I've bought Twilight Imperium 3 and Shattered Empires as a joint present for my missus and I this Christmas and was just looking for a bit of advice for the first game. I've read back through some threads both on this board and BGG and just wanted to make sure I've got it more or less right.

Our first game will most likely be a 3 player game although it is quite likely in the future we'll be mainly playing 4 player games and possibly 5 player games at somepoint (getting any more players than that any time soon will be quite unlikely).

Until now the game most like TI3 that we've played is Warrior Knights with its expansion and whilst I'd call that a sophisticated game, it isn't overly complex it looks like TI3 will be quite the step up! So for the first game, I was thinking of keeping it simple by:

1) Playing vanilla TI3 without the expansion in order to learn the mechanics of the game at first. The first game will be more about learning the rules than trying to win as we dont know the rules well enough to formulate any strategies.

2) Using Imperial 1. This is probably something we'll most likely drop from the 2nd game onwards, but we'll use it to keep the game as short as possible.

3)Using a preset map for the first game- this will keep it balanced whilst we learn the rules and should save some time.

4)Although it'll be the vanilla version we play, we'll probably use the Age of Empires variant (is that correct?) The one where all the public objectives are revealed at the start to give some focus to the game from the off.

5)Print out several copies of the tech tree for us players to use.

That's pretty much it. Does any one have any advice they can provide?

Cheers,

El

I'm an experienced player, and I agree with most of what you said, except the strategy cards.

Each game of TI3 takes a long time to play, so many groups don't play very often. The game is also very complex in terms of rules and strategies. With these things in mind, I would NOT use the vanilla Strategy Cards, but would go with the ones from Shattered Empire. The strategy cards are a vital part of the game to learn and understand. The vanilla cards are inferior in game design, so you will inevitably start using the expansion ones. If you first learn the vanilla cards, IMO you will have wasted valuable time that you could've used to learn the Shattered Empire cards. Worst case scenario, people will not like the game because the vanilla strategy cards are so bad, and you'll have a hard time getting a group together again.

Even for an experienced player, every game of TI3 is a learning experience. But the more you learn, the better the game gets. Therefore I think it's more useful to learn the game with the rules you're going to end up using anyway.

Fair enough, what does everybody else think? I must admit the game is still teasing me, hiding away in the garage still unopened! Without breaking any forum rules, is it possible to have a quick run down as to how bad the vanilla strategey cards are in comparison?

The only glaring issue with the original strategy cards vs. the expansion ones are the #1-#8 combo.

If you have speaker, you MUST take #8 to get the 2 points.

If you are second to pick, you MUST take #1 to be able to #8 next round.

If you do not do this, you fall behind in points. The game overall moves at a much slower pace with the original cards. It is very hard to build up quickly and move out, so it seems like it takes forever to do so. The expansion cards remove the requirement of you to pick a specific card all the time. There will of course be times when you need to.

I agree with using a preset map for your first game as nobody will know how the systems work in conjunction with objectives and such. That will reduce your time for your first game by a lot. Once you know definitely stop using preset maps as building the maps is a major part of your strategy as you get to look at your secret objective before building the map. Do I have "Keeper of the Gates"? Then I want wormholes near me. If I don't, maybe I don't want them near me.

As far as optional rules, I would use only a few. I would use the Wormhole Nexus, which makes the galaxy smaller and ensures more interaction. I would also use racial technologies, as they can improve some of the weaker races, while adding just a little bit more for the stronger ones. Don't worry about ANY other optional rule.

As far as cheat sheets go, here are a few links to some useful ones:

Tech Chart:

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/27486/twilight-imperium-3e-shattered-empires-tech-tree

This Tech Chart is simply the best one out there. It reads directly from top to bottom. It is color coded and easy to read.

Objectives Checklist:

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/55517/objectives-checklist

This might not be extremely useful for the first game, but it might be nice to know what is out there. I use this one to explain to people about objectives during the game since it is not possible to dig in the box for the actual cards to show them.

Good luck in your first game and enjoy this awesome experience.

El Mariachi said:

I don't think the original SCs are THAT bad. I mean, we switched to the Expansion set as soon as we got them and never looked back, but it's not like the game was terrible with the old set.

The whole #1-#8 "game clock" thing definitely exists, although I think how prominent it becomes depends largely on how obsessed the people playing are with "making the absolute best possible choice every time." I've played this game with some pretty serious strategy gamers (including a couple guys who seriously read entire books dedicated to the art of analyzing board game strategies) and this game clock has never arisen in our plays.

It's sort of like a nuclear arms race. If one guy starts using the "game clock" strategy with Imperial I, then everybody has to do it just to keep up. But as long as nobody focuses on doing it every time, the game can be played in a much more free style. Of course, getting the Expansion SCs (or at least subbing in Imperial II) removes the temptation entirely, as well as mixes up a few other things that keep people moving turn after turn. At the end of the day it really depends how "gamist" your group of players is.

I would say just have fun with your first few games. Use whichever SC set you want, use the expansion or don't. This game is big enough that it will probably be a few games before people at your table really start to manipulate the mechanics to their advantage. At first it'll just be everyone exploring the game in their own way.

I would say use the SE strategies. That's not because of game balance, or good/bad - in your first game, that's not really important anyway. I say it because if you plan on moving onto them at some point, well they're no more complex to use than the vanilla ones, so you might as well. There's no sense in starting on one set, and just as you're getting used to them changing over.

One thing I would say:

- Follow LIKE GOSPEL the section on the race sheets titled "tactical action". It's a 7-part step-by-step guide which if you follow, answers 90% of questions about 90% of the game.

Enjoy!

Cheers for the responses guys. I'm really looking forward to playing this- it's making Christmas seem like it's ages away!

To begin with its my intention to use the old objective cards like a game clock just to keep things ticking along in the first game, but I imagine we'll be replacing the vanilla cards with the SE cards almost straight after. I'll also give some of the recommend SE options a go from the 2nd game onwards.

Many thanks for the play-aids, they look like they'll help a lot! Do you guys and gals have any general advice as well on ensuring everything goes smoothly and as quickly as possible (don't worry, we'll be setting plenty of time aside for the game but anything that will help ensure we can close the game will be much appreciated!)

Cheers,

El

El Mariachi said:

Make sure everyone prepares for their turn during the previous player's turn. This is the most important factor in keeping up good pace.

I played with Imperial for the first few games, but like everybody else I dislike how restrictive it is. Since you sound like you want to try it out as written, go all out and use all 8 of the initial cards, so you can greater appreciate how much better the expansion is

Personally, when teaching the game to new players I do use the base cards as they are easier to understand and more straightforward, with the exception of Trade II, Technology II, and Imperial II because they are easy to swap out and greatly improved over the originals. In my experience, the expansion strategy cards are more difficult for new players to wrap their heads around, but once you have a few games under your belt you can start using the full set and really enjoy the game more. Use Age of Empires for your first game whether or not you use Imperial II

Definitely go with a preset map for your first game. I would ignore all the alternate rules and for a 3-player game I probably wouldn't even use the Wormhole Nexus. Even racial techs are kind of wonky, both in how you acquire them, and in how each player's is different. However, if you're playing with a group of experienced boardgamers who have read the rules ahead of time, you may want to give racial techs, artifacts, and leaders a try.

As far as keeping the game going, the best thing you can do is make a rule that whenever anybody finishes their turn, they have to notify the next player. "Ok, that was Trade... Warfare is up next! Greg that's you!" Prepare for your turn during other player's turns. When all you're doing in a turn is building, say so and let the next person move if they don't care what you build

Hi everyone,

it's been a while since I created this thread, but Christmas has finally happened and I managed to grab my first game of vanilla TI3! My first game was a 3 player game, all of us being new. The options we used were:

Preset Maps: We used the 3 player preset map, subbing out the SE tiles (Hope's End and Trade Stations) for tiles from the base game.

Age of Empire.

Base game strategy cards including Imperial I (all players were made aware of how to use the game clock mechanic).

The races were decided randomly as per the normal rules and ended up with my friend getting the Jol-Nar, my girlfriend getting the Yssaril Tribes and with myself being the Mentak Coalition. To summarise, the game went really well and we all had a lot of fun- we played to 10 VPs which took us about 6 hours including a small break at the end of every game round to allow us to rest, grab a quick bite to eat and drink and generally allow us to keep focused whilst we were actually playing. We intentionally kept the game very 'vanilla' so that we could concentrate on learning the mechanics of the game.

As a group we concluded:

• The game isn't as complicated as first thought- it's sophisticated and there's a lot of subtley to the potential strategies which will eventually reveal themselves as we get more comfortable with the rules but overall, it all seemed quite logical. The fact that we have previously played a lot of Warrior Knights helped I imagine as the essence of the games are similar.
• The vanilla game was great fun, but we can see how some of the variants add a lot of flavour.
• The three races were good fun. The Mentak Coalition seemed fairly balanced although having a fleet size of 4 at the start helped a lot and it was cheeky being able to steal trade goods from the other players if they had enough counters. I also managed to win with the coalition! The Jol-Nar seemed to be quite powerful with a lot of starting technology and the fact that the public objectives consisted of several tech based objectives, meant the jol-nar had an early lead. They were quickly dealt with though . The Yassaril Tribes seemed quite good and my girlfriend actually lead most of the game with them until I was able to sneak the win right at the end.
• The Imperial I Card....yeah...we can see the reason it's like that but having to always choose Imperial and Initiative was quite restricting at times and the only reason the Jol Nar lost quite so badly in the end was that they were prevented from choosing it when it was their turn to thanks to a sneaky card played by my girlfriend. It was very useful in an all newbie game and I recommend it for other newbies, however we will be ditching it in the future.
• Using a preset map and the age of empire variant saved a lot of time. We will try the game without these variants eventually, but for now we'll be keeping them to help keep the game time fairly reasonable.
• Player aids like a tech tree are invaluable, many thanks for pointing this out!

We're confident enough with the rules to play the next game with the following variants to form our opinions on them:

1. Age of Empire and the 3 player preset map. However, the preset map will now be used with the SE tiles as suggested.
2. SE Variant Strategy Cards with Bureaucracy (any ideas how to make the bureaucracy card a better choice whilst using Age of Empire?)
3. Race Specific Tech
4. Artifacts (to reduce game time due to the added options we're using)
5. SE Variant Objectives (they seem more interesting)
6. Distant Suns to spice up the early game phase rather than merely going, I claim this planet, and I claim this one, and this one etc.
7. Guardians of Mecatol Rex (merely waltzing in on Mecatol Rex in the last game felt wrong somehow)
8. Leaders (some people say they don't add much, but my group are keen on trying them)
9. Sabotage Runs

There are others we're interested in trying like shock troops, facilities, the wormhole nexus etc; but I reckon the above lot will keep us more than busy in our next game. Do you guys have any tips and advice for players at our stage (newbie, but no longer TI virgins!)

Cheers,

El

1 & 2. Age of Empire is good for new players to be able to plan long term strategy, but if bureaucracy I do recommend playing without age of empires. However, this might slow the game down as you can't plan ahead too far.

3. The racial techs can really help even the playing field. The races that were very strong to begin with received a weaker racial tech, while the weaker races received a stronger tech.

4. Good choice, my group doesn't use them much, but they will definitely speed the game up.

5. I would suggest combining all the objectives into one big deck and selecting from there. Every game will be different. Some will be more resource/influence heavy, some more tech heavy, some more warlike. This really boosts replayability.

6. If you are looking to keep the time down a bit while you are still learning the game I would advise against Distant Suns. They can really slow the game down if you are unlucky in your DS draws. I've seen people lose their entire fleets first round. Once you have learned the game, however, I would definitely say add DS when playing with 3 or 4 players. When playing with 5 or more people, DS can really slow the game down even more. If you are wanting to give them a try, use the "territorial distant suns" option from the expansion. This will ensure that nothing major will happen to you until you move farther away from home.

7. Good choice here as well. If playing with DS this should basically be mandatory. This option doesn't really effect game time much.

8. Leaders lead to a lot more options for strategy. However, they introduce a lot of agents which can be used as a sabotage card, which might slow the game down. Leaders are always used in my play group.

9. Sabotage runs are interesting, but not really worth it. There is no reason not to throw this in though.

Hi Dave, thanks for your reply!

I was looking at the strategy cards again last night and I reckon that whilst it we're still using the Age of Empire option, we'll house rule the Bureaucracy card with the 'Red Tape' rule I've seen bouncing around the web. Essentially what this does is whilst you know what the objectives are in advance through Age of Empire, you cannot claim them until the 'Red Tape' has been removed- i.e. you put counters on the objectives you can't claim and you remove them in the same way you would reveal hidden objectives using the Bureaucracy card.

Also, I believe it was when I was reading the Imperial II card, I gleamed that normally you can only claim one objective per turn- something we missed in our first game. Is this correct?

I quite like your idea of mixing the two objective decks together to help boost replayability. In fact I imagine we'll do this after our next game- i.e. we'll have a game with just the new objectives to see what they're like and then mix them together for the future although part of me is tempted to do this before the next game in case the variant objective cards are perhaps a little too warlike?

We're quite keen to try out Distant Suns but I have heard this variant does slow down the game somewhat, particularly if people probe every system they want to land on first however I hadn't considered the possibility of people losing their entire fleet in the first turn. Whilst this sounds entertaining I reckon in reality it would be quite a hinderence when you don't have the resources available to recoup your early losses. I think I'll take your advice play "Territorial Distant Suns" simply to avoid this. As for time, well hopefully the artifacts option will keep it down a little but at the end of the day, as long as it isn't a 12 hour three player game, we'll be alright- we'll set aside a whole day for our game.

Cheers!

El

The rules state that you can only claim one objective during the status phase. Bureaucracy lets you claim one during the action phase, and then you may claim your normal one during the status phase. Imperial II lets you claim as many as you are able, but only if you control Mecatol Rex.

The new objectives rely more heavily on combat, while the original objectives have tech and resource ones. When you combine them they have a fairly even distribution. There is no reason you can't try the new ones alone before you mix.

Territorial is a good intro to Distant suns. You'll get to experience them, but also not be completely blindsided by bad luck. After getting to know them I would say just do completely random ones.

Have fun with this awesome game.

Sounds good, hopefully i'll be able to have my next game a couple of weeks into January, it'll be another 3 way game with the same players. Having said that at some point I'm planning on introducing this game to two people from work. What level of complexity would you recommend in terms of variants if 2 people in a 4 player game are experienced, and 2 are completely new?

Cheers,

El