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Post game from my session this Saturday! The table ended up as The Arborec, The Universities of Jol-Nar, Sardak N'orr, The Yin Brotherhood, The L1Z1X Mindnet, and myself as The Federation of Sol. The far side of the galaxy from me was filled with wormholes, leaving myself and the Mindnet relatively disconnected. N'orr had a terrible run of luck on Distant Suns, losing his armies repeatedly to fighters and hostile locals, one world ended up having settlers from the Arborec already living there. They put up a defense but he was incensed and eradicated them for being "in his space." After a couple laws were passed, Jol-Nar began rolling into an insane technology lead, and quietly built up huge fleets, uncontested by the struggling N'orr and Arborec. The Yin kept to themselves, cautious of the N'orr and the Mindnet. I saw an opportunity to seize some valuable worlds and invaded the system neighboring the Mindnet's homeworld for my Preliminary objective. He responded with a fleet buildup, which I matched. Then, I promptly jumped my new fleet into a supernova when I explored the Final Frontier. On the next round, I tried invading his homeworld with my Advanced Carrier / Fighter fleet but the Mindnet flagship disables fighter screens and Duranium Armor meant my inability to land more than one hit a round left him unscathed. This basically ended my game, I retreated and lost most of my colonies, the Mindnet never really got running either. The game was fast, but Imperium Rex was the first Phase II objective and crowned the High Squid Empress from the Jol-Nar after a desperate attempt to stop her from taking her tenth VP on any of three different fronts. In truth, this wasn't the best game I've played. The N'orr player wasn't a regular and was clearly frustrated by a run of bad Distant Suns tokens, but my playgroup really enjoys the exploration element to them so we always end up using them. We used the star-by-star galaxy creation rules that allow homeworlds to go down anywhere, but this still meant we were all on the third ring and never more than one tile out of our regular position, and the N'orr and Arborec players never checked the Jol-Nar. I was glad to introduce new players to the game, and the gameplay was remarkably smooth, but there was less interaction than I had hoped, and almost none in the center of the board, when Mecatol Rex was almost completely surrounded by empty space. For our next game, I'd really like to keep the exploration element of the 4X formula, but would like to investigate some different implementations of it.
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Nov 30, 2015 16:24
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MikeCrotch posted:I would agree that you don't need to buy either expansion to make the game good, but you definitely should print off the alternative strategy cards from Shattered Empire (the set of eight running from Leadership to Bureaucracy). The original ones are just plain not very good and the original Imperial card drastically unbalances the game right from the off. It's fine though. People loved TI before it had expansions, you know? I'm tired of people saying Imperial is somehow unplayable or broken, when they just don't understand it. What Imperial does is create a de-facto leader out of the gate (the speaker) since someone picks it first, but as long as everyone is aware of this and sandbags them in galaxy construction and early trade deals, it shouldn't make them more likely to win. The base game understands someone will be a small leader at the start, and has tools in other parts of the game to balance that out; and even if the other players ignore this, the edge is not large. It can also be used as a small handicap for less skilled players, which is great option for a lengthy game like TI. And sure, you have to take Imp and Init, so roughly 1/3 of your turns have automatic choices for SCs, but as I said before, TI has so much going on that for your first game it's not bad at all to have a few obviously good choices in the mix. I played TI vanilla for my first 3 games and I loved it. Even though the Bureaucracy set of cards are better, the game does not require them to do be fun at all, and I'd wager people like me, the kind of people that like big, Ameritrash-y spectacles, will be too busy waging space war, negotiating space trade, and trying to conduct space diplomacy to notice a lack of elegance in one part of the game. Seriously, it's fine. It's fiiiiiiiiiine.
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Nov 30, 2015 18:00
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It's fine, but it should just be ruled as a rotation that bequeaths VP. The first guy is the Space- president or whatever, the second guy is the space-vice president. President gets VP. ViceP gets nothing. Other players draft cards. Cards don't include the 2 cards that have this ticking clock mechanism. It becomes part of the game's pacing instead of being part of this other system that kind of hints at more depth but doesn't produce any in practice. So in practice it doesn't mess anything up by existing, it's just clumsily written and incorporated. The distant suns stuff is similar. Every card needs to have a Good, Bad, and Ugly component to it, otherwise someone gets lopsidedly screwed, which makes a huge, floppy grand strategy game feel random.
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Nov 30, 2015 19:11
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Well I just ordered the base game on Amazon (no LGS anywhere close to me  ) but God bless Prime.
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Nov 30, 2015 19:40
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ZorajitZorajit posted:
This is exactly why distant suns is bad. Yeah, exploration can be more exciting, but it just usually screws one person repeatedly, which is really not fun for them. For my part, I'd rather not play than play with distant suns again.
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Dec 2, 2015 07:33
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Got my game today, holy crap it's gorgeous. But how do you all store your game, it doesn't seem to come with anything to store all the pieces in? Plastic bags the route to go?
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Dec 2, 2015 21:33
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AmericanGeeksta posted:Got my game today, holy crap it's gorgeous. But how do you all store your game, it doesn't seem to come with anything to store all the pieces in? Plastic bags the route to go? Baggies all the way. I've seen people get more elaborate, but making a bag for each race and a bag for each color will work just fine.
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Dec 2, 2015 23:25
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AmericanGeeksta posted:Got my game today, holy crap it's gorgeous. But how do you all store your game, it doesn't seem to come with anything to store all the pieces in? Plastic bags the route to go? Bag for each race. Bag for each colour. Bag for fighter/troop counters. Bag for cards.
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Dec 3, 2015 03:24
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You know it occurs to me now that putting all those little bags into one BIG bag would probably make the game a lot easier to store and carry than that big ol' unwieldy box.
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Dec 3, 2015 07:39
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I baggie up everything and can store the whole game in 1 BSG expansion box. The size of the original box is just obnoxious.
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Dec 3, 2015 11:31
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I still use the original box, mainly for its theatrical value.
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Dec 3, 2015 17:42
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hoobajoo posted:I still use the original box, mainly for its theatrical value. Agreed, the two expansion fit nicely together with the core and really look good on the shelf. I use gallon-size bags for everything, all the colored ships are in the Shards box, the race packets are in the SE box, everything else is boxed or rubber-banded in the core box along with rules, cheat sheets, tech trees (enough for everyone at the table) and some note paper with notes from previous games about what house rules were good and what wasn't.
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Dec 3, 2015 19:14
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Last time we played this was a few months ago, and someone admitted later they might have put something that belongs in one of the Race-specific bags into one of the Colour-specific bags. I'm far too demoralised by this information to go wading through them all 
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Dec 4, 2015 16:18
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Yoshimo posted:Last time we played this was a few months ago, and someone admitted later they might have put something that belongs in one of the Race-specific bags into one of the Colour-specific bags. I'm far too demoralised by this information to go wading through them all This, or the reverse, happens basically every time I play TI, except minus the person telling anyone about it. We sit down the next time and someone goes "poo poo, where's my race techs" or "what's this pile of councillors doing here" and we have to go searching. If the previous game was recent enough for me to remember who was playing what, I usually yell at them a bit for being unable to follow the simple instructions I always recite at the end of a game: "The color bag gets the pieces, the (non-race) techs, the promissory notes, and the units rules card thingy. Everything else should have your race's symbol and goes in their race bag." You wouldn't think that'd be so hard but it is somehow.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:46
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I bought TI and both expansions probably two years ago now and we've played it four times in total. I absolutely love the game but my group cannot get over how counter intuative some of the things are when you're playing with people that might not usually play really big board games. There's all these ships and cool technologies but really they're only worth researching if you're going for them as a victory condition. It feels like it should be a Civilisation style wargame and my friends all play it like that but it just isn't one at all. This means my games always go on forever and eventually we just have to give up because we've run out of time. Even though we play Age of Empire with the variant bureaucracy rule - which is that you play with the objectives revealed but a token on each one that bureaucracy removes - so what you need to do is always there people are just too engaged with trying to fight. It's a real shame. I love all the variety in the game but I cannot get it to "work". Mostly we've moved to Eclipse and Forbidden Stars because they're actually wargames and that's what my group seems to want. Now the boxes just sit there looking at me. I've tried to sell it but the boxes are so enormous that the postage almost always makes it not worth bothering. I'm really hoping that they release a new one and slim it down a bit. Or at least make it take slightly less time.
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Dec 4, 2015 20:08
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Isn't Eclipse even more economic than TI?
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Dec 5, 2015 15:00
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nimby posted:Isn't Eclipse even more economic than TI? Eclipse is in theory but the economy drives your war machine (or your defence machine) in any game that isn't just two players. While building an army in Twilight Imperium is often a bit of a trap since you should only be fighting specifically to get your VPs.
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Dec 7, 2015 12:29
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Taear posted:Even though we play Age of Empire with the variant bureaucracy rule - which is that you play with the objectives revealed but a token on each one that bureaucracy removes - so what you need to do is always there people are just too engaged with trying to fight. You need to hammer it into your group's skulls that fighting is worthless except when it gets you victory points, or when it gets you resources which enable you to get more victory points. That said, there's a lot of fighting in your average game of TI when the players are competent. But wanting to fight for fighting's sake seems to be by far the most common error new TI groups make.
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Dec 7, 2015 13:49
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Unless you play a Chaos in the Old World/TI mashup as Khorne, in which case fighting would get you VPs. It's really ripe for a battlefleet gothic/40k mod.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:50
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Unless you play a Chaos in the Old World/TI mashup as Khorne, in which case fighting would get you VPs. Travelling to another system requires a Warp diceroll.
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Dec 8, 2015 13:20
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Geisladisk posted:You need to hammer it into your group's skulls that fighting is worthless except when it gets you victory points, or when it gets you resources which enable you to get more victory points. That said, there's a lot of fighting in your average game of TI when the players are competent. But wanting to fight for fighting's sake seems to be by far the most common error new TI groups make. I know. They know that they have to not fight but it just doesn't 'feel' right and leaves everyone a bit disappointed. Everyone seems to have that worry that they're going to be attacked so they build up ships and are using loads of their turns doing things that are technically useless. Yes it's just my group dynamic but it drags the game on even more than it needs to be.
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Dec 13, 2015 10:41
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Taear posted:I know. They know that they have to not fight but it just doesn't 'feel' right and leaves everyone a bit disappointed. New players will do bad things that experienced players have learned to avoid, because that's what experience means. At a point, you can lead the horse to water, but it'll take him a couple tries to learn how likely he is to be attacked while he drinks.
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Dec 13, 2015 14:45
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Even experienced players can get that way. I was in one game as the Ghosts and a veteran player was correctly holding me out of Mallice, because once the Ghosts have Mallice it's nearly impossible to get them out again. One of the best long term strategies for the Ghosts is to take Mallice, and build a Space Dock and Refinery there. The guy who'd gotten to Mallice first knew that, had seen how effective that could be....and yet, when one of his neighbors attacked him, he still went on tilt and poured everything into a war with that guy, which let me bum rush and seize Mallice. Even players who know better can get emotionally invested in a war that's a bad idea. Which, I suppose, is one reason that TI is such a great Space Empire Simulator. 
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Dec 13, 2015 16:53
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How often do goons find themselves playing TI? For example, before everybody has holiday obligations at the end of the year, my group usually gets 3 - 5 games a month in. Mosty 4 - 6 players, occasionally 8, but we can knock out two 6ish hour games in a day.
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Dec 14, 2015 08:09
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Nitis posted:How often do goons find themselves playing TI? I used to get a couple a month in, but a couple people moved away and my playgroup lost critical mass. I'm down to about 2 a year, but I'm going to move next year, and plan to get that number back up there.
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Dec 14, 2015 08:25
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hoobajoo posted:New players will do bad things that experienced players have learned to avoid, because that's what experience means. At a point, you can lead the horse to water, but it'll take him a couple tries to learn how likely he is to be attacked while he drinks. Nobody wants to play it any more because it takes too long. That's what I was saying - it's a shame but I never get to play the game now.
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Dec 14, 2015 10:04
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Nitis posted:How often do goons find themselves playing TI? 1 or 2 times a year. Although it was zero for the last five
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Dec 14, 2015 15:23
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3 years ago I started a year-long, 10 game tournament with 5 friends. Due to people getting into relationships we still need to play the 10th
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Dec 14, 2015 18:14
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nimby posted:3 years ago I started a year-long, 10 game tournament with 5 friends. Due to people getting into relationships we still need to play the 10th Just most wins out of 10? The three-peat is the Holy Grail of my group. A couple of us have been at two consecutive wins, pushing for three, but the other players haven't let that happen. It gets intense.
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Dec 14, 2015 18:46
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Taear posted:Nobody wants to play it any more because it takes too long. That's what I was saying - it's a shame but I never get to play the game now. Oh, I see, that does suck. Did you use the SE objectives and artifact worlds? Those encourage aggression, which cuts down on the arms-race cold war situations. Or if you live in a medium or big city, you could try to find a playgroup outside your normal board game pals.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:08
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Nitis posted:Just most wins out of 10? The idea I had was to let people write down a pick for their race, player last in the rankings has first dibs (so the leader needs a lot of backup picks). I mainly just wanted an excuse to play with some of the races I never seen to draw. One of the players made a massively convoluted scoring system that means the tenth game is worth 7x as much as the first. The tournament itself ended up seeing that same score-making guy gunning for me for most of the games, where in one of the earlier games he openly stated he'd let his other neighbour win cause why not. I got back at him last game by using turn 1 Warfare II to assault his home system, somehow he didn't see this coming. The tenth game doesn't even need to be played, cause that other neighbour has too many points now for him to catch up to. But I still had my fun playing stuff like Nekro Virus and the fungus dudes.
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Dec 15, 2015 06:29
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Nitis posted:How often do goons find themselves playing TI? Last year we probably did like 30 games. We've done two or three this year. Mostly because it just takes too drat long.
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Dec 15, 2015 22:14
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The first game of 2016 is looking like it could end up with the full six. On that note, what table layouts work for you lot? We may have to move the various decks and strategy card row to a side table
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Dec 24, 2015 12:30
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I have never played this before and thus spent most of today reading rules and strategy arguments in an attempt to try and not lose a 7-player game tomorrow. Everybody going is seriously into board games, but a day of TI is a special event so I have no idea how relatively experienced/inexperienced they are, except for the host who I'm assuming has all three rulebooks memorized given the absurdity of the setup: Winnu - Naalu - Xxcha - Letnev - Yin - Creuss - Yssaril Effective Strategy Cards 1 Leadership 2 Diplomacy II 3 Assembly II 4 Production 5 Trade III 6 Warfare II 7 Technology II 8 Bureaucracy Rules In Effect [huge long list of stuff from both expansions] Adjusted tech tree I was able to read through the section explaining the yellow brach, scrolled down, grew horrified, and just looked at the linked image instead. It makes a lot of sense, but this guy makes goons look well-adjusted  As Winnu, I'm starting speaker and start out with Stasis Capsules and my choice of either Integrated Economics or Neural Computing. I think this at least means that if I lose it was probably my own drat fault unless I can't convince everybody to gang up on the Yssaril, it which case it'll be their faults and I'll hate them forever. I'll follow up with the post-game recap, but I'm mostly anticipating heavy rules-lawyering, bickering, and ruined friendships.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:19
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Trasson posted:post of the year Alright, now I'm concerned. At least no Distant Suns, but we're using long war and just about every "pointless bookkeeping" variant. Also, Political Intrigue. We're starting at 9am and we'll be dedicated to finishing it and the host practically begged everybody to bone up on the rules and strategies, but if one guy in particular doesn't learn very quickly to shut his trap and quit dictating other peoples' turns, I'll bring the needle to sew it closed myself. That guy pretty much ruined BSG 
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Dec 27, 2015 03:47
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I will recap the game and conclude the necromancy (which is unfortunate, but how much can you talk about a game you kind of never get to play?). So from the aforementioned setup, the people playing the Letnev and Yssaril didn't show up, and thank god because one of them was the dreaded chatterbox. Of the people there, only two had played before (though they'd played a lot), and one of the others hadn't even glanced at the rules which is probably why setup alone took two hours. So It was a five-person game and we just used the vanilla suggested board setup with an extra ring of tiles around our home worlds. I thought everything I'd seen only had three layers, but whatever on that one. I got really stupidly lucky on my tile draw with a three planet system (amongst a bunch of other beefy ones) and so many tech planets that buying up the yellow tech tree was ostensibly free, especially since the Winnu don't need to chew up a strategy token to pounce on somebody's else's tech turn. The house-rules tech tree was key. One of the vets hadn't used it before and said it made the game a drastically nicer experience for him. Crucially for me, War Suns became a yellow which required any one tech of each color as prereqs, and who-knows-who-cares became red instead of yellow. But it's four layers deep at worst, and the progression goes from lovely to good. But the reason I really mention it is because it shifts the starting techs. The host said it does nerf the Yssaril somewhat, but for me I got Stasis Capsules and Integrated Economy, which meant I got to fill up my area almost instantly along with the ability to shuttle my ground troops around to claim planets for free. I abused the hell out of this. Pirates to my left, Naalu to my right, and I didn't even interact with the other two. I ended up getting good buffers of red zones and empty space on either side of my home world, and since the two actually-violent races didn't end up playing it took an incredibly long time for anybody to go to war with anybody. My only battle for the first three turns was the pirates attacking a destroyer in empty space to fulfill their preliminary objective. Around turn three or four we finally got a warmongering objective, and the pirates rolled so incredibly poorly against Yin that they lost four dreadnoughts in one go and didn't have a serviceable fleet until extreme endgame. He didn't use any wormholes until literally his last move, other than to block them and get that one galaxy first thing. Shortly thereafter, the Yin...I don't know how the Yin got crushed so badly, but it really must have been the Xxcha. At any rate, they fell out of the running midway through. As for the Naalu, that was the guy who didn't read the rules so people went easy on him, at least until the very end when he'd been so coddled that he was about to win. At that point, I gravity-slung a war sun with some backup to his home world and took it with no resistance  At this point, it was midnight and the Xxcha decided to rules-lawyer the hell out of his Assembly turn. He had stalled and saved up all of his influence, used an action card to search the deck for an emperor card he had in mind for an easy VP, and ran into Lords of Mecdal Rex in the meantime. Crucially, Naalu were well-fortified there and willing to give him the promissory note to take a VP off his win condition just to watch me lose my poo poo. At this point I pulled a sabotage on the initial action card because gently caress that and more rules-lawyering about action card timing ensued. So, there you go. 16 hours and it would have taken another turn for somebody to win. Three of us were neck-and-neck, another guy had lost his home world, and the last guy had like 3 VP. Simulated turns were great, long war.........yeah. After dealing with all of those bullshit housekeeping rules, I kind of wish I'd kept a closer eye on them and used them more effectively (or at all) because the more experienced people made good use of them and eventually ended up clowning my economic power. I hate that it takes so drat long, because I really want another shot at it since I actually know how to play now. My turns could have been much, much more efficient. Propaganda Machine fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Dec 28, 2015 |
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Dec 28, 2015 11:16
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quote is not edit
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Dec 28, 2015 11:22
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I'm still utterly mystified at how TI3 takes so long for people. My one and only game we played as literal filler after a CCG tournament, and we were done within 2 or 3 hours.
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Dec 29, 2015 10:02
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Corbeau posted:I'm still utterly mystified at how TI3 takes so long for people. My one and only game we played as literal filler after a CCG tournament, and we were done within 2 or 3 hours. It's because we appreciate the finer nuances of political intrigue.
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Dec 29, 2015 12:19
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Corbeau posted:I'm still utterly mystified at how TI3 takes so long for people. My one and only game we played as literal filler after a CCG tournament, and we were done within 2 or 3 hours. How the hell? We've played dozens of games. 5 and 6 man games take five hours at the absolute minimum.
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Dec 29, 2015 13:23
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