To compensate for the civilian-ship abandonment strategy on New Caprica, our group house-ruled:

-- If all the civilian ships are destroyed, humans lose.

Furthermore, we had issues with the Cylon leader agendas and devised a new method for them. We looked at all the 5-player agendas and the 4/6-player agendas; we then divided them into first-half goals and second-half goals; our modified house-usage:

-- Cylon leaders draw a "Part 1" agenda to begin the game from the correlating number-of-players stack, then keeping in mind their primary win condition (Humans Win or Cylons Win).

-- Cylon leaders draw a "Part 2" agenda at "halftime" and secretly discard any "Part 2" agenda that does not match the "Part 1" primary win condition (Humans Win or Cylons Win), drawing until they draw a matching primary win condition.

-- Cylon leaders win if they achieve both aspects of their agenda (Part 1 and Part 2) by game's end.

List of Agendas:

5-player, Part 1

• Humans win -- 4 or more ship locations are damaged (Galactica or Pegasus).
• Cylons win -- All resources must be in the red.
• Cylons win -- Food or Population must be at 2 or lower.
• Humans win -- 3 occupation forces and/or centurions must be destroyed.

5-player, Part 2

• Cylons win -- You must be in either the Brig or Detention at the end of the game, or executed at least once.
• Humans win -- Population must be in the red.
• Humans win -- Population or Morale or Food must be at 2 or lower.
• Cylons win -- Morale must be at 2 or lower.

4/6-player, Part 1

• Humans win -- 3 resources must be at 3 or lower.
• Humans win -- 10 raptors, vipers, and/or civilian ships must be damaged/destroyed.
• Cylons win -- Humans must have traveled at least 6 distance.
• Cylons win -- 4 or fewer locations are damaged.

4/6-player, Part 2

• Humans win -- You must be infiltrating and not be in the Brig or Detention.
• Humans win -- Morale must be in the red.
• Cylons win -- Morale must be in the blue.
• Cylons win -- Morale is in the red and within two of another resource also in the red.

For example, Cavil (playing in a 6-player game) draws a 4/6-player agenda from the Part 1 pile. He draws the "Humans win -- 3 resources must be at 3 or lower" card. Through the game, he continues raining down destruction on humans. When the humans reach 4 through destination cards, he draws another agenda card, from the Part 2 pile; he draws the "Cylons win -- Morale must be in the blue" but is forced to discard it (the new card drawn must match the primary win condition of the first card). Cavil draws another card immediately and gets the "Humans win -- You must be infiltrating and not be in the Brig or Detention" card. To win the game, Cavil must now have 3 resources at 3 or lower and be infiltrating without being in the Brig or Detention to win the game.

We have found this to give the leader something to look forward to for the second-half, while keeping play strategy fluid. This also fixes the supremely simple agendas for the leaders in each setting (Humans win -- if you've played a super crisis card, or Cylons win -- if you've traveled 6 or more, or Humans win -- if you're infiltrating). Our modification keeps all agendas interesting and hard to guess, while being fair and pragmatic.

Suggestions for enhancement or comments are welcome. We hope you enjoy our development.

4 locations have to be damaged at the moments the humans win? That's aa pretty hefty order that the cylon really doesn't have much control over now that the human fleet location doesn't inflict damage anymore.

I like the house rule regarding the Civilian ships, and think there should be some official rule in that regard as well, but messing with the Cylon Leader Agendas in that manner seems to change things too much for my taste. But house rules are for whatever works with your group.

I wish there was more of a downside to losing Pegasus. When we play, we put both the Pgasus and Galactic tokens in a dice bag and pull them out randomly. Otherwise, Pegasus becomes a damage sink. Unless we missed it in the rules, I think there should be a morale loss if Pegasus is destroyed.

abraxus_smith said:

Whenever one of the "generic" civilian ships is destroyed (one population, no other resource) before the New Caprica phase, it gets shuffled back in with the supply of civilian ships.