One of my favorite games of all time, Twilight Imperium can only be described as a thematic epic, a game of galactic civilization building and management, dripping with intrigue, politics, diplomacy, trade, war, exploration and just all around 4x goodness.  I always say that if I was to be stuck on an island with 5 of my best friends and we could only bring one game with us, this is definitely the one I would choose.  With near infinite re-playbility,  mountains of strategic depth and an almost overwhelming set of variants and options this has to be one of the most dynamic board games in existence.

Starting this month I will be focusing in on Twilight Imperium both in this blog, on the pod cast and in my own personal gaming group.

Now I realize that Twilight Imperium is a rather niche thing.  We are talking about a pretty complex game that really requires 6 dedicated players and runs the better part of 6 hours.  Not to mention the science-fiction subject matter.  We are talking about a game here that eliminates a lot of people in a lot of ways.  For those of you who hear science-fiction, epic, six hours, six players and it brings a smile to your face, then this article series is definitely for you.

In the course of this article series we are going to explore this game inside and out.  We are going to look at strategies, the races, tricks of the trade, pitfalls and most importantly how to win.  First however let’s just kick things off with a general overview, lets assume for a second you don’t own Twilight Imperium yet and you are considering picking it up.  Consider this a sort of list of important things to know about TI3.

It’s a game about a war but not a war game

Whenever I describe TI3 I always begin by telling people that despite appearances, while this game is definitely about a great galactic war, it is not mechanically speaking a game of war.  Now don’t get me wrong here, you will definitely be fighting.  You will build mighty space fleets and send them into grand battles, fighting over planets and resources, but these aspects of TI3 are really a distraction and perhaps better to say an extension of the treacherous intrigue, diplomacy and politics that are the true driving force of the game.

To win Twilight Imperium you must score points and there is only one way to do that which is to complete public and secret objectives.  Waging war for war’s sake will not win you the game in all but the rarest circumstance, or when using some select variants and its very much more likely that simply going on a war path even when pursuing points will ultimately lead you to a crushing defeat.  So always keep in mind as you approach TI3 that while you must always build up your military and prepare for war, successful players will use their war machine with precision, as a means to an end and most commonly to distract their opponents from their real agenda which should always be kept hidden.

This is of course also important if you are buying this game because you think it’s a “war in space” game, it’s not and you definitely should not buy this game if that is what you are after.

This is more a hobby than a game

While I would never fault someone for giving TI3 a try, the truth is that TI3 is designed from the ground up for dedicated players, people who are interested in studying and learning about the ins and outs of this complex game.  This is an event game, something you plan an evening around, going into it knowing it’s going to take up the whole night.  It’s not a game you simply pull out on a random board game night.  It’s definitely not for casual gamers either and for best results it’s important that all participants prepare for the game by reading the rulebook on their own. In other words, it takes motivated, interested players who are eager to play to be successful.

I note this here because if you are considering purchasing TI3 you must keep this in mind. You want a gaming group setup ready to dive in with interest and excitement, a group that is aware of what TI3 really is and be on board with it.  You don’t want to twist arms and convince reluctant people to play this game, it simply does not work out well and given the expense of the game, it would be a shame to shell out so much money for something that collects dust on your shelf.

So be sure you really have a gaming group ready to commit to the game before you buy, else you will find yourself like many do, on the forums posting “looking for TI3 games in X, Y area”.  You don’t want this big beautiful box on your shelf that never see’s the light of day.

It’s a game for 6 players, no more no less

This might be a controversial opinion and so I say this with full disclosure that this Is just that, my opinion.  To me, TI3 with anything more or less than 6 players changes the experience and in most cases considerably reduces it to the point where I would consider other games before I play a 3, 4 or 5 player game of TI3.  Here is how I see the breakdown.

3 Player Game
In a 3 player game the core problem is that intrigue, politics and diplomacy suffer greatly and since this is really the focus of the game, that is a real deal breaker for me.  You have a triad so any alliances or political coordination results in a 2 on 1 situation and this makes for a very poor TI3 experience in my humble opinion.  TI3 really shines in an environment of multiple political plays, diplomatic situations and intrigues motivated by a field of players, without it, it really just becomes a game of war rather than a game about a war.  It effectively devolves into an overly complicated game of RISK.

4 Player Game
This is probably the only alternative I would consider to be “ok” in a pinch or when one is desperate to play, but still largely skip-able especially considering the wide range of awesome 4 player games available.  The main problem here is that each player gets 2 strategy cards which diminishes the game greatly because you know with 100% certainty every secondary ability of every strategy card will be played.  The dynamic becomes predictable and it really gives certain races a much bigger advantage then they would normally have throwing the balance off.  The map is even which is good and I don’t necessarily hate 4 player games, but generally speaking I think there are better options out there in the 4x genre for a 4 player game than TI3.  I think new players will hate it considerably less, but as you gain experience you will recognize the subtle differences.

5 Player Game
This to me is the worst of the bunch largely because the map is so uneven.  You end up with 3 players affected negatively by their home world position at the start of the game and this really makes it tough especially for the middle (5^th player) who has 2 players only 2 hexes away.  While there are some modifications that can be made to the map as released in the expansions, or via the standard rules of handing out some added trade goods, these solutions are imperfect at best.  I have never cared for any of these solutions and personally avoid 5 player games to avoid the diminished experience.  You especially want to avoid a 5 player game as you are introducing it to new players, the game will immediately be accused of being horribly unbalanced and unfair.

7 & 8 Player Games
TI3 is already a big epic, very long game but at 7 & 8 players it gets too long even for the most dedicated veterans.  You are talking about a 8+ hour game here and while I imagine initially some might be attracted to the size of the game there is just too much down time and the game runs too slow to be worth it.  The experienced is diminished considerably and it becomes too messy to manage.

At the end of the day the perfect, sweet spot is a 6 player game and this is really what you should be shooting for with your gaming group.  I would argue that all player counts can be modified and house ruled to be improved, in fact in later articles I will be talking about some of those house rules and home brewed variants that improve the game for other player counts, but in as a whole, out of the box, 6 player games is where it’s really at its best.

The Shattered Empire Expansion Is a must

Twilight Imperiums greatest strength is its dynamic nature and unfortunately in the original game there is a strategy card called “Imperial”, the number 8 card, which really breaks the spirit of those dynamics.  This is corrected in the Shattered Empire Expansion (as well as Shards of the Throne) by introducing alternatives to this card.  This issue is lovingly referred to as the “Round Robin” effect.

The Round Robin Problem
The issue which most TI3 players are familiar with is the round robin effect of the imperial strategy card.  This card effectively gives you 2 free points simply for activating it and 2 victory points in TI3 is huge.  What ends up happening is that every player will quickly realize that whenever you can take the Imperial card you must take it.  Since the person with the speaker token picks strategy cards first, the obvious play if you are the second player during the strategy phase is to get the speaker token hence you will be taking the “Initiative” strategy card which does just that.  Another words the round robin effect is that the speaker takes the Imperial Card and the second player takes the initiative card so he can get the Imperial card next round.  This shuffles down the line and eventually all players will make this move at least once.

This happens every round resulting in most games with the first two picks of each strategy phase being the same.  This goes around the table resulting in each player eventually getting his 2 free points.  The idea here is to speed up the game but there is a negative effect that comes into play at the very end of the game, which creates the arguably game breaking impact.

What happens is that the average TI3 game takes about 7-8 rounds, which means that 1 or 2 players will end up getting the Imperial card twice, aka 4 free points.  This means that the player who gets the speaker token in the first round of the game, something determined randomly with dice at the start of the game, will end up getting 2 more points than everyone else in round 7.  Making him the most likely winner of the game as he only needs to produce 6 other points to win the game (you win at 10 victory points) by round 7.  Not an all to difficult task with most races under normal circumstances.  Any experienced player knows that you aren’t winning the game unless you score a point each round so scoring 6 points by the start of round 7 is something all good players learn to do well.

This round robin cycle is terrible for the game, in particular at a table with more experienced players but in general it is just bad. Fortunately the Shattered Empire Expansion resolves this by offering alternatives to the Imperial card (more on that later).

Now there are of course ways to house rule this so this is not the only reason to get the Shattered Empire expansion. The additional races, action cards, political cards, all of the alternative strategy cards not to mention the added variant options all improve the game dramatically. It’s my recommendation that if you purchase TI3 you automatically purchase Shattered Empire with it directly.  I would also recommend you pick up Shards of the Throne while you’re at it because frankly this game will not be in print forever and the print runs FFG does make are usually small so if you are going to get into TI3 you pretty much want to go all in.

That’s just my opinion of course but these expansions add so much to the game, improving the experience so dramatically that if you end up loving TI3, you’re going to really hate yourself if you did not get the expansions along with it.  Besides, this game is always sought after so if you take good care of it you will not have any trouble selling it later if you end up not liking it and recouping your money.

Final Considerations

The final consideration I think anyone considering getting into TI3 should make is definitely to make sure you understand the design aspect of the game.  I think most people who look at this game would categorize it as “Ameri-trash”.  It’s packed full of miniatures, its thematically driven and it uses dice and lots and lots of cards.  The thing is that if you remove the miniatures and dice, pretty much every mechanic in this game is effectively a “Euro Game” mechanic.  In fact, I would consider this a kind of cross over game, but if you don’t like Euro games, if you don’t like Euro mechanics you will find a lot to dislike about TI3.

TI3 makes heavy use of things like Role-Selection (works like Puerto Rico), command move and bidding just to name a couple.  There is a ton of Euro influence here mixed in with the Ameri-Trash luck/randomness.  I would argue it blends the best of both worlds but in the end this blending of design styles might not be for everyone so be sure you really read the rulebook and consider how you feel about this infrastructure that TI3 is build around.

Ok I think that is a good start to the series, keep an eye on the upcoming articles!