Hi. First post in these forums. I recently bought the base game of Twilight Imperium. We've played the first game (really clunky, most of the times we were re-reading the rules) but overall the game was fantastic and very enjoyable. I've been lurking several forums that say that the Imperial strategy is broken. We didn't catch it very much and never used it our first game. But overall i guess the usual strategy phase goes: the speaker gets the imperial strategy, then the second player gets the speaker token (initiative strategy) and then everyone else get the rest, so basically the initiative and the imperial strategy cycle the whole board all the time, right?

also i've heard some people said that the Shattered Empires expansion is a MUST. how true is this statement? for being first time players, is it ok to play with the base game?

thanks for the responses!

Yes that is exactly how it goes. If someone passes on taking the imperial or initiative card when they have the chance they basically forfeit the game.

In this matter shattered empire does 2 things. First, it provides an alternate imperial card (named imperial 2) that works slightly differently. Playing with the core set strategy cards and just swapping out that one works perfectly fine, and I am pretty sure the rules for that card can be downloaded off the FFG site (check the product page for TI).

The other thing shattered empire does is it provides a totally different set of all 8 cards, printed with a white background instead of black. A lot of people prefer the white strategy cards over the originals, but they are not totally necessary, just nice. They accomplish the same sorts of things that the original set does but do it in different ways or for different costs (the technology 2 card, for instance, is a lot easier to get technologies with).

So shattered empire isn't "necessary", but you will probably want it just for that reason, to say nothing of the new races, unit types, optional rules, new technologies, etc...etc...

Should also be noted that some of the optional rules it includes can really speed up play.

Not required, but really really good addition.

Btw. Bit of a longshot, but I don't suppose your username is a reference to canton, ohio, where you live? I'm in Akron and always looking for more people to play TI with.

I second what ForgottenLore said, and Shattered Empires is definitely worth it if you get to play the game even semi-regularly or even (in my case) annually.

Thanks for the quick answers

So theoretically, a game will have at maximum 10 strategy phases, right? because you have 6 Public Objective stage 1 + 3 Public Objective stage 2 + The imperium Rex card, which means that if imperium rex is the last card to appear, you'll take 10 strategy phases before you flip it, right?

@Forgottenlore sorry, but I don't live in the United States. Canton is my name

@BeardedBaron thanks for the input, we've played the game last Saturday and we are already making plans for next week , we really liked the game and it really lived to the hype.

So theoretically, a game will have at maximum 10 strategy phases, right?

@Forgottenlore sorry, but I don't live in the United States. Canton is my name

Yeah, I figured as much, doesn't hurt to ask though.

So theoretically, a game will have at maximum 10 strategy phases, right?

Correct. The game is designed to have a hard limit on the number of turns. Of course, if you and your group want to, you can vary the number of objective cards (and number of victory points to win) to vary the number of turns and game length. The rulebook includes to option to bump things up to 14 for an extra long game (because what twilight imperium needs is to be longer).

@Forgottenlore sorry, but I don't live in the United States. Canton is my name

Yeah, I figured as much, doesn't hurt to ask though.

Thanks for the answers. How's the TI3 scene in ohio?

However, only 10 phases means that more players will get more victory points from the Imperial card. isn't that a little bit imbalanced or the game balances it well?

Not great. I've introduced the game to several people to positive results, but it's been difficult trying to coordinate things because the game takes so long.

Yes, unless you have 5 players the imperial strategy card does favor going first. One of the reasons to change it. If I remember correctly, the imperial 2 card is something like "you may claim more than 1 public objective this status phase. If you control mecatol Rex immediately gain 1 VP." Or it lets you execute the secondary ability instead, and no one else that round may do so (the secondary ability is the same as on imperial 1). This does a couple things. First, it encourages people to actually try and meet the requirements for objectives. As I recall from when I first got the game, the imperial 1 card basically made it so that everyone relied on it for VPs, maybe scored 1-2 objectives and turtled up for a lot of the game. The new card pushes players to score objectives, it also pushes players to fight over mecatol Rex, which discourages turtling up and being defensive, making for much more dynamic games.

Oh, another optional rule I recomend is playing with all public objectives revealed at the start of the game. Players can score any one of them each round and you use a token to track number of turns. When the token hits the imperium Rex card, game over. This also encourages players to strive for the objectives.

But how do you reveal objectives with the Imperial II card?

It may be that Imperial 2 requires you to play with the variant that has all objectives revealed to begin with (whatever that variant is called in the rulebook). That's such a commonly used variant that I had forgotten that the imperial 1 card was the mechanic that flipped new objectives. I thought it was an automatic process in the status phase.

I believe Imperial II flips over as many objectives as it has bonus counters on it when it's taken, but it has been awhile so I may be wrong about that.

Ill have to try this all objectives revealed variant next time I get a chance to play.

It really is the only way to play. Having all the objectives visible to begin with make planing and strategy more important because you know what goals your trying to achieve. Speeds play too. Revealing just 1 objective a turn means that players probably can't score anything for the first couple turns, so games usually go the full 10 rounds. If all the objectives are accessible to begin with it makes it more likely that someone will achieve the 10 points to win before the 10 turns are up. The only problem is that you have to remember to move the turn tracking token each status phase.