The goal of Bombay is to have the most rupees at the end of the game. Players will earn rupees from buying the different colored silk bales from the trading posts and selling them in the cities, collecting City Tokens, Client Tokens and building Palaces.
Players start their turn with 3 action tokens. Each type of action may be performed more than once (exception: buying silk bales). The possible actions and their costs are:
Move to an adjacent intersection for 1 or 2 action tokens, depending on the intersection.
Buy a silk bale for 1 or 2 action tokens and 1 or 2 rupees, depending on the color / trading post. *You may only buy one silk bale each turn*
Sell a silk bale in a city for 1 action token.
Build a Palace for 1 action token and 1 silk bale.
Players may also "consolidate their fortune" and get 1 rupee from the bank instead of performing actions.
Selling: you receive rupees according to the demand of each city and the good sold moves to the bottom:
Top - 4 rupees
Middle - 3 rupees
Bottom - 1 rupee and 1 Client Token.
Bonus: yellow silk bales sell for 1 extra rupee and purple silk bales sell for 1 extra client token.
Palaces: you may spend any one silk bale to build a palace of your color in any intersection without a palace built and receive any bonus tokens at that location. Whenever an opponent goes to a spot with one of your palaces, you receive 1 rupee from the bank.
Bonus tokens: Client Token Bonus, City Token Bonus, 2 Rupees Bonus, Silk Bale Bonus (choose a silk bale from the leftmost market to get for free).
At the end of the game, players receive rupees according to majority of Palaces + Client Tokens:
2 player game: 1st = 4, 2nd = 0
3 player game: 1st = 6, 2nd = 2, 3rd 0
4 player game: 1st = 8, 2nd = 4, 3rd 2, 4th = 0
5 player game: 1st = 8, 2nd = 6, 3rd 4, 4th = 2, 5th = 0
City Tokens: you receive one City Token of the color corresponding to that city when you sell a silk bale there for the first time, provided there are still tokens of that color left. Bonus City Tokens can also be gained by building a Palace in an intersection with such a token. You may only have one City Token of each color.
At the end of the game, players receive:
0 rupees for 1 or 2 different City Tokens
4 rupees for 3 different City Tokens
8 rupees for 4 different City Tokens
The player with the most rupees wins. Ties are broken by the number of Client Tokens.