Hello!
According to the instructions for the game if you play with only four players then each player chooses two SCs each. I wonder how the balance would be if the players still only would take one SC. Would it work at all? Would it be broken? Has anyone tried it?
I've never tried playing this way in a four player game.
One thing it would do is speed up the game a bit since each player will have only one strategy card to execute.
Something I could see happening is that the strategy cards deemed "less worth taking" by the players in the game would never be selected unless there was a situation-specific reason for someone to do so.
Kerrin2 said:
I've never tried playing this way in a four player game.
One thing it would do is speed up the game a bit since each player will have only one strategy card to execute.
Something I could see happening is that the strategy cards deemed "less worth taking" by the players in the game would never be selected unless there was a situation-specific reason for someone to do so.
That situation would probably be 3 or more bonus tokens on them.
At least in vanilla I think it would be quite boring to only draw 1 SC each in a 4 player game since there would only be 2 non-given choices each round.
We play with both the expansions and I use all the SC cards from shattered empire. The reason I asked about the one SC card limit is because we're all still fairly new to the game and I thought that it might make things simpler if everyone only had to execute one SC instead of two. But perhaps it also makes the game less fun, I just don't know. It is quite unfortunate that we only managed to get four players this Saturday. I'm going OT now, but does the mercenary optional rule add fun to the game or does it simply just strenghten the already strongest player? We've never tried mercs before, though it does kind of look fun.
Mercs are quite powerful--some players remove the most powerful mercs from the game or ignore the option altogether. I love mercs myself.
In a 4-player game where everyone picks 2 SCs, this guarantees some competition for Trade III. The player that takes Trade gets the merc, so I find it can actually help players with weaker starting fleets get a quick boost.
Panzerkanzler said:
We play with both the expansions and I use all the SC cards from shattered empire. The reason I asked about the one SC card limit is because we're all still fairly new to the game and I thought that it might make things simpler if everyone only had to execute one SC instead of two. But perhaps it also makes the game less fun, I just don't know. It is quite unfortunate that we only managed to get four players this Saturday. I'm going OT now, but does the mercenary optional rule add fun to the game or does it simply just strenghten the already strongest player? We've never tried mercs before, though it does kind of look fun.
Some of the games central mechanics are triggered by specific SCs (non-activation production, political phase, technology, moving the speaker token, revealing new objectives etc). If half the SCs are unselected each round, you risk twisting the game pacing by having way too many tactical actions in proportion to other aspects of empire development.
So, I wouldn't recommend it.
Worked for us, we had 3 players our first game and we only took one each cause we forgot about the rule. The game is very different then when you take 2.
Well, we began the game by only selecting one SC each but we quickly found it that it leads to a boring game. So we changed back to two SCs per person after three rounds. But I enjoy the game the most when we are five players or more, because while one sc per person is too few in a 4 player game I feel that 2 SC per person (in a four player game) leads to very strong, too strong I think, combos. We also tried out the political intrigue option last time, it adds some great fun to the game.