Nippon: Zaibatsu · Board game rules
How does the Local Market action work with two players?
Quick answer
In a 2-player game, only 2 Influence spaces per Local Market count toward the limit, but you may still place on a 3rd (or 4th) empty space if your token outvalues an existing one, forcing the lowest-value token off.
Details
The Local Markets action lets you spend 1–3 Goods matching the Demand tile's type to place an Influence token on an appropriate Influence space in a Region's Local Market, then gain either a Region bonus (2/2/2/3 Goods) or 2 Money for each activation [p.14 — LOCAL MARKETS ACTION]. To determine the correct Influence token value, check the table on the Main board based on the Goods' level (1/2/3-level Goods correspond to different value ranges) [p.14 — LOCAL MARKETS ACTION].
For the space itself: if empty, you may place freely (ignoring preprinted values); if occupied, you may only replace the token if your new one has a strictly higher value, returning the old token to its owner [p.14 — LOCAL MARKETS ACTION].
The key 2-player rule is the space limit. Normally there is a limit of available Influence spaces per Local Market (2/3/4 for 2/3/4 players), but in a 2-player game you may choose any 2 spaces in the Local Market to occupy [p.14 — LOCAL MARKETS ACTION]. Once you've filled those, you may still replace existing tokens with higher-valued ones as normal. Additionally, in a 2-player game you may place a token on a 3rd empty space in the Local Market, but only if that new token's value is higher than at least one token already there — and if you do, you must immediately return the lowest-value token in that Local Market to its owner, keeping the total at 2 [p.14 — LOCAL MARKETS ACTION; p.24 — REMEMBER].
Watch out: This exception lets you effectively "push out" the weakest token by placing a stronger one on an otherwise unavailable 3rd space — but you cannot use it just to add a token without meeting the higher-value condition relative to at least one occupied space.