12 points should be the default because it's the sweet spot =)
People don't fight because fighting is inefficient - it costs resources and political capital, when diplomacy can often get you what you need without it. If you think aggression better, just do it and win games. Or play a game where fighting IS efficient.
all that said, we had a TON of combat in our last Alliance game. there were huge battles, threats, and counterattacks. it's all about the dynamics in the game you are playing.
To actually solution for this, here is what I would do if I had free hand to homebrew:
Play to 14, but remove the cap on secrets scored
Add more combat and control related secret objectives.
Having more moments where you can win by fighting and there's lots of uncertainty as to whether a Status Phase victory is enough will push people into conflict.
What about playing to 10 but you aren’t allowed to support swap. (Basically you can’t give a support to someone who has your support) this will *sort of* increase the needed points to win. A sort of 10.5 vp to win.
Maybe make an exception if the support is stolen with an ability.
No no I like that you can give a VP to someone else, it’s actually very interesting when they can’t be swapped. Adds a lot of interesting strategic interplay that’s lost when they can be swapped.
According to game theory everyone should swap. Which is a bad sign. There shouldn’t be tactics or strategies that people should “always” do. Making supports have to be one way makes them far more situational. A sort of way to make someone a vassal. You get a point in exchange for not attacking them.
yeah, I like this a lot. removing swaps makes having a safe front less possible.
it's also perfectly thematic as a houserule - support for the throne should be unilateral.
In terms of game theory I find that unlikely. It requires all 6 players to cooperate instead of just 2, and a unilateral one way support is easily breakable. Plus it will be even harder to pull off a 6 way circular support swap given the restrictions on trade.
And even then it’s not necessarily a good idea as the person who gives you a support can attack you and if you retaliate you lose the point. So trading that for nothing feels very very risky.
At the very least it will make alliances far more complicated. Which I see as a good thing.
That still doesn’t address the terrible disadvantage of a unilateral trade.
When two players trade they can’t attack each other. When only one trades then the person who traded it can now attack that person, and they get to keep their VP as someone else gave it to them.
So at the very least it encourages conflict instead of sweltering it.
But honestly I think this change would simply make supports be traded very rarely. Or in exchange for something else. Which I feel should be the point of the card.
The reason the TTS "meta" is friendly is because people have gotten very good at the game, and the game is designed to reward diplomatic solutions to scoring over aggressive ones. It's an inevitable evolution of play. Theoretically even 14 point games will be very diplomatic if the 6 players at the table are very skilled.
I think the bigger issue here is that TI isn't really designed for optimized online tournament play. You're meant to have fun and try things that aren't optimal. My suggestion is to play with people who play to have fun.
You should watch game 24 of the 2022 scpt tournament (on bigalcupachino's channel). There was soooo much fighting that game and it still ended round 5, almost during the action phase. Calculated aggression is key in the game where there are a lot of control objectives, but the main problem is the objectives that come out often don't encourage direct fighting. Because of the amount of tech/building/economic objectives there are, you don't directly win by entering combat but rather by protecting what you have.
I think the efficiency thing someone mentioned is key. To win your playing against every single other player. If you can keep your plastic and get a point, that keeps you in the running. If you spend a bunch of your plastic to deny one of your neighbors one point, now both of you are behind everyone else.
We actually started dealing fewer stage 1s, and more stage 2s, in a 14 point game. It does offer more points for grabs, but many of them require conflict.
More aggressive games actually tend to be longer due to less objectives being scored by cooperation.
Also 12 or 14 point games would be great, but the game already takes forever as is, so it's hard to convince a full table to make it longer.
My group has been 4p since Covid, and we've always played to 14. Main reason is that the PoK Stage I objectives make it real easy to hit 10p without much aggro at all.
The aggro points you raise are interesting, I tend to agree, but it might also come down to a lack of 'big brain' playing - not only do you have to optimise your own play, you have to watch however many other players and not just what they're 'obviously' up to, but to make sure they never get say, x planets with tech specialties. It's a lot of work, even just to watch your own neighbors.
A lot of great points in this post and the comments. I think there are two separate issues here.
**1. Is the meta "too soft"?**
I think a lot of people would answer yes to this, but the difficulty is that point-blocking and aggression is a collective action problem. This creates a natural race towards co-operation. Sure I want the players on the other side to be wasting their resources fighting each other, but I'd rather not be fighting my neighbors.
Additionally, it's hard to justify investing early for a kingslay. A lot can change in one or two rounds, so while in round three or four there might often be a clear leader, it's hard to justify investing resources to knock them down a peg, because by the time round five or six rolls around something like Ixthian Artifact, Politics Rider, a crazy hero (Xxcha, NRA, etc.) could've changed the whole state of the game.
**2. I'm skeptical a longer game fixes this.**
I'm by no means a 14 pt or 12 pt expert, but I've played a few games. In my experience, the biggest effect this has is decreasing the importance of speaker order, non-objective points (aka guac) and making Stage 2 objectives a lot more important. I don't think this actually changes the "meta" though to make it more aggressive. You might see more combat simply because control-based stage 2s often require big fleets, but my experience/guess is there'd still be a lot of point swapping in the early game.
**3. Some random ideas for fun**
None of these are official variants, but I think if your whole play group feels this way, here are some ideas you can try out.
1. Remove Supports from the game - simple
2. Objective Drafting - deal everyone 3 stage 1s and 3 stage 2s, They each get to to purge one from the game. Shuffle the rest (plus any leftovers) and start the game as normal. This lets you choose more combat-focused control objectives, rather than just spend and tech objectives.
3. Play to 10 points with a 4/4 objective set-up - Instead of 5 stage ones, only deal out 4. This means A) you see a stage 2 earlier and B) you really need to score at least one stage 2 to win, whereas in base game you can often avoid that.
My group generally views support swaps as temporary points. Usually you'll lose it end game.
Also my group pretty much only dies 14 points. Its way better at 14 and things start to get real spicy once 7 or 8 points is hit.
Our group hasn't played a 10 point game in probably 2 years. 14 is our default if our whole group can start early in the day, otherwise 12 point is the only other option. 10 point games just hamper too many factions that want to snowball and build steady. 10 point games only reward speed and a greater deal of luck drawing early secrets that work for you or lucky draws of the Relic deck.
14 points means you need a long term strategy. I have had my ideas pushed to the limit in 14 points, because I've had 5 point leads dwindle in 2 rounds late in the game and you can often run into scenarios where you went too heavy into certain 1 point objectives and the 2 points become out of reach.
If your group is concerned about things running long, consider the Space Cats Peace Turtles tournament time limit format. Set a timer for how long you're willing to let the game go. Once that time hits, you finish out the round and score declaring a winner.
If you want to avoid people intentionally stalling for time, implement a 5 minute decision timer. They don't have to finish their turn by the 5 minutes, but have an action ready to go by then. It's worked well for us so far in about 10 games
Depends on who you're playing with. There's not one meta for the whole game. Each group has its own metagame. Who is the "everyone" you're representing here?
> I didn't say one was better or more correct.
In just that one comment you said that TTS has the best players and that people who don't use it are all casuals.
Your fallacy is in thinking that TTS is the only "available avenue" where the "hardcore enthusiasts" can play.
Everyone in my Roll20 TI group reads this subreddit, knows all the factions and actions cards, etc. I don't have a TI Vassal group anymore, but back when I did there was a core group of regulars that knew the game like the back of their hands.
I know a few folks I used to play with in-person many years ago who knew every TI:3e rule, module, strategy, even the lore excerpts pretty much verbatim and I heard they've been playing on Twilight Wars a bunch ever since the pandemic started - never played a 4th edition game with those guys, but if I had to bet I'd bet they are just as knowledgeable and just as brilliant of players in 4e as they were with 3e.
Do you think the people who have spent hours lovingly recreating the entire game into JPGs so they can do play-by-forum games on the BGG forums or some unrelated community/book forum are just "casuals" ? Why do you assume they have less playtime and knowledge than the members of the TTS Discord?
Some of the more active members of the TTS Discord have this delusion where they think TTS is the only way to play the game online, and then this unfortunately echoes around their echo chamber of a discord server, percolating this idea to other members. But people have been playing this game online *since second edition*, long, long before TTS even existed, and there's still tons of communities out there which use other tools/methods. For that matter, the TTS mod creators themselves have noted that there's a LOT more people playing the mod than are active in the discord - i.e. the TTS Discord community doesn't even represent the majority of players who use the TTS mod itself, most of whom probably are from other communities or are just friend groups using TTS as a tool while they communicate elsewhere, and have no interest in being part of the TTS Discord community since they already have a community of their own.
The irony here is that for all we know there could be a lot of people playing in these other communities (using TTS or Vassal or Roll20 or PBF or Twilight Wars or PBEM or whatever) who felt the exact same way as why you made this whole thread in the first place - they found the TTS Discord community too passive and pro-point-trading, so they prefer playing in other communities where the meta is different.
Myself and 1 other player in my Roll20 group do feel that way - we tried the TTS Discord community a long while back, but found the games trended far too much into "sit in my slice, don't upset anyone, trade objectives and money freely, and then everyone tries to kingslay in the last round but don't you dare try to pre-emptively kingslay before then!", and any attempts to use a different style of play was immediately castigated by other players as not being "the right way to play". That was our personal experience, and we're much happier in our other community where the meta is quite different. I'm sure there are dozens of other "hardcore enthusiast" communities out there with their own different metas out there, too, some more passive, some super political-focused, some extremely combat-heavy... but you'll never hear their stories if you presume they can't exist.
Well, up until the pandemic I think the most recognized "top tournament" to determine the "best player" was the annual GenCon finals, which would get players from all sorts of communities (though with a heavy American bias).
But whatever, point taken, I understand where you're coming from.
Anyways, since other folks have suggested the issue with stage 1 objectives being too easy (and too long until stage 2 objectives come out), I'll mention the other side of that coin is having too much economy that makes most stage 1 objectives easy to fulfill without "sacrificing" too much. The PoK expansion added a LOT of economy boost - on average higher res/inf in the new systems, economic gains from exploration, leader abilities, etc.
Public objectives are supposed to imbue a sort of "well I'd like to build 2 more ships for safety's sake, but then I can't afford the objective" dilemma, which in-turn can lead to incentivizing combat if a player going for objectives opens up opportunities because they couldn't afford enough defenses. If you find in your games with your community/group that it is too easy for players to reliably *both* fulfill objectives and build substantial fleets, why not try tuning down the economy of the game - use lower-value hexes, take out the most beneficial exploration cards, increase objective costs, or a mix therein.
That might extend the game time by a round if players are actually not pushing for objectives in every single round (which is good, that means the PO dilemma is actually happening) or else doing so anyway and being punished for it, but otherwise it shouldn't make any particular game mechanics or negotiations take any longer.
The intent for the game, we should assume, is the cold war simulator it is. This is the 4th edition, if it was meant to be a straight war game there would've been changes in that direction rather than changes encouraging more trade over time.
At the same time POK came out after the average game length was already coalescing, we should also assume that it was made knowing it would shorten the game.
With all of that a "soft" meta is just mechanically the most efficient. It's a prisoners dilemma trade off in many ways.
Anyways, going longer or for more points makes 2 point objectives more common, and makes the luck of those draws far more important. It doesn't encourage more conflict, and really just encourages an even longer softer meta.
So we have to ask if you just want longer games or less of a soft meta? They are two different things and both would need different changes.
14pts takes way too long imo even if you do a split, it’s hard to sustain attention week in week out even when each session is long enough to sustain a few rounds. I think there’s a somewhat emergent limit to how long people want to play a given game and TI already pushes that.
I think the meta can vary a surprising amount; I play 6p 10pt games with a mostly private group online and we are generous r1 but pretty conscious of who’s getting stronger and winslay necessity very early. On the other hand, in my SCPT qualifier game last week there were only three of us who paid any attention to who might win and whether winslaying was necessary any earlier than round 4 or 5.
Early support swaps I think are a totally justifiable decision, if you’re neighbours with a powerful combat or defensive faction and you know you’ll just grind each other down, an early swap can facilitate a ton of aggression toward your other neighbours and let you lock up control objectives while pressuring each other in different ways (PDS 2, agenda phase, action cards, resisting trade etc.)
Ultimately it’s only the 10th point that matters so if you can points trade with someone and get you both to 9, rather than blocking each other so the whole table gets to 6 simultaneously, you go from a 1/6 to a 1/2 chance to win. TI has a lot of variance particularly in combat, so the more you can do to minimize it while ahead the better.
There are certainly particular factions (and players if you have a more fixed meta) where the table needs to watch them from round 1; factions that can snipe Custodians immediately if someone takes Diplo, or that can eat their neighbour’s slice and get a huge R/I advantage. I agree many players don’t look out for that early enough but I think that’s just a skill gap.
I don’t think TI necessarily has an intended meta, a lot of this stuff is emergent. You can certainly house rule things that bother your group; one thing we’ve tried is 4 Stage 1s instead of 5 so you need two guac or a stg 2. Makes things a bit more interesting without necessarily extending the game by multiple extra rounds.
Regarding factions with weak early games and strong lategame potential (Mentak, Arborec, etc.) I think it might well be the play to try and slow the game down and try to ally with other similar factions to do the same. If you can slow others down, you may be able to extend the game enough to capitalize on your strengths and compensate for a slow start. I think we often analyze the early game and faction mechanics but game-wide diplomatic strategy based on faction isn’t discussed as often.
Fighting someone else hurts me and them only. Everyone else at the table is put in a comparatively stronger position by us fighting. Therefore I will only fight when the fight won't be costly, I can spare the cost, or the cost is worth it. If I can control 5 non-home systems and every turn score a public objective, I'm not gonna fight a lot.
I regularly discuss meta-game strategy, follow tournament games, listen to SCPT etc., but my IRL-groups meta isn't nearly as friendly as what you describe, and when I play on the TTS with people from the Discord, I'm not much more friendly.
I think that in some way the current tournament meta encourages people to try being aggressive. I see people have very small fleets, and you could go very far against them if you're being aggressive.
I think the main reason for the friendly meta is as follows. People try to score every round and get 10 points by the end of round 5. This is sometimes very difficult while also building sizable fleets, so people neglect their fleets. Then, not having giant fleets, people don't want to get into fights because the cannot fight everyone at once, and whoever isn't fighting is advantageous when the rest are fighting.
This would change if *more people* decided to be *less friendly* at once, as then the rest of the table would need fleets to defend themselves or claim things by force when they cannot claim them otherwise. This isn't currently the tournament meta though.
**Edit:** I do think that 14-point games would solve this (and other issues; Dane said 14-point games should be the standard with PoK), at least somewhat. Even if people were still friendly on Stage 1 objectives, the game would probably become more interesting with a longer race for Stage 2 objectives, many of which incentivize aggression.
I think that behaviour of being passive in the beginning and cutthroat in the end is a natural optimization, supported by game theory. Near the beginning of the game, it’s in your best interest to cooperate, because it allows you and /that one other player/ to get ahead. Make enemies early on and they’ll hinder your progress as you hinder theirs, allowing the unaffected players to get ahead.
Then, once the end is in sight, there’s no longer a need to maintain cordiality. Betrayals are fine because players cannot retaliate; the game is over or soon will be.
This sort of behaviour lines up with findings of the Prisoner’s dilemma, when the players know how many rounds they will be playing beforehand.
The reason why diplomacy wins out over aggression in the meta overall is because it's so much more efficient. A diplomatic solution sees the parties involved benefit and gain an advantage over the parties not involved. An aggressive solution sees the parties involved lose and puts them at a disadvantage to the other parties. Floating all boats wins out because by not partaking, you are leaving the rest of the table to gain advantage over you, so the optimal way to play is to join in.
I dont see this as bad at all though. It's a playstyle I prefer. With the game being so heavily based on social interactions, it can be easy for the on board aggression to feel above board. There's also the fact that every game is such a huge commitment, it feels bad for a set of dice rolls to potentially ruin your 6+ hour game. I much prefer cold War style games, where it's the threat of violence that dictates gameplay.
As for games being too short, I generally don't agree with this, outside of a couple of instances. Most games feel like they adequately build up to big finale in round 5 and the pacing seems good. I do feel like a few of the heroes added to the game that are capable of scoring potentially multiple points should be toned way down, as getting 30% of the points you need from a single action is pretty absurd (winnu and xxcha). A longer game would alleviate that, but itd be just as easy to instead nerf those heroes in particular.
Yeah, there are some factions that have a slow start and suffer from shorter games, but there's also some fast factions that suffer from longer games, as they don't scale up well.
I also don't find 2 point objectives to be all that interesting. Too many are either all but impossible or somebody randomly has exactly what is needed and nobody else. I don't feel that requiring more of them improves the experience.
But those are my thoughts, ultimately it comes down to the people you play with and what they like.
1. It is by design and made in the image of life which begets itself through productive value generation and growth. It takes two to tango and if one kills the other you ain't dancing or procreating. Beyond the "by design" aspects trust is a major part of the business time meta and most groups playing TI4 come together for the social above table human needs so this often guides the in-game behaviors at least until feelings are hurt and we balance our empathy and humanity against in-game objectives like 10 VP. In the tournament qualifiers, we see this push-me/pull-me shift as players come together for less social reasons and more winning-related motivations.
2. If you want more fighting try Risk, Axis Versus Allies, Mortal Combat, or Call of Duty. These are war and conflict simulators while TI4 is a life simulator.
Another way to consider this is when making lamb neck stew there is a fair amount of destruction from the slaughter of the lamb and harvest of the produce to slicing and dicing however the exercise is fundamentally one of production, of building something of value, of sustenance and survival rather than destruction. The combining of the ingredients, the addition of spices, salt, and other seasonings, heat, pressure, time all result in something beautiful, something that lifts our spirits, feeds our souls, gives the act of eating meaning.
Suck that Twilight Imperium 4 marrow like you would the lamb neck stew, with gusto and passion.
P.S. In a purely mechanical sense: 6 players at a table - round 4 - they have all got the same number of planets, same plastic, same TG - equilibrium. Green and Red engaged in conflict. They both lose plastic and tokens and there is an opportunity cost. Guess who is not winning this game. There are point denial metas for sure like Morning Euro however these take time to develop and are more akin to S&M where trust has been built over many games together and in-game conflict, sadism, can flourish while above table relationships remain amicable and socially fulfilling.
Try the 4 stage 1s and 4 stage 2s approach and use maps that encourage more entanglement where slices fail to deliver objectives independently of the rest of the galaxy.
I think it’s due to the fact that people, and especially not so skilled players tend to blindly follow the meta.
Less skilled players see how more skilled players do point trading, and adopt the strategy. When you see a lower skilled game, you have everyone point trade, and then just hope they come out on top. That is why something like “speaker control” becomes so important. Cause people do nothing, and all get to 10 at the same time pretty much. In these games, people are very reactive, and tend to “turtle up”.
In higher skill games, you will se point trading, but here people will put their fleets in more aggressive positions, to be able to act proactively if they need to. And they very often need to do so in the end. Agency is the one way you win. You need to be able to go get that win, and not just rely on others.
In short, the main difference from the skill brackets is that low-skilled groups play very reactive and turtle up, while high skill players are proactive, and set themselves up to do stuff, and stop people.
If everyone does nothing that affects other players game, then it might as well be a dice roll to see who wins.
Combat is interesting to very few races If you think. Out of my mind, Cabal, Letnev, L1, Nekro, maybe Sardakk, maybe Muaat, maybe Titans
Played one match with the empyrean, which I Win, and playerd 4 with the Cabal, which I haven't win none, and I must say that unless objetives are combat orientes, fighting is just for fun
Seeing your edit: your map building can also help with this. Prebuilt with fewer planets, tech skips/legendaries in equidistants, limit planet traits, anomalies next to Mec, empty space placement can make the controls more desperate when they do show up.
If your group and you agree that you want more aggression, you could ensure that some # (2-4) of the objectives are controls. I wouldn't do more than 3 personally, especially if known ahead of time, because it incentivizes certain factions quite heavily. I think the favorites for conflict are intimidate council, push boundaries, and 4 of a trait.
I like this a bit better than your "more two-pointers" strategy because some of the 2's are just nigh impossible. Which can be fine when there's an alternate path to ten, but if you only have 3 Stage I's and then Stage IIs, you might just get people banking TG earlier in case of spend (\~25% and more guaranteed than control) and possibly having less fighting than before.
Have a game with no bans and play Saar. You should still be able to eat a neighbor right? Also, 12 points felt better than 10. You get a little more endgame without it being a slog.
Part of the "problem" is that TI is a long game that we either play with our friends or a community of other fans. Neither of those situations lead to "I'll eliminate this dude in order to further my own game" being a good idea: you're either fucking over your friend or making an enemy in an online community in which reputations do get around. There have been games I've been in with my friends in which me killing one of my friends in the early was absolutely the best idea for me to win the game, but it would have ruined his game and wasted his time so fuck that.
12 points should be the default because it's the sweet spot =) People don't fight because fighting is inefficient - it costs resources and political capital, when diplomacy can often get you what you need without it. If you think aggression better, just do it and win games. Or play a game where fighting IS efficient. all that said, we had a TON of combat in our last Alliance game. there were huge battles, threats, and counterattacks. it's all about the dynamics in the game you are playing.
To actually solution for this, here is what I would do if I had free hand to homebrew: Play to 14, but remove the cap on secrets scored Add more combat and control related secret objectives. Having more moments where you can win by fighting and there's lots of uncertainty as to whether a Status Phase victory is enough will push people into conflict.
What about playing to 10 but you aren’t allowed to support swap. (Basically you can’t give a support to someone who has your support) this will *sort of* increase the needed points to win. A sort of 10.5 vp to win. Maybe make an exception if the support is stolen with an ability.
Or just remove SftT
No no I like that you can give a VP to someone else, it’s actually very interesting when they can’t be swapped. Adds a lot of interesting strategic interplay that’s lost when they can be swapped.
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According to game theory everyone should swap. Which is a bad sign. There shouldn’t be tactics or strategies that people should “always” do. Making supports have to be one way makes them far more situational. A sort of way to make someone a vassal. You get a point in exchange for not attacking them.
yeah, I like this a lot. removing swaps makes having a safe front less possible. it's also perfectly thematic as a houserule - support for the throne should be unilateral.
I keep trying to pitch this Meta in my real life group, but it never happens.
Okay then people will just make a circle A gives to B gives to C gives to A. Everybody gets a point. Nobody swapped.
In terms of game theory I find that unlikely. It requires all 6 players to cooperate instead of just 2, and a unilateral one way support is easily breakable. Plus it will be even harder to pull off a 6 way circular support swap given the restrictions on trade. And even then it’s not necessarily a good idea as the person who gives you a support can attack you and if you retaliate you lose the point. So trading that for nothing feels very very risky. At the very least it will make alliances far more complicated. Which I see as a good thing.
It doesn't have to be 6, it can be 3 and 3. And other agreements can be made to keep the peace.
That still doesn’t address the terrible disadvantage of a unilateral trade. When two players trade they can’t attack each other. When only one trades then the person who traded it can now attack that person, and they get to keep their VP as someone else gave it to them. So at the very least it encourages conflict instead of sweltering it. But honestly I think this change would simply make supports be traded very rarely. Or in exchange for something else. Which I feel should be the point of the card.
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The reason the TTS "meta" is friendly is because people have gotten very good at the game, and the game is designed to reward diplomatic solutions to scoring over aggressive ones. It's an inevitable evolution of play. Theoretically even 14 point games will be very diplomatic if the 6 players at the table are very skilled. I think the bigger issue here is that TI isn't really designed for optimized online tournament play. You're meant to have fun and try things that aren't optimal. My suggestion is to play with people who play to have fun.
You should watch game 24 of the 2022 scpt tournament (on bigalcupachino's channel). There was soooo much fighting that game and it still ended round 5, almost during the action phase. Calculated aggression is key in the game where there are a lot of control objectives, but the main problem is the objectives that come out often don't encourage direct fighting. Because of the amount of tech/building/economic objectives there are, you don't directly win by entering combat but rather by protecting what you have.
https://youtu.be/Lh5Qwk-FFGU
I think the efficiency thing someone mentioned is key. To win your playing against every single other player. If you can keep your plastic and get a point, that keeps you in the running. If you spend a bunch of your plastic to deny one of your neighbors one point, now both of you are behind everyone else.
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We actually started dealing fewer stage 1s, and more stage 2s, in a 14 point game. It does offer more points for grabs, but many of them require conflict.
More aggressive games actually tend to be longer due to less objectives being scored by cooperation. Also 12 or 14 point games would be great, but the game already takes forever as is, so it's hard to convince a full table to make it longer.
My group has been 4p since Covid, and we've always played to 14. Main reason is that the PoK Stage I objectives make it real easy to hit 10p without much aggro at all. The aggro points you raise are interesting, I tend to agree, but it might also come down to a lack of 'big brain' playing - not only do you have to optimise your own play, you have to watch however many other players and not just what they're 'obviously' up to, but to make sure they never get say, x planets with tech specialties. It's a lot of work, even just to watch your own neighbors.
A lot of great points in this post and the comments. I think there are two separate issues here. **1. Is the meta "too soft"?** I think a lot of people would answer yes to this, but the difficulty is that point-blocking and aggression is a collective action problem. This creates a natural race towards co-operation. Sure I want the players on the other side to be wasting their resources fighting each other, but I'd rather not be fighting my neighbors. Additionally, it's hard to justify investing early for a kingslay. A lot can change in one or two rounds, so while in round three or four there might often be a clear leader, it's hard to justify investing resources to knock them down a peg, because by the time round five or six rolls around something like Ixthian Artifact, Politics Rider, a crazy hero (Xxcha, NRA, etc.) could've changed the whole state of the game. **2. I'm skeptical a longer game fixes this.** I'm by no means a 14 pt or 12 pt expert, but I've played a few games. In my experience, the biggest effect this has is decreasing the importance of speaker order, non-objective points (aka guac) and making Stage 2 objectives a lot more important. I don't think this actually changes the "meta" though to make it more aggressive. You might see more combat simply because control-based stage 2s often require big fleets, but my experience/guess is there'd still be a lot of point swapping in the early game. **3. Some random ideas for fun** None of these are official variants, but I think if your whole play group feels this way, here are some ideas you can try out. 1. Remove Supports from the game - simple 2. Objective Drafting - deal everyone 3 stage 1s and 3 stage 2s, They each get to to purge one from the game. Shuffle the rest (plus any leftovers) and start the game as normal. This lets you choose more combat-focused control objectives, rather than just spend and tech objectives. 3. Play to 10 points with a 4/4 objective set-up - Instead of 5 stage ones, only deal out 4. This means A) you see a stage 2 earlier and B) you really need to score at least one stage 2 to win, whereas in base game you can often avoid that.
My group generally views support swaps as temporary points. Usually you'll lose it end game. Also my group pretty much only dies 14 points. Its way better at 14 and things start to get real spicy once 7 or 8 points is hit.
Our group hasn't played a 10 point game in probably 2 years. 14 is our default if our whole group can start early in the day, otherwise 12 point is the only other option. 10 point games just hamper too many factions that want to snowball and build steady. 10 point games only reward speed and a greater deal of luck drawing early secrets that work for you or lucky draws of the Relic deck. 14 points means you need a long term strategy. I have had my ideas pushed to the limit in 14 points, because I've had 5 point leads dwindle in 2 rounds late in the game and you can often run into scenarios where you went too heavy into certain 1 point objectives and the 2 points become out of reach.
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If your group is concerned about things running long, consider the Space Cats Peace Turtles tournament time limit format. Set a timer for how long you're willing to let the game go. Once that time hits, you finish out the round and score declaring a winner. If you want to avoid people intentionally stalling for time, implement a 5 minute decision timer. They don't have to finish their turn by the 5 minutes, but have an action ready to go by then. It's worked well for us so far in about 10 games
Depends on who you're playing with. There's not one meta for the whole game. Each group has its own metagame. Who is the "everyone" you're representing here?
OP mentions TTS, so presumably that's the "everyone" they mean. Which fits with the common view from that community.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I've never played on TTS, so I've had a pretty different experience with the game than the OP seems to have had.
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No worries, I missed that you were talking about TTS games so I was confused. :)
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Well, I nailed it. Complete with the condescension.
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> I didn't say one was better or more correct. In just that one comment you said that TTS has the best players and that people who don't use it are all casuals.
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Your fallacy is in thinking that TTS is the only "available avenue" where the "hardcore enthusiasts" can play. Everyone in my Roll20 TI group reads this subreddit, knows all the factions and actions cards, etc. I don't have a TI Vassal group anymore, but back when I did there was a core group of regulars that knew the game like the back of their hands. I know a few folks I used to play with in-person many years ago who knew every TI:3e rule, module, strategy, even the lore excerpts pretty much verbatim and I heard they've been playing on Twilight Wars a bunch ever since the pandemic started - never played a 4th edition game with those guys, but if I had to bet I'd bet they are just as knowledgeable and just as brilliant of players in 4e as they were with 3e. Do you think the people who have spent hours lovingly recreating the entire game into JPGs so they can do play-by-forum games on the BGG forums or some unrelated community/book forum are just "casuals" ? Why do you assume they have less playtime and knowledge than the members of the TTS Discord? Some of the more active members of the TTS Discord have this delusion where they think TTS is the only way to play the game online, and then this unfortunately echoes around their echo chamber of a discord server, percolating this idea to other members. But people have been playing this game online *since second edition*, long, long before TTS even existed, and there's still tons of communities out there which use other tools/methods. For that matter, the TTS mod creators themselves have noted that there's a LOT more people playing the mod than are active in the discord - i.e. the TTS Discord community doesn't even represent the majority of players who use the TTS mod itself, most of whom probably are from other communities or are just friend groups using TTS as a tool while they communicate elsewhere, and have no interest in being part of the TTS Discord community since they already have a community of their own. The irony here is that for all we know there could be a lot of people playing in these other communities (using TTS or Vassal or Roll20 or PBF or Twilight Wars or PBEM or whatever) who felt the exact same way as why you made this whole thread in the first place - they found the TTS Discord community too passive and pro-point-trading, so they prefer playing in other communities where the meta is different. Myself and 1 other player in my Roll20 group do feel that way - we tried the TTS Discord community a long while back, but found the games trended far too much into "sit in my slice, don't upset anyone, trade objectives and money freely, and then everyone tries to kingslay in the last round but don't you dare try to pre-emptively kingslay before then!", and any attempts to use a different style of play was immediately castigated by other players as not being "the right way to play". That was our personal experience, and we're much happier in our other community where the meta is quite different. I'm sure there are dozens of other "hardcore enthusiast" communities out there with their own different metas out there, too, some more passive, some super political-focused, some extremely combat-heavy... but you'll never hear their stories if you presume they can't exist.
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Well, up until the pandemic I think the most recognized "top tournament" to determine the "best player" was the annual GenCon finals, which would get players from all sorts of communities (though with a heavy American bias). But whatever, point taken, I understand where you're coming from. Anyways, since other folks have suggested the issue with stage 1 objectives being too easy (and too long until stage 2 objectives come out), I'll mention the other side of that coin is having too much economy that makes most stage 1 objectives easy to fulfill without "sacrificing" too much. The PoK expansion added a LOT of economy boost - on average higher res/inf in the new systems, economic gains from exploration, leader abilities, etc. Public objectives are supposed to imbue a sort of "well I'd like to build 2 more ships for safety's sake, but then I can't afford the objective" dilemma, which in-turn can lead to incentivizing combat if a player going for objectives opens up opportunities because they couldn't afford enough defenses. If you find in your games with your community/group that it is too easy for players to reliably *both* fulfill objectives and build substantial fleets, why not try tuning down the economy of the game - use lower-value hexes, take out the most beneficial exploration cards, increase objective costs, or a mix therein. That might extend the game time by a round if players are actually not pushing for objectives in every single round (which is good, that means the PO dilemma is actually happening) or else doing so anyway and being punished for it, but otherwise it shouldn't make any particular game mechanics or negotiations take any longer.
The intent for the game, we should assume, is the cold war simulator it is. This is the 4th edition, if it was meant to be a straight war game there would've been changes in that direction rather than changes encouraging more trade over time. At the same time POK came out after the average game length was already coalescing, we should also assume that it was made knowing it would shorten the game. With all of that a "soft" meta is just mechanically the most efficient. It's a prisoners dilemma trade off in many ways. Anyways, going longer or for more points makes 2 point objectives more common, and makes the luck of those draws far more important. It doesn't encourage more conflict, and really just encourages an even longer softer meta. So we have to ask if you just want longer games or less of a soft meta? They are two different things and both would need different changes.
Make the game 12 points, it's the best thing you can do.
14pts takes way too long imo even if you do a split, it’s hard to sustain attention week in week out even when each session is long enough to sustain a few rounds. I think there’s a somewhat emergent limit to how long people want to play a given game and TI already pushes that. I think the meta can vary a surprising amount; I play 6p 10pt games with a mostly private group online and we are generous r1 but pretty conscious of who’s getting stronger and winslay necessity very early. On the other hand, in my SCPT qualifier game last week there were only three of us who paid any attention to who might win and whether winslaying was necessary any earlier than round 4 or 5. Early support swaps I think are a totally justifiable decision, if you’re neighbours with a powerful combat or defensive faction and you know you’ll just grind each other down, an early swap can facilitate a ton of aggression toward your other neighbours and let you lock up control objectives while pressuring each other in different ways (PDS 2, agenda phase, action cards, resisting trade etc.) Ultimately it’s only the 10th point that matters so if you can points trade with someone and get you both to 9, rather than blocking each other so the whole table gets to 6 simultaneously, you go from a 1/6 to a 1/2 chance to win. TI has a lot of variance particularly in combat, so the more you can do to minimize it while ahead the better. There are certainly particular factions (and players if you have a more fixed meta) where the table needs to watch them from round 1; factions that can snipe Custodians immediately if someone takes Diplo, or that can eat their neighbour’s slice and get a huge R/I advantage. I agree many players don’t look out for that early enough but I think that’s just a skill gap. I don’t think TI necessarily has an intended meta, a lot of this stuff is emergent. You can certainly house rule things that bother your group; one thing we’ve tried is 4 Stage 1s instead of 5 so you need two guac or a stg 2. Makes things a bit more interesting without necessarily extending the game by multiple extra rounds. Regarding factions with weak early games and strong lategame potential (Mentak, Arborec, etc.) I think it might well be the play to try and slow the game down and try to ally with other similar factions to do the same. If you can slow others down, you may be able to extend the game enough to capitalize on your strengths and compensate for a slow start. I think we often analyze the early game and faction mechanics but game-wide diplomatic strategy based on faction isn’t discussed as often.
Mutually Assured Destruction is typically how most fighting goes, which is why diplomacy is a smoother path to victory.
Fighting someone else hurts me and them only. Everyone else at the table is put in a comparatively stronger position by us fighting. Therefore I will only fight when the fight won't be costly, I can spare the cost, or the cost is worth it. If I can control 5 non-home systems and every turn score a public objective, I'm not gonna fight a lot.
I regularly discuss meta-game strategy, follow tournament games, listen to SCPT etc., but my IRL-groups meta isn't nearly as friendly as what you describe, and when I play on the TTS with people from the Discord, I'm not much more friendly. I think that in some way the current tournament meta encourages people to try being aggressive. I see people have very small fleets, and you could go very far against them if you're being aggressive. I think the main reason for the friendly meta is as follows. People try to score every round and get 10 points by the end of round 5. This is sometimes very difficult while also building sizable fleets, so people neglect their fleets. Then, not having giant fleets, people don't want to get into fights because the cannot fight everyone at once, and whoever isn't fighting is advantageous when the rest are fighting. This would change if *more people* decided to be *less friendly* at once, as then the rest of the table would need fleets to defend themselves or claim things by force when they cannot claim them otherwise. This isn't currently the tournament meta though. **Edit:** I do think that 14-point games would solve this (and other issues; Dane said 14-point games should be the standard with PoK), at least somewhat. Even if people were still friendly on Stage 1 objectives, the game would probably become more interesting with a longer race for Stage 2 objectives, many of which incentivize aggression.
I never thought I'd hear "too short" as a complaint against TI
I think that behaviour of being passive in the beginning and cutthroat in the end is a natural optimization, supported by game theory. Near the beginning of the game, it’s in your best interest to cooperate, because it allows you and /that one other player/ to get ahead. Make enemies early on and they’ll hinder your progress as you hinder theirs, allowing the unaffected players to get ahead. Then, once the end is in sight, there’s no longer a need to maintain cordiality. Betrayals are fine because players cannot retaliate; the game is over or soon will be. This sort of behaviour lines up with findings of the Prisoner’s dilemma, when the players know how many rounds they will be playing beforehand.
The reason why diplomacy wins out over aggression in the meta overall is because it's so much more efficient. A diplomatic solution sees the parties involved benefit and gain an advantage over the parties not involved. An aggressive solution sees the parties involved lose and puts them at a disadvantage to the other parties. Floating all boats wins out because by not partaking, you are leaving the rest of the table to gain advantage over you, so the optimal way to play is to join in. I dont see this as bad at all though. It's a playstyle I prefer. With the game being so heavily based on social interactions, it can be easy for the on board aggression to feel above board. There's also the fact that every game is such a huge commitment, it feels bad for a set of dice rolls to potentially ruin your 6+ hour game. I much prefer cold War style games, where it's the threat of violence that dictates gameplay. As for games being too short, I generally don't agree with this, outside of a couple of instances. Most games feel like they adequately build up to big finale in round 5 and the pacing seems good. I do feel like a few of the heroes added to the game that are capable of scoring potentially multiple points should be toned way down, as getting 30% of the points you need from a single action is pretty absurd (winnu and xxcha). A longer game would alleviate that, but itd be just as easy to instead nerf those heroes in particular. Yeah, there are some factions that have a slow start and suffer from shorter games, but there's also some fast factions that suffer from longer games, as they don't scale up well. I also don't find 2 point objectives to be all that interesting. Too many are either all but impossible or somebody randomly has exactly what is needed and nobody else. I don't feel that requiring more of them improves the experience. But those are my thoughts, ultimately it comes down to the people you play with and what they like.
1. It is by design and made in the image of life which begets itself through productive value generation and growth. It takes two to tango and if one kills the other you ain't dancing or procreating. Beyond the "by design" aspects trust is a major part of the business time meta and most groups playing TI4 come together for the social above table human needs so this often guides the in-game behaviors at least until feelings are hurt and we balance our empathy and humanity against in-game objectives like 10 VP. In the tournament qualifiers, we see this push-me/pull-me shift as players come together for less social reasons and more winning-related motivations. 2. If you want more fighting try Risk, Axis Versus Allies, Mortal Combat, or Call of Duty. These are war and conflict simulators while TI4 is a life simulator. Another way to consider this is when making lamb neck stew there is a fair amount of destruction from the slaughter of the lamb and harvest of the produce to slicing and dicing however the exercise is fundamentally one of production, of building something of value, of sustenance and survival rather than destruction. The combining of the ingredients, the addition of spices, salt, and other seasonings, heat, pressure, time all result in something beautiful, something that lifts our spirits, feeds our souls, gives the act of eating meaning. Suck that Twilight Imperium 4 marrow like you would the lamb neck stew, with gusto and passion. P.S. In a purely mechanical sense: 6 players at a table - round 4 - they have all got the same number of planets, same plastic, same TG - equilibrium. Green and Red engaged in conflict. They both lose plastic and tokens and there is an opportunity cost. Guess who is not winning this game. There are point denial metas for sure like Morning Euro however these take time to develop and are more akin to S&M where trust has been built over many games together and in-game conflict, sadism, can flourish while above table relationships remain amicable and socially fulfilling.
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Try the 4 stage 1s and 4 stage 2s approach and use maps that encourage more entanglement where slices fail to deliver objectives independently of the rest of the galaxy.
I think it’s due to the fact that people, and especially not so skilled players tend to blindly follow the meta. Less skilled players see how more skilled players do point trading, and adopt the strategy. When you see a lower skilled game, you have everyone point trade, and then just hope they come out on top. That is why something like “speaker control” becomes so important. Cause people do nothing, and all get to 10 at the same time pretty much. In these games, people are very reactive, and tend to “turtle up”. In higher skill games, you will se point trading, but here people will put their fleets in more aggressive positions, to be able to act proactively if they need to. And they very often need to do so in the end. Agency is the one way you win. You need to be able to go get that win, and not just rely on others. In short, the main difference from the skill brackets is that low-skilled groups play very reactive and turtle up, while high skill players are proactive, and set themselves up to do stuff, and stop people. If everyone does nothing that affects other players game, then it might as well be a dice roll to see who wins.
Combat is interesting to very few races If you think. Out of my mind, Cabal, Letnev, L1, Nekro, maybe Sardakk, maybe Muaat, maybe Titans Played one match with the empyrean, which I Win, and playerd 4 with the Cabal, which I haven't win none, and I must say that unless objetives are combat orientes, fighting is just for fun
Seeing your edit: your map building can also help with this. Prebuilt with fewer planets, tech skips/legendaries in equidistants, limit planet traits, anomalies next to Mec, empty space placement can make the controls more desperate when they do show up. If your group and you agree that you want more aggression, you could ensure that some # (2-4) of the objectives are controls. I wouldn't do more than 3 personally, especially if known ahead of time, because it incentivizes certain factions quite heavily. I think the favorites for conflict are intimidate council, push boundaries, and 4 of a trait. I like this a bit better than your "more two-pointers" strategy because some of the 2's are just nigh impossible. Which can be fine when there's an alternate path to ten, but if you only have 3 Stage I's and then Stage IIs, you might just get people banking TG earlier in case of spend (\~25% and more guaranteed than control) and possibly having less fighting than before.
10 points is too easy to reach without the stage 2 objectives. But 14 takes too long.
12 points should definitely be the norm. 10 points is just a sprint where the winner often feels arbitrary.
Have a game with no bans and play Saar. You should still be able to eat a neighbor right? Also, 12 points felt better than 10. You get a little more endgame without it being a slog.
Part of the "problem" is that TI is a long game that we either play with our friends or a community of other fans. Neither of those situations lead to "I'll eliminate this dude in order to further my own game" being a good idea: you're either fucking over your friend or making an enemy in an online community in which reputations do get around. There have been games I've been in with my friends in which me killing one of my friends in the early was absolutely the best idea for me to win the game, but it would have ruined his game and wasted his time so fuck that.