OK _ so I'm relatively new to TI3, but I fully recognize it as the greatest game I think I've ever played (not including the first time I played Candyland with my son, but that's a different thing, and and can't wait until he plays this. He already loves to set up the boards on his own)

Enough about the kids. So the only drawback I have is that I have to schedule about 9 hours to play a 4 player game. WOW!!! What I'd like to hear from some folks is how to decrease the time.

I found some threads and articles on this in the past, and I wanted to see what other game fans migh recommend

Examples of What I've done so far:

All race counters in seperate boxes _ I use Baby food boxes. This includes trade contracts, planet cards and race tech

All the color ships in seperate boxes

Simulated early turns - Why this isn't the standard way to play I don't know. This is Muy cool, and sets the stage beautifully

I don't really care for the pre set maps, and neither do the folks I've played with. There's something cool about setting up the galaxy, and placing the systems where you want - kind of like setting up terrain in a minis game.

Age of Empires - not only fast but seems to make more of a thinking man's game. Also seems to balance for the Jol Nar, who can get their clocks cleaned in simulated early turn unless they have lots tech objectives (at least that's what I've seen)

Any other suggestions out there? Does having one player control the action or political decks help any? Anything I could do to get a 4 player game down to less than 6 hours would really be cool.

Thanks for your thoughts

Wow, that is a long time for a game. All the changes you suggested are sensible, and will help. My suggestions are:

- Experience, experience, experience. The more you play, the faster you get.

- Pre-plan moves; also, if someone is building for theirs, do you really need to know what it is before you take your move?

- After your turn finishes, shout to te next person so they know it's their time to act.

thanks for the thoughts. We'll keep at it. I've read up a lot lately so I'm hoping that too will keep us moving.

The reason why simulated early turns isn't standard by the way is because some races are stronger early on, while others take their time to come up to speed and are more powerful later. Simlated early turns takes out some of those early benefits and downsides, making some races weaker and others stronger and essentially screwing balance a litte.

It's not that bad for the first couple of plays though, when people don't know yet which races are better kept in check early on anyway

I believe that one of the assets of TI3 is that it is looong

Make sure not to use space mines or distant suns if you want a fast game.

blarknob said:

I don't know if I'd say that Space Mines would slow down the game any more than other defensive stuff like PDS would.

sigmazero13 said:

The thing is that you don't get to choose between space mines or PDS, but you get to choose between space mines and space mines plus PDS.

Well, a four-player-game takes about five to six hours, and you won't reduce it more, I think. Main thing is experience. Nine hours is REALLY long. Do people take much time to think their moves? Perhaps it helps to implement a countdown with two to five minutes for everyone to think it straight.

Playing with experinced players makes the game go faster. We help the next player remeber to plan their next turn, espicall when a large battle that doesn't involve you.

Organizing the tokens is a great step. Keeping them ready to go takes 30 minutes off the set up time.

Personally I can't wait until I have the kind of time to play a really long game and go "all in" with all the options we can play in a game, but right now it's just hard to schedule us old timers for more than a few hours at a time. from what I've seen TI remains engaging all the way through, so no matter how long the game goes it'll be fun all the way through.

In the last game we played we added the artifacts, which I think helped because it put more points on the board, and gave points that military types could take and/or hold, so that was a bonus.

I thought about the Voice of the Council with that in mind, but wondered if the politcal haggling for the position would actually increase the time. Thoughts?

Here's another suggestion for you. You might try looking for a play by email game. the place to do this would be at the TI3 wiki which can be found here . These usually take between 5 and 10 minutes to check each day and so it's a great way to play a game of TI3 when you don't have the time to sit down for 9 hours or people around to play with. Also, you should ask this question on the TI3 wiki forums. I am sure some of the other veterans over there would be happy to help you out! Good luck with your future games!

Some tips to speed up the game...

1)Set up the game before the other players start.

2)Know which races you and your friends would play in advance and set them up.

3)Playing experience is the key to faster games.

4)Play the first games with the basic startegy cards until you all know what must be done and then turn to the expansion strategy cards.

5)Make sure that everyone understands that to actually play this game you must think what you are going to do in each turn during your opponents turn so that when your turn comes to act immediatelly and not look how pretty the spaceships look or the most common line "What it's my turn already where is the Tech tree?"

I think that all these will bring down your play time eventually to 1 hour per player

Good luck

One thing I highly recommend is to tune the policital and Action card decks. There are a lot of cards in both decks that take up space and time unnecessarily.

4lterego said:

Interesting _ What do you pull from the decks?

It also helps to have someone be the timekeeper. Meaning when player 1 is buying something, this person would say tell player 2 to start working on his turn.This way it keeps the game moving.

I am not crazy about the pre-set maps but they do speed things up.

You could try a pre-made star-by-star map and then bid for position. Bidding is alot quicker than building a map.

Also, the newer the players the more guides help. For instance, tech maps can really speed things up, especially for new players.

Bill

Yes, experience speeds up your game. You no longer have to think about everything you can do and how, because you get a feeling for the situations on the board and which actions will be the most effective.

Besides, our game group uses hourglasses. Not only to speed things up, but also to keep things interesting. It can be satisfying to see a strong player struggling just because his time runs out. On the other hand it adds a tad more "realism" to the game, because sometimes you are confronted with situations you cannot think about for too long and you "HAVE TO ACT NOW!". Very interesting.

I have to admit that in the first two games some had problems with the hourglasses. Especially in the late game. But in a 5 or 6 player game there is enough time to think about your next step, when it is not your turn. To keep it fair the players start their turn by picking either a three or an eight minute hourglass. You are not allowed to take the eight minute hourglass two times in a row. If time runs out you are allowed to end your turn. This system does not limit your turn time. It just limits your thinking time in your very turn. Further we incorporated a penalty system if some players play too slow. If another player claims that the active player is not in time often or misuses the "end your turn properly" rule. The Council votes if this is true or not (Like during the political phase). If the Council votes for true it discusses a penalty. This penalty must fit the situation on the board and must have to do with the turn for which the penalty occured. Penalties go from simple "End your turn immediately" to leaving the command counter on the current active system during the next round (Effectively playing a "Signal Jamming" Action Card on that player). This power of the Council is self-regulating since players do not always want to vote against powerful enemys slowplaying here and there.

This system works well for our game group and it is a very interesting addition, since it brings more politics to the game and expands the use of alliances.

First time I played whit my friends(5 player game) it took 10hours and we only played for 7VP. But in time it got much faster .

If you wanna be good in this game, experience is the MOST important thing. I think.

Does anyone else think that the fleet supply is too small to win the game militarily? I mean, there are a few acceptions, but for the most part I wish the game was more combative instead of only playing for victory points.

If that would be right the problem wouldn't be the fleet supply but the plastic limit. Great empires can't have fleets big enough to swarm the enemy on several fronts.

It should be quite challenging in a roughly balanced game to bring all your plastic models to the table. In our game group (mostly 5 players) it sometimes occurs in three player games. But when the game roup is bigger it is not an easy task to secure your perimeter whilst simultaneously advancing in technology to keep up with the others. Buying tech and advancing on the VP track can be expensive and there is rarely enough left to crank out fleet after fleet. If not, you're either very lucky or the throne of Mecatol Rex truly belogns to you!

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. We played out a 4 player in just about 4 hours that was more satisfying than any previous game. Experience and the right strategy cards made a big difference (Trade 2, Tech 2, Imp2). I was concerned Imp2 would slow things down, but it really played better and kept us out of an otherwise predictable Imperial/Initiative cycle. In addition, everyone had their own tech chart copy and I got a set of Darice boxes for the plastics that had individual compartments, so everyone could see the unit they were looking for.

Thanks for all the help. With this kind of speed now we may add leaders, mines and distant suns to extend just a wee bit.

If you end up with 7-8 players every game like in ours, you might want to inject a *****-at-the-guy-with-the-hat ethic. This, of course, involves a hat. It can be any hat (baseball cap, santa hat, cat-in-the-hat hat) which is generally pretty conspicuous and is handed to the next person in the game round once the previous owner of the hat has completed his/her turn. The hat allows everyone to know who's turn it is, and allows the focus of their impatience to be directed at the hat bearer should they be delaying their turn too long. We used to lose mountains of time to "who's turn is it anyway?" followed by a half minute backtracking. No more, with the *****-at-the-guy-with-the-hat ethic.