My Twilight Imperium group are big fans of using the Age of Empire objective rules along with the Imperial II Strategy Card. It gives the game the right level of pacing and interactivity we're looking for. However, using many of the SE Strategy Cards makes it necessary to use Bureaucracy to keep cards flowing smoothly. Bureaucracy doesn't jive with Age of Empire and causes the game's pacing to slow down too much for us.
So I was toying with the idea of adding a mechanic that increases the pace of Victory Points while at the same time sponsoring a continuous, revolving field of skirmish combat. The class trading card game Vampire: The Masquerade had a singular token (much like the Speaker Token in Twilight Imperium) called the Edge. It was obtained by successfully inflicting damage on another player in a multiplayer game. However, once you obtained it other players would try to take it away from you, and you didn't gain any additional benefit from it for piling onto you original victim.
In Twilight Imperium, the Edge would likewise be a singular Token. The first player to conquer another player's planet (or Trade Station) would obtain it. The next player to successfully conquer on of that player's planets would wrest the Edge from him, making himself the target of attack. During the Status Phase the player with the Edge gains one Victory Point.
I think the mechanic would help promote a little more low-grade conflict early rather than the massive sort of cold war build-up that ends in some sort of dramatic player-purging assault or back-stab. It would also keep VPs flowing to compensate for the slower pacing of Bureaucracy .
My only real concern is whether it would work in games where the Ysarril Tribes are in play. Their turn-skipping feature seems to give them too many opportunities to wait until most other players have passed and then just snipe the Edge in a no-contest sort of bid turn after turn.
- Marty Lund