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Pretorian

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Posts posted by Pretorian

  8. Posted

    On 4/1/2018 at 9:39 AM, BigKahuna said:

    Twilight Imperium is kind of a cross between "old school" boardgaming style game and new school Euro games.  As such, depending on the group the length of time can vary wildly.  For example in my current group it rarely takes more than 5 to 6 hours to complete a game from setup to clean up.  Though I have a few old school groups I don't play with anymore that could turn a TI game into a multi-day event.

    I think the defining factor of an old school group is that they get heavily invested in the story of the game, the negotiations, backstabbing, they spend far more time trying to control what is going to happen rather than simply running the mechanics.  

    I'm not sure there is much you can do to speed up an old school gaming group that lives in the negotiations and drama of a game, its how they enjoy it, what they come to expect from it, so trying to curtail that experience might result in it feeling shallow and unsatisfying.

    My suggestion for old school gaming groups like this is to simply lower the point requirements to win the game and add a few extra ways to get points.

    Some great variants for this kind of group can be found in TI3

    Artifact Planets (forcing all 4 planets into the game) is a great way to add 4 additional points into the game.

    Starting the game with 3 extra objectives (Public I's face up).  So you end up with 7 P1 objectives. 

    Than just play the game as you normally would, people should reach the point thresholds much quicker.  You will probably end up with your normally excessively long game, but you should be able to finish it rather than calling it after 10 hours :).

    My advice however would be to avoid changing any social rules about how your group plays the game.  They do it that way because they enjoy it and why else are you there if not to enjoy the experiance.  Let them negotiate & plot!

    I completely agree. In fact I find, I can't say boring but, not satisfying a TI game that lasts less than 5-6 hours while the longest game I had was awesome (6 players, 14 vp, 3:20pm-8:20am including 2h dinner time  and a lot of plotting and treachery).

  11. Posted

    3 hours ago, pirbawa said:

    So this brings up another interesting situation which is the Naalu special ability.

    Does this movement ignore transportation requirements?

    I think it does: it just say to move the ships to the adiacent sistem (so apply 49.8), which is some sort of retreat.

    For ground forces, you can bring only the ones that can be transported by the moving fleet.

    49.8 is clear, so apply it anytime it happens.

  14. Posted

    7 hours ago, Absol197 said:

    Hey all!

    I'm a long-time TI super-fan, and I'm very happy to have my copy of TI4 in my hands :) .

    I also like how politics has become a more viable strategy in this edition, as the Xxcha have always needed some love!  However, during the TI3 days, my group came up with a slight variant that we liked, and I wanted to see what people's opinions were of implementing something similar in the new edition.

    So, the change I'm suggesting is as follows:

    1)  Once the Agenda phase gets added to the game, a certain number of cards are revealed off the top of the Agenda deck, creating the "Docket."  How many cards I'm still deciding on, but numbers I'm considering are 5, 10, or the number of players.  The docket remains face-up, probably near the objective area, and can be perused by players at any time.

    2)  The Politics strategy allows you to draw two cards from the top of the Agenda deck, swap any number of the cards you're looking at with cards in the Docket, and then place the two cards on top or on bottom of the Agenda deck in any order.  This replaces the normal third ability.  It's basically the same, except the extra step of allowing you to replace Docket cards with the drawn cards if you want before putting them on top/bottom.

    3)  During the Agenda phase, instead of drawing cards off the top of the deck to resolve, the Speaker chooses one of the Agendas on the Docket to vote on.  Once that is resolved, the Speaker chooses a second card on the Docket.  Once that's resolved, the Docket is refreshed with two new Agendas.  The rest of the Agenda phase is unchanged.

     

    The idea is that it allows players to see some of the possible laws they could vote on and develop a strategy.  The Speaker now has the power to determine which of the Docket Agendas get voted on, meaning making the Speaker mad is a surefire way for them to call a vote on the Agendas that you don't want brought to the floor, and makes the Politics card a bit stronger, as they get to choose who has that power.

    What do you guys think?  Too much?  As I said, political domination has become more viable, but it still suffers from a high degree of randomness, as if beneficial Agendas don't come up, your massive voting power doesn't really mean anything.  Let me know!  There's a good chance this is a horrible idea, but I think there's at least a moderate chance it has some merit.

    I like how your house rule sounds. I'm going to test it with my group in our next game.

    Absol197 reacted to this

  15. Posted

    I found this in TI4 reference (3rd point of 66.3)

    "•    If a player has the “Deep Space Cannon” technology, he can use the “Space Cannon” ability of his PDS units that are in systems that are adjacent to the active system. The hits are still assigned to units in the active system. "

     

  17. Posted

    On 10/11/2017 at 7:20 AM, BigKahuna said:

    hmmm well that's a very minor size difference, but that is very unfortunate, I'm really surprised that FFG would do that.  The only reason to resize the tiles by some such an insignificant amount is to very deliberately make the two tiles incompatible, which is a giant **** you to the community.  I'm very disappointed. 

    I'm disappointed too but not surprised: TI3 is an awesome game (the best in my opinion) and  improve such a thing is difficult; unfortunately they have to keep selling something and a new edition always means new incomes. Incompatibilities are needed to make sure that any re-use of previous edition won't reduce the incomes.
    Maybe I'll buy TI4 expansions if FFG adds new units and/or races (I don't care of tile incompatibility since I made a handcrafted table with 3D planets) but for the moment I think I'll wait TI5 hoping that FFG will add stuffs and improve the game instead of make some rearrangement and add some little incompatibility to call it a new edition.

  18. Posted

    An isolated MR linked only with wormholes would give too much advantage to the Creuss. In that case it would fit a house rule to consider MR's wormholes out of Creuss racial abilities.
    A table for 192 systems can be easily assembled, the problem is how to move the units in the middle of the maps considering a distance of 9 systems plus the player area.
    Anyway I find hard to gather 6 players in the same day for this game, 18 players would be likely impossible for me.

  19. Posted

    On 12/8/2017 at 9:03 AM, Flolo said:
    • Make the  activation (and also the control) markers in the fleet colors, not in the race colors. Cant remember how often I fall into the trap, when I thought for the planning "Oh, that system is already activated by the purple player", just to realize later "Oh da**, that is the blue player, with the purple race. The purple player has the orange markers, and there is of course a 3rd who uses the orange fleet" (it happens esp. often with purple and orange, not sure why those two colors are more subject to this problem than the others; must be a psychological thing).  I played it quite often, and it still happen to me, not to mention the newbies, who get very easy confused. It is just nonsense to have two colors for each player, and then have it possible to have one player one possible for ships on the map, and an different player the same color for markers.

    For who prefer CC and markers in fleet colors instead of race colors I suggest to use colored glass pebbles (like the ones in the image) of the proper dimension. I find them awesome as command counter while I continue to prefer race flags as control markers.

    s-l300.jpg

    Fnoffen reacted to this

  20. Posted

    I would be happy also with only 17 different flagships. And with "different" I mean the shape, not the color. Then if they want to launch on the market a full set of  different models for each race, they are welcome.
    Speaking about the prepainted-models... I don't like them: their cost will surely increase (compared to unpainted ones) but I'm not sure if I'll like the paint job they would do and so I might have to paint the models anyway.

  22. Posted

    8 hours ago, MikeEvans said:

    Somebody did design Star Wars races and played them in a PBEM.  They worked pretty well, though they kind of had to stretch a bit to get 6 different races.  I believe the game was called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  The Good were the Rebels and the Naboo (technically part of the Old Republic, I know).  The Bad were the Empire and the Trade Federation.  The Ugly were the Hutts and the Bounty Hunters.

    I believe there were some Star Trek variants as well, but I don't recall anybody actually playing with them.  I agree wholeheartedly that the political intrigue of Trek fits Twilight Imperium much, much better.  Star Wars is mostly just about good vs. evil.  Trek is full of political and ethical intrigue between nations, not just within them.

    I'd love to see Trek races, though I don't think we'll ever see them supported in any official capacity.  That's ok though, fans can take care of that.  The main Klingon ability would have to be something like:  When you execute the primary or secondary ability of the Warfare Strategy Card, you may execute both abilities.

    Please keep Star Wars away from my favourite game. 
    For what dealing Star Trek: it would be nice to have an expansion with Star Trek races but I personally wouldn't mix TI races with ST ones in the same game... they are two different universes and unless some fool Tholian scientists create a tear between the two realities with a tricobalt device there won't be any reason to mix them.
    Anyway, instead of adding universes I think they should consider to expand and develop the lore of TI universe because until it stay only in Peterson's head it is useless. In my opinion they set up a wonderful background (with some recall from Dune, which I personally consider a positive feature) and I hope it will be expanded and detailed.

  23. Posted

    I was asked this question but I'm not sure of the answer.
    Situation: at the end of turn 8 the Lazax (P1) win the game and the "Loyalist" (P2) win with him.  Now happens that P3 has P1's (Lazax's) treaty card and P4 has P2's (Loyalist's) treaty card.

    So who win the game? P1+P2+P3+P4 or just P1+P2+P3?
    Is there any official rule or FAQ that solve this? If not what are yours interpretation?

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