Working on getting a game started up with my group, I think I have devised a way to increase the speed of each player.

As each turn begins I would like to get a player to do his turn fast so I have devised several mechanics that gives "incentive" the player to be "in the game" and not on their phone or reading a book in-between turns.

The first one is ​Bonus Trade Goods :
If at the start of your turn you go immediately (within 5 seconds) and finish your action within 1 minute you get a bonus "trade good". (limit 5 per round)

The second one is ​Bonus Command :
At the end of the status phase all players take a vote and vote for the most speediest player (besides themselves) whoever gets the most votes gets a bonus command counter, on ties both players get a bonus command counter.

Not quite sure I like it. Seems gamebreaking to me. At least the CC part.

I agree with Fnoffen. Bribing players to play quickly is going to result in two things:

1) players arguing over whether or not they acted quickly enough.

2) players damaging cards and other components of your game in their haste to play as quickly as possible.


As an added bonus (see what I did there?) you may also find people not wanting to play the game anymore due to the added stress of timing everything. 5 hours under the clock could well be a worse experience than 13 hours at your leisure.


If you're looking to speed up the game, the first thing I would do is take a long hard look at which optional rules you're using. Try to optmize those choices for speed first. For example, don't use Distant Suns or Final Frontiers (I think that's the name for the space-based DS tokens?) Those only slow down the game. DO use Age of Empire (the one where all POs are face up from the start.) This will give players something game-related to do during the down time between turns (ie: think about how to get the next PO), and help to ensure they have a plan ready when their turn comes around.

If your group is prone to combat, make sure there are a lot of wormholes on the map, so people can get into it faster and more frequently. If your group is NOT prone to combat, reduce wormholes so that players don't feel the need to spend as much time turtling to protect their Home System (we all know the type, who will turtle even when everyone else is already turtling and clearly not interested in fighting them.)

Distribute responsibilities for all the decks and non-faction tokens. So one guy is in charge of the Action Deck, another in charge of the Political Deck, a third guy in charge of TGs/Bonus tokens, etc.

I made little planet discs using wooden discs and sticky paper to replace the planet cards. They're just the right size to be placed on the planets on the map, and they make everything flow much smoother in the "conquering planets" arena. You take a new planet? Pick it up off the map! No need to go digging through a separate deck of cards to find it. This also seems to reinforce people's memory when it comes to claiming planet discs from other players after invasion. And all that planet management being smoothed out makes the game run noticeably faster, I find.

I made little planet discs using wooden discs and sticky paper to replace the planet cards. They're just the right size to be placed on the planets on the map, and they make everything flow much smoother in the "conquering planets" arena. You take a new planet? Pick it up off the map! No need to go digging through a separate deck of cards to find it. This also seems to reinforce people's memory when it comes to claiming planet discs from other players after invasion. And all that planet management being smoothed out makes the game run noticeably faster, I find.

Ooooh. I like that idea. Do you flip the disc over when you exhaust it? Did you do them up with nice graphics and everything? Can we get pictures?

On topic, I have found that the artifacts really speed up play. I didn't think I would like them at first, but after playing with them I find they really speed up the game and encourage players to not just turtle up.

I would also like to see pictures of said planet disks. Possibly also a quick walk-through of the how (as in brands used and such)?

I made another type of disks myself to use as Fleet Markers. I painted my disks in all the eight plastic colours, six of each colour, and then paired them up with roman numerals I, II and III on them so each colour has 2 of each numeral. (mixing the colours to match was pure agony btw...) The idea with them is to lessen board clutter by having larger fleets moved off-board with one half of a Fleet Marker pair leaving the other marker on the board to show where the fleet is located. Also makes big fleets somewhat easier to overlook. Haven't gotten around to making the intended matching Fleet Sheets though...

I made another type of disks myself to use as Fleet Markers.....The idea with them is to lessen board clutter by

I copied this idea from litko

http://www.litko.net/products/Fleet-Movement-Stands.html#.VRg0GWu9KSM

Finally got to play with them last week. They worked great. Really reduced clutter and solves the issue of overlooking a fleet. Also, it looks really cool having the space ships actually be OVER the planet.

Ooooh. I like that idea. Do you flip the disc over when you exhaust it? Did you do them up with nice graphics and everything? Can we get pictures?

Yeah, you flip them over when exhausted. The back side is B&W and includes the fluff text from the planet cards, as well as repeating the relevant stats so you don't have to keep flipping them over to remember what each planet gives you while planning next turn.

I'll see if I can dig up the original image files I used to make them (I've been through 2 or 3 computers since then, so I'm not sure if I still have them.) I think they're pretty enough to serve the purpose, but IIRC they were only about 96dpi. If I had to do it all over, I'd probably make them 300dpi this time.

If not, I'll snap a few pics with my iPhone so you can at least see them. =)

I would also like to see pictures of said planet disks. Possibly also a quick walk-through of the how (as in brands used and such)?

I don't recall the brands used for anything, but I got a bunch of 1.5" wooden discs from the local craft store, which were exactly the right size for the planets on the game's tiles. For Mecatol Rex, I was able to find a 2" (or 2.5"?) disc to fit it perfectly.

Then I printed the images out on sticker paper, cut them out and stuck them to either side of the wooden discs.

Finally, I covered them all with plastic shelf liner (Con-Tact, I think) and trimmed that to shape as well.

(The planet images for each planet were downloaded from the old ti3wiki.org. Good times, sadly it's not around anymore.)

It took a while, but they do look really nice =)

The back side is B&W and includes the fluff text from the planet cards, as well as repeating the relevant stats so you don't have to keep flipping them over to remember what each planet gives you while planning next turn.I'll see if I can dig up the original image files I used to make them

They sound awesome, and yeah, if you could provide the actual image files that would be cool.

When we're looking for a speedier game, the first thing we look at is the optional rules, as mentioned above. Generally keep it simpler without domain counters, councilors, etc. Artifacts help speed things up, as does including all wormholes. Sometimes we'll play to few VPs if time is really of the essence.

I don't particularly care for the idea of rewarding players in the game with trade goods, etc. I like to take my time occasionally when I have a strategic problem to solve, and I don't want to feel that my consideration is causing me to lose out.

Instead, in the game we usually try to remind players of the rotation when play passes to the next player, letting the following player know he's on deck, etc. If the guy ahead of you is building and it doesn't affect your play, go ahead and start moving yourself.

I have found all of my games have gone around 6-8 hours for play time. We have both the expansions, we play with artifacts and we also try and regulate the number of hazards and empty space in the game.

Also I've found that the game gets better with a crowd of people that know each other and are used to each other so that smack talk/past betrayals/table talk and secret talk plays a bigger role.

One thing that I personally find helps is if all players have at least a decent grip of the rules. An 8 player game where only 1 or possibly 2 people know them can bog it all down with constant explanations.

One thing that I personally find helps is if all players have at least a decent grip of the rules. An 8 player game where only 1 or possibly 2 people know them can bog it all down with constant explanations.

True, I generally assume an extra hour or two of play time if there are new players, but that isn't really something you can control, unless you never want anyone new to learn the game.

Here's one way to help people get that decent grip: http://www.preeminent.org/steve/games/ti3/ti3demo/

While this is not as good as Steve-O discs, you can just place the planet cards on the planets at set up time rather than disks.

also some people might not be ok with it, a subset of the group can get the board setup before hand and place all the card/disks on them. In my mind it really does not hurt to not have everyone involved in the board setup.

On this topic. I openned TI3 and actually read the standard game is 10 VP and FFG actually wrote 'Long Game' variant for 14 VP. Here's a thought: why didn't FFG use some insightful thinking and just add a Short Game variant where you need only 8 VP (or 6 VP perhaps). I'd say 8 VP is fine. Also keep in mind when FFG made the game they added a way for a player to gain 2 VP by simply choosing Imperial so they felt maybe that was 'too short'. Thus when you want to speed up your game, its easy as simply adjusting the required VP to win. Problem identified, Problem solved.

In my experience (**** near a decade) I have probably played TI3 about 250 times. There is only one thing that definitively work to speed up the game.

Experience

In the end, a 6 player game of Twilight is going to take 4 to 6 hours no matter how much experience you have. Its just something you have to make peace with. Sometimes certain elements of this very dynamic game can catapult the game and make it go a little faster than 4 hours and vice versus sometimes circumstances will cause it to go longer but in the end if you are averaging games that are more than 6 hours, the issue isn't the rules, mechanics or variants your using, its a lack of experience among the players.

If you are having issues with games lasting more than 6 hours, the simplest and most direct approach is to reduce the amount of points you play for.

There are some methods I have had limited luck with mechanically to speed up the game that can be effective.. sometimes.

1. Play with objectives open (classic way of playing TI pre 3rd edition).

2. Remove all variants and play a clean game, the less rules and components theoretically the faster the game plays.

3. Use the early turn rules found in Shattered Empire.

Strictly speaking though, with experience you can play with any variants you want and the game should not slow down on you because in the end each player takes one action and there are no actions in the game that take an inordinate amount of time.

Typically what slows down games of TI3 is that players on their turn are don't know what action to take and they sit there trying to figure it out. Experienced players will almost always be ready to take their action the moment their turn comes up so the time it takes to execute their turn is the amount of time it takes to resolve the mechanics involved.

To get your group to that point you just have to play through the learning process and unfortunately their really aren't that many shortcuts to take in that department, experience comes with time.