Hi there,

i have played the game only twice. It is awesome, really good concepts. Fantastic possibilities in diplomacy, armies, technologies etc.

But i was wondering how strong the imperial strategy card is. In both games -i have played yet- the winner was determined by this strategy. Especially in the last turns this card was high frequented. I think this fact makes the game a little boring. Struggle for a strategy card is not what i expected.

Here is my question:

Is there something i did not noticed about it?

My idea is to reduce the gain of victory points to 1. I look forward to your experience with it.

Thank you in advance

Luxis

The Shattered Empire expansion has a version of the Imperial Strategy (Imperial II) that fixes this problem that many of us see with the vanilla game.

Imperial II (8)

Primary Ability: The Ancient Throne (Choose either a) or b).)

a.) During the upcoming Status Phase, you may qualify for any number of Public Objective Cards. Also, if you control Mecatol Rex, immediately gain 1 Victory Point.

b.) You may execute the secondary ability of this Strategy Card for free. No other player may execute this secondary ability. (Secondary ability is the same as the original card.)

You're absolutely right - it's way too good. There are three options:

1.) Reduce the benefit to 1 VP (as you said)

2.) Use Imperial II as suggested above

3.) Buy the expansion, Shattered Empire. Not only does it remove Imperial completely, it fixes a couple of other bugs in the game too.

Thanks for your comments.

This evening we will start a game with the 1 VP rule. I am curious.

Shattered Empire has just been ordered

For what it's worth, the 1VP idea isn't a new idea; there is a page of "official variants" in the Support section of the TI3 area of this site; one of those is simply just to reduce it to 1VP.

(Imperial II is a little better, though, as it only gives you the 1 VP if you control Mecatol, and has an option to just do the secondary instead, which prevents everyone else from using the Secondary).

Yes I read that just before playing. So we decided to handle it with the "1 VP only if you control MR"-Rule and it worked fine. The game was much more exciting.

Luxis said:

Don't forget the other half of that option, though - the one that lets you claim multiple objectives in the Status Phase! That can be very powerful, also.

Otherwise, I don't know if it would be worth picking in many cases, because any time you do, it allows all the other players to build at a space dock without activating it!