How to Play Concordia: Personality Cards, Houses & Production
Concordia is an economic network game in which your hand of personality cards is both your action system and your final scoring engine. On every turn you play exactly one card, resolve its action, and leave it face up in your discard area until a Tribune action returns your played cards to hand.
Base-game guide. This covers standard Concordia without Venus team rules or map-specific expansion systems.
Start with colonists, goods and a small action hand
Each player begins with sea and land colonists around Roma, starting goods/money and the same basic set of personality cards. The map is divided into provinces containing cities that produce different goods.
Play one personality card per turn
The card determines your entire turn. Common cards include:
- Architect: move colonists, then build houses in reachable cities.
- Prefect: activate a province for production or take the cash alternative shown by the rules.
- Mercator: gain money and buy/sell goods within the card’s trade limit.
- Senator: acquire new personality cards from the display.
- Diplomat: copy the top played card of another player.
- Tribune: return your played personality cards to hand and optionally add a new colonist.
Architect moves colonists before building
Movement points are based on your colonist count. Colonists travel along land or sea routes and occupy route spaces rather than cities. After movement, you may build in cities adjacent to your colonists by paying the city’s goods cost plus any increased money cost caused by existing opponent houses.
Prefect produces for every player with a house in that province
When you Prefect a province for goods, each city in that province produces its good for every player who owns a house there. The active player also receives the province bonus. The province marker then flips to its money side until provinces are reset by a later Prefect action.
Buying personality cards changes actions and scoring
Senator and related card effects let you buy personality cards from the display. The position in the display affects purchase cost. New cards add action flexibility, but they also carry a god icon that multiplies specific assets during final scoring.
Tribune resets your action cycle
Played cards stay unavailable until you play Tribune. Recovering a large discard gives more cards back, but waiting too long can leave you without the action you need. Tribune can also help place additional colonists, which improves movement and some scoring.
The game ends when cards or houses run out
The final turn is triggered when a player buys the last personality card from the market or builds their final house. That player takes the Concordia bonus card; the other players receive one final turn before scoring.
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Sources and scope
Checked September 20, 2026. Venus, Salsa and map-specific additions are outside this guide.