I play TI with friends and, as friends, we are somewhat reluctant to remove someone from the game early on because it means they won't have anything to do for the next several hours. Has anyone come up with a good way to let someone re-join the game if they've been eliminated?

I was thinking of maybe electing a non-planet hex and replacing it with the homeworld from a randomly chosen, not-currently-in-use, race (which the eliminated player would then start playing from that initial position). Granted it would be almost impossible to win by starting over mid-game, but at least the player could still participate. Maybe there would need to be a rule that the new little empire couldn't activate systems of the conquer - making it a vassal of sorts so that there was an incentive to eliminate an opponent rather than leave them barely alive.

Ki_Ryn said:

The conquering player could allow the conquered to control units in the region of space which previously belonged to him, effectively two players playing one race. The "real" player would still be calling the shots though, the second player would mostly just be rolling combats and moving tokens on the map, probably.

Alternatively, the eliminated player could assume the role of card-drawer, handing out PCs and ACs in the Status Phase, managing trade goods into and out of the bank with all players, etc.

The vassal idea is an interesting one. Instead of randomly placing a new race mid-game, you could just let him start from scratch with his original race under the same restrictions. It would amount to the same thing and not require you to change the map mid-game. The only problem with this idea is that allowing a player to stay in the game with the restriction that he cannot attack player X will give player X an obvious advantage. There's another whole set of plastic ships out there, another set of CCs hitting the table and no matter what they do they can't hurt X. If these two players are adjacent (as is likely, I would think for an early game elimination) then player X now has a considerable safety buffer on one side of his empire, since that player can't invade, but will still block other players from coming at him from that direction. It's not just a question of the conquered player not really having a chance to win, it also gives the conqueror a much better chance.

In our games we've never had a problem with early elimination (in fact, I don't think anyone's ever been fully eliminated in any game we played.) Another approach might be to see if you can find ways to discourage players from eliminating people in the first place. Remove objectives that require you to invade another player's home system, stuff like that. Of course, if your players tend to take a particularly hostile approach to the game and attack all the time anyway, this might not change much.

Honestly, if it was me I'd want to leave and did the one time I got eliminated. Eliminating players is a total pain in the butt and ultimately I've never seen anyone including myself take someone out without likely losing the game in the process. That important flexibility to complete objectives in the end game is a bit destroyed when you've had to put that many eggs in one basket. It also seems kinda messed up that your path to victory is through ethnically cleansing the universe of X race of aliens. IMHO all of those objectives are lame and break the game for the person who gets them.

You can get away with diverting resources to Mecatol to complete your secret objective in large part due to how central that system is and if you play with them its proximity to the needed artifacts end game. When you take over someone elses home system and wipe the floor with them you force yourself way out of position. You have to hope you get a chance to counter punch and take it after they make their stab for mecatol or another player. Basically everything has to break right for you most times and even then you still may lose everything in the process.

In the end I recommend that you take the proactive approach and remove those kill X neighbor secret objectives. They just ruin the game and very likely both parties chance at winning.

How the heck could anyone get eliminated early??? If someone played THAT BADLY, wouldn't you have half a brain and let the take back their mistakes? That is SO noobie to have that happen, and I'm talking about the other guys as well!!!

Have some fun for goodness sake, and don't forget you want to enjoy TI3, not simply win it in the face of poor negligent play!!!

CTuxford said:

I definitely know some people who would not let you take back anything that had already been done. Also, if the people in his group are overly aggressive, it's possible player A went all out to attack player B early on. In a well-formed group this would probably mean player B over-extends himself and leaves himself vulnerable to counterattack by another player, but in some groups a favoured player might be able to get away with murder (or genocide, in this case ) because the remaining players are unwilling to take advantage of his weakened state. TI is as much about politics as warfare. A player who knows how to manipulate his opponents (instead of their pieces) can get away with some surprising things sometimes.

Different people play this game different ways. Personally, I rarely ever attack people unless my hand is forced. Other people just go nuts with the fighting and basically ignore everything else. All methods are presumably fun to those who employ them, otherwise why would they play that way?