Howdy, hosting a game this weekend and considering adding New Caprica into the mix. We will be adding the new characters and cards as well as Pegasus into this game and it's going to be seven players, so we will have a cylon leader from the start.

In your opinion, how does the New Caprica end game affect difficulty? In particular, does it make the game vastly easier for humans or cylons? I've no problem with small balance changes but I'm still tossing the idea in my mind of introducing all of Pegasus to them at once because the game may be balanced that way or waiting to introduce New Caprica to them because the game may not be balanced that way.

Thank you for the help!

First thoughts are Morale is suddenly WAY important. Pop is also important, but IMHO losing pop via Civilian Ship loss not as bad.

That is not to say throw ships to the wind, but on Caprica you have to unlock and launch often all or most of your Civ ships, if you loose some ships, well, it's that many less you have to unlock and move up, which is that many less crisis/turns to loose other resources.

Detention is a big hassle, ties in with morale. You lose Morale for people you leave behind, and you need someone one the (space whose name I cant recall) who you can XO to really move ships. If you have 2 morale and 2 people in detention, even with all ships up, you cant leave yet! And man, have we been there.

Thanks for the thoughts. I think I'll introduce the new characters, cylon leaders, crisis cards, and pegasus to them this week but hold off until next game for New Caprica just because it seems a tad different and complicated.

New Caprica makes two types of victory easier for the cylons, but it shortens the main game making everything else easier for the humans.

With new-caprica the humans will use less {fuel, food & moral} And it's less likly that galatica will be destroyed or a boarding party will win.

However, you tend to loose a lot of People leaving new caprica, so you want to keep losses of population down, e.g. avoid dice rolls for early activation of the hyperdrive.

And if the Admiral is an unrevealed Cylon when Galatica returns to new Caprica, the humans will trivially loose. Either the admiral jumps immediatly while most of the ships & players are still stuck on the planet. Or he refuses to jump until the cylon fleet blows away the remaining civilian ships.

HooblaDGN, I would agree that you might want to hold off on New Caprica for a few. My opinion on it, in short, is that it makes the game way too easy for humans. There's little for cylons to do there, aside from the silly cylon admiral strategy mentioned by XAos, which, when it happens, tends to leave everyone at the table with a bad taste in their mouth.

No more maps once you arrive at New Caprica, and you begin drawing from a fairly bland crisis deck that has a lot of morale losses and brigging of humans. Cylons use "Breeder's Canyon" which is like a half-rate Caprica, while humans XO each other to move ships from one pile to another. Rinse, repeat until galactica comes back, at which point there's a decent airfight unless the fleet has preserved both its nukes, in which case they annihilate the two basestars and can literally play indefinitely without the threat of any more cylon ships ever showing up.

My group's verdict on New Caprica is that it's okay for a change of pace, but it's often an unsatisfying third act.