Vinci

Vinci is Philippe Keyaerts’s civilization game of expansion, scoring, and timely decline—the direct design ancestor of Small World. Each player selects a civilization defined by a pair of randomly combined specialization tiles. Those abilities determine extra units, easier conquest, defensive strength, or bonus scoring from particular regions. Players enter the European map from its edges, then spread into adjacent provinces by committing the required wooden pieces; conquest is deterministic, so the puzzle is how far a limited population can stretch without becoming vulnerable. At the end of every turn, controlled provinces and civilization powers generate victory points. Growth inevitably stalls as rivals remove units and the empire becomes too dispersed. A player can then spend a turn putting that civilization into decline: most pieces disappear, the remaining provinces continue to score, and a fresh civilization enters on a later turn. The central decision is therefore not only where to conquer, but when the future value of a new power combination exceeds one more turn from the old empire. Across three to six players, repeated rises and collapses continually redraw Europe until the score threshold ends the game.