Hey,
I have 3rd edition of the game with both expansions: Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition: Shattered Empire and Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition: Shards of the Throne. Why aren't those expansions listed under 4th edition? Is Prophecy of Kings compatible with 3rd edition? Am I required to buy 4th edition to have all expansions?
TI3 and TI4 are completely different games. You are more than welcome to use some sort of house rules to force them to work together somehow, but TI3 and TI4 are not designed to be mixed at all.
14 minutes ago, Wh0isTh3D0ct0r said:TI3 and TI4 are completely different games. You are more than welcome to use some sort of house rules to force them to work together somehow, but TI3 and TI4 are not designed to be mixed at all.
Ok, I thought that editions are only cosmetically different not a total redesign.
1 hour ago, Fallen Zen said:Ok, I thought that editions are only cosmetically different not a total redesign.
Often times a new edition of a board game has mostly cosmetic differences, usually because a different company is now producing it. But in the case of TI4, they started from the ground up and used most of the best stuff from TI3 but removed or streamlined everything else. For instance, pretty much everyone agrees that researching new technology is WAAAYYYYY better in TI4.
Check out this comparison video...
Edited by Wh0isTh3D0ct0r
The key differences between 3rd and 4th editions:
Trade (with commodities) and transactions
Agenda Phase structure
Removal of old tech tree and replacement with generic and unit upgrade technologies
Significant culling of action cards and agenda cards (leaving in the most impactful)
Loss of Transfer Action and addition of Component Action
Significant plastic units upgrade (IMHO)
All of these changes have taken the best of of 3rd edition to create an incredibly solid TI4, and while the base game came with all 17 races (from TI3 and both expansions), it lacked 8-player support, additional space tiles for larger maps and scenarios. PoK is meant as a holistic expansion to TI4 (meaning you should incorporate all components into the base game rather than treat them as modular editions) which adds 7 new races (bringing the total up to 24- a number easily divisible by 3,4,6 & 8 for drafting convenience), 8-player support, 20 new Stage I & II objectives, a revised Distant Suns mechanics called Exploration, Mechs (24 unique units that replace the older mechanized units) and legendary planets.
The TI Codex will be a quarterly document that introduces new game content like scenarios, fan fiction and variant rules derived from the larger community of TI players. The first installment: Ordinian, has is already available for download on the FFG website.
So for 3rd edition, most commonly played is a variant called Shattered Ascension and often on Table Top Simulator. http://www.astralvault.net/games/SA/
But for designs purposes the most part is 3rd edition was modular in other words many of the rules were "optional" and to be decided between you and your play group. Some people hated Distant Suns tokens and would never use it, others (like one podcast) loved distant suns but didn't like the Galactic Council module. Other things is that the original followed the traditional 4x tech tree but that lead to an issue of newer technologies from expansions being a dead end (does not unlock other technologies). Agendas were also tied to a Stage card and not automatically at the end of a round. Trade was the simple trade agreement cards than when trade was taken you got the number of TG on a card that you hold that wasn't your faction.
For 4th edition they did a lot of streamlining. The upcoming expansion for example is not modular but an actual expansion, you play with the expansion you are likely going to play with all the additional mechanics that are added (exploration cards, relics, mechs, heroes). The trade system was revamped to you producing commodities then when you exchange them they are flipped to become trade goods which could be spent. Instead of the Tech Tree where each technology has a prerequisite it is now a tech path where you pick one tech and then that allows you to move to the next one. Also Agendas are now at the end of every turn.
So yeah there are quite a bit of differences between the two. Some people still prefer 3rd edition (heck you can find people that claim 2nd edition was the best). If you are new to the game just go with the latest as it will be easier to find players for it.