Baghdad: The City of Peace – Three Turns Later, It Finally Works

A historical Middle Eastern theme in a euro game? That’s not something you see every day. Baghdad: The City of Peace takes us somewhere that still feels fresh in board gaming, right in the heart of the Abbasid Caliphate during one of history’s great golden ages. You play as viziers serving the caliph in the City of Peace, competing for influence while attracting scholars, scientists and artists to your household, constructing buildings across Baghdad, and helping raise the caliph’s grand palace.

👥 1-4 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 90-120 minutes
📝 Designers: Fabio Lopiano & Nestore Mangone
🎨 Artwork: Roland MacDonald

🏢 Publisher: Alley Cat Games (review copy provided)

Gameplay Overview

The game flows from planning to payoff, round after round. At the start of your turn, you slide your previously played character cards one space to the right, triggering any that leave your board. Starting characters usually give simple rewards, day characters give bonuses if their conditions are met, and night characters score points at the end of the game if you’ve completed their objectives. Then you play a new character into the leftmost slot on your board, adding its skill and boat icons to those already visible. Managing which icons are active at any given time decides what you can actually do each round, so planning ahead really matters.

Once your new character is in place, you move your boats along the river. The number of active boat icons on your characters tells you how many spaces you can move in total. Boats can pick up goods from river spaces or dock at ports to trade them for money or other rewards. Once a boat reaches a port, it’s there for good, and it’ll count toward your final score.

After that, your vizier travels through the city, moving one quadrant each turn. On your very first turn, you can start wherever you like, but after that your vizier always moves one step clockwise around the city. Wherever your vizier stops decides your main action. City spaces let you claim tiles such as students, patients, books or artefacts, which you can place on your board if you have the right skills. Students can temporarily boost your skills or help move boats. Patients give you goods when you place them, then you flip them over to their other side. Books can unlock wisdom rewards when you collect enough of them, and artefacts will give you points at the end of the game.

You can also stop at a building site to construct something by paying coins and meeting the required skills. Buildings can give lasting effects and points later on. If you visit a palace site instead, you spend goods to add new sections to the caliph’s palace, placing your architects there for prestige. If you need to travel further around the board, you can spend step tokens to move your vizier an extra space or two.

Before ending your turn, you have to pay your students and deal with any nearby patients. You pay one coin for each student connected to your vizier’s space and lose one favour for each patient. If you can’t pay or don’t have enough favour to lose, you gain shame tokens instead, which cost you points at the end.

Once that’s done, you draw a new character card from the wisdom area and refill the empty slot with a fresh card from either the day or night deck, depending on where you drew from. The city also refills its tiles, ready for the next player.

At almost any time, you can take bonus actions if you have the resources. You can buy another boat as long as you don’t already have one waiting in the starting space, spend favour to gain coins or goods, or use wild tokens and students to temporarily boost your skills.

The game continues until everyone has played all of their character cards. When the last turn is over, players count up their prestige from every possible source: boats in port, completed buildings, architects in the palace, fulfilled night characters both in your discard and still on your board, collected artefacts and your position on the favour track. Don’t forget to subtract any points lost for shame. The vizier with the highest total prestige becomes the caliph’s most distinguished courtier, earning a place of honour in the City of Peace.

Gameplay & Flow

Baghdad: The City of Peace sits right in that middle to heavy euro range. It’s structured but doesn’t feel stiff or mechanical. The main thing that makes it tick is the card timeline system. Every character you play stays on your board for three turns before sliding off and triggering its delayed effect. It’s simple enough to explain with “slide, play, act,” but once you’ve played a few rounds, you realise how much it shapes everything. Each choice you make now echoes a few turns later, for better or worse.

Truth be told, that’s where the tension comes from. You’re always planning ahead but never quite sure if you’ll have the goods, skills or timing to pull it off when the moment comes. Around that, the rest of the game fits together neatly. The river keeps your economy moving, the city turns your skills into action, and the buildings and palace give you something bigger to aim for. It all feels like part of the same system, nothing tacked on just for show.

Money and goods are tight, so you’re constantly making small trade-offs: do you expand or just hold things together? And because your vizier always moves exactly one step each turn, the pacing stays steady. You can see what’s coming, you can think ahead, but the game doesn’t drag. It gives you time to plan without turning into a math exercise.

Strategy & Luck

This is the kind of game that rewards patience and foresight. The clever turns are usually the ones you set up two or three rounds earlier. That sliding timeline turns every move into a little gamble, not about luck, but about whether your plan will still hold when the moment finally arrives.

There’s a bit of luck in the mix. The new character cards and city tiles might not always appear when you want them to, and sometimes you just have to adapt and work with what’s there. Still, it rarely feels unfair. Since the display is open, you can plan around it, and a good player can always adapt. The real challenge isn’t luck at all, it’s efficiency. Overspend, ignore upkeep, or plan too far ahead without securing resources, and the game quietly punishes you. It’s tight, not harsh, but enough to keep you alert.

Player Interaction

Player interaction here is quiet but real. Nobody’s blocking or attacking anyone, yet everyone’s chasing the same limited spaces. That’s where the tension builds. The city and palace can fill up quickly, and getting there first matters more than you might expect. When two players go for the same tiles or palace sections, it turns into a silent race that you can feel around the table.

There’s a quiet race happening on the river too. Some ports are just more tempting than others, and it always feels good to slide in right before someone else was clearly planning to do so. You’ll often catch yourself glancing at other players’ boards, trying to guess their next move. It’s not cutthroat, but it keeps you aware of the table.

Let’s be real, if you prefer direct confrontation, this won’t scratch that itch. But if you enjoy the kind of tension where awareness and timing do all the work, Baghdad handles it perfectly.

Theme & Atmosphere

The theme isn’t just decoration. Baghdad’s golden age runs through the entire design, and it feels natural rather than forced. The students, patients, books and artefacts all make sense in the world of the game. You’re helping a city of learning and culture grow.

The characters you bring into your household are real historical figures, and that gives the game authenticity without turning it into a lesson. There’s no need for flavour text or storytelling, because the mechanics already express what the game is about. The palace in the middle grows as players contribute to it, and even though you’re all chasing prestige, there’s a shared sense of progress that fits the title “City of Peace.”

Honestly, it’s nice to see a euro game that steps away from the usual medieval or industrial settings for once. The tone and artwork make it stand out, and the theme feels respectful, not borrowed.

Components & Art

Once the board is on the table, it’s hard not to stop and take a look. The board has a circular layout that feels balanced, with the river cutting through one side and the palace standing proudly in the middle. The colours are rich and warm, and the layout makes sense after a single round.

The wooden pieces are lovely. The towers, the dome, and the boats give the board some shape, and when the palace starts stacking up, it becomes the real centrepiece. The icons are clear, the tiles are thick, and nothing feels flimsy.

Yes, the table can get busy once everything’s out, but it’s a good kind of busy, more like a living city than a messy board. Even with all that colour, it stays readable and practical. It looks detailed, but it plays smoothly.

Pacing & Replayability

The early rounds are calm while you build up your household. The middle of the game tightens as coins and tiles start to disappear, and the last few turns can get intense as everyone tries to make their final moves. The listed 90-120 minutes feels right. Three players strike the best balance between flow and competition. Two is quicker and more tactical, while four makes the game run longer, but it also adds a bit more pressure for those shared spots.

Replayability comes from the optional modules: public works, contracts and objectives. Public works adds shared projects, contracts create short-term trade goals, and objectives reward specific milestones. Once you’ve learned the base game, mixing these in gives it new aspects without changing the flow. It’s a neat way to keep the game fresh for different groups without weighing it down.

Accessibility & Complexity

Baghdad isn’t simple, but it’s clear once you see it in motion. The rules connect nicely, so even though there’s a lot to manage, it never feels overwhelming. The fourteen-plus age rating fits.

The rulebook deserves real credit. It’s well structured, easy to follow and full of helpful examples. The notes in purple are especially good for catching tricky details. There’s a section for solo play and modules, and a full icon reference on the last page that’s actually useful mid-game. The only complaint is the shape. That wide, square format looks nice but isn’t exactly user-friendly. Still, as rulebooks go, this one does its job better than most.

Final Thoughts

Baghdad: The City of Peace is a slow burn of a euro. It rewards patience and attention, as every decision sends ripples a few rounds ahead, and honestly, seeing your plan finally come together a few turns later is what makes it all worth it.

If you want advice, focus on timing. Plan your card slides early, dock your boats at the right ports, and don’t stretch your economy too far. Favour is your quiet safety net, and it can save more than one round from collapse. The challenge isn’t just about being efficient; it’s about staying in rhythm with the game.

Baghdad is a game that values steady progress and thoughtful play. The more you understand its flow, the more it rewards you. And when the palace finally stands tall at the centre of the board, it’s hard not to feel a bit proud that your vizier helped make it happen.

Honestly, it’s also the kind of game where you’ll kick yourself for a bad call you made three turns ago, but that’s part of the charm. You live, you learn, and next time, maybe your vizier will remember to pay the students.

📝 We received a review copy from Alley Cat Games.