My game group is definately Emotional/Ego/Political conflict. To us VP points are secondary if not third
Having been long time Risk 2210/Axis and allies players we tend to prefer the conflict of the game over some silly VP.
An idle army is an itch that u just want to scratch
In our games at most we got to about 7 VP's and have never been able to mix VP collecting and Conflict pursuit.
How do you play??
I play for the shear vastness of the game, and so our game group can hang out for the day and just have fun with galactic domination. The VP help with keeping things on track, but it's not what we have as our primary focus.
My group used to play it like it was a Giant Risk basically. We didn't like the VP track especially with the OLD Imperial Card. As time wore on and the games became too long, we grew to appreciate the VP system (minus the Imperial Card) and found it really did require more strategy.
It wasn't too long before the entire group started playing to
WIN
instead of who had the biggest baddest fleet (well except for 1 player).
I remember when I thought VP's seemed to be a needless barrier on a truly amazing War game. Now I can't go back to how we used to play. It really is a better game when you play for points instead of battles.
Points all the way. As long as you ditch the Imperial Strategy Card.
I would vastly prefer to perform sudden tactical strikes with a specific objective in mind than slog through an all out war.
Without question, VPs.
If all the others in your group insist on not playing for points, make sure you go for points every time, and then watch them cry as you win time after time after time. VPs make it a vastly superior game.
For me, it's all about political intrigue/conflict. Oh, and the sense of some epic story being forged.
Vp's for me. I win most of the games I play
VPs, most definitely. I play games to win them.
VP's turn the game from an Impressive Galactic War to nothing but a series of minor skirmishes and 3 player alliances.
1. Usually about a third of the games, 3 players play as one team until they eliminate one player or two players. Then they fight to see who wins amongst themselves. The only way this does not happen is in games bigger then 6 players. So the one or two players on the recieving end never really have much of a chance.
2. Major Wars usually spells disaster for the 2 combants, so they never really care about victory points, so the player that does the least combat has a better chance at winning. (People will be more likely to vote for them, and will not be expecting attacks from them).
3. Any player that fell behind in victory points will no longer care about claiming victory points but will spend most of the game messing with other players.
If you have a player 4 VP or 5 VP behind the leader,. what will he do? Pretty much mess up someones game because he can do nothing else to do. So this victory point system is pretty broke UNLESS most players agree to play the game about the same way .
Twilight is more a Galactic War of minor skirmishes and big alliances then a true strategy game.
There really is not much room for a player that wants to Military road like Axis and Allies game except for the Instant Win objectives.
And then those objectives are not that common in a game.
The VP system really needs to be adjusted so if a player can chose the Military path and instead of the Intrique path of Alliances,
How many twilight games where the player who only controls his home system wins the game and another player conquered most of the board.
Thats my point! Thats like Switerland declaring themselves the Emperor and Germany has conquered the World.
That is kinda silly isn't it.
The VP system does bring an end to the game but I think is still needs alot of tweaking to allow players with other styles of playing to be interested.
The Victory Point Mechanism makes TI3 a Strategy Game in the Euro Game sense. That is, you have to carefully use your limited resources to enact the best strategies (primary and secondary) to achieve goals laid out by the objectives.
Building up fleets and attacking other players may seem like tons of fun, but it is not all that mentally challenging.
Players who think win TI3. They win CoEII also come to think of it.
The old Imperial card is not the best game play. Bureaucracy is okay. Mike Evans' stacking Imperial card is a pretty good solution.
The best of course is that guy Lance Harrop's Accordion Strategy Cards.
Victory Points are what the game is mainly about - if you want to play to win.
I do enjoy the Political aspect of the game a lot and do not always focus on the VP's like I should. I play more for the fun of the game and try not to come in last.
Ans I do agree with the former comment on the Accordion Strategy Cards.
normally you play games to win them?!? so VP are important but in TI3 its sometimes hard to just fokus on them especially when that "friend" was bachstabbing you again.... thanks to shattered empires there are some more VP for conflict.
So in short : I'am going for VP but when i'am millitary strong some "friends" have to pay no matter what VP are saying
The Emo thing... but the VP too!
I play to have fun and challenge myself mentally against worthy foes. But a big part of fun for me is trying to win. If I'm not playing for VP's, as is echoed in many other posts, I'm just spinning my wheels.
Back in the beginning the goal of many games was just to acquire War Suns. Once that novelty wore off, then we were all shooting for Advanced Fighters. Then we realized that they put objectives and a point track in the game for a specific reason, and thus we realized that that was the end goal.
What you have to keep in mind is: The way is the goal.
You and your friends don´t have any fun in remembering the last game, which was won by a straight-goin´-on-VPs-player, and i think the game itself was like tthat too.
Keeping an eye on the Victory Points is useful, but in our games funny or epic actions and fighting great wars/telling epic stories always stand in the front. If you play for winning only go playing Trading Card Tourneys, but ruining Twilight Imperium´s great game feeling with powergaming wasn´t worth to buy the game in my opionion.
TI offers so much more...
When playing face to face it is definately both. To play this game is an experience and while I try to get as many points as possible, there are alot of other things that attract to the game and don't doing them would be criminal. As a game it has its flaws, but as an experience it is wonderful. When playing PBF games, it is victory points definately.
Of course, any goal I have when I play a game is to win. What is so great about TI3 is the path to that victory. Even though I aim to accumulate as many VPs as I can, that quest is not my favorite part of the game. The political wheeling and dealing is what I love so much about the game, and why I'm always trying to convince people to try it out, even if they're rather intimidated at first.
I don't have a group... Everyone should shed tears of pitty for me.
But in all seriousness when I can find a few people to play with, we play to win. I goof around alot, but there is still a very distinct strategy that I utilize with VPs in mind. I think that's one of the things that makes TI so immersive. You can have almost any strategy and it's valid.
Well, it's all about VP. But that doesn't mean the other goals aren't important, too.
That may sound ***** in the first moment, and I want to explain myself. The game is about VP, right? You win if you score them. So if you don't, you won't win, it's that easy. I hate to play with guys who don't want to win but to use some game mechanics that just come to their mind by chance and screw the game for the ones that play for victory. I call it the "kingmaker syndrome". A player that has no chance to win decides the game by attacking some player - and the other one wins then. Mostly, the reason for attacking the specific player then are personal ones and don't coincide with the game, which makes it even more unsatisfying, especially after a seven-hours-game.
So, I always encourage people to play for victory. We had the situation in our last game (three players, two experienced, one novice). All had roughly the same ammount of VP, but I nearly wiped out the other experienced player, so he hadn't much real chance left. The novice then wanted to attack me, because he had attacked the other one before. I then told him that he could ******* WIN THE GAME this round if he'd done it properly, and he did, and I made a respectable second place.
Because of that, play for VP. The rest comes, because you need to fight, because you need to trade, because you need to be diplomatic - this results of going after the objectives, and clever players try to prevent their enemies from fulfilling their own. The epic game experience and the feeling of running a space empire, the whole ego- and ambience-thing, it comes from alone then.
I play for the victory points. I find the very best games are the ones where every player is tring to get points every turn and is actively trying to keep others from getting points. When you have players that are playing for objectives other than winning it really breaks the balance of the game and makes it much less interesting to play.
VP's all the way...
It is way more difficult to get VP's than being a risk like/war monger except if you are playing random races...I think it depends more on the race you pick rather than the style of your play.
I play for the rule of steal: "To crush my enemies. See them driven before me. And hear the limantations of their women."
@Falling: Just when I saw you there, a question OT: I have those nice pictures of your planets and special systems and all, but no rules for them. Could you tell me where to get them?
FallingfromGrace! Blast from the past! Welcome back... please come join us over at the wiki, it would be great to catch up with you.
I play to win games. Winning can be fun. And since my game group consists of very good friends winning is all the more satisfiyng. Someone has to show the others who's boss (No, that is just sometimes me). And since winning in TI is about gaining a given number of vctory points we try do gain as much as possible and to keep the others from gaining VPs. Some go the political/diplomatic/intriguing way and forge alliances. Others simply conquer worlds and amass armies. And some just go for the VPs. It always gets very interesting when one or two players are close to their win and trying to convince the others to play in their favour. But for me, the most satisfying part of the game is to see that others declare you as so dangerous, that they forge three or four player alliances simply to keep you from "winning again".
This game is plain fun, because it offers so many possibilities to achieve victory and it gives you an impressive amount of space for own ideas and rules to personalize your game and to enrich your experience. This is the reason why we play it so much. And I think a game only becomes a great game when it doesn't only make fun, but when it encourages you to use your imagination to alter it. To make it a personal experience.
In this regard, Twilight Imperium is not just a great game. It is an achivement!