This is a continuation of a discussion on Preliminary Objectives (SotT Optional Rule) which was thread-jacking a different topic for a while. The fact is that these unbalance the game in favor of players whose PO happens to bring them closer to accomplishing the Secret Objective they draw afterwards. Obviously there is already randomness in the game that will tend to favor certain players (map setup, Domain Counters, combat rolls, etc.). The question is, where do we draw the line at what is fair and what is acceptable

The thing about POs and SOs is that they should be considered bonus points and not your only objective in the game, which is probably why you're allowed to claim a PO or an SO on the same status phase in which you claim a public objective.

Unless you are playing with the Age of Empire option, the winner of the game will nearly always be among those who accomplish their SO. The major alternatives are either to go all out and try to accomplish one of the instant victory Stage II Publics, or seriously hamper anyone who succeeds in their SO-- which generally requires a cooperative effort.

TI has HUGE luck factor associated with it, somewhat depending on what options you're using. The political and action cards alone are things where a player can get extremely lucky or unlucky. Sometimes your PO or SO works perfectly with your race, sometimes it doesn't i.e. 5 Dreadnoughts and the Lizix Mindnet. Luck is just something you have to deal with when playing TI, the combat dice alone have made me lose battles when statistically I should have won. 1 Hostile Local beating 2 invaders, then beating 2 invaders again with Gen Synthesis, sounds improbably right? Didn't make it impossible.

The things that may seem "unbalanced" are actually what make TI fun, when randomness sometimes beats out common strategy, there's a fun factor to it. I've won with "In the silence of space" and I've lost to political cards that either wipe my fleets or just give my opponents free points. Just accept that it's part of the game and have fun. If you don't like the option, don't play with it. If you don't like the game, don't play it. We've had a player quit because TI isn't oriented enough towards combat, so we told him "It's TI, not A&A. If you don't wanna play a point game, we're ok with you not playing."

It is an added element of randomness in a game which indeed has a lot of random elements already, but something feels different in this case. It isn't up front-- some people's SOs are essentially just worth 3 VP now. We need to try to draw a line here between random elements that are fair and random elements that aren't. For example, even though the first person who is chosen as speaker is random, I think we can agree that the vanilla ISC, which caused the first player to win the vast majority of games, was going too far. With that in mind, I think a good rule of thumb is--

Randomness is fair under two conditions: (1) when players are able to prepare for the risk of negative outcomes by acting to improve their odds or eliminate the randomness all together somehow beforehand; and/or (2) when players are certain to have enough time to work together in a reasonable way and compensate for random outcomes that throw off the balance. An important corollary to number 2, in the spirit of promoting an all-around enjoyable experience, is that conditions requiring the group to instigate the effective elimination of a specific player due to random effects needs to be the result of an unlikely accumulation of several such positive random outcomes in their favor.

As an example of how this applies to several other random elements: It's easy to see from the beginning who has any advantage by virtue of the map layout and players will act accordingly throughout the entirety of the game; you can protect yourself from the randomness of Domain Counters by scanning or taking certain other precautions; you can put the odds in your favor with combat rolls by having a superior force. I don't think that the PO assisted SO fits here.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to use POs, but I just haven't come up with a good 3rd Party rule that would make me comfortable with it yet.

Hugesinker said:

This can be true. TI is similar to the card game "Munchkins" to the point where everyone says, "We're all friends here" up until the point where someone is about to win. It mostly depends on your play group. Our group tends to try to save their SO for the finish line but most of us have enough experience to where we can read someone else's SO and begin hampering his progress towards it fairly early. Also, it's important to note that if you're trying to stop someone from winning when they're 1-2 points away, it's probably already too late because they should have their win planned from the last round.

Hugesinker said:

The rule of thumb back when we were playing vanilla TI was: If you let someone win because of the ISC, there's nobody to blame other than all the people that lost. Don't get greedy with your own production and ability to conquer planets and stop him early from pulling Initiative or Imperial all the time.

Hugesinker said:

Play chess. There are multiple things that make the game incredibly random and unpredictable at times. Sometimes lady luck sits behind you, sometimes she doesn't. The true skill/strategy in the game lies in being able to beat someone who has lady luck on their side. It's one of the reasons why my group isn't allowed to choose their race, it's randomized so that everyone can learn from each others' experience and strategies. What works for this race? What doesn't work for this race? What did he do wrong with this race last time? In my group, I win at least 4/5 games and the other 1/5 is usually the same player. Why? We're both adept at adjusting strategy based on what we're dealt and both good at bluffing the others as to what SO we have. That player's first victory was a streak breaker for me mainly because I had 2 neighbors that were afraid of me and kept harassing my systems or putting me on defense and my possible victory was still only 1-2 points behind him.

Hugesinker said:

Try the "veto" system I posted in the other thread or try these:

(1) Have each PO and SO that work together (i.e. 5 Dreadnoughts PO and 5 Dreads, Mecatol, etc.) and have them paired together. Find a way to shuffle the pairs (probably 3-card Monte style) then deal them out to each player so that when they qualify for their PO, they already know how to accomplish their SO.

(2) Simply remove any PO that corresponds with an SO and deal out the rest to the players.

(3) Play with more VP options like Voice of the Council, Artifacts, etc. so that players aren't so reliant on a PO and an SO that work together.

I've stated earlier that POs and SOs should be considered a bonus and with enough experience, they're fairly easy to read who has which. I believe there are only 10 POs and 13 SOs in total.

On a side note, if you are playing with the Artifacts option, try this: Instead of having players choose which qualifying planets get a token, shuffle the tokens then deal them with priority to systems surrounding Mecatol Rex and the Wormhole Nexus. Any remaining qualified systems are then chosen by the players in clockwise order starting with the speaker. We do this to tempt players into putting a system with planets near Mecatol rather than just empty space and also to make them more fair. Most people might be gunning for Mecatol for an SO, it's influence value, or just as a staging point, but if there are artifacts nearby, more people are likely to fight in/around Mecatol.

I put up a few PO next to the Special objectives (green) at the start of the game and still give everyone there SO to start with. This gives more Objective possibilities and for some players a quicker game. These count as regular objevtives that can be scored as normal stage 1 or 2 objectives. I will put up 3 of the easier ones and consider them Stage 0 objectives.

Method 2 I have tried as well -

I have also done it another way and that is to place up at the beginning of the game 1 random PO for each player in the game and it is available for anyone to accomplish immediately from the start of the game but can only be scored by one individual. That way there would be 6 PO in play in a 6 player game but it would still be a race to the easy ones and everyone still would have their SO on hand so even if you could not get one finished then you still had your SO as well.

I never liked the basic rule of havig to finish your PO before getting an SO so I do not use it anymore as some PO's were much harder then others so a player might not ever get the chance of having a SO in the game.

My using one of the other 2 methos I still give everyone an SO and there are just a few more starting objectives in the game.

Here are the Preliminary Objectives with the Secret Objectives they assist below as I see them: (+) Indicates directly assisted, (s) Indicates likely to assist.

Researcher —I control at least 4 planets with a Technology specialty.
(+) Technocrat, (s) Focused, (s) Diversified
Invader —I control a planet that was controlled by an enemy player this round.
(+) Expansionist, (s) Threatening, (s) Conqueror
Enemy —I have destroyed 2 enemy Cruisers this round.

Antagonist —I control a planet in a system adjacent to an enemy player’s Home System.
(+) Threatening, (s) Regulator, (s) Conqueror, (s) Merciless
Infiltrator —I have destroyed at least 1 enemy ship in a system adjacent to its owner’s Home System.
(+) Threatening, (s) Conqueror, (s) Merciless
Defender —I have all 6 of my PDS units on the game board.

Traitor —I have attacked a player this round with whom I have a trade agreement.
(s) Threatening, (s) Merciless
Explorer —I control 2 systems adjacent to Mecatol Rex.
(+) Expansionist, (s) Forceful, (s) Diversified, (s) Industrial, (s) Master of Ships, (s) Usurper
Commander —I have all 5 of my Dreadnoughts on the game board.
(+) Industrial, (+) Forceful, (+) Master of Ships
Scientist —I have 3 yellow Technology advances.
(+) Diversified, (s) Focused, (s) Technocrat

The "Keeper of the Gates" is the only SO which is not likely to be assisted at all;. where the " Enemy " and " Defender " POs are not likely to be assisting any SO. The " Explorer ", which sets up a staging area for an invasion of Mecatol Rex, is the most likely to be assisting and therefore the most sought-after PO; followed by " Antagonist ", which sets up a staging area for an invasion of another player's home system. That's why I can't confidently endorse a common-pool variant for these at the moment.

At first I was thinking that having everyone's PO be revealed would balance things by making it more difficult to fulfill any related SO, since other players would be on guard for that early on. However, the odd " Traitor " PO makes this unworkable-- since no one would want to trade if they already know it will just cause them to be attacked. Otherwise, this PO seems by far the simplest to accomplish. In addition to assisting, several POs can make SOs much more difficult. The conditions of the " Commander " PO, for example, will cause a player to be severely crippled early for any exploration-related SO, though it does assist SOs which require lots of Dreadnaughts on the map. I think many players who use POs are already removing this card.

I've made up some replacement POs to jacket over the front of the existing ones. These are unlikely to be related to any SO and also encourage players to choose strategy cards or options which are generally unpopular early in the game. I'll put these up on the new TI3 variant site if anyone is interested: www.simonkamber.dk/ti3