Hi,

let me say up front that I love this game. It's scope, the depth and production quality all combine to make it one of the best games I have ever played.

So yesterday I played this with four other experienced gamers and after 8 hours solid gaming we finally concluded that player A would win. After 8 hours of gaming I was disappointed not to actually finish the game, he had collected 6 victory points, but also had the largest fleet (he had ran out of counters) and so really it was fair to say he would win - eventually!! And of course, this is the games biggest weakness - it takes soooooo long!!! I know this is an oft mentioned negative against this game and so propose the following three house rules.

I am not proposing that these rules are made canon, but I would appreciate your input as to whether you think they would work, or would there be some unforeseen negative consequences - all I am after is for an 8 hour epic game to actually be finished!

Note: We played with all three expansions, including mercenaries and events in empty space - but not distant suns.

1) Use the card that give whoever claims it 3 vp. This without doubt keeps the game moving towards a timely conclusion and means that it isn't all about the biggest fleets.

2) I suggest that a Public Objective is revealed every turn. This is in addition to one being revealed if a player selects the appropriate option. They still have the ability to claim a victory condition during the turn.

3) Finally I would like to propose a new Action. By spending a token from your Strategy section (not the Command section). The player can add another Secret Victory condition to his hand. Hand size for this is unlimited. I see this as a reasonable way past someone finding their initial victory condition difficult.

I think with the above three rules/amendments the game will progress much quicker to a natural conclusion.

Thanks for your time and input.

2) I suggest that a Public Objective is revealed every turn. This is in addition to one being revealed if a player selects the appropriate option. They still have the ability to claim a victory condition during the turn.

I would go one further and suggest you use the optional rule that says all objectives are face up from the start. It allows people to better plan out their long-term strategy and ultimately get more VPs in a shorter time frame.

3) Finally I would like to propose a new Action. By spending a token from your Strategy section (not the Command section). The player can add another Secret Victory condition to his hand. Hand size for this is unlimited. I see this as a reasonable way past someone finding their initial victory condition difficult.

The price is not unreasonable for drawing a new S.O. The only problem I see with it is that so many of the SOs involve controlling Mecatol Rex. Since SOs are claimed in addition to your one PO for the turn, you might wind up with someone drawing 2 additional SOs and then claiming all 3 at once and getting a huge lead. RAW was written on the assumption that you'd only have one SO, after all.

An additional house rule to say you can only claim 1 SO per turn (in addition to your PO) would probably fix this, while granting the advanced rate of VP scoring you're looking for.

Actually this game isn't about big fleets, but it is hard to comment more specifically without knowing what Strategy Card combination you were using.

I think suggestion 1 and 3 are both very unbalancing for different reasons. As for suggestion 2, revealing an extra objective every turn only leads to a 4-5 turn game, which will be even more anti-climatic. If you want a short game, either reduce the points needed to win the game or reduce the pile of objectives rather than draw faster.

That being said it is a very long game - and perhaps it is what adds that epic character that draws certain players to it - and longer the more optional additions are being used.

My best advice for making the game short is more about the context of the game than the rules themselves. It makes a huge difference if the game can be set and ready in advance and, more than anything, this game benefits from having (and accepting) a pace-maker, keeping people at using downtime to plan their actions and being vocal at who's turn it is, what SC secondary is being done etc., handing on the turn etc. Those are the true time killers.

Its always hard to advise people on problems they have in their games (and game groups) when their is virtually no information provided about how their games are setup. There are any number of reasons your games are taking too long but I assure you with 100% certainty knowing nothing about your situation that its not the game that's the problem and changing the rules will not fix it.

TI3 is a long game, but if your games are taking 8 hours you have a easily fixable problem, but to actually fix it you need to provide a bit more background.

What strategy cards are you using?

What variants are you using?

What optional rules are you using if any?

Any house rules?

Answer that and I can tell you why your games take so long.

When artifacts are near each other near the center of the board, the game does end faster.

I suggest home ruling that only planets can be placed next to Mecatol Rex so artifacts can be placed there.

I agree with this. I didn't like the artifact rules when I first read them but I have been very pleased with the effect they have on the game. They manage to both speed up the game by putting more VPs out on the board and they encourage more conflict between players as they fight over them.

2) I suggest that a Public Objective is revealed every turn. This is in addition to one being revealed if a player selects the appropriate option. They still have the ability to claim a victory condition during the turn.

Normally a public objective IS revealed every turn. Even if the Imperial strategy card isn't picked one round, when it is picked extra cards should get flipped based on the # of bonus counters on it, making it effectively one card a turn.

I agree with the guy up-thread though, the game is more fun and faster with the option that has all objective cards revealed at the beginning. That way you don't have to rely on good timing to score objectives and can plan strategy better. Nothing is going to suck quite as much as holding Mecatol Rex for 6 turns only to loose it the turn a Mecatol Rex objective is flipped up. An advantage of this version is that, if you still think the game is going to slowly, you can deal a couple extra POs above the regular track these would not count against the games turn limit, but would give players more options to score VPs and get to 10 faster. Should still be limited to one per round though.

3) Finally I would like to propose a new Action. By spending a token from your Strategy section (not the Command section). The player can add another Secret Victory condition to his hand. Hand size for this is unlimited. I see this as a reasonable way past someone finding their initial victory condition difficult.

This one I don't like. This would give everyone the ability to skip a turn like the Yssaril tribe, just with the cost of a counter. Because of that, I suspect you would actually run out of secret objectives.

Do you have the expansion with the Preliminary Objectives? They are like secret objectives but much easier to accomplish. When you score your Prelim you get dealt a Secret, though most people I know just deal one of each at the beginning of the game.

Another house rule I have read is to divide the secret objectives into 2 piles, 1 pile has all the "I control Mecatol Rex.." secret objectives and the other pile has all the rest. Players get dealt one SO from each pile at the start of the game. A player can only SCORE one of those SOs, but they can look at them and choose which one to go for.

3) Finally I would like to propose a new Action. By spending a token from your Strategy section (not the Command section). The player can add another Secret Victory condition to his hand. Hand size for this is unlimited. I see this as a reasonable way past someone finding their initial victory condition difficult.

This one I don't like. This would give everyone the ability to skip a turn like the Yssaril tribe, just with the cost of a counter. Because of that, I suspect you would actually run out of secret objectives.

True, but the added cost of a CC from Strategy is nothing to sneeze at.

The power of Yssaril is not that they can skip one action during a given round, it's that they can skip every other action throughout a single Action Phase - in every Action Phase - in order to delay their important actions until everyone else has passed.

I don't think too many players would be spending a CC from SA on drawing a new SO every other action during a single round. They probably wouldn't have enough CCs to do it more than once or twice per round, even if they wanted to.

And, as you say, SOs will run out and then there's nothing left to draw, so the ability can ultimately only be used a fixed number of times per game, among all players.

If you think TI is a long game then you should try axis & allies global Hahaha...

You could pick up a copy of Eclipse, takes about half as long to play and scratches that TI itch, not quite as well but you got your fix in though. :-P

I try to avoid house ruling games, so imo the best way to speed up TI is to set a time limit, then as you start to get close to the call time lower the VP's needed to end the game.

As long as you make sure everyone knows at game start that the VP's to end the game will get lowered as the finish time approaches then there should be no complaints.

The old complaint "well if I knew that was gonna happen then I would have done X 2 turns earlier" etc is negated