About Commercium: The Silk Route Empires, from BoardGameGeek:
Commercium – The Silk Route Empires is a medium weight, competitive unit-placement game for 2–5 players, set across the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han Empires of the 1st century AD.
Players compete to earn the most victory points as they travel from empire to empire, buying and selling historically valuable goods unique to each region while competing for limited opportunities on a shared board. A different global objective and changing selection of merchants with specialized abilities create new combinations and priorities each game.
The central tension comes from choosing your own secret objectives: taking on more creates greater scoring potential, but unfinished objectives carry penalties. Rivals may claim resources you were counting on, turning long-term plans into tactical decisions about when to commit, when to pivot, and when to pursue a different opportunity.
Easy to learn but highly variable, Commercium combines competitive unit placement, asymmetric abilities, push-your-luck objective selection, and multiple paths to victory.
-description from the publisher
