Agricola is a
Euro Game by Uwe Rosenberg, in which the players take on the role of pre-industrial farmers. (For those of you who
speak Latin, this should not be surprising.) Players use their family members to take various actions to build up their farm:
- Building fences to make pastures, in which one of three kinds of animal (sheep, pigs, and cattle) can be raised.
- Plowing fields, in which grain and vegetables can be grown and harvested.
- Adding rooms to your house (which gives you room for "family growth" that lets you get an extra person and an extra action), and later renovating it (upgrading a wood shack to a more valuable clay hut, and later to a still more valuable stone house).
- Building Major and Minor Improvements to give you an advantage (like letting you produce food or gather certain resources faster).
- Taking up Occupations to help out around the farm and (like Improvements) give yourself an advantage.
This board game contains examples of the following tropes:
- Automaton Horses: Your family members need to eat, your farm animals don't. Justified, in that they tend to be kept in pastures and are presumably subsisting on grass.
- Boring, but Practical: while playing combinations of cards can become very powerfull, it also costs turns and resources to set it properly up. Instead, simply covering the basics like plowing fields, grabbing resources and food are solid moves to net you points and possibilities in the long run.
- Gratuitous Latin: The game is named after the Latin word for "farmer", presumably to give it an old-fashioned feel to go with the theme of playing as a 17th century farmer.
- One-Word Title: The game's title is Agricola, Gratuitous Latin for "farmer".
- Recursive Reality: The game features several "Room" tiles, in one of which a game of Agricola is being played.
- Shout-Out: A number of them on the card art.
- The Stone Carrier looks uncannily like Obelix
- The Dock Worker is a caricature of Klaus Teuber, creator of Settlers of Catan. Its effect is even based on the "port trading" mechanic from Catan.
- Another of the room tiles features a game of Bohnanza, another game by Uwe Rosenberg.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Like many Euro games, you need various resources in order to build up your farm, like Wood, Clay, Stone, and Reed to build Improvements and upgrade your farm house, and Food to pay for certain actions (undertaking Occupations) and to feed your family each turn.
