I was perusing the rulebooks, and realized that something was gone. Where did all the variants go? Even the base game had variant options for longer games, or different ways to handle objective cards, or the distant suns tokens. ( I know someone else complained about those. I'm being a bit more general.)

The expansions each added more variants, too. Some where ok, some where great. But they were all options that let us customize our experience and make each game our own. I can understand not having all the variants in the game, especially since some of them were just terrible. But why remove all of the optional rules?

EDIT: stupid phone somehow posted this before I was done.

Long war is still there. Aside from that, it seems FFG wanted to avoid mechanic-creep this time around, so they made everything they liked part of the core game (race-tech, flag-ships, promissory notes...) and everything else went the way of the dodo.

The great thing about some of the old variants for TI:3, is that you can probably find a way to incorporate them into TI:4 if you miss them that much. Distant Suns looks like it would be easy to bleed into TI:4 from TI:3 for example.

16 hours ago, Snid said:

The great thing about some of the old variants for TI:3, is that you can probably find a way to incorporate them into TI:4 if you miss them that much. Distant Suns looks like it would be easy to bleed into TI:4 from TI:3 for example.

With distant suns you can also use the planet traits for them, Industrial can have green and hazardous can have red so you won't be blindsided like you would have in 3rd ed.

Yeah, I imagine that after a game or two (to gauge it, in it's own) we'll add most of the crome we use when playing today: Distant Suns, Mechs, Mercs (?), Representatives, and Artifacts. Wormhole Nexus as well. I could even imagine adding this right away.

55 minutes ago, aermet69 said:

Yeah, I imagine that after a game or two (to gauge it, in it's own) we'll add most of the crome we use when playing today: Distant Suns, Mechs, Mercs (?), Representatives, and Artifacts. Wormhole Nexus as well. I could even imagine adding this right away.

I want to try a version of Twilight Imperium that actually plays well at lest once, and considering how often we will get to play I expect the first expansion to come around after the first 2 sessions anyway.

Yeah. The group I play with has already agreed that we need to play it vanilla a couple of times, just to appreciate it for what it is. Then, after some time, let the home brewing and the nerfing commence.

I think there is some logic to this arrangement. From a development stand point, it was probably a lot easier to test and balance when you always play with everything and there are no alternatives and combos to test. There were a lot of oddities with the rules and balances when it came to mixing different variance, so it was less about rules complexity and more about how X variant, combined with Y and Z variants worked in the scope of a 6 hour game.

I would imagine as well that with TI3 players being fairly accustomed to playing with variants pretty much always (aka, I think very few if any at this point play vanilla TI3), it made sense that they just work the most common variants into the core. I mean since Shattered Empire was released I have never played without Racial Techs for example and since Shard of Throne I have never again played without capitals. I think if I were to research "most common variants used", I would probably come up with a list of things that were included in TI4 and I'm guessing this is probably how it went down.

Then there are variants like Distant Suns and Leaders which where great in theory, but from a pragmatic stand point had a lot of mechanical issues. Distant Suns were basically a "random" component to the game which is something from a design perspective not particularly great in a 6 hour a game. Getting a major setback that will likely cost you the game in the opening moves of a game in a 6 hour game is fairly disappointing and I watched that play itself out pretty much in every game distant suns were included over the last 10 years. Its cool conceptually but, in practice it kind of sucked. Leaders were also kind of a weird mechanic because it largely just stalled games adding rounds to an already insanely long game, so while again a cool concept it was not very practical.

What it looks like to me is that they set a core foundation using what was effectively the fan favorites from TI3 with its 3 expansions like the races, capital ships, racial techs for example, and they cut out the more beneficially debatable mechanics. I would venture to guess with a certain certainty that some of the variant mechanics we had in TI3 will find their way into expansions in newer more streamlined form, hopefully a more balanced form as well.

My gut feeling is that TI4 will completely replace TI3, its not going to be this 3rd edition, 4th edition D&D kind of thing where you have hold outs who think the old game is better, its clear its the same game with more focus so Christian T.P. clearly did his homework on the community.

6 hours ago, BigKahuna said:

and since Shard of Throne I have never again played without capitals.

Do you mean flagships here?

44 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Do you mean flagships here?

yes.. as in capital ships or flagships.

On 8/25/2017 at 4:25 AM, BigKahuna said:

I think there is some logic to this arrangement. From a development stand point, it was probably a lot easier to test and balance when you always play with everything and there are no alternatives and combos to test. There were a lot of oddities with the rules and balances when it came to mixing different variance, so it was less about rules complexity and more about how X variant, combined with Y and Z variants worked in the scope of a 6 hour game.

I would imagine as well that with TI3 players being fairly accustomed to playing with variants pretty much always (aka, I think very few if any at this point play vanilla TI3), it made sense that they just work the most common variants into the core. I mean since Shattered Empire was released I have never played without Racial Techs for example and since Shard of Throne I have never again played without capitals. I think if I were to research "most common variants used", I would probably come up with a list of things that were included in TI4 and I'm guessing this is probably how it went down.

Then there are variants like Distant Suns and Leaders which where great in theory, but from a pragmatic stand point had a lot of mechanical issues. Distant Suns were basically a "random" component to the game which is something from a design perspective not particularly great in a 6 hour a game. Getting a major setback that will likely cost you the game in the opening moves of a game in a 6 hour game is fairly disappointing and I watched that play itself out pretty much in every game distant suns were included over the last 10 years. Its cool conceptually but, in practice it kind of sucked. Leaders were also kind of a weird mechanic because it largely just stalled games adding rounds to an already insanely long game, so while again a cool concept it was not very practical.

What it looks like to me is that they set a core foundation using what was effectively the fan favorites from TI3 with its 3 expansions like the races, capital ships, racial techs for example, and they cut out the more beneficially debatable mechanics. I would venture to guess with a certain certainty that some of the variant mechanics we had in TI3 will find their way into expansions in newer more streamlined form, hopefully a more balanced form as well.

My gut feeling is that TI4 will completely replace TI3, its not going to be this 3rd edition, 4th edition D&D kind of thing where you have hold outs who think the old game is better, its clear its the same game with more focus so Christian T.P. clearly did his homework on the community.

I'd love permission to post this quote to my facebook group, because God **** that is some Truth!

On 8/16/2017 at 10:29 AM, bishop083 said:

I was perusing the rulebooks, and realized that something was gone. Where did all the variants go? Even the base game had variant options for longer games, or different ways to handle objective cards, or the distant suns tokens. ( I know someone else complained about those. I'm being a bit more general.)

I was under the impressions the Map Setup, Promissary Notes & the Long War were "Variants". They're listed in the "Advanced Rules" as opposed to "Variants", but they function as options you can or don't have to use. Also, couldn't Age of Empires, while not specifically stated as such, could be brought forward with ease couldn't it?

On 2017-08-25 at 9:08 PM, BigKahuna said:

yes.. as in capital ships or flagships.

Technically, all ships that are not fighters are concidered capital ships. Flagships are (usually) the biggest of the capital ships. Terminology is key.

7 hours ago, Fnoffen said:

Technically, all ships that are not fighters are concidered capital ships. Flagships are (usually) the biggest of the capital ships. Terminology is key.

Technically the definition of "capital ship" has changed over the years. It used to mean the big, heavy combat ships; battleships and dreadnought and the like, but didn't include cruisers and escorts and destroyers and the like. So in TI terms, that definition would include dreadnought, warsuns, and flagships.

More recently, especially in sci-fi space opera circles, the term has come to mean ships capable of independent operation, generally classed as "not-fighters". Put another way, in sci-fi, capital ship means a space ship that acts like a wet navy ship while a non-capital ship is a space ship that is treated like an airplane.

I suspect the latter usage will win out in the end, but the matter is still in flux.