I always like the politics portion of TI yet choosing the Assembly strategy is something that seems to happen only after it has like 2 bonus counters on it with my standard 6 player play group. I came up with a simple house rule that has been fun. I’d like your opinions on it.


SETUP:
Before play shuffle the deck of political cards and draw a number of cards equal to the number of players. Place these cards face-up in the public play area. These cards are considered "on the floor of the Galactic Council." The laws on the floor of the Galactic Council are not resolved, i.e. are not active.

All players receive two political cards at the start of the game to form their hand of political cards.


THE ASSEMBLY STRATEGY:
The mechanics of the Assembly strategy are not changed at all however when a player is chosen to pick a Political Card for voting, they can either choose from their hand of political cards or any Political Card on the floor of the Galactic Council.

Whenever a Political Card on the floor of the Galactic Council is resolved, the player that chose the card can do either a) or b):
a) Replace the resolved card on the floor of the Galactic Council with a Political Card from their hand and draw a Political Card.
b) Replace the resolved card on the floor of the Galactic Council with a Political Card drawn from the deck.


THE GRINDING WHEELS OF BUREAUCRACY:
If no player has chosen the Assembly Strategy Card this turn then after all players have passed but before the Status Phase begins the player to the right of the Speaker chooses a political card for voting as per the Assembly Strategy above.


ANALYSIS:
This house rule basically will force a galactic council vote every turn and add the complexity of saving influence for that vote if no one has used the Assembly Strategy. Also, it gives a greater variety of laws to resolve at one time since the pool will be all players’ hands of cards as well as the six visible ones. Additionally, it gives the player to the right of the Speaker slightly more power since this is usually the weakest spot re: selection of new strategy cards in the next turn. Finally, it gives some added intrigue in allowing players to move less-than-awesome political cards from their hand into the public area and draw a new one.

After some play experience it seemed to work well and people took Assembly more often to prevent calling a vote on some of the visible laws that would have been hurtful. However, we hit a snag when we played a game with the Winnu. The Winnu’s racial ability seems overpowered in this regard, at least in the first turns where most people will not have unexhausted planets to add to their vote count. The Winnu dominated the vote during these time period. We are considering either saying the Winnu ability can’t be used during The Grinding Wheels of Bureaucracy. Also considering doing the Grinding Wheels of Bureaucracy vote immediately after the Strategy Phase when the Assembly strategy card has not be chosen.

The game would mainly be about voting, nothing else would really matter.

Only high influence players would win the game and they would be the only players having fun.

In 3 rounds, a low influence player could get elected for 15 game ending PC's.

And if a player is the VP leader, that player must always take Assembly to nerf bad PC's.

The balance in the game would be gone.

I do like the idea of having more influence on the laws to be passed. I like the idea of a player having political cards in their hands to add to the possible laws to be played.

Yet, forcing a vote, even though the assembly strategy hasn't been chosen even further downrates its usefullness.

Maybe a house rule that gives a player one VP if they brought a law on the floor which is conceqently chosen on the same turn, would give political players a reason to do so.

I like idea of the laws on the floor of Galactic Council, and was even thinking about something similar for my group.

I dont like the grinding wheels of bureaucracy though. You are weakening Assembly SC. Voting will happen even if it is not picked this round.

My group is playing with following rule:

If Assembly has bonus counter , 1 additional political card can be played during political phase

It gives us more politics, and people are still forced to pick Assembly if they want laws to be passed

Would it really make the game all about politics? In all games I've played in my group the politics have never been that game-changing (or game ending for a player) but actually serve as a means to add variability to the game so games would be less likely to play out exactly the same.

As for balance, influential races would be stymied more in not using their resources for influence hoarding, resulting in less development of fleets and infrastructure.

I recognize that the influential races would have a huge advantage if the auto-politics happened directly after the Strategy phase instead of right before the Status phase, so I'm tossing that idea.

Additionally, yes, it makes the Assembly strategy even less lucrative, however that is still the means of becoming speaker, choosing the voting mechanism, and drawing action cards and political cards. Do any of you do anything to make Assembly a more likely choice, or is my group abnormal in its ignoring of this strategy card?

At the very least, I think the laws on the floor of the council is a good idea mainly because I find when it comes around to doing a vote no one has anything remotely interesting in their hands to play for politics and winds up spending boring laws as trade goods.

Shadow said:

I think I wasn't clear on something, this is not correct. Worst case would only be 3 "game-ending" Political Cards after 3 rounds.

PC cards are mainly used as "unfair" weapons against a single player or any player who just happened to be out of influence.

Probably destroying 5 turns of planning by the player.

Most PC cards are not designed to improve the game. Powerful PC's are mainly designed to be the "atomic bombs" of high influence players.

If you want more voting then, PC cards like Ancient Artifacts, Public Execution, Fleet restrictions, Holy Planet of Ixth would have to be tossed.

But high influence players that like voting, like it because of those harsh PC cards. Those players do not want powerful PC cards discarded for trade goods. They want to force those cards up for a vote and cause chaos every turn because they have huge advantages in voting.

That would unbalance the game greatly toward high influence races.

Low Influence races like Norr would not be picked because of high voting.

Shadow said:

Ya I have to agree with shadow here. Anyone familiar with the political deck should be aware of the pretty harsh consequences of a player being able to choose from a wide variety of political cards and how voting usually goes in a game of Twilight. For one, in most games only one or two players have any real voting power in particularly early in the game and in the late game their tends to be one player who really commands most of the votes. With the wide range of effects of political cards and so many to choose from (from his hand plus the ones in the council), on top of the forced voting each round the player with an influence advantage has a very powerful racial ability which is really what this all boils down to.

I do think your on to something clever here, I like the idea of making the political portion of the game playing a larger role.

Perhaps the galactic council floor could be played in order. Another words all players can see whats coming up but you execute them from left to right every round. Eliminating the power of choice, at least creates some timing issues. But Im not sure that would solve the problem entirely. In the end the reason you have voting the way it is in the game today is because the effects of the political cards can be devistating when timed right but getting the timing right is difficult and requires a great deal of planning by the player trying to execute a particular political card. This difficulty is the balancing factor of political cards. GIving players too many political card choices enevitably means the most powerful political cards will be played each game and because their effects are so powerful as shadow said, the player with the most influence is going to have some serious command over the game results.

Fair enough! I guess my experiencing lately with my play group is that the political process rarely results in anything game defining or changing at all. Thanks for the insight