In Marchia Orientalis, players get the order to develop the eastern territories (latin "Marchia Orientalis") of King Otto's Empire in the 10th Century. Starting with one single city tile, they buy farms, fund monasteries, and in the end erect the castles to defend themselves against enemies from inside and outside their territory (mark). To put a new tile to your mark, you buy it from the market. If it is from one of your spaces, you pay the money to the bank; if you buy it out of the track of another player, you pay the price to him. The tile may be put to your mark only if you have matching trading symbols on both tiles (supply chain monastery/farm-village-city-castle). If a tile has neighbors all around, you get the according victory points. As an alternative, you can choose to draw two new tiles from the pile and offer them in your track of the market. Since you are not allowed to buy tiles in such turn, you must decide whether to make them expensive and hope that you can afford them on your next turn — or to make them cheap and take the risk that others buy them before you have the chance to do so. Final scoring includes bonus points for most tiles of each type of building and money as well as non-finished buildings (half the value).