So why do groups who (three times in a row) consistently execute admirals still insist on remaining hidden as a cylon admiral until its too late to do real damage because they've been killed? The issue should self-correct. That it doesn't makes me wonder what the constantly unrevealed cylons are thinking.

Hem said:

How so?

To recap: the Cylon Admiral Strategy involves the admiral finding out they're a cylon, but choosing to remain unrevealed and play as a completely loyal human for the entire game. Then, once Galactica returns on New Caprica, he immediately moves to the ship and orders the launch. This destroys every civilian ship left on the ground (which will often be all of them), and executes all of the humans on the ground. The huge loss of population and morale is guaranteed to cause a cylon victory unless the humans have done some strange maneuvering to avoid it. Ellen Tigh's once per game ability to steal the admiral or president title allows her to do it too.

The counter to this is to simple execute the admiral if there is an unrevealed cylon when you reach New Caprica. If Ellen's OPG is still available, she needs to either use it superfluously or be executed herself.

The tactic is very strong, and a guaranteed win if the humans fall for it. If they don't, you've hamstrung yourself for most of the game and are highly unlikely to win.

Sinis said:

Sinis said:

Note these two things together. A sleeper agent really can't do much before the NC phase. So it might be in thier best interest to lay low and let the admiral be executed in the NC phase simply because there is an unrevealed cylon with no suspicions. The admiral is executed, causing a morale loss and a loss of a lot of skill cards (the admiral's entire hand and the cards going into the execution skill check). The humans are all like "OMG! Who is it?" The sleeper reveals the next turn, taking advantage of the affect on his loyalty card.

I heard something from my friend that played the cylon admiral in our last game. He was neither a cylon at the beginning nor during the sleeper phase. We had only one cylon reveal late in the game. He handed his unrevealed loyalty card to the admiral. That unrevealed loyalty card was a cylon card that activated the admiral (an extremely rare chance of this... I know). It's a good thing we were able to execute the admiral between the other cylon's reveal and the admiral's turn... otherwise the execution would not have been timed correctly to prevent the early jump.

Syragar said:

While it's true that a non-admiral unrevealed cylon could 'make' the humans execute the admiral for the morale and card disadvantages, it might not be worth it to do so. Many of the Cylon loyalty cards say "Target a character on Galactica", or are somehow dependent on galactica's presence. If I had the bomber loyalty card (draw 5 locations, damage two), my reveal would have no effect unless I did it before the New Caprica phase, or after Galactica returns (at which point, I've been playing as a human for a significant portion of the game). Unless that 1 morale is going to win you the game (you have the morale penalty loyalty card and a set of extreme circumstances), it doesn't seem worth it. Passing loyalty cards is a rough circumstance, but rare. Furthermore, if in a 5 player game, a player is dealt both loyalty cards and waits until the new caprica phase, it's hard to imagine them winning, unless they've been doing some incredible sabotage and the human players are oblivious (though an additional execution may be required).

These are the houserules we use:

Any ships that are destroyed during the game pre-NC are returned to the supply rather than the box if they show a ship that loses 1 population only. This prevents players from destroying ships pre-NC to make the NC phase shorter/easier.

Ships that are destroyed during the NC phase are not revealed and the resources are not lost until the fleet jumps away. This helps retain uncertainty about the best time to jump (rather than just figuring out which ships are still remaining on NC and doing the math).

Occupation Forces destroy prepared ships first, then locked ships. This means that OFs are not destroying ships that are going to be left behind anyway.

The Admiral may not use his action to jump the fleet until the jump marker reaches the auto-jump space on the FTL track. This not only means that at least a few ships should be able to get airborne before the fleet jumps, but also prolongs the NC phase to give Sleeper Agent Cylons more chance to do stuff before the game ends.

We also start the resource dials with 2 extra population and 1 extra morale.

Bleached Lizard said:

Wow. Your civ ship rules and extra resources would be brutal in our group; it's pretty rare that a significant number civilian ship will be lost before the new caprica phase.

We tend to have problems with humans winning more than losing.

Sinis said:

Huh? I don't get you... Brutal for who - the humans or the Cylons? If it's rare for you to lose ships before the NC phase, do you just mean that the extra resouces would make it too easy for the humans?

Bleached Lizard said:

For the Cylons, they could not conceivably win. Your houserule makes the new caprica phase a free pass, even if civilian ships are destroyed, there would have to be an FTL Control use, or something else that lowered population a fair bit to prevent a quick skip off the planet, abandoning the civilian ships. Your houserules address things that are non-issues during our games; occupational forces rarely get to destroy a ship. Though, the delay to jump may give the cylon players more time to capitalize on some advantage (if the cylon ships in orbit survive). I'll illustrate the problems our cylons are already having.

TBH, we're not sure now the NC phase is supposed to go. Basically, it's not really clear how cylons are supposed to spend their turns during the NC phase. It's known that the number of population on the civilian ships is equal to 12, the starting population. So, here are some cases:

Case 1: Many civilian ships have been destroyed from raiders and stuff, say 6+. The cylon's best bet? It seems to be the Occupational Authority and occupational forces.

Case 2: Few civilian ships have been destroyed. The cylon's best bet? It seems to be the arrest action or the Breeder's Canyon action (for more crises). Using occupational forces will not really put the cylon player closer to victory: the humans will have to prep and launch fewer ships, and it's really a zero-sum action unless you can destroy every civilian ship (as is presumably possible in Case 1).

Cylon problems with Case 1: Occupational forces are made of paper. A pilot makes it even worse. Executive Order exacerbates the problem even more. Your houserule about destroying civilian ships doesn't really speak to this problem, though the delay might allow a surviving cylon fleet deal significant damage.

Cylon problem with Case 2: Arrest Action is flimsy; human players will use strategic planning on it, often landing them in the relatively painless medical center. They may even be executive ordered out unless you pick the very next human player. Sometimes, this action does *nothing at all*, and with strategic planning, the chances of that are quite high (3 in 8). Calculations gets an honourable mention here too. Your houserules don't really speak to this either; there will not be a significant number of ships (if any) that are destroyed, and the lengthening of the phase will not really help because the humans already need a lot of time to prep and launch the ships.

Cylon problems common to both cases: 1. Humans will always outnumber cylons in terms of actions. For every Cylon action, there are between two and six human actions, because of player ratios and executive order.

2. To make matters worse, the board shows favour to the humans; the cylon has to march occupational forces the full distance to the shipyard, creating more delays, in short, a cylon's action at the occupational authority is worth less than a human's action at the shipyard.

3. To win, realistically the cylons will have to destroy between three quarters to every civilian ship. If the players shied from FTL control, or took precautions when doing it (Helo, Strategic Planning, Calculations, Kat), the cylon player may have to destroy every single the civ ships. Realistically, the amount in our games is nearly all the ships, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 ships (assuming all of them made it to NC, which they frequently do). This means that Occupational authority and occupational forces are often bad moves. The margin can be narrowed even further with Preventative Policy.

4. The space battle in the New Caprica phase is mostly writeoff for the typical cylon side. A pair of Nukes, or Pegasus CIC will leave those basestars in ashes without any recourse. A pilot, or a person at command can realistically hold off the raiders forever (or at least, for enough ships to escape for the humans to win) with executive order.

So, yeah. Our games seem to find the New Caprica phase to be a free pass for the humans. With a dearth of options available to cylons, and the magnitude of their victory condition (seriously, the cylons have to destroy a crapton of civilian ships in order to win, and there just aren't the resources to do it), once the players hit NC, it's like it's a foregone conclusion who will win. Even in the games where we wanted to launch every single civilian ship, we were able to do so; we rarely leave any behind, unless it's mathematically impossible to lose by leaving.

This wasn't meant to turn into a rant. I wanted to share my group's NC experience. Anyone have similar? Different?

Sums up our play group exactly. I even started a thread about how we retired New Caprica from our group/store, to see if anyone can tellus how it should be done so it isn't a free pass for the humans.

Okay - I held this one back 'cos I would expect everyone to go *WHAT?!!!* if I mentioned it, but seeing as you kinda asked...

One further houserule we use (and we introduced this one to counterbalance Pegasus' extra firepower and to give pilots something to actually DO) is to give Cylon ships double activations. After resolving a crisis card, we draw another one and if the Cylon ship activation icon is different from the one on the first card, then we activate those ships.

This means that, yes - civilian ships are destroyed pre-NC and the fact that all the 1-pop ships come back does make a difference. It also makes it possible for the Cylons to actually win by destroying Galactica or, more importantly, by boarding party.

There are also other houserules we use, but I think those are the main ones relating to this issue.

Thanks a lot, James ! Although it might sound like a joke, your help WAS helpful !

Keep on with the sum up every page please ! just kiddin this time

Sinis said:

-1 Morale + 1 player's hand + 1 human action + 7 TN worth of other cards sounds a hell of a lot better than most reveal abilities. It's certainly better than the morale loss (-1 morale), better than brigging (1 action + 7 TN worth of cards, gets erased at NC), and probably better than sending someone to sickbay (4-9 cards).

And after they mistakenly execute the admiral you can potentially go execute someone yourself, since they're already down 1 hand of cards and the paranoia should be running high. Or just cackle madly to try to get them to spend another turn and 7 TN to kill you.

Zack said:

I agree completely. If you're a sleeper, you're only a cylon for a very short time before the NC phase starts anyway. Are you really going to cause more damage by revealing earlier? As Zack said, the total penalty for executing a human admiral (not just the -1 morale, but the loss of all the cards and a human action) is much more powerful than any cylon reveal I've seen.

So in the case of a Cylon admiral, what's the alternative?

Please forgive me I only read through page three before submitting this response, but the position of having an unrevealed Cylon on New Caprica has crippled every game I have played in since the expansion. My friends and I usually have a group of 6 or 7 and one of the two Cylons always seems to go undiscovered or undeclared until this point. This starts a line of executions that continue until we find the unrevealed Cylon.or severely cripple our chances of winning.

Like Syragar, executing all players until the humans know for sure that the Admirals title is in a human’s hand has always left a bad taste in my mouth and doesn’t feel like it is in the spirit of the game. On multiple occasions I have been a human Admiral who is executed at the beginning of the New Caprica phase just because the unrevealed Cylons know that the human player must waste this time or risk loosing the game. Using his idea of a final check to jump the fleet really makes sense.

Syragar, what colors do you use for the positive and negative cards that are put into this final skill check you suggest? Using 2 points for every ship or human left behind seems to work.

The vast majority of the time a single execution should be enough: the admiral is executed, the player is either a cylon and you stop, or they're a human and they the next person in the line of succession and you are now a guaranteed human admiral. Two executions would only happen if both Cain and Adama had been chosen and Cain was not the Cylon. Barring exceptional (i.e. illegal) circumstances, it will never be necessary to do more than two executions unless the two executed humans want to force it by refusing to choose Tigh.

In the games we have played, there have been up to three executions trying to find one or both of the hidden Cylons. In my opinion you should never have to execute any player who is playing in the best interest of the humans just because a Cylon has decided to stay hidden (Admiral or not) because to many humans are lost in the process. I think having a mandatory check to jump the fleet (that final jump only) makes perfect sense in game / series terms:

-If a Cylon Admiral tries to jump the fleet this would give the other human players a chance to play against the jump check and basically have a chance to mutiny.

-Or the Cylons would play against the humans who are trying to flee New Caprica and try to use force to keep them there longer.

This is in the humans advantage because there is usually more of them and that reviled Cylons can only play 1 card against checks at this time.

Wow, James, you actually gonna have to help me once more with summing up the situation because I definitely am LOST in time and space again, thanks to the contribution of Little Red - chiisaiakai, that is

Please James ?

I can't see how you would ever need 3 executions to ensure that the admiral isn't a cylon. If you get to Caprica and there is an unrevealed Cylon and the loyalty of the admiral is unknown, the chain of events would be:

1) Execute the Admiral.
a) If either Cain or Adama are available, the executed player picks one of them and you now have a known human admiral.
b) If neither Can nor Adama are available, but the highest in line's loyalty is known (because they were executed earlier perhaps), you now have a known human admiral.
c) If both Cain and Adama were picked at the start, the title passes to one of them and the dead person picks Tigh as their replacement character (or Tigh was already picked by an executed human earlier).

2) Execute the admiral. The only way to get here is if Cain and Adama were chosen at the start and their loyalties are unknown. You can't get here without knowing that Tigh is a human unless the player that was executed refused to choose him. Congratulations, your admiral is a cylon.

While it's possible to have 3 executions needed to find a hidden cylon admiral, it requires every human player who is executed that game to opt not to pick the next person in the line of succession. If any of them do, at most you'll need 2 executions.

Note: this assumes there are no house rules in play which make it possible to pick more than 2 military leaders during game setup.

Can't you just send people to the brig to get rid of them being admiral until you get to someone you know is human?

Yes, but:

1) It's much harder to do on New Caprica, since there is no Admiral's Quarters. Execution on NC is incredibly easy.

2) Without execution, knowing loyalty beyond a shadow of a doubt can be pretty hard.

I see the problem - it hasn't occurred to our group yet, but we haven't had a Cylon Admiral while playing Pegasus.

If I do see the problem, I think I'm going to implement a skill check to jump the fleet, but I don't think it needs to be 2 * the remainder. My thinking is difficulty = the maximum number of human players on New Caprica (the maximum Morale loss, in other words) + the number of civilian ships still on New Caprica. That should give a difficulty somewhere around 5-7 for a loyal admiral, or as high as 12+ for a treacherous Cylon. The intent, of course, is not just to rely on the difficulty and Destiny to stop him - if the admiral tries to jump the fleet in an obviously suicidal move, the human players will band together to prevent it from happening. Right now I'm thinking Leadership and Piloting positive, everything else negative. (Politics, strategy, repairs, and treachery will all mire Galactica in indecision, and make the rescue take longer. Aggressive leadership and skilled piloting will make the escape succeed.)

Thanks for the feedback everyone; I see why you say it is unlikely to have three executions to determine loyalty, but with the group I play with it really isn’t. We have no house rules when it comes to picking military leaders, just the ones concerning character selection from the rules (meaning two military leaders, sometimes more depending on executions).

The problem with my group is that the Cylons have discovered that remaining undeclared is much more beneficial to them winning the game than declaring. This is mainly because the humans suspect each other way too often and start a witch-hunt. This also gives the Cylons the opportunity to strategically play against critical checks and observe crises at the end of their turns.

As far as executions, when a human player is executed it often happens that they don’t want to take the next military leader available just to prove loyalty of the Admiral, forcing them to chose one would only take away from the game.

Ringarin and James, when you send an Admiral to the detention center on New Caprica they do not loose there title. This only happens on Galactica when they are sent to the brig; so the detained Admiral still posses the power to jump the fleet on there turns from detention.

BeriAlpha, as far as card colors I was thinking green and red as well, but also adding Engenering as positive to try and make it a little more even between the Cylons and the Humans. I still think Syragar was correct with using 2pts for every human and ship left behind because this would be a huge disadvantage and deterrent to the Cylon players who are limited to the amount of cards they can play during checks.

Thanks again for the feedback, and nice job on figuring out the name Hem

Chiisaiakai said:

I disagree, for the reason you stated - making it 2x would be a huge disadvantage and deterrent to the Cylon players. This is a valid strategy for the Cylons - wait until New Caprica, then jump the fleet too soon. The problem isn't that this strategy is possible, it's that it is automatic. Making it a difficulty 20+ check means that a Cylon admiral is forced to play loyally, lowering the difficulty until you get to the point where it's probably a good idea for a human to jump anyway.

Ultimately, it shouldn't be the difficulty of the check that prevents the jump - it should be the other players.

My concern with my own plan is that a loyal Admiral could get bad Cylons and a bad Destiny draw, and fail to jump the fleet. It could potentially mean an entire pass around the table before he can attempt to launch again. But hopefully someone has an EO in their hand.

Engineering's probably a good add, though.

As far as executions, when a human player is executed it often happens that they don’t want to take the next military leader available just to prove loyalty of the Admiral, forcing them to chose one would only take away from the game.

So then it's like I said: the executed humans are forcing it. I don't think it's fair to blame the game for a choice the players are making*, but if a house rule is necessary because the players refuse to be tactical but still want to win, a vote for the final jump seems a pretty common one.

* not that you're necessarily doing that.