I love this game, but I think TI3 has gone from me. It’s always hard to get players, but there were 7 of us. We would get together with 5 players most of the time. But, I have recently had 3 of the players say that they don’t really like the game any more, plus 1 more player now works weekends, and the remaining two might be busy just depending. I don’t really want to play 3 player anyways.

What causes players to dislike the game after playing it for a couple years? Weirdly enough, these players aren’t quitting because they just don’t have the time. They just recently discovered that they don’t really like it.

Is 3 player even worth playing?

I guess it’s time to put my 150 bucks worth of game into the closet for the dust to gather. I sympathize with the Lazax, who’s once proud empire was crushed, as now the pride of my game collection has fallen to the disinterest of many of the original members…

There's always the thought of trying to find new players to play against. If you play against the same players all the time for the same game, I find that you often end up molding how you play towards the what works against them, often resulting in virtually the same experience from game to game. Switching out about half of the players for new players can really change how the game feels.

I've had the fortune of being able to play with 2-3 different circles of players, and it makes me look at the game in a new way.

For 3 players, give each player 2 races to play as allied races so you have 6 races on the map.

This does work pretty well.

Try setting up as many as you like and playing solo? I do, it's still fun. I don't have any players to play with so solo is the way for me, but I just try to play equal and fair and see who comes out on top.

Historically my gaming group goes through "enough of TI3 already" phases which often start with over analyzing the game and pointing out its flaws, but is really just a sense of being played out. No matter how great a game is, if you play it too much it eventually starts to loose its novality. My suggestion is to throw it up on the shelf and don't even suggest it for a while. Take the time to enjoy some of the other amazing games out there. In time, when they haven't seen it for a while they will be ready to go at it again.

I think the big attributing factors to a groups interest fading in TI3 is the commitment of time it takes to play. At least thats been my experiance. I found that my group doesn't mind playing 6-7 hour board gaming session but to dedicate all the time to a single game becomes tiresome. When my group kind of doing the "we dont want to play TI3" we took a break from board gaming all together that lasted about 3 months. I kicked things off again by introducing some new board games and I have found that my having more than just one offering the interest rose dramatically.

We started playing games that had no simultarities at all to TI3 and its been a blast. Railroad Tycoon for example became so bloody popular that we ended up getting all the expansions and its become the new "default" game that we kick each board game night off with. Other faster games like Dominion, Caracassone and Thunderstone see a lot of table time. And when the urge to play something more significant came up we tried things like Battlestar Galactica, Shogun (queen games version), Rune Wars and Star Craft. Some got a great reception, others not so much. Recently we tried Civilization (FFG version) and we are about to take dominant species for a test drive.

The point is, there are other games out there besides Twilight and I think maybe the problem isn't that they don't like Twilight Imperium anymore, but rather they are tired of playing it. So try something new. REX I hear is great, Eclipse just landed in the number 7 spot on BoardGameGeek and is getting amazing reviews.

Thanks Guys.

I agree that it would be nice to play in different circles of players, but these are all the guys I can get to have any interest at all. So, my problem is that I’m out of players. Looking back though, I can see what you’re saying. People do kinda get into a routine and I know what they will play like each time. I think that’s why I usually win. I play “how the race would play”, and the other guys do the same thing each time regardless of race.

I used to play Descent solo, but that’s a very different type of game. Not sure I’d be able to play TI against 5 other teams of myself??? Lol I might give it a shot though.

I understand what you’re saying about “enough already”? I don’t think we’ve played enough for that. We’ve had maybe 5 games in 4 months and now haven’t played for 2 months, but the only players there each time are the players that still like it. The others were there maybe 1 or 2 games. We play lots of other games too. I have lots of gaming friends, but only a few that want something “heavy” like TI. I can find 20 people to play Settlers of Catan any time I want, but all the games I want to buy I wont cause I can barely scrape together a game of TI.

Maybe it got too boring? I’ve always tried to shorten the game time, so I used preset maps, and I kept from using most variants from SE. I think most players didn’t play enough to really strategize in the base game, so adding more stuff each time would just be too much. Maybe I just made it too stale instead? I just bought SOTT (crappy timing) which has a lot of new additions that might revitalize it, but again, I think it might be too much to learn. What variants do you add and still keep the game around 5 hours?

hmm it seems you have a bit of a different problem than what I experianced. Quite oppossite to your situation, my gamers love the heavy stuff and usually skulk at the lighter games (though we still throw in the simple stuff too). Generally though group dynamics are just that, group dynamics and if your players don't like heavy games, than Ya, Twilight Imperium is like trying to feed a two pound steak to a vegitarian. Its the heaviest game I know.

I don't thing the use of variants or setup of the game itself will probobly make much of a difference to a group that prefers lighter games, you mentioned Settlers of Catan and I giggled a little. I tried to introduce that to my group and they looked at me like I just asked them to smoke some crack with me. I still take a lot of grief about it on a weekly basis about it. So I suppose its different strokes for different folks.

Its not easy to find like minded gamers who enjoy a game like Twilight Imperium and take the time to learn to play it well, its not your typical gaming experiance and it seems like the whole board gaming industry is really moving away from heavy, complex games. We get fewer and fewer every year. The design philosphy seems to be that they want to have big board games, alla, epic games, but they are designing them with simplicity and improved speed in mind. I personally think the results haven't been that great. Civilization and Rune Wars for example, both interesting games and fun enough to play in their own right but really don't fall into the same category and gaming experiance as Twilight. Their streamlining resulted in a lot of mechanics that are very obvious attempts to keep things simple and as such the gameplay becomes simple as well. Even the new game Eclipse is being hyped as "Twilight Imperium Light", which I think personally is a poor way to sell the game to guys like me, but I think my kind of my demographic is the minority. I don't want my games simpler, I want the weight, groups like mine are the ones who order the two pound steaks. I do think though its a reaction by designers to give to the majority of gamers what they want, so I think your group probobly represents the general majority of gamers who are looking for lighter less time consuming and less complex gaming experiances. The new way to make games seems to be easy to learn hard to master, but the results are quite often easy to learn, easy to play and nothing to master because its all very obvious.

Great… now I feel embarrassed for even mentioning Settlers. Lol jk My friends will tolerate Cities and Knights, which ads about four times as many rules and complexities. Or, they’ll play some of the variants from the Barbarians expansion. I’m the kind of guy that wants to play it with Cities and Knights, Seafarers, and all the Barbarians variants at once. That would actually be a complex game.

Well, maybe my friends would like Eclipse then? What are some games your group plays that are at the very low end of time and complexity? (and still more complex than settlers) The problem is I don’t want to randomly drop 60 to 90 bucks on games I know I would like, only to find out that no one will play them.

My other problem is that most of my friends are instantly disinterested as soon as you say “space”, “aliens”, “wizards”, or anything fantasy. Lol The game types I most like. I gave up on getting people to play Descent a long time ago. So, I need a game that has a boring theme, takes around two hours, and is only a little more complex than settlers. Lol The six guys that used to play TI might allow some cool themes.

Any suggestions?

Relampagos said:

Well their are a lot of great games out their that offer both complexity and use themes that are less about aliens and fantasy. I get what your saying though, we have a few that are very anti fantasy or sci-fi, prefering more down to earth kind of themes.

Unfortunatly Twilight Imperium is one of those games that managed to merge complexity with streamlined mechanics quite well and they are in fact rare. Most games that can be said to be complex usually go overboard. But I can think of a couple you might want to check out.

Shogun from the MB masters series (recently reprinted as Ikusa) is a game mostly about warefare but offers elements of planning and plenty of diplomacy and betrayel. Its definitly lighter than Twilight Imperium and carries a higher element of luck, but good players with good strategy will always win over people relying on dice. Its a game I often use as proof that you can have a dice mechanic game and still have it be deeply strategic (I actually often use Settlers to make the same case). Most importantly though its a great theme (Feudal Japan) which I think in all my years have never met someone who didn't at least have a passing interest in and of course is a massive game that looks amazing on the game table adding the same kind of atmospheric sense of things as you get with a game of Twilight Imperium. There is a long standing community of support with some awsome variants for controling the pace of the game and just like Twilight Imperium its a game that keeps everyone involved almost all the time so there isn't a tremendous amount of down time. The actions of other players tend to almost always affect more than just the one person they are targeting. Great game, a real classic and I have never met a gamer who was unwilling to play.

Dominant Species: Easily the best game to come out in 2010 it has a quirky but interesting theme of players trying to propigate a species of animals each with its own unique abilities (kind of like races in Twilight Imperium). Its a worker placement game, but without question a very complex and deeply strategic game that requires a lot of brain muscles, while simultanously being very competative with a lot of "screw you" type of moves. Its a bit simple in its presentation, using Euro style wooden cubes and rather plainly made components, but what it lacks in visual appeal it makes up in amazing gameplay. I have never seen a negative review of this game and everyone I know that has tried it, loved it. The first couple of games might be slow but once everyone gets the hang of it, you can easily play it in the time it takes to play a game of settlers.

Railroad Tycoon (or Rails Of The World, aka same game) While actually a very low complexity game, it seems to make our gaming table more often than any other game and has so for over a year. People just love it and its understandable since its such an easy game to learn and play, yet offers amazing depth. It falls into the easy to learn, impossible to master category. The games are always close, their is plenty of competivness and interaction and no two games ever play the same despite the fact that you are on a static map. Add the fact that their are several expansion that offer new maps this big board game remains one of my personal favorites for reason I can't really put into words. Its just fun to play, that is all I can say. With such an easy learning curve games can move quite fast, we have finished games in under an hour, though sometimes games can take up to 2.5 hours just because their tends to be a bit of "staring at the board" at times.

Through the Ages: A Civilization game that is yet to be dethroned, still beating the FFG Civilization board game, its hard to imagine a game that looks this bad, offering so much. Without a map to speak off and no plastic units to march around the board its one of those games that I see a lot of people hesitate, but it only takes one play and I promise you that you will be hooked. Its an addicition to play this game, offering a wide array of strategic complexity and creating a great atmosphere despite its rather poor visual presentation. Its based on real world historical things, so no fantasy here and it certainly doesn't play like you would imagine a game about civilization building to play. But its a great game that we don't play that often because despite its fun factor when we have 6 hours to spare we are naturally playing Twilight. So its often displaced by Twilight in our group, but it makes everyones top 10 list in my circles and I'm not at all suprised to see it held in such high regard on BoardGameGeeks because it really does transcend the casual, hardcore player line. Its not that hard to learn to play and its very approachable by casual gamers while simultanously being attractive to both Euro and American gamers. Really great game, would love to see a reprint with some nicer components. This one takes a bit longer than the ones mentioned above, but its a pleasure to play the game from start to finish.

Not sure if that helped at all, but if your having trouble convincing your group to play fantasy themed or science fiction themed game, these are pretty good alternatives I think.

Thanks. Might give'em a shot.