Hi everyone, I have a quick question that I was wondering if you guys could help me find the answer to!

Long story short- I'm hosting a large 6 player game of Twilight Imperium next Friday. Specifically, all of us have quite a few games under our belts and have taken the Friday off to work to indugle our passion for TI3. We also want to make this as epicly big as possible and try out some stuff that we would normally not to in our Twilight games, namely we're going to throw in every single option from the base game and both expansions (except for S.E.Ts, Age of Empires and because we don't like it, Space Mines) and play The Long War (14 Victory Points). For those that are interested we’re using the strategy cards from Shattered Empire but with Trade III. We know this will be an incredibly long, somewhat bloated experience but that is entirely the point of this exercise. It’s also why we’re playing it on a Friday and have kept our Saturday free just in case…

What I want to know is, given that it’s a 6 player game what size map should we use? I was planning on using the 6 player preset map (setup the night before)- but we’re wondering whether or not to go for the 4th ring around it. I’ve heard bad things, such as it can add too many resources to the map but I was wondering what you guys thought, given the context above.

Cheers,

El

If you add a 4th ring you'll have 20+ resources each, which in your case might not be a bad idea since you're going all out with variants, but would break a regular game where you have to plan each resource expenditure carefully.

Kouteki said:

The variants don't really change resource availability much. The fourth ring still breaks the balance of resources. I would strongly recommend playing the default three rings, and leaving the fourth ring for 7 or 8-player games.

You could make a compeomise and make a partial 4th ring by adding systems around the home systems only. If you prep the system tiles to include ALL the empty systems you should mitigate the extra resource flow.

Thanks for the responses so far guys. Your views are pretty much what I thought myself- looks like we'll be sticking to the three rings then. I'll let you know how it goes!

Well that went pretty well!

All in all, our Long War was a big success and I can definitely see us doing the long war variant in the future. To be honest, I thought our views would be 'yeah it was fun, but we won't do that again' but everyone agreed that whilst we wouldn't do it all the time- we'd certainly consider it as a viable option in future plays. Twilight Imperium is an epic event that you usually have to book a day for in advance to playing it, just to make sure you have enough people who can play so if you have to go through all that effort anyway, the extra few hours on top to play the Long War aren't really that noticeable. It may be that we just psychologically paced ourselves well but even though the game took about 14 hours (including breaks for meals and a fair bit of time spent negotiating), it didn't feel like it took any longer. In fact, by the time we had finished (around midnight), we were crazy enough to get in a game of Settlers of Catan before we went to bed (I wouldn't do that again though- that was a little too much haha). Another hidden advantage of the long war is that the game is actually long enough that if you make a few mistakes or get a few bad domain counters early on, there's plenty of time to recover and do well.

I'd certainly recommend that if you can, try the Long War once just so you can make up your own mind on it. We didn't think we'd like it all that much (normal twilight games are long enough) but were pleasantly surprised. We also played with all the optional rules (with both expansions) except for space mines, SETs and the rules which override each other. It was good fun but I can definitely say that after playing with them twice now (we normally ignore it), my gaming group and I don't believe that the Leaders option is worth the extra complication. They have too little impact on the game for the amount of rules governing them and they're very easy to forget about. Distant Suns and Final Frontier were as fun as always but disappointingly the mercenaries saw almost no action in the entire game. In theory, they should be quite good and the quirky special rules each one has looks fun but in-game we rarely consider hiring them. Maybe next time in a smaller, 4 player game they'll see some use but I've played with the merc option a number of times now and just haven't seen them do all that much.

Using the default, 3 ring map was definitely the right choice. It was a very interesting game and a lot of important moves were made throughout the day. There were a few diplomatic attacks which I personally don't like (I'll blockade your space port and you can blockade mine so we can each score a VP) but some actual proper attacks as well which is always good.

Well that's that. It was a great day and I look forward to getting it onto the table again, maybe some time in the new year.

Cheers,

El

El Mariachi said:

I appreciate your adding to the thread to let us know that things went well, but for Pete's sake please give us some DETAILS! Who were the races involved? Who won? Were there any especially epic moments? What was the most memorable event?

I would like to give my differing perspectives on a couple of comments, if you don't mind. My group has found Leaders to be very worthwhile, and we've seen Diplomats and Agents have a huge effect on the game! If your goup has trouble remembering to use them, though, I can see how you might want to play without them.

What I really don't understand is what you wrote regarding the Mercenaries. Are you literally never taking Trade III in your group, or is the person who takes Trade III really choosing NOT to hire a mercenary?!? If it's the latter, then you guys are making a very serious mistake! You don't have to pay for a Mercenary the turn you hire him or her, and since you're the Trademaster you can be sure of making trade agreements. As long as at least one of those agreements is still in effect the next time Trade III is chosen, you'll get a Trade Good before you have to pay your mercenary and you'll be able to pay him with that. In short, there is absolutely no reason why the chooser of Trade III shouldn't hire a Mercenary (unless you have no worlds with at least one ground force or Mech for the mercenary to appear on). Furthermore, I can tell you that whether those quirky special rules are fun or not, they are certainly effective! Twice now the actions of an enemy Mercenary have cost me the game. The first time a neighboring player without XRD Transports or Statsis Capsules used the Mercenary with a one carrying capactiy to unexpectedly transport a Mech to my home world, an occupation which preventing me from scoring and allowed another player to win.

The second time the Mercenary who can land a hit on the enemy unit of your choice if he is killed took out my full Carrier in a preemptive strike, dooming the invasion of the Artifact planet I was planning which would have brought me victory.

Finally, the same evil Mercenary who blew up my carrier showed up in another game in which we were using Imperial II. My brother had used Lazax Gate Folding to occupy Mecatol Rex, and brought in the Mercenary along with a small fleet to protect his occupation of the throne world. The presence of the mercenary was very clever, since any attack force would see the carrier it planned to use for the occupation destroyed in the space battle, and no one would want to risk that loss. Unfortunately for my brother, I saw the consequences of letting him keep Mecatol Rex and send in a few ships just to kill his guardian mercenary. None of them survived, but they accomplished their mission:).

Finally, I don't like the diplomatic point trading either, nor do I care for reckless use of Support for the Throne.

Too bad about the space mines. We found them extremely useful - fighters become more useful since they are immune, and invasion forces must be spread out across the fleet in the case of carrier scoring a mine hit.