Q: Can you use the Imperial Favour action to take an action
that would normally cost 2 action cubes?
A: Yes.
Q: Does this mean that I can take 'Commercial Income' twice
in a round?
A: No. The 'Commercial Income' action is restricted
to once per player per round.
Q: The Bribery card differs from the text on the Player
Aid. What's up?
A: There is an error on the Player Aid, which should
read the same as the Bribery card. This is the correct text:
Unbribed official becomes unsecured
OR
Cash on official = replace unsecured marker
(bribed Hubu official = minus 1)
Gift obligations do not apply.
Q: In the last turn it can happen that a player involved
in an Imperial Examination or a Ministry Resolution gets to
choose the winner, because he or she hasn't received a gift.
Is there a way of handling this more in keeping with the rest
of the game?
A: Yes. Although not covered in the original Confucius
rules, the recommended official method for handling this situation
is covered in the following additional rule.
This rule applies ONLY in the Imperial Examination step and
the Ministry Resolution step of the final round of the game
and only in the following very rare circumstances. In either
of these steps a player may have to make a choice uninfluenced
by gifts between aiding one of two or more players, such that
any one of those players would win the game directly through
this single free choice - a situation commonly known as 'king
making'.
For example, it is the last round of the game in the Ministry
Resolution step. There are three players remaining in the
last Ministry to be resolved, and the player with least influence
has no gifts from either of the other two players. These two
players are on equal victory points and either one of them
would win the game with the Minister chit, but fail to win
with the Secretary chit. The player with least influence must
temporarily transfer his influence to one or other of the
two leading players, either of whom would win the game as
a result.
In this circumstance ONLY, the choosing player must choose
from the players who could win the game according to the following
preferences: first the player who is the Chief Minister in
the final round; second, the player seated closest clockwise
round the table from the Chief Minister in the final round.
Q: Can I take the 'Force Imperial Examination' action even
if there are no students? If so, what happens.
A: The rules don't stop this from happening (except
in Round 1). However, nothing will happen, no candidate official
will be placed and players don't get to pay any money for
tutoring.
A suggestion from Axel Schmale that players may wish to try
out:
"If a player takes the "Force Imperial Examination"
action and no one has nominated a student (both student spaces
are empty), the player may place the candidate official on
an empty space in the indicated ministry, or, if there is
no empty space, the candidate official can replace any unbribed
(but NOT an unsecured or secured) official. The player does
NOT put his marker on the candidate official. The candidate
official is just an honest official, who cannot be bribed.
The Ministry Resolution step (every space contains an official
or a candidate official and every official has a marker [only
some candidate officials might have no marker]) will be played
as usual, but if there is tie between the final two players
the one with the most senior official becomes Minister."
Q: Are there any other official variants, apart from the
Admiral Variant?
A: SSG is unlikely to promote other specific 'official'
variants. Confucius was developed and play tested over several
years prior to publication in May 2008, and many variations
were tried out. Usually there are solid reasons for the design
and development decisions that were made, for example for
game balance, stability of the game system, consistency with
the theme and so on. However we know that many players like
to experiment with variations to the rules of published games,
and we welcome this type of discussion. A good place on the
internet for these discussions is the BoardGameGeek website
and Confucius can be found at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/32014/.
