As a TI newbie I have some unclarities I encounterd while playing my first TI game:

a) if some race special ability enables that race to execute a primary ability of a given strategy card instead of its secondary ability, do they have to pay a command counter or not?

b) in 3 or 4 players game, when each player draws (chooses) 2 strategy cards. On the Initiave card is written "that you do not have strategy action during this round". But I think that having Initiative card does not prevent me from (legal) playing my second strategy card. Or is it not so?

c) in 3 or 4 players game, when you go through numbers of chosen strategy cards. Do you have to go through all 6 or 8 drawn cards, before a turn ends, so that each player will have 2 actions (per turn), or you determine the order by the lowest number (on a card) for each player, so that each player will have one action during a turn (as rules say)?

d) one secret objective card (from base game TI) says something like "I control at least four planets with a particular (same) technology speciality." What if there are not enough such planets on a board? Is it a bad luck for me?

Thanks for your answers.

a) Yes. See page 6 of the FAQ.

b) You are correct.

c) From FAQ/Errata, p.2:

Turn Order in 3- and 4-Player Games
To determine order of play in a three- or four-player game (in
which players have 2 Strategy Cards) use only the best (lowest)
initiative value of the two cards to determine order of play.

d) I've never encountered that situation, but I'd allow the player to take a new Secret Objective.

Agree with magicoctopus on all counts.

A situation that's more likely than the tech speciality is someone having Keeper of the Gates as their secret objective (the one where they need all the wormholes) and there are no wormholes on the board. In both, I would give the player a new secret objective.

possumman said:

As would I. However, technically if you have a galaxy with no Wormholes, Keeper of Gates is very easy - controlling all 0 wormholes is not difficult But I'd still have them redrawn.

That being said, although I tend to play rules-as-written, one little fudge I do is I always ensure all 4 wormhole systems are in the tile deck, and I always play with Mallice.

I would simply advise using preset maps as they usualy cnacell both possibilities, though some require the expasion. And either way, playing with all 4 wormholes makes for much more fun play anyway

Artemis said:

Yes. They need to activate the secondary as normal, but then they can choose to do the primary instead. (Or sometimes in addition to =O.)

Artemis said:

You are correct, sir. That passage refers specifically to the initiative card itself. If you're playing a game with two SCs per player then the player with initiative still plays their second SC normally.

Artemis said:

Turn order is determined by the lowest SC each player has. This is a mistake we made too, the first and only time we played a 4 player game. We each took an action at each of the two SC counts, but I later found a passage in the rulebook that told me you take one action per round at the lowest SC number. You must still activate both SCs before passing.

Artemis said:

I would reveal it and ask for a re-deal. I'm not sure what, if anything, the actual rules say about that though. Honestly I've never had that situation come up.

In regard to insufficient tech specialty planets on the board, you would either reveal it as soon as you receive it and take another, or (if that didn't happen for whatever reason) claim it with the most possible number of the most abundant tech specialty type on the board. This can be roughly inferred from a FAQ ruling on the public objective requiring you to control Mecatol Rex and all adjacent systems: you only have to control all adjacent systems which are able to be controlled (thus not counting supernovae or asteroid fields). However, I wouldn't ever allow someone to claim it with less than 4 total tech specialties acquired, less than 3 of one color, or (alternatively) less than all of them on the board.