics and Empires as Empires.
If Opponent declares victory, then no change to rules. Only Empires are counted as Empires.
Since this is a 2-player game, victory requires 3 more king cards, not 2.

Globalization Victory
If player declares victory, all of the opponents Law, Discovery, and Patron prestige icons are
considered as Discovery icons.
If Opponent declares victory, then no change to rules. Only discovery icons count.
Renaissance Victory
If player declares victory, all of the opponents Law, Discovery, and Patron prestige icons are
considered as Law icons and all Opponent’s Republics and Empires are considered Empires.
If Opponent declares victory, then no change to rules. Only Law icons count.

Patron Victory
All of Opponent’s Law, Discovery, and Patron prestige icons are considered as Patron icons.

Operations
Move a Bishop of this color from Opponent card to newest Player card of
same location from Player card to newer adjacent Player card

Take one florin from the leftmost market card. Prefer not the Trade Fair
card.

Discard newest Player card in location

Target Player Concession bordering card’s location preferring closer to the

emporium.

Remove one token of this type from the card's location. Prefer the token
type order on the card, and repress a non-theocratic color if possible. Then
top to bottom. Do not use it on an Opponent Empire.

Target Empire in play with Opponent majority Concessions with either

empty or Player Concessions that are affordable to be Repressed. Prefer
least Repressed tokens.

Move Pirate to kill a Player Concession

Kill a token. Prefer non-theocratic color if possible. Then top to bottom. Do

not use it on an Opponent Empire.
One-Shots
● Trade Shift
○ Prefer the emporium with more Opponent concessions. May require an explore
icon.
● Coronation
○ Marry the first un-played king from the card's list.
● Apostasy
○ Only perform if the Player has both icons in Tableau.
● Civil War
○ Always perform Civil Wars as per regular rules
● Religious War
○ Always perform Religious Wars and convert the location to a theocracy on
victory.

Notes
● If there is a tie in evaluating options and no tie breaker is specified in the instructions,
prefer top, left, bottom, right, in that order. For example, if there are two targets for a
campaign, both unowned and winnable, then the Opponent will prefer to attack the
location using top, left, bottom, right priority.
● The Opponent does not try to directly advance victory conditions nor stops the player
from doing so. This variant provides a challenge through two mechanisms. First, the
Opponent cheats by taking three actions every turn instead of two (buy, play, run ops).
Second, the combining of empires and religious prestige on a player-declared victory
gives the Opponent a lot of leeway. Hopefully, this still provides a challenge and fun
game while keeping the Opponent overhead to a minimum

Sub-variants
● After the player is victorious, remove that victory card from the player, for the following
games, until all victory cards are used by the player to win. (After three player victories,
there will be only one valid victory condition for the player).
● Create a third market row of only Vitruvian cards. The player can not buy from this new
market directly. Any time the player buys a card from the regular market they may
discard that card and take the corresponding card from the Vitruvian market. Then
refresh both markets. The Opponent ignores this third market.