Space Cats, Peace Turtles. Ep 001. Leadership & Diplomacy

Launching this podcast and hope everyone will give it a listen.

Please take part in the discussion by responding to any points you agree or disagree with.

This episode covers the basics of Twilight Imperium 4th Edition. We go over the galaxy and movement, the Leadership & Diplomacy Strategy Cards, and the following races: Federation of Sol, Ghosts of Creuss, Naalu Collective, and The Xxcha Kingdom.

The next four episodes will continue to go over Strategy Cards and Races, and then we'll kick off into more open discussions. We'll eventually make our theoretical race ranking (before having played any games of TI4) as well as episodes devoted to each Race's starting strategy. Finally, once we have our hands on the game, we'll do episodes devoted to breaking down entire games, discussing successful and unsuccessful strategies. I hope you enjoy, and please give us any feedback.

I really enjoyed this. I thought your ideas about the Naalu were spot on. I hadn't thought about fighter swarms. Once they have hybrid crystal fighter II, they are building units that are as good as other races cruisers I for half a resource each. And take up half a fleet supply. Construction limits are going to be the issue here rather than resources. You can build a very powerful fleet with very little.

Couple of points: the Xxcha had a -1 on opponents rolls in the first round of combat in TI3.

Also with Sol, you say that there will be great stacks of GFs everywhere. I think that in TI3 the use of the 2GF ability was rare, as it was extremely expensive. 2 GFs for a CC is not a good deal! I think this is even more true in TI4 in a poorer CC environment. As such, I think that the Federation is all about the CC ability, and the vast fighter swarms, assuming they can build them. Sol cares about build slots as much as the Naalu.

Could you please post in this thread or a new one when there are new episodes?

1 hour ago, Robofish said:

I thought your ideas about the Naalu were spot on. I hadn't thought about fighter swarms. Once they have hybrid crystal fighter II, they are building units that are as good as other races cruisers I for half a resource each. And take up half a fleet supply. Construction limits are going to be the issue here rather than resources. You can build a very powerful fleet with very little.

I tried to make this point during gencon and everyone basically blew me off

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/256512-the-new-racial-techs/#comment-2933434

2 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

I tried to make this point during gencon and everyone basically blew me off

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/256512-the-new-racial-techs/#comment-2933434

Wow you did and they really did. You were right.

Yeah. We go into this a bit more in the next episode, but there's definitely something to be said for the races that seem like absolute super powers now. Some of them have these seemingly unstoppable abilities, and you have other races that seemed to get no significant improvements. When you put them side by side, it seems like most races got nerfed purely because these other races got buffed so intensely.

That may be true but just because a race is really good at control doesn't mean they are good at technology or economy. I've never seem a game won where one person just dominated the entire game, in fact it's the guy that has barley any fleet left and is holding on by a thread that usually scores enough victory points to win. It's all well and good that some races are really good at combat now or whatever, but are they good at scoring objectives? That's not been my experience in the handfull of TI4 games I've played thus far. I'm interested in seeing how other groups play TI4 once it's out to the masses.

Good podcast btw, looking forward to the next one.

Good stuff!
Looking forward to playing TI4 with any race to really play their unique abilities to the fullest. Except perhaps The Winnu?...keen to hear your thoughts on them, with perhaps some house rule balances.
Thanks.