I love this game and actually have no problem with the pace and speed of the game. Having said that. I'd like to get into the game a little faster so that our group can "move further" into the game without running out of time. Any ideas out there on speeding up round 1 and getting into round 2 faster? I thought about expanding starting resources and allowing each player 2 additional technologies and pass one law before we even begin round 2. Essentially, I'm brainstorming here and wondering, can we start a little further along so the conflict and victory points begin to happen faster. The only downside to this is you can't then watch and see what is purchased and where people go. BUT to be honest, usually others are too far away the opening round anyway to worry about it. I'm about to ramble, so any ideas would be helpful.

In my experience, the better all players know as many rules as possible the faster it goes. Doing away with constant pageflipping through the rulebooks cuts out a significant amount of downtime.

The rulebooks are available on FFGs site in pdf format so all players could read through those at their own leisure before it's time to play. Also: the following link provides a really good way of polishing up on at least the basics: http://www.preeminent.org/steve/games/ti3/ti3demo/

How are you handling basic set up? Is someone getting the map and stuff set up before everyone else gets there? Is the a way for your group to select races before hand? That person could have all the starting tokens and cards set up before hand as well.

Make sure everything is organized, with bins for GF, Fighter, and TG tokens. Split the action deck into 2-3 smaller decks so that one is accessible to everyone. Stuff like that.

Moving on to actual gameplay. What, if any, expansions and optional rules are you using?

If your using preliminary objectives, deal both it and the secret objective(s) right at the start, instead of waiting till the prelim is scored. This lets players work toward their secret from round 1.

If there aren't too many players, separate the secret objectives into "I control mecatol rex and...." ones and non MR ones, then deal one of each pile to each player, but a player can only score one secret objective all game. This encourages everyone getting involved, and mitigates someone getting screwed with an un-achievable goal

Don't use distant suns tokens. They add a lot of flavor, but really slow down the game.

Do use artifacts. I didn't like artifacts when I first read about them, but after having played with the they speed the game up a lot, and really make things more dynamic.

Use tech 2 strategy card (if available), makes it a lot faster for everyone to get tech.

Use the option that has all public objectives revealed at start. That way people can start scoring right away.

Most other optional rules slow the game down and shouldn't be used if you are explicitly going for speed.