Somnium (2 players, 10 minutes) is a push-your-luck card game introduced as a mini-game in Fall From Heaven II, a popular mod for the Civilization 4 PC game. Somnium is played with a deck of 54 cards: 3-7 in ten suits as well as three Fool cards and a Death card. The objective is to gather cards so that your set of highest-of-each-suit sum beats that of your opponent.
Somnium is a push-your-luck card game introduced as a mini-game in Fall From Heaven II, a popular mod for the Civilization 4 PC game. Somnium is played with a deck of 54 cards: 3-7 in ten suits (Angels, Devils, Pentacles, Staves, Suns, Moons, Towers, Dragons, Swords and Cups) as well as three Fool cards and a Death card. The objective is to gather cards so that your set of highest-of-each-suit sum beats that of your opponent.
On your turn, you draw cards one at a time. In between each draw you may choose to end your turn and "bank" the cards drawn so far, but if you hit the Death card or turn up any two of the same suit, all drawn cards are discarded. The Fool cards allow you to steal a card from your opponent. In the context of the computer game, you stand to win a minor diplomacy bonus towards other leaders by besting them in a tournament game, but will suffer a likewise relation penalty by losing such a game.
- Game Designer: Derek "Kael" Paxton
- Original programmer: Stéphane "Sto" Nadry
- Art: Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and Jason Engle
