There are 8.49 million people in nyc and its hard to find people. Any thoughts as to why?

The time commitment scares them away...

Cheers,

Joe

I've not yet found someone else who has already played. In my experience this is one of those games where you have to put the leg work in to build a group so most of the time you'll have a new player in your games, I've introduced this game to about 20 people and have had a good success rate (it only fell flat for one of them). Pretty much all of them before their first game were dubious about the time limit, but it gets easier when you can have your previous converts back you up on the claim that the game is so engrossing, you don't notice the time go by

Build a gaming group as a whole with a variety of games, then introduce it to people that already dedicate time to the group. It's more likely you can convince someone to put in the time for an all day game if they already do spend an entire day playing games with a group of people they're comfortable with.

The game takes a long time, comes across as very random, not balanced, and is not accessible to new players (has lots of rules/unknown cards/unknown objectives including a crazy long FAQ and even an unofficial FAQ).

I have tried to streamline the game to increase it's accessibility and reduce playtime by:

• excluding any unnecessary optional rules (the most important of which is Distant Suns but I also ditch Shock Troops, and others)
• ignoring any rules/FAQ rulings that are not intuitive so they do not need to be remembered or even discussed. Ex yellow tech advances and defeating the Custodians of Mecatol cannot be used for completing objectives.
• streamlining the physical logistics of the game by: providing a printed tech tree to each player to track tech (instead of fiddly cards which still require looking at another tech tree sheet), using a good organiser to hold all the pieces.
• lessen memory and experience needed by: providing a printed sheet of all the objectives possibly in play with any clarifications required (secret/public/etc), and tips about action cards to look out for. Ex. Keeper of Gates absolutely REQUIRES clarification but so does any objective that uses the term 'control a system'. And if you do not know that Local Unrest/Direct Hit/Friendly Fire exist you are at a severe disadvantage)

I also put in some balancing changes but those are less necessary and more controversial.

Present the game as simplistically and streamlined as possible. Make sure the presenter of the game is a master of the rules. Improve the new player experience and they will want to play again

excluding any unnecessary optional rules

While I certainly agree about a lot if the optional rules (especially distant suns) can slow the game down, several of the can radically speed it up. Playing with all active public objectives revealed at the start (can never remember what that option is called) can do wonders for the game. Likewise, playing with artifacts can radically reduce pkaying time (seriously, when we started playing with artifacts average play time dropped by almost 3 hours).

Certainly some optional rules (like artifacts) and house rules (like faceup objectives) can speed it up. Most of the provided optional ones just add to the complexity and extend game play. I do not recommend simulated early turns as I think it removes an important step of the game. The official ones I play with are:

Certainly some ....house rules (like faceup objectives) can speed it up.

Um... Face up objectives is one of the optional rules in the core rulebook. (page 33)

Its the "Age of Empire" optional rule that you say you are excluding

EXCLUDED

TI03: Age of Empire

Age of Empire can radically speed up game play by allowing Players to actually work towards the objectives right from the start. You don't have to wait 2-3 rounds for a couple of objectives to be revealed before you know which ones you have a chance of scoring.

Ah yes my bad. I did a quick look but forgot its a basic option when using the original strategy cards. If you want to use something similar with the SE strategy cards (which are much much better) you will have to use the "Red Tape" which I believe is a house rule.

I have not played with the "Red Tape" variant yet but I will be trying it in the future. Mostly, to make the game more strategic. Not necessarily to speed it up.

"Red Tape" variant

Not familiar. Can you elaborate?

"Red Tape" variant

Not familiar. Can you elaborate?

For your convenience: http://www.ti3pbf.com/wiki/Red-Tape_Bureaucracy

I have in the past dismissed the Red Tape variant. It is debatable whether it will make the game shorter. Providing more information to players does make it more strategic but at the cost of usually adding to analysis paralysis. Players do take longer to crunch the numbers. It also weakens Bureaucracy as you no longer have the secret information regarding the next objective that may come up. And lastly it can extend the maximum number of turns and also game length, due to Imperium Rex not possibly coming up early and being chosen when a player has a strong lead. I will give it a try at some point but I do not believe it will significantly speed up the game.

Oh wow. I guess I am pretty lucky with my playgroup. We average 6 player games twice per month. We are a bit above our own average this year with 27 games but I think we will get to maybe 29 before the holidays.

if it´s a matter of interest we use the following Contents

Everything BUT:

-Spacemines (they are either worthless or just slow the game down. Without them "Minelayers" can also be discarded without much concern)

- Facilities

- Wormhole nexus (we usually vote about this pre game; we also auto include it when creuss players are present)

Also as Houserules:

- Random Races with 1 reroll (varies. when we got a new player we usually let them pick. sometimes people reroll twice. just to ensure noone is super unhappy)

- Pre Sorted Action and Political Cards (mosty reduced it to cards with actual impact. especially the Politics got reduced by almost 50%. AC also got filtered pretty heavily and after that the amount of combat related cards got scaled down accordingly so that you wont have like 5 direct hits in hand).

- Diplomats get an additional ability: discard two action card; search the action card deck for "signal jamming".As an Action. Once per Gameround . Its not overpowered; it just gives the Diplomat more power than his invasion block. since its super expensive anyways its not really abusive.

- If a Bonus counter is placed on "assembly"; the Speaker chooses a player to resolve a political card. Whenever a Political card is played by a player; that player draws a new one.

- low impact domain counters.

- bonus Tradegoods in games with uneven playernumbers reduced from 4 and 8 to 3 and 6 respectively.

- one less empty system; one additional red system. only one supernova. Red systems with planets inside do count as planets and my be placed next to other red systems.(also really fun to have things like; nebula next to nebula with planet. really good for Xxcha players as it turns out.

- Leaders may choose to yield when in combat. The leader are taken into custody by the then victorious player and all other units of the yielding player are destroyed immidiatly (not exactly what "yielding" should do. But we agree that just blowing up admirals in sometimes super random situations is a bit "eh" also; it increases negotiations as it adds new "valuables".

As a side note: None of us thinks highly of banning races like some people on the internet suggest (mostly towards yssaril) but rather passionate hate-plays against despised races. I personally do not really think any race is super overpowered....but darn. i hate the fricking hacan (another sidenote; i love to play agressive. But we got that one guy in the group that is a genius with hacan and xxcha....makes me rage everytime he gets them)