Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory

Player count determines roles: two players use the Working Class and Capitalist Class; three add the Middle Class; four add the State. Public companies, the treasury, and policy still function at lower counts, and two-player elections still include Middle Class voting cubes.

Play five rounds of preparation, actions, production, elections, and scoring; skip preparation in round one. Action order is Working Class, Middle Class, Capitalist Class, then State. Each takes five turns, playing one card for its effect or discarding it for a basic action, plus at most one free action per turn.

Role development: the Working and Middle Classes spend health, education, or luxury equal to population to gain prosperity and immediately score its new value. Healthcare also gives 2 VP and a worker; education improves a worker’s skills. Working Class unions provide influence and 2 VP each round. The Middle Class can gain another prosperity during scoring if fully operational companies outnumber its prosperity value. The Capitalist Class transfers after-tax revenue to capital and scores total capital, with bonuses for new wealth milestones.

Policy and the State: propose a change to an adjacent policy section, with no competing bill already on that policy; spend 1 influence to call an immediate vote. Fiscal policy controls public companies, labor policy sets minimum wages, and other policies affect tax, welfare, trade, and immigration. In four-player games, unresolved events penalize the State before it scores the sum of its two lowest legitimacy values and its agenda; legitimacy is then halved, rounded up, and permanent tokens are added.

Production resolves each step completely before the next: produce and pay wages, cover food needs, check IMF intervention, then pay taxes. Within each step, order is State, Capitalist Class, Middle Class, Working Class. A company’s listed wage covers its entire workforce, not each worker separately.

For each bill, draw five voting cubes and let players secretly add influence. A tied vote passes. If the bill passes, the proposer earns 3 VP; other supporters earn 1 VP only if they actually contributed a supporting cube or influence.

After round five, the Capitalist Class loses 5 VP per loan. Other roles may repay loans at 55 each, losing 1 VP per unpaid 5. Add each role’s policy, inventory, and cash bonuses where applicable; the State scores 1 VP per 30 cash and counts only media influence in its inventory scoring.

Most VP wins. Break ties by matching policies 1–5: A for Working Class, B for Middle Class, C for Capitalist Class, and the agenda for State. If still tied, a tied State wins; otherwise compare voting cubes, then share victory if necessary.