Little surprised there hasn't been any discussion about the changes in how the game is going to handle politics. From what we know, that seems like it is going to be the biggest change by far. So I thought I would start a topic to hear peoples thoughts on it.
For starters, here is what we know
The product page says this about the political strategy card
QuoteThe Politics strategy card allows a player to draw additional action cards and give a player the Speaker token.
based on that, and looking at the picture of the card, it looks like its full text is something like
Quote
Choose a player other than the speaker, that player gains the speaker token.
Draw 2 action cards.
Look at the top 2 cards of the agenda deck. Place each card on the top or bottom of the deck in any order.
No idea what the secondary is, but probably lets you spend a CC for an action card or two.
We also know that
Quotethe agenda phase occurs at the end of every round after Mecatol Rex has been claimed. Players get to refresh all their planets for the agenda phase, meaning they don’t have to split their planets for use between resources and influence. Like Third Edition , agenda cards are used to pass new laws in the galaxy, flipped from the top of the deck. After one law is voted on, a second card is flipped and another round of voting occurs. Planets are refreshed again after the agenda phase ends.
So, for starters, there is no politics and voting until someone has claimed Mecatol Rex. Probably a simple house rule if players want to engage in politics before getting to the capital, but officially the assembly doesn't start voting on stuff until someone claims the planet.
Next thing that really jumps out at me is that the political strategy card actually has very little to do with the political mechanics. Looks like you can prevent some crap laws from coming up if you want, but that's it
Then there is the fact that you're voting on more than 1 agenda each round. the way it is phrased makes me think that it is always specifically 2 agendas, but I suppose it might be more.
And finally, you don't have to worry about keeping influence available until after the vote since all of your planets untap (sorry "refresh"
) before and after the political phase
I'm not really sure what I think about these changes. I've never been terribly happy with the political element of the game. It always seemed like a bit of a formality. It could have serious repercussions on the game, but it was never really a contest. Either the agenda being voted on was lame and nobody cared whether it passed or failed, or one player always had so much influence that no one could stop him from deciding which way the vote went. A big part of that, I think, was the random way agendas would get turned up, and they seem to be retaining that element. Filtering the top couple cards doesn't really help a whole lot.
Another thing that has always bugged me is that taking the political strategy card doesn't seem to actually give you much benefit in the political aspect of the game, its all about action cards. Again, filtering the top couple cards doesn't help if the cards are crap. If you put both cards on the bottom of the deck, your back to a totally random draw. I've always felt that taking the political SC should give you some extra votes in the assembly, or give you a greater ability to decide from "known" agendas which ones will get voted on. something like everyone has a had of political cards and when the SC is played each player chooses one of their cards to bring before the senate and the player executing the primary ability gets to choose 1-2 of those cards to be the ones that will be voted on that round. Something.
On the plus side, I do really like breaking the actual voting out into its own phase, and making it so that you don't have to horde influence in order to participate. So many games I've played where, by the time politics gets played most players are down to 0-2 influence available for the vote.
What do you guys think? Good changes, bad, or just more of the same?