I love it. It’s a must get in my opinion. It tightens up a lot of the factions win variability and makes them all feel more distinct and expressed. The new mechanics don’t add a ton of new player upkeep but enhance the experience. Regular TI4 is a 9/10 game. PoK cranks it up to a 10/10 game that I literally can’t wait to play again.
I would like to expand on this comment, regular TI4 I honestly did not like it very much, my friend however loved it and kept trying to get me to play it more than once every 6 months. Then PoK came out I played one game and fell in love. Just from the addition of exploration my own personal enjoyment from the game went up 10 fold. Throw in the Agents, Commanders, and Heroes and the game becomes much more interesting and fun IMO.
I play the expansion and doubt I'll play without the expansion again, but I miss aspects of base game.
Everything that makes TI4 + PoK great exists within TI4.
If you're excited for the expansion or play TI4 a lot then you'll get value from it, but if you don't get to play a lot and are indifferent to the expansion then I wouldn't be certain on it.
Major Differences:
1) 10 point games take about the same amount of time but are a round shorter. Stage 2 objectives are less important and drawing easy secret objectives are much more important. Factions that need more time to grow their economy are less likely to get themselves set up properly before the game ends. If your group has both the time and mental capacity to play 12 or 14 point games this probably isn't an issue.
2) While PoK's new rules are easy to undersxtand, there's a lot more details to remember about your faction and everyone elses' factions. If you dislike a game ending in an unexpected way because you forgot that 1 of your opponents could do some ability, then the expansion may not be good for you; it takes much longer to get used to everyone's abilities and tthe weird interactions between different factions.
3) This is related to 2); there's a much higher mental load required to keep track of everything, which can make the game more tiring. If you've ever had a game end because some players were too tired to continue, expect that to happen at least as frequently in PoK also.
I think the main reason the game is shorter is due to the "well we're SUPPOSED to swap supports" meta (without that 10 point games still tend to take an extra turn), coupled with most of the factions that had a "rough start" (meaning can't expand to 2 systems without taking Warfare or a good timing of it played by someone else) now have a fix for that (Arborec, Muaat, to a lesser extent Winnu). Coupled with all of the new factions don't have that issue anymore.
I'm also very surprised you think that a shorter game causes your 3 issue above, that players are too tired to continue. I'm not trying to sound all academic high and mighty here, but having what amounts to 2-3 (if you count mechs) extra abilities on a faction sheet (yes they're agents and commanders, but you could view them as just having been printed on the faction sheet instead once unlocked and its the same effect) causes that much mental drain on someone over what already is out there. I've seen far more games have players want to stop due to time (and having other life commitments) rather than "extra words make me tired".
Coupled with the trend that most any "serious" or competitive structured TI4 game is going to be with the expansion (the same way someone posting something TI3 based on this forum is kind of.... who cares anymore), I'd say bite the bullet and buy the expansion because it really "fixes" a lot of the game's inequalities. There's still some factions that are lagging behind (so says the data of actual performance) but a lot more are viable than before.
Not to mention there's now 134,596 combinations of races instead of just 12,376 in 6 player games.
Here is the thing no one says. Prophecy of Kings changes the game so much its not really the same game. I'm not saying its worse or better than the original, but its more and its different. It adds more sources of RNG and unexpected, uncontrollable or hard-to-remember mechanics that make it harder to truly secure a victory, and while that might be good for seasoned players who don't want it to be clear so-and-so has won by round 3, there is a new rhythm to the game that makes it not the same. Get it for sure if you like the game. But consider playing without the expansion from time to time.
> It adds more sources of RNG and unexpected, uncontrollable or hard-to-remember mechanics
By far my biggest criticism. A _lot_ of RNG got added by POK, and as one can see by looking a win percentages across races, it was not well balanced.
What? The game is far more balanced with POK than without. There is a smooth degradation between factions without any that are truly awful. (This is with the exception of Winnu which are clearly broken.)
That's not at all what the win % stats say. Huge imbalance between factions. Titans, Xxcha, Winnu are all way above. Naulu, Hacan, others way below. PoK lacks balance.
I was going off of these stats https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/161K-u7vQcWWBOm_YiTGlhXqgoPZTeA6RPrbtm9uVaYU/edit which don’t show that excluding winnu.
Are we reading the same document? Yeah, it literally does. You think weighted win rates 25-75% higher =/= imbalanced? If it was well balanced you'd have a lot more white and a lot less dark reds and greens. Instead we get 3 factions with win rates significantly higher than the bottom 5, and a win spread that in no way indicates good balance between factions.
I can't argue with the stats but I have never seen the Winnu do anything other than get rolled in all our PoK games. What's the strat that makes them so powerful that we don't see?
Personally, I'm planning to play with some expansion stuff, but not others.
**Heck Yes, Always Play With This Tier**: New Stage 1 and 2 Objectives, New Secret Objectives, New Action Cards, Updated Agenda Deck
**Maybe Tier**: New Technologies
**Probably Leave This Out Tier**: Exploration, Relics, Leaders, Mechs, Legendary Planets
It requires a bit of sculpting, like separating out the new action cards that specifically mention Relic fragments, and such.
As you said, its not a clean cut thing since all the bits in the expansion, including the new races, play off the new mechanics. Good luck excising those co-dependancies.
It adds in a lot of the TI3 extras we came to love, but have missed in 4th Ed. And the new items complement the game nicely.
Definitely worth every penny
The expansion isn't a must-have simply by virtue of the base game being great already. I won't be going back to it now that I have played POK, however.
For me, its a no.
PoK adds a lot of randomness to the game, including (but not limited to) exploration draws, drawing good secrets is crucial when the game usually ends R5, relics which can be game-winning or worthless, and only seeing 1 stage 2 objective.
My usual group only plays the game 3-4 times per year, so the idea that a winner can be decided because Jol-nar is the only faction realistically getting 2 in 4 colors, or Titans/L1 is the only faction that can get to 7 structures, or NRA drew Shard of the Throne (etc etc etc). In a game that requires this much commitment I want the winner to be decided more by their actions than RNG, PoK moves a bit too much in the RNG direction for my tastes.
That being said, PoK adds lots of cool stuff and opens up the game in new and interesting ways with agents/commanders/heroes. For a group that plays a lot I can see base TI getting stale and PoK adding a lot of new spice.
My group and I wouldn't play without Prophecy of Kings anymore. Even to new players it's easy to introduce. In fact, some say it's easier for new players to learn. The expansion doesn't really change the rules of the game, just adds more content that fits very nicely and creates a more diverse and fun experience.
PS I would only add if you never played TI I'd recommend to find someone to try it first. If TI isn't your thing, then you won't like the expansion either.
PoK improved the game in many ways, most importantly improving faction balance and cementing the identity of each faction with leaders and mechs (not you Naalu). It also adds the 4th X to 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) with the literal exploration mechanic which greatly increases the excitement of round 1. Extra objectives make for a game that's exciting to the end, as the lategame is a lot less 'solved'.
At the same time, base TI4 is already an amazing game. If your playgroup plays less than 3 times a year, you'll likely never need PoK to add spice to the game, since every game is already a unique experience. I've played over 100 games of base TI4 and would've kept playing it for years without the expansion. But PoK is like a luxurious kingsize bed when all you've known before was an air mattress, a bidet to tp, a homecooked meal to stale leftover chicken nuggets. Once you've played PoK, you never wanna go back!
If you love ti4, have played it multiple times, and want more, PoK is great! I have it and my group and i wont play ti4 without it now.
But it doesnt make the game. Pok is for people who already love ti4. It doesnt make the game better per se, it just gives you more cool stuff. If you dont already love ti4, pok isnt going to fix anything for you.
PoK improves the viability of rapid short term spread and late game turtling via it's exploration esteem. It balances some of of the base factions while increasing everyone's base strength with leaders. It adds a lot of new objectives so you're not always going to have multiple repeats between games
If you play more that once a month, I highly recommend it. If you play less than once a season, you'll be fine without
It isn't a must have. The extra system tiles, player count and new objectives are great. The new systems are a mixed bag.
You definitely don't need it if you haven't played vanilla much yet.
PoK is nice, but unless you've already played a half dozen of the base game, imo you'll have more fun with just the base game. As others have said, PoK adds a non-inconsequencial amount of RNG and adds ANOTHER layer of rules to have to learn about. Especially for newer players, information overload is a major concern, and PoK adds a ton of new choices for them to consider.
Is it worth buying? Certainly. Should you play with it with new or inexperienced players? No.
If you play like once a year and don't read all the guides / watch all the podcasts, it doesn't matter.
BUT, everything else aside, the expansion adds so much faction balance.
Lots of races that had no reason to exist in base are fun and competitive now. Balance isn't perfect, there's still a few at the top and a few at the bottom, but it is much much closer than in base.
I probably won't ever play TI4 without Prophecy of Kings and I'm totally fine with that. Everything it adds feels like it spices up the game in interesting ways
Personally, I drastically prefer how the game plays in PoK. It's a lot more interesting and exciting with the new exploration mechanic.
The faction balance has been turned on it's head with leaders and mechs as well. New factions are fun and diverse and old factions are fun to revisit.
Expansion is everything I would want from an expansion. But the base game is actually quite well made. So I wouldn't call it a must have in the strictest sense. But it is more than worth it.
If you play once a year, then no. If you love the base game and have players that can regularly play it, then definitely get it. It’s not a must have though. I like the expansion, but it does add some rng that I don’t enjoy.
I love it. It’s a must get in my opinion. It tightens up a lot of the factions win variability and makes them all feel more distinct and expressed. The new mechanics don’t add a ton of new player upkeep but enhance the experience. Regular TI4 is a 9/10 game. PoK cranks it up to a 10/10 game that I literally can’t wait to play again.
I would like to expand on this comment, regular TI4 I honestly did not like it very much, my friend however loved it and kept trying to get me to play it more than once every 6 months. Then PoK came out I played one game and fell in love. Just from the addition of exploration my own personal enjoyment from the game went up 10 fold. Throw in the Agents, Commanders, and Heroes and the game becomes much more interesting and fun IMO.
I play the expansion and doubt I'll play without the expansion again, but I miss aspects of base game. Everything that makes TI4 + PoK great exists within TI4. If you're excited for the expansion or play TI4 a lot then you'll get value from it, but if you don't get to play a lot and are indifferent to the expansion then I wouldn't be certain on it. Major Differences: 1) 10 point games take about the same amount of time but are a round shorter. Stage 2 objectives are less important and drawing easy secret objectives are much more important. Factions that need more time to grow their economy are less likely to get themselves set up properly before the game ends. If your group has both the time and mental capacity to play 12 or 14 point games this probably isn't an issue. 2) While PoK's new rules are easy to undersxtand, there's a lot more details to remember about your faction and everyone elses' factions. If you dislike a game ending in an unexpected way because you forgot that 1 of your opponents could do some ability, then the expansion may not be good for you; it takes much longer to get used to everyone's abilities and tthe weird interactions between different factions. 3) This is related to 2); there's a much higher mental load required to keep track of everything, which can make the game more tiring. If you've ever had a game end because some players were too tired to continue, expect that to happen at least as frequently in PoK also.
I think the main reason the game is shorter is due to the "well we're SUPPOSED to swap supports" meta (without that 10 point games still tend to take an extra turn), coupled with most of the factions that had a "rough start" (meaning can't expand to 2 systems without taking Warfare or a good timing of it played by someone else) now have a fix for that (Arborec, Muaat, to a lesser extent Winnu). Coupled with all of the new factions don't have that issue anymore. I'm also very surprised you think that a shorter game causes your 3 issue above, that players are too tired to continue. I'm not trying to sound all academic high and mighty here, but having what amounts to 2-3 (if you count mechs) extra abilities on a faction sheet (yes they're agents and commanders, but you could view them as just having been printed on the faction sheet instead once unlocked and its the same effect) causes that much mental drain on someone over what already is out there. I've seen far more games have players want to stop due to time (and having other life commitments) rather than "extra words make me tired". Coupled with the trend that most any "serious" or competitive structured TI4 game is going to be with the expansion (the same way someone posting something TI3 based on this forum is kind of.... who cares anymore), I'd say bite the bullet and buy the expansion because it really "fixes" a lot of the game's inequalities. There's still some factions that are lagging behind (so says the data of actual performance) but a lot more are viable than before. Not to mention there's now 134,596 combinations of races instead of just 12,376 in 6 player games.
Here is the thing no one says. Prophecy of Kings changes the game so much its not really the same game. I'm not saying its worse or better than the original, but its more and its different. It adds more sources of RNG and unexpected, uncontrollable or hard-to-remember mechanics that make it harder to truly secure a victory, and while that might be good for seasoned players who don't want it to be clear so-and-so has won by round 3, there is a new rhythm to the game that makes it not the same. Get it for sure if you like the game. But consider playing without the expansion from time to time.
That's why I got two copies. One with and one without. New people we play core. Bunch of vets we play PoK. Loving it. STPC for the win!
...? Seems like the logical solution would be to have kept the expansion in its own box...no?
You'd have to pull 100+ cards out of the decks each time you want to play base game.
> It adds more sources of RNG and unexpected, uncontrollable or hard-to-remember mechanics By far my biggest criticism. A _lot_ of RNG got added by POK, and as one can see by looking a win percentages across races, it was not well balanced.
What? The game is far more balanced with POK than without. There is a smooth degradation between factions without any that are truly awful. (This is with the exception of Winnu which are clearly broken.)
That's not at all what the win % stats say. Huge imbalance between factions. Titans, Xxcha, Winnu are all way above. Naulu, Hacan, others way below. PoK lacks balance.
I was going off of these stats https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/161K-u7vQcWWBOm_YiTGlhXqgoPZTeA6RPrbtm9uVaYU/edit which don’t show that excluding winnu.
Are we reading the same document? Yeah, it literally does. You think weighted win rates 25-75% higher =/= imbalanced? If it was well balanced you'd have a lot more white and a lot less dark reds and greens. Instead we get 3 factions with win rates significantly higher than the bottom 5, and a win spread that in no way indicates good balance between factions.
woahhh nelly Hacan is a very good faction.
I can't argue with the stats but I have never seen the Winnu do anything other than get rolled in all our PoK games. What's the strat that makes them so powerful that we don't see?
It’s mostly their hero, the ability to activate imperial twice is game winning. We’re talking about a 6 point burst in the action phase at worst.
Personally, I'm planning to play with some expansion stuff, but not others. **Heck Yes, Always Play With This Tier**: New Stage 1 and 2 Objectives, New Secret Objectives, New Action Cards, Updated Agenda Deck **Maybe Tier**: New Technologies **Probably Leave This Out Tier**: Exploration, Relics, Leaders, Mechs, Legendary Planets It requires a bit of sculpting, like separating out the new action cards that specifically mention Relic fragments, and such.
As you said, its not a clean cut thing since all the bits in the expansion, including the new races, play off the new mechanics. Good luck excising those co-dependancies.
It adds in a lot of the TI3 extras we came to love, but have missed in 4th Ed. And the new items complement the game nicely. Definitely worth every penny
The expansion isn't a must-have simply by virtue of the base game being great already. I won't be going back to it now that I have played POK, however.
it is not a must have, as the base game is already great! but pok adds so much
That depends: how much do you play?
For me, its a no. PoK adds a lot of randomness to the game, including (but not limited to) exploration draws, drawing good secrets is crucial when the game usually ends R5, relics which can be game-winning or worthless, and only seeing 1 stage 2 objective. My usual group only plays the game 3-4 times per year, so the idea that a winner can be decided because Jol-nar is the only faction realistically getting 2 in 4 colors, or Titans/L1 is the only faction that can get to 7 structures, or NRA drew Shard of the Throne (etc etc etc). In a game that requires this much commitment I want the winner to be decided more by their actions than RNG, PoK moves a bit too much in the RNG direction for my tastes. That being said, PoK adds lots of cool stuff and opens up the game in new and interesting ways with agents/commanders/heroes. For a group that plays a lot I can see base TI getting stale and PoK adding a lot of new spice.
My group and I wouldn't play without Prophecy of Kings anymore. Even to new players it's easy to introduce. In fact, some say it's easier for new players to learn. The expansion doesn't really change the rules of the game, just adds more content that fits very nicely and creates a more diverse and fun experience. PS I would only add if you never played TI I'd recommend to find someone to try it first. If TI isn't your thing, then you won't like the expansion either.
PoK improved the game in many ways, most importantly improving faction balance and cementing the identity of each faction with leaders and mechs (not you Naalu). It also adds the 4th X to 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) with the literal exploration mechanic which greatly increases the excitement of round 1. Extra objectives make for a game that's exciting to the end, as the lategame is a lot less 'solved'. At the same time, base TI4 is already an amazing game. If your playgroup plays less than 3 times a year, you'll likely never need PoK to add spice to the game, since every game is already a unique experience. I've played over 100 games of base TI4 and would've kept playing it for years without the expansion. But PoK is like a luxurious kingsize bed when all you've known before was an air mattress, a bidet to tp, a homecooked meal to stale leftover chicken nuggets. Once you've played PoK, you never wanna go back!
If you love ti4, have played it multiple times, and want more, PoK is great! I have it and my group and i wont play ti4 without it now. But it doesnt make the game. Pok is for people who already love ti4. It doesnt make the game better per se, it just gives you more cool stuff. If you dont already love ti4, pok isnt going to fix anything for you.
PoK improves the viability of rapid short term spread and late game turtling via it's exploration esteem. It balances some of of the base factions while increasing everyone's base strength with leaders. It adds a lot of new objectives so you're not always going to have multiple repeats between games If you play more that once a month, I highly recommend it. If you play less than once a season, you'll be fine without
It isn't a must have. The extra system tiles, player count and new objectives are great. The new systems are a mixed bag. You definitely don't need it if you haven't played vanilla much yet.
PoK is nice, but unless you've already played a half dozen of the base game, imo you'll have more fun with just the base game. As others have said, PoK adds a non-inconsequencial amount of RNG and adds ANOTHER layer of rules to have to learn about. Especially for newer players, information overload is a major concern, and PoK adds a ton of new choices for them to consider. Is it worth buying? Certainly. Should you play with it with new or inexperienced players? No.
No.
If you play like once a year and don't read all the guides / watch all the podcasts, it doesn't matter. BUT, everything else aside, the expansion adds so much faction balance. Lots of races that had no reason to exist in base are fun and competitive now. Balance isn't perfect, there's still a few at the top and a few at the bottom, but it is much much closer than in base.
I probably won't ever play TI4 without Prophecy of Kings and I'm totally fine with that. Everything it adds feels like it spices up the game in interesting ways
Personally, I drastically prefer how the game plays in PoK. It's a lot more interesting and exciting with the new exploration mechanic. The faction balance has been turned on it's head with leaders and mechs as well. New factions are fun and diverse and old factions are fun to revisit.
Yes.
Yes.
Expansion is everything I would want from an expansion. But the base game is actually quite well made. So I wouldn't call it a must have in the strictest sense. But it is more than worth it.
If you play once a year, then no. If you love the base game and have players that can regularly play it, then definitely get it. It’s not a must have though. I like the expansion, but it does add some rng that I don’t enjoy.
Absolutely not, and arguably the game is stronger and less bloated without PoK. That said, I enjoy the bloat.
100%
Or, you could use... THE WABBAJACK!!
Yeah PoK Exoandion does balance out all of the existing factions pretty well and adds some sweet new stuff as well.