Contracts & Cities

City spaces, Deal tiles, contracts and royal objectives.

Contracts

Contracts show the tea and other requirements needed for a delivery. During the optional contract step after an action, pay the required goods and receive the listed rewards. When the shared display runs low, refresh it from the shuffled contract supply as shown in the rules. Your starting contract comes from setup.

City spaces

Cities can hold factories, tea boxes, agents and market posts. Factories determine which company can import or serve tea there. Deal tiles provide a city-specific effect when activated by spending a concession. Market posts can earn their owner money when other players take tea or activate a Deal tile in that city.

Royal Orders and Mandates

The Royal Order spaces request tea for the Crown. A delivery also gives a Royal Mandate: an endgame objective, sometimes based on a majority. During maintenance, refill the Royal Mandate display to three cards, even if the Royal Orders are not all full.

When all three Royal Orders are filled, return their tea to the supply, flip all three Order tiles, discard the remaining Mandates and reveal three new ones. This full reset happens after completing the action; ordinary Mandate replenishment happens during maintenance.

Raise the Royal Supplier marker of the worker’s company by swapping it with the company immediately above it. A company already first stays there. A company entering an empty track takes first place; otherwise it takes the lowest occupied place and pushes that marker down one space. A marker pushed past fifth place leaves the track.

Deals

Each Deal tile provides its own city effect. Check the tile before spending a concession to activate it; some affect money, concessions, tea, workers, shares or company quotes. Resolve the printed effect immediately.