Overview

In this game you create a power base for your leaders, either by building a kingdom or by taking over parts of other kingdoms. You then use this power base to either destroy other players’ kingdoms – earning victory points in the process – or at least keep them at bay while you build or take over monuments to earn even more victory points and balance out your score. All this while the other players are trying to do the same to you.

First moves

At the beginning of the game, you need to get some leaders out so they can collect points of their colour.

The classic oldschool opening is putting your green and black leaders on the same temple, at right angles. In the second turn reinforce them with a red tile in the space between them to form a little 2x2 square with each leader flanked by two temples. (Green and black are the two leaders with a special function, so it’s a good idea to get them on the board early on.)

Red and green is another good starting combination. (Having an opponent’s red leader in a kingdom you’re trying to fortify can be very vexing.)

It’s perfectly reasonable to keep some leaders off the board for quite a while if you want to get out more tiles in the beginning (instead of wasting a turn each on placing a leader – having two more tiles out in the early game can make a huge difference) or want to preserve your leaders from battles they cannot win. This last bit is important: As soon as wars become possible, you’ll need some tiles to defend your leaders or they become easy prey.

Starting points

The starting temples traditionally considered “good” are F3, F9 and N5. In four-player games, the last player to start usually has to get a bit creative and either squeeze in between two kingdoms or distribute their leaders around.

If you want to start in the middle of things and create a bit of pressure right away, I7 is the place to go.

Starting on the four corner temples (B2, B8, O9 and P2) is rarely a good idea: they are cramped and their treasures get picked first, leaving them vulnerable to a catastrophe. If you do have to start out there, make sure to place an additional temple for support, at least.

The temple on N5 is right next to the only spot where you can build a monument from blue tiles, hence it is sometimes called the “water temple”. With some blue tiles in hand, placing a blue leader here can pay off nicely.

Stray leaders

You don’t need to keep all your leaders together in one flock – instead, you can put some, or all, in different kingdoms. This can be good way of cramping your opponents’ style. Temples with treasure make great homes for stray leaders, since they’re catastrophe proof.

However, doing this often means underusing that leader, and coordinating moves with leaders in several kingdoms can be a pain, since you’re constantly relying on other players not messing up your plans. On the other hand, controlling just one, strong colour in a kingdom means you can gladly start wars in that colour and not care about the kingdom falling apart once you have reaped your victory points.

The best way of dealing with a rogue leader is often patience. If you can’t catastrophise him but plan to get rid of him some time in the future, hem him in with some tiles on adjacent squares to prevent the building of supporting temples. The be patient until you can kick him out with a revolt. Sometimes you can use a convenient enemy kingdom that’s strong in that leader’s colour to start a war and blast him out of your kingdom.

Mind you, a stray leader is not necessarily a bad thing. If, say, you’re building a kingdom centred around your priest and trader, and then another player jumps in with his farmer and starts adding in a wodge of blue tiles in addition to your red and green ones, that kingdom can very quickly become a force to be reckoned with, in all three colours.

Kingdom construction

A kingdom consisting of one straight line of tiles is extremely vulnerable. A single tile lost to a war or catastrophe will split it, and bridging the gap takes three tiles – more than an entire turn. Sometimes you need to expand and cannot avoid building single-file, but if you have the time, building two tiles wide or creating additional connections will limit the threat of catastrophes. Building a loop – that is, connecting the end of a dangling stretch of tiles to a nearby part of your kingdom – is more economic than a thick block of tiles all the way through. Monuments are indestructible and make good anchoring points.

Putting all your leaders into the same kingdom can be very convenient and greatly simplifies things. However, their supporting tiles can get in each others’ way and make a kingdom vulnerable to wars: If you put some green tiles between your black leader and his black tiles, those greens are a breaking point: loosing a green war will mean your black leader gets cut off from his supporters and then you will lose the black war as well.

Look for such breaking points in enemy kingdoms and exploit them to split them up and defeat their leaders one by one. Keep your own leaders well connected to their supporters. Rivers with their blue tiles are a natural breaking point.

When you go for redundancy by building two connecting pillars of tiles, make sure you don’t put the same colours in both files where one lost war would disconnect both at the same time.

Temples with leaders attached are more durable than other tiles and useful for connecting colours and leaders.

Putting your leaders on the edge of your kingdom, facing outward so an attacker has to connect to them first, can isolate you in case of a lost war. The vanquished leader is taken from the board, leaving one empty space between the attacker and your remaining kingdom – a bit like a blown fuse.

Never leave an empty spot with two adjacent temples open at the end of your turn. This is just begging for a revolt.

A note on “your” kingdom

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of a kingdom you’re building as “your” kingdom, as something like a home or territory you have to build up, make your own and protect at all costs. A kingdom containing all your leaders at once is convenient, but be on the lookout for other advantageous positions to put your leaders in.

Don’t get too attached to a kingdom you’re building. This is no game where you slowly build up something in order to enjoy and cherish it. A kingdom is a weapon to smash other kingdoms with and a tool to make points. Expect it to get demolished in the process. Perhaps try not to think of it as “your” kingdom. Kingdom is wherever you put one of your leaders.

Efficiency

An average game on this site lasts around 16 or 17 turns, often less. This means you get less than 40 moves to score enough points in all four colours. You need to make efficient use of your moves. Remember that placing or moving a leader will not earn you a victory point.

When you start out with a few red tiles in your hand, consider getting a leader on the board by inciting a revolt (what some call “with tempo”). This is an efficient move (if you win!), as it will earn you a red point at the same time, and also make life interesting for the other players. This is the best way of dealing with a rogue leader at the beginning.

Victory Points

Never forget that your score is determined by your weakest colour. If you have 20 points in red, green and blue, but only 1 black point, your score is still 1. This is why temple treasures are so useful; they count as whatever colour you need most at the moment.

Putting a tile into a kingdom will get you a single victory point. That is not a lot. To win a game you need to look at other sources of points: wars and monuments. Treasures and single tiles are nice for rounding out a score, but wars and monuments will win the game.

Monuments

It is tempting to build a monument as early as possible, but this can backfire easily: you are turning your kingdom into an valuable target at the very same time you are weaking its defences in one colour (and four tiles of the same colour is a lot). In other words, don’t build a monument unless you can defend it – for a while. Make sure the effort is worth it.

On the other hand, when other people start putting up the first monuments, you have to decide: either quickly build a monument of your own to keep up, or move to take over someone else’s monument by starting a war or revolt.

Losing a monument

When losing a monument, often the first impulse is to take back what’s yours, right now. This can lead to a vicious back and forth for little gain. Avoid useless grudge wars. It often pays to pause and consider: do you really need that monument right now? If you have enough points of that colour, maybe it has served its purpose. You cannot expect to keep a monument to yourself forever in this game.

Having fun with monuments

• Spike another player’s half-finished monument with a tile of the wrong colour
• Complete an enemy monument yourself and pick two colours you prefer
• Or complete it by placing the fourth tile, but refuse to actually build it
• Cut off a leader from his monument with a catastrophe
• Banish a leader by incorporating his only adjacent temple into a new monument
• “Gift” someone a monument, weakening him in a critical colour

You can also place a tile to at the same time join two kingdoms and complete a monument. First you finish the war, then you can decide whether to build, and what colour.

Defending against revolts

Sometimes is useful to go on the defensive. To make a kingdom less vulnerable to revolts, plug spaces next to temples. Never leave open a two-temple spot if you can help it. Arranging leaders and temples in a tight grid so that several leaders share one temple is an effective defensive setup, though costly in red tiles and time. Keep in mind that a determined attacker can always place a catastrophe or two, or plug a temple into a walled-up kingdom and start a revolt there. Excessively fortified leaders have been known to attract a veritable barrage of catastrophes.

There is no such thing as an invulnerable kingdom.

Tiles and randomness

Contrary to what some people claim, this game is not “all about getting red tiles”, nor is everything up to chance. Randomness plays a certain role, of course, but what makes a player good is dealing with what he is, well, dealt.

At the start of the game, the tile bag contains 47 red tiles, 36 blue and 30 each of both green and black. (The remaining 10 red tiles start out on the board as treasure temples.) Consequently you can expect to draw more red than blue tiles, and more blue than either green or black.

The rule of thumb for conflicts is that having three more tiles of one colour than your opponent is an acceptable advantage. With red, you’ll want one more to be on the safe side, with green or black, having one less is not a big deal. It often pays off to be aggressive and take some risks here.

If you don’t have the right tiles, get rid of the tiles you have by starting a conflict (and making points!) or, in an emergency, by swapping some tiles. There is a school of thought holding that the more tiles you have cycling through your hand, the likelier your are to see the tiles you need.

Same for tiles you no longer have a use for: When you find yourself as the defender in a hopeless war, say between black leaders, consider cutting your losses by reinforcing the lost conflict by throwing in all the black tiles you have. With your king gone, you won’t have any use for the tiles, but purging your hand means you can at least hope for a good redraw. Don’t blindly put your king back on the board and try to re-wage the lost war.

Wars

Revolts often come out of the blue, but you can usually see a war coming. When one kingdom approaches another to within a distance of two fields, an attack becomes possible – two tiles is the distance you can cover in one turn. Consider going on the attack first, if you have the advantage in some colours.

When another kingdom approaches yours to within a single tile, alarm bells should ring. This is the critical distance, because an attacker can play a catastrophe and attack in the same turn. If your kingdom has a vulnerable spot, this can be devastating. It’s almost always a good idea to strike first in this situation.

Early wars, like early monuments, can easily backfire. More tiles in the hand than on the board means they are unpredictable and offer few victory points. While it is true that a war lost early on can be devastating, the loser has the rest of the game to rebuild and can end up in a superior position if you don’t keep up the pressure. This often means a whole series of limited wars which leaves you no time to consolidate your overextended kingdom. Predictable wars also make you vulnerable to ambushes. This is dastardly and underhand tactic which involves looking weak on the board while keeping three to four tile of the colour in question in your hand. Remember that the defender wins a draw – this is equal to having one free tile, and very valuable if you can entice an opponent to attack you.

When a leader is hopelessly outnumbered or has already piled up a goodly heap of points in his colour, you may be better off leaving him off-board, where he is safe from conflicts.

Catastrophes

Placing a catastrophe is an action that will not earn you any points in itself nor help you cycle through your tiles– it is not an efficient move. It is, however, a great opportunity to get creative when you need to block or slow down a move, banish a weakly supported leader or prune a kingdom. Catastrophes are usually most useful in a crucial war or revolt, by splitting off a vulnerable part of your target. Beware of creating a back-and-forth where your opponent can in the same turn simply place a single tile to bridge the damage and hit back with a catastrophe of his own.

Don’t hoard your catastrophes, but don’t spend them carelessly, either. Once you’ve fired both barrels, your opponents can allow themselves a great deal more freedom in approaching you. Having no more catastrophes left feels a bit like being a toothless tiger.

Things to keep in mind

• When joining two kingdoms with a tile, you won’t score a point for that tile.
• You cannot join three kingdoms in one action.
• Also, you cannot place a leader where he would connect two kingdoms.

(“Joining kingdoms” here means both with or without a war; a kingdom is any number of tiles with at least one leader attached. This means when you remove a leader from the middle of a kingdom, splitting it into two now unconnected kingdoms, you’re not allowed to rejoin the two halves with a leader in the same place.)

• Keep an eye on the number of treasures. The game ends when the number of treasures drops below 3, which can come as a rude surprise.
• The game finishes instantly when you try to redraw from an empty tile bag. This means you won’t score points from monuments, which comes at the end of your turn.

(This is the rule from the original edition of the board game. It discourages swapping tiles to finish the game early. The first publisher, Hans im Glück, changed it after a year or two. With the new rule you always got to finish your turn and score monuments, which made forcing an early finish a common move. Later editions and the BGA implementation reverted back to the original rule. If you’re used to the other rule, be prepared for a longer and more convoluted end-game.)

A final thought

There is no such thing as security or safety in this game. Sooner or later, things will always go to hell. Kingdoms will fall apart, monuments will get captured, leaders will be ousted. It’s impossible to always prevent this. You can make the other players work hard and stack the odds in your favour, but it’s the dramatic turns and sudden twists that make this game tense and interesting. Enjoy the ride while it lasts, and when in doubt, go on the attack.

Only monuments are forever.

Links

If you want more than the basic hints in this quick guide, take a look at this annotated game over on Board Game Geek. It’s a game log with commentary, full of valuable insights and lessons; taking the time to think through each move and then playing a few games yourself will get you up to speed very quickly.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/170187/annotated-game-part-1

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/170597/annotated-game-part-2

Then there is this discussion thread on strategy – more recent and much shorter than the above:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2893767/two-and-half-experts-discuss-tigris-euphrates-stra