Foundations of Rome FAQ
110 questions players ask · Updated Nov 10, 2026 · Full rulebook
Components and Setup
Player Turns
- Is money limited in Foundations of Rome, or can players keep taking Take Income actions without end?
- Can a player who has nothing to build or buy still take the Take Income action?
- Is there a limit on how much money a player can hold or collect?
- On your turn, do you take all three actions or just one?
- Can you buy more than one Deed or build more than one building in a turn?
- Can you overbuild when you have no spare Lot markers to mark the vacated lots?
- When overbuilding, can a replaced building's footprint outside the new building become an empty lot?
- When overbuilding several buildings, must the new one be bigger than their combined size, or than each of them?
- Can one building be built over two or more smaller buildings at once?
- If an overbuild removes a residential building, does the population track drop?
- When the last six Deed cards of an era are on the board, do they slide over when one is bought?
- Can you buy a Deed if all your Lot markers are already on the City board?
- Must you build buildings in order of increasing size, starting from size 1?
- Can players keep taking income with nobody buying the last Deed in a round?
The End of an Era
- Does the era end as soon as the last Deed card is drawn, or must every Deed on the board be bought first?
- What happens if nobody wants to buy the last Deed of an era?
- Who takes the first player token when a new era starts?
- What does the first player token do in the base game, beyond marking who starts?
End of Era Scoring
- When a Civic building scores 1 VP for every two Citizens on adjacent Residential Buildings, does an odd number round up or down?
- Does the population track reset, add up, or rise between eras?
- At end of era, who gets the population leader bonus, and do you score buildings again each era?
- How does a Civic building that scores 1 point per adjacent Civic building work?
- How many points does a civic building that scores per Silver on adjacent Commercial buildings get?
- Do the flat victory points on commercial buildings score at every era's end or only at game end?
End of Game
Monuments Expansion
- Do Temple of Vulcan, Temple of Minerva and Tower of Wonders count as civic buildings, or as the type printed on their card?
- Do Temple of Vulcan, Temple of Minerva or Tower of Wonders count as civic buildings for civic adjacency scoring?
- How much silver is the Temple of Vulcan worth when scored, and does each adjacent building add to it?
- Does the Tower of Wonders score its 3 VP at the end of every era, or only once?
- What is the most VP Imperial Harbor can score over a game?
- How and when do monuments score?
- When you build over a monument you own, where does that monument go?
- Can a larger normal building be built on top of a Monument?
- How do you build the Pantheon when it requires zero Lot markers on the board?
- Do a monument's build requirements still need to be met after the monument is placed?
- Do monuments count as buildings when another monument checks for a building requirement?
- Can lot markers alone satisfy a Watchtower's requirement for two lots on the board edge?
- Must the size 3+ building for Temple of Mars be a commercial building?
- When a monument must be built on an edge, does its whole footprint need to touch the edge?
- What does a monument requirement of 4+ lots worth of a building type mean?
- Do commercial monuments pay Silver each time you take Take Income, including the Temple of Vulcan's adjacency Silver?
- How is the Temple of Minerva's population scored, and does its value change as neighbours are built?
- Can Temple of Apollo be built when all players are tied at zero on the population track?
Trading & Stealing Module
Objectives Module
- Does having zero of something qualify for a Fewest objective?
- How many victory points does an Objective's bonus give, and where is it listed?
- When are hidden Objectives checked, and does 'before the end of the game' mean you can claim one earlier?
- When are the hidden Objective cards dealt, before or after the starting lots are placed?
- What does 'discard pile' mean on the Investor objective card?
Invocations Module
- How does the Winds of Change invocation let you rebuild over a building?
- Does Blessing of Fortune pay Silver on every commercial building on the board after you take income, including your own?
- Can you build on a lot claimed by Expand Boundaries before its Deed is revealed?
- Does Divine Favor let you choose from any unbuilt monument in the box, or only those in play?
Player Roles Module
- Does the Frugal role's Deed discount apply when the adjacent lot has only buildings on it?
- Does the Efficient role's +1 Silver per commercial building also add VP at the end of the game?
- If Militant lets the active player take Silver but they have none, can Greedy still take Silver from them?
- Does Patron of Travelers give +2 population once, or every era?
- Does Hospitable's extra citizen count for civic buildings that score adjacent population?
- When does the Eloquent role's extra +2 Citizens apply?
Will of the Consul (Cooperative Module)
- Do Will of the Consul setups count the Consul as a player?
- How often does the Consul act, and does it take a deed and build?
- What does the Consul do after the last Deed card is bought?
- At the start of a new era, does the Consul card reset to its Planning side?
- In Will of the Consul, when is the Consul card passed to the next player?
- Does the Consul score 1 VP per coin its coin buildings produce at the end of Era 3?
- In Will of the Consul, does the player with the most population still score their population VP as well as the majority bonus?
- How does the Will of the Consul module set the minimum Deed price?
- Can the Consul's minimum Deed price go down if a commercial building is overbuilt?
- Can Roads of Fortune be used together with the Will of the Consul module?
Foundations of Rome: Roads of FortuneExpansion
- When do Roads of Fortune Milestone markers go back to the players, and when do their rewards score?
- Do the alternate Monument cards from Roads of Fortune apply to the base game and other expansions, or only when Roads of Fortune is in play?
- Do the alternate Temple of Vulcan or Temple of Minerva, which add a Civic type, score anything extra for that civic type?
- Do you need influence on an edge to be eligible for that edge's Roads of Fortune reward, and are rewards given only to players with influence there?
- For Roads of Fortune edge rewards that say most or largest, do you count only buildings on that edge?
- How does Ceres calculate her influence on a board edge in Roads of Fortune?
- Do you need the extra Favor tokens when playing with Roads of Fortune?
- On Road 4A, does a victory point symbol with no number mean 1 VP per building?
- What does the Roads of Fortune road 4B option to spend a trade token to purchase any lot allow?
- Can unused Invocation cards be discarded in place of coins to buy lots on Roads of Fortune road 8B?
- Do lot markers placed on a Roads of Fortune objective by road 7B come back to the player?
- When are road tiles resolved during Roads of Fortune era scoring?
- When do you add population from a road reward population token?
- How many VP does an era 3 road reward give for each building on its edge?
- Is there a Milestone marker limit per player count in Roads of Fortune?
Foundations of Rome: Gardens of CeresExpansion
- How does Ceres buy a Deed card in solo mode, and does she pay for it?
- How does Ceres build a Monument when a card shows the construct-monument icon?
- When setting up solo Ceres, how many Monuments are drawn, and must they differ in size?
- In solo mode, does Ceres's adjacency scoring count garden tiles per tile or per cluster, and does it count tiles or icons?
- For solo Ceres, do her population and commerce garden tiles count when she scores civic buildings, and do they count for the player?
- When Ceres scores population at end of era, whose population does she score?
- Does Ceres place Lot markers during setup?
- Where does Ceres place a garden tile when she owns no lots next to her parks?
- When Ceres picks the Deed nearest existing plots, do empty owned lots count, or only laid garden tiles?
- In what order does Ceres build garden tiles during Enlarge Park?
- What does Ceres do with a Claim Deed action when no Deed matches, or she has no Lot markers?
- If Ceres has several Deeds to choose from but no Lot markers on the board, which Deed does she take?
- When Ceres takes a Bribe, where does she start adding coins on the Deed board?
- Can Gardens of Ceres be played with more than one player?
- In solo Ceres play, where does the drawn action card go after you resolve a Ceres card?
- Do civic buildings score every adjacent Gardens of Ceres garden tile, and how many points is each worth?
- In solo Gardens of Ceres, do four adjacent garden tiles of the same kind count as four buildings for a civic building?