I'm a brand new player to Twilight Imperium. I played one game against myself and then two in my local game group. Given the game's reputation we were surprised how we could finish the game within four hours. It was a lot of fun, too.

The objective system is surprising. I won the game while another player completely dominated the board militarily, and we discovered that when those Victory 2 objectives start flipping the game can end very rapidly. It seems strange the objectives, especially the Victory 2 objectives, are so easy to complete.

We've never played with more than three people; it's hard to get that many to meet at one time. I can tell I'm going to want to play a lot more of this game to learn how to play it well, more than I can expect to get, so I'm hoping someone releases a Vassal module soon so I can play remotely with others.

In any case, great game! I remember being memorized by the box of TI3 when I was a teenager and it's great to now be able to play TI4.

Objectives are generally easier the fewer people there are. I have never played a 3 player game, but generally in a 4 player game resources are more abundant because all Strategy Cards are used every round. in 5 and 6 player games 2 or 3 cards aren't chosen. Also games tend to get a lot more competitive as players learn the nuances of the "knee cap" & "halt" strategies that you learn with experience.

One thing you have to realize about TI4 is that, all races are capable of scoring all objectives relatively easily. The stumbling block are other players so if you are not playing aggressively to try to stop people from scoring than by the time blue objectives start dropping its too late to really halt progress. This is different from TI3 where objectives were difficult to complete even if no one was stopping you and very subtle moves could halt someones progress. TI4 requires a lot more aggressive play else you end up with a 8/8/8/8/8 game where the last round comes down to who is holding the speaker token.

It's for the reasons that @BigKahuna outlines that I recommend going to 14 point game with three people (and I suspect this would hold true for four, but I'm in the same boat as you @ntguardian regarding getting people together at the same time and place so I can't say for certain). It only really adds an extra turn or two, but we found that without it the game ended just as it seemed to really be warming up.

On 12/20/2017 at 2:13 PM, BigKahuna said:

The stumbling block are other players so if you are not playing aggressively to try to stop people from scoring than by the time blue objectives start dropping its too late to really halt progress.

On 1/10/2018 at 10:18 AM, GaGrin said:

I recommend going to 14 point game with three people

I agree with both these assessments.