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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. If you don't have a 45 minute debate of the finer details of intergalactic diplomacy before every move the game would be boring and fast!
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Dec 29, 2015 14:22
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My absolute fastest game so far was with five players, clocking in at about 4 1/2 hours. That was with everyone experienced with the game, me judiciously keeping things moving, and drawing Imperium Rex as the first Stage II objective.
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Dec 29, 2015 14:46
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SettingSun posted:My absolute fastest game so far was with five players, clocking in at about 4 1/2 hours. That was with everyone experienced with the game, me judiciously keeping things moving, and drawing Imperium Rex as the first Stage II objective. Shouldn't there be at least 2 Stage II objectives before you can possibly draw Imperium Rex 
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Dec 29, 2015 15:02
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I personally know that Corbeau is a super genius so my theory is that the game was played in his head and all his opponents were mental simulations.
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Dec 29, 2015 16:35
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Well, it was a 4 player game, so that probably cuts a bit off the max time. I think it was more because there was no analysis-paralysis at all. The group had clearly played it a ton and I'd just read up on the game a couple of days prior (by total coincidence) so we all seemed to have a clear idea of what we were trying to accomplish on any given turn in order to move us toward the victory conditions. Once you cut out the AP and the empire-building-for-it's-own-sake rather than going for VPs, the fundamental mechanics flow very quickly. So it was basically Eclipse, but 50% longer for 50% more flavor.
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Dec 29, 2015 22:51
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Propaganda Machine posted: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. Err.... What was the timing on this sequence? If there was no actual voting taking place between the discussion about the promissory note and your sabotage, that's something that's in a grey area, but if there was any voting, your sabotage was too late. Though some time oughta be given to let people react. Corbeau posted:Well, it was a 4 player game, so that probably cuts a bit off the max time. I think it was more because there was no analysis-paralysis at all. The group had clearly played it a ton and I'd just read up on the game a couple of days prior (by total coincidence) so we all seemed to have a clear idea of what we were trying to accomplish on any given turn in order to move us toward the victory conditions. I can hardly believe anyone could get a decent enough grasp to have a clear strategy just by reading the rules beforehand. The rulebook is a goddamn mess even if you've got the game in front of you to familiar with everything. nimby fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 01:32
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nimby posted:I can hardly believe anyone could get a decent enough grasp to have a clear strategy just by reading the rules beforehand. The rulebook is a goddamn mess even if you've got the game in front of you to familiar with everything. The rulebook wasn't all I read. When I get interested in a boardgame I typically devour all strategy content available on BGG.
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Dec 30, 2015 01:44
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Actually we did a full day of gaming with what we call the Imperium trilogy- we play the Fall of the Empire scenario, then a game of Rex, then a regular game of Imperium. Fall of the Empire didn't last long. The Lazax spent all their resources building PDS to defend the centre of the galaxy. Meanwhile I was the Sardakk and had the traitor victory condition, so I just built a crapload of fighters and took the poorly defended Emirate's homeworld on turn 3 or so. Fall of the Empire is fun but pretty unbalanced and everyone really needs to keep in mind what the objectives are. The Emirates player definitely could have done more to defend but he was under the impression I had the "build every ship" objective I guess. I also managed to snag the win in Rex (which I'm normally terrible at), because I was Xxcha and guessed the Emirates would win on turn 8. I think it's probably the easiest way to win with Xxcha since you just need to stop everyone else from getting VPs and don't need to get them yourself. The final game was the big event. Played with a few house rules and Distant Suns (ugh), which screwed over our newest player. Unfortunately I went aggressive too early and got wrecked by a grand alliance. It was the closest game we've ever played, with the winner being decided by amount of planets since they were tied on points and # of objectives scored. Arborec continue to be super weird and I'm not sure of the best way to play them. I know you want your racial tech early, but 5 resources is really expensive. I went without it the whole game.
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Dec 30, 2015 16:50
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Blisster posted:Actually we did a full day of gaming with what we call the Imperium trilogy- we play the Fall of the Empire scenario, then a game of Rex, then a regular game of Imperium. 
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Dec 30, 2015 16:56
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So for what it's worth, part of why it took so long was three of us being inexperienced and unsure of ourselves, especially at the beginning, and the host being the sort of guy who'd bounce back to his room to check up on FAQs and errata. Both the host and the Xxcha player were also verbose in explaining possible play options to the other two newbies.nimby posted:Err.... What was the timing on this sequence? If there was no actual voting taking place between the discussion about the promissory note and your sabotage, that's something that's in a grey area, but if there was any voting, your sabotage was too late. Though some time oughta be given to let people react. He also sent us a loooong email afterwards clarifying errata and things we may or may not have done wrong, and he deemed the Sabotage legal. It went like this: Xxcha plays Assembly Xxcha declares himself speaker Xxcha selects Pirates to select policy for vote Xxcha plays action card to search the deck for the policy he wants (Emperor) In the midst of this deck search, they find Lord of Mecatol Rex They clarify that this card will destroy all of my units in the Naalu home world Naalu gets excited and offers Xxcha the VP he wanted out of this action It becomes clear that this is the policy that Xxcha is deciding on I play Sabotage So, according to the email errata, the host has deduced for himself that a sabotage can be played with full knowledge of the action card the Xxcha was looking for. The promissory note hadn't changed hands, and it was a long day but I figure that kind of has to be the machanic that would have given Xxcha his VP. And no voting beforehand.
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Jan 1, 2016 04:14
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First game of the year tomorrow. Hopefully with the full six. We're playing very light on variants as we've got a new chap and the rest of us are fairly rusty. So the alternate strategy cards and dealing everybody two secret objectives at the start (But only allowing them to claim one). This is set to the background of myself and another player both being fairly tired due to one of those irritating on-going colds.
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Jan 1, 2016 20:02
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Propaganda Machine posted:So, according to the email errata, the host has deduced for himself that a sabotage can be played with full knowledge of the action card the Xxcha was looking for. The promissory note hadn't changed hands, and it was a long day but I figure that kind of has to be the machanic that would have given Xxcha his VP. Perfectly legal then, yes. I highly advise anyone playing Twilight Imperium to either study the entire FAQ and errata set, or just print it out/download it on a tablet. A lot less headaches when people can look up tricky situations they're about to get into, so less frustration about something working so-and-so. nimby fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 2, 2016 |
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Jan 2, 2016 13:06
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:I think TI is just dune with lion dudes as the Sardaukar or Atreiades or whatever. The planet in the center is Dune. It's part of why there's this diplomatic angle to what's going on that is part of getting victory points. I would say TI borrows from a lot of elements, Dune is one but I can see a bigger influence from Issac Asimov's Foundation series. Mecatol Rex isn't Arrakis, its Trantor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trantor
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Jan 3, 2016 08:00
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I think I'm starting to see what I'd like in a 4th edition of this. I think you could do a fair amount just be having the majority of planets worth 1 resource and 1 influence. This would really cut down on the book-keeping (and sort out the problem of one of our new players who had to look at every single planet card he had, and every other player had, before making a decision). Make any deviation from those numbers a special in the same as the tech bonuses, so +1 resource, red tech bonus, +1 influence, etc would just be extra symbols on the cards. Do away with resource+2 for the number of ships that can be built at one dock and just make it a static 3 or something. More technologies that aren't directly concerned with combat would be helpful. Right now, it seems that the tech tree being so focused on making more ships and making them better contributes quite heavily to some players trying to play space risk (which isn't fun for them as they lose, and isn't fun for anybody else as they add a couple of hours to an already long game). I do struggle to see what could be usefully done though in the technology space without adding a whole extra system of some type. There's a lingering issue with politics/assembly in that the politics deck just isn't interesting enough and the voting is a bit clumsy with everybody needing to total up their current influence. I wonder of this should stop being an action and start being more of an event in the strategy phase to determine a temporary rule for the next round
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Jan 3, 2016 11:34
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If you turn TI into Eclipse, TI isn't going to win out in the end.
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Jan 3, 2016 21:58
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Mojo Jojo posted:I think I'm starting to see what I'd like in a 4th edition of this. This sounds like it would makes the game really boring. If people can't count then maybe this isn't the game for them. Why would neutering the politics into temporary effects make a better game? The voting on long term effects it one of TI3s coolest features.
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Jan 3, 2016 23:20
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Rutibex posted:This sounds like it would makes the game really boring. If people can't count then maybe this isn't the game for them. The reality of playing the game in my experience is that laws are incredibly rarely passed. And I don't think removing unnecessary book keeping would make the game boring in any way. The current influence system is clumsy and rarely achieves anything
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Jan 4, 2016 09:15
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MikeCrotch posted:Shouldn't there be at least 2 Stage II objectives before you can possibly draw Imperium Rex Why would you think that? Imperium Rex gets shuffled into the stage IIs during setup and with Bureaucracy there's a 20% chance of it being the first Stage II you draw.
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Jan 4, 2016 10:01
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Mojo Jojo posted:The reality of playing the game in my experience is that laws are incredibly rarely passed. Weird. We always end up with 2 or 3 crazy usually game changing laws passed in our games.
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Jan 4, 2016 12:37
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SettingSun posted:Why would you think that? Imperium Rex gets shuffled into the stage IIs during setup and with Bureaucracy there's a 20% chance of it being the first Stage II you draw. Huh, I must have used a variant at some point and got that mixed up with the base rules.
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Jan 4, 2016 12:45
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Gallant vets the political deck before the game by removing cards that are trivial, possibly irrelevant, or flatly positive/negative for all players. Goofus leaves the political deck alone and also plays with Distant Suns.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:28
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Chomp8645 posted:Gallant vets the political deck before the game by removing cards that are trivial, possibly irrelevant, or flatly positive/negative for all players. I'll be dsmned if I let those Distant Suns chits go unused, I paid for them, they are going out every game! Also, only cheaters vet decks before hand 
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Jan 4, 2016 15:39
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Rutibex posted:I'll be dsmned if I let those Distant Suns chits go unused  Rutibex posted:I paid for them, they are going out every game! Rutibex posted:Also, only cheaters vet decks before hand 
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Jan 4, 2016 16:07
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Rutibex posted:I'll be dsmned if I let those Distant Suns chits go unused, I paid for them, they are going out every game! Also, only cheaters vet decks before hand It's this kind of thinking that has me seriously considering buying a second copy for my group just so the guy that already has TI can't say "my game my rules" anymore.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:52
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Triskelli posted:It's this kind of thinking that has me seriously considering buying a second copy for my group just so the guy that already has TI can't say "my game my rules" anymore. I don't think TI is a appropriate game for twelve year olds, anyway.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:56
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Geisladisk posted:I don't think TI is a appropriate game for twelve year olds, anyway. I disagree. I think that the Nekro Virus should always be played by a twelve year old.
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Jan 4, 2016 18:59
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Instead of a spanking, Mom takes little Billy's home world and uses an epic fleet of war suns and dreadnaughts to wipe out all of his planets. At this point, homework sounds like more fun, anyway. In seriousness though, I remember being 12 and I don't think this would be age-inappropriate at all.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:05
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A real mom would use Muaat racial tech to blow up Billy's Lirta IV system. *edit* Has anyone actually seen that Muaat racial tech get used? It seems such a massive resource investment just to say a one-time gently caress you after you conquer and hold a system for a turn. nimby fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 20:24
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Oh boy, organizing my first game with the shattered empires expansion coming up this Sunday at the local board game store. Trip report on the way.
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Jan 6, 2016 19:25
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nimby posted:A real mom would use Muaat racial tech to blow up Billy's Lirta IV system. Nope but I could imagine it being used as a 'cold war weapon' for threats but that'd be it I think.
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Jan 6, 2016 20:14
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Can anyone give me the box dimensions? I need it for shelf purchases  (Found them. It's 30.5cm x 61cm)
DJ Dizzy fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 22:14
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DJ Dizzy posted:Can anyone give me the box dimensions? I need it for shelf purchases Twilight Imperium 3 is actually more compact that it would first seem. When I got it for Christmas I needed to lug it home on public transportation (several trains and buses) and I could not take the huge box it came in. So I discarded the box, and discovered that the entire contents of TI3 will fit perfectly comfortably in this old tin of Christmas cookies, about 1/6th the size of the TI3 box. This is also handy, as now TI3 takes up less space on my shelf than Agricola or Mage Knight 
Rutibex fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jan 30, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 15:30
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Rutibex posted:Twilight Imperium 3 is actually more compact that it would first seem. When I got it for Christmas I needed to lug it home on public transportation (several trains and buses) and I could not take the huge box it came in. So I discarded the box, and discovered that the entire contents of TI3 will fit perfectly comfortably in this old tin of Christmas cookies, about 1/6th the size of the TI3 box. This is also handy, as now TI3 takes up less space on my shelf than Agricola or Mage Knight I refuse to believe this. Please post photos.
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Jan 31, 2016 12:32
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Mojo Jojo posted:I refuse to believe this. No lies, the TI3 box is about 5X bigger than it needs to be for storage (shipping is a different matter):   
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Jan 31, 2016 14:26
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Played Naalu for the first time in a recent game. Gonna say not the best race I've played but definitely the most fun. Had a wormhole adjacent to my homeworld and researched gravity drive. 3 move speed at homeworld with 0 initiative can make for fun times. Also I think there was an audible groan around the table when I announced I researched Telepathic Mind Weapon and read out what it did.
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Mar 14, 2016 22:47
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Chomp8645 posted:Played Naalu for the first time in a recent game. Gonna say not the best race I've played but definitely the most fun. Had a wormhole adjacent to my homeworld and researched gravity drive. 3 move speed at homeworld with 0 initiative can make for fun times. Naalu are strong, and the table's reaction was correct. Similar to Mentak purchasing Mirror Computing, paired with Salvage Ops.
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Mar 17, 2016 01:44
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Happiness is blitzing a four movement Alastor into the Hylar homeworld, popping two warsuns with assorted escorts, and acquiring warsun tech for doing it.
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Mar 22, 2016 18:58
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Nitis posted:Happiness is blitzing a four movement Alastor into the Hylar homeworld, popping two warsuns with assorted escorts, and acquiring warsun tech for doing it. How did you manage that? And did the Alastor kill something, or do you count the suicide nuke killing stuff for stealing tech?
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Mar 22, 2016 20:41
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You have to fight at least one round of space battle so if it blows a fighter it counts. Not that you shouldn't just take a hit on a war sun to stop that happening but anything can happen in the insanity tinged 15th hour of a game of TI.
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Mar 22, 2016 20:59
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nimby posted:How did you manage that? And did the Alastor kill something, or do you count the suicide nuke killing stuff for stealing tech? Gravity drives -> High Alert token -> Flank Speed action card = 4 movement Jihad Joe posted:You have to fight at least one round of space battle so if it blows a fighter it counts. Not that you shouldn't just take a hit on a war sun to stop that happening but anything can happen in the insanity tinged 15th hour of a game of TI. I gave the player a couple trade goods to take a hit on a fighter, and he accepted. I had another fleet ready to pounce on an expansion, so he took my blood money.
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Mar 22, 2016 21:26
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