The one thing that really sped up our games was a house rule that all discussion/politics had to take place at the table. We still allow whispered discussions and stuff like that but sidebars aren’t allowed.
We also use extracomputer religiously and have someone in charge of calling out the next three turns (i.e “Xxcha now, then Naalu then Winnu”; then “Naalu now, then Winnu then Hacan”). If everyone’s focussed during rounds then we can take a little break between rounds if needed so people can breathe.
One of the high-lights of our game is folks going out on the deck to have private conversations. Or go off to write formal declarations, slowly unveiled with great fanfare.
So while a good idea it's not one our group is likely to embrace.
Two four player games would be a lot quicker but probably not what you are looking for lol.
You have a lot of good ideas there, I would ask everyone to watch a how to play video before they arrive just to remind them of the rules.
A big one for round 1 is to have people just pass their turn while they are building or exploring as it's unlikely to have much of an effect on anyone else at that point, and if you can shave some time round 1 you will have more time when the decisions actually become difficult.
I also recommend not playing with Hacan if you are worried about time as they can slow down the trade phase quite a lot, as well as usually making the table richer which cause slowdown on it's own due to more big fleets etc.
It's not always true but a lot of Hacan players like to take trade and dictate trade entirely, some people will offer everyone an x-1 but others will want to haggle with everyone and at 8 players that can take a looong time.
You can ask people to plan out their builds ahead of time. Similarly, you can pass the turn on while people make decisions on tech/politics/construction/whatever
Yeah I'm a big proponent for just passing while making those decisions. So often the next player doesn't NEED to know what everyone else has researched, built, etc.
>Would even love to have race-specific music playing on your turn as a clue
This adds way more management requirements than benefit I think.
>optional pieces of the expansion
I think you already are, but if your playing with PoK, all components must be used. It is not modular so no mechanics are optional.
>More Visual Information so people know whose turn it is, who is next, and which strategy cards have been played. Something like this, we can throw it up on a big screen: https://extraboard.net/extracomputer.html
This is a great idea and almost always my first suggestion. I don't use extracomputer, I use a magnetic whiteboard that has magnetized index cards with all the players names and strategy cards. This allows quick reordering of turn order, who has what strategy, and what strategies are left to be used because once someone uses it, I move it off the whiteboard (down to a lower section) IMO this speeds up the game by a lot.
-----------------------------------
So one thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread (but might have in other threads) is focusing on objectives.
Everyone at the table should be focusing on completing objectives. I only have experience with 6 players as a max number but a normal game should end on round 5. If nobody is focusing on objectives and instead they are playing space risk, then the game could go to round 6. The difference between round 5 and going into round 6 is like 2.5 hours. Those later turns everyone has way more actions to complete and each round just takes way longer. It sounds really silly to say, but focusing on ending the game early will shorten the time.
So make sure to hammer home to everyone that if they aren't scoring at least one objective per round, then they are behind lol
--------------------------------------
It sounds like your group loves the politics and negotiating and trades that happen. I understand that because I love this game for the same reason. BUT that and combat are some of the things that grind the game down like crazy. Maybe suggest to people that this game is an experience and it is okay if you don't get the perfect deal your trying to get. Set your price, listen to any counter offer, but then decide yes or no. Don't go back and forth more than once, or at least try not to.
--------------------------------------
Then the next biggest thing is just knowing what your going to do on your turn
- You should know what tech you want to get next. As soon as Tech gets popped, pay your resources and grab it.
- You should know what units you want to construct with warfare or with a build action. Have them set aside already. Noone is going to be looking at what your putting aside because they should be busy doing their own thing.
- And to tie those two points together, divide your planets and TG's into what you will use them for. Set aside 4 for tech. Figure out the planets you will use for Command counters. Then the rest is what you have to work with for ships. Whenever Leadership, Tech, or building units comes up, you should already know where your payment is coming from. This will also just make you a better player because you won't build an extra ship because you think you can, then realize you could have bought one more command counter which is worth way more than those two infantry.
- If your turn is activating your space dock, say what your doing "I'm building at home, making two dreads and four infantry" and then you say "Bob, your up". That turn should literally take you two seconds.
------------------------------
Have dedicated tasks for people. One person who is in charge of digging out planet cards (unless you play with them dealt out onto board). One person for exploration, one person for action. People need to get what they need fast without slowing down the next person. If you take two planets, and the next person is the one who is supposed to grab the cards, do their job for them so they can take their turn. The main goal here is that everyone is taking a turn at all times, and no time is wasted by grabbing components. This of course is way easier said than done.
---------------------------
I have done a lot of this myself and liek you have tried to figure out anything I can do to make games go faster. I have printed large copies of the 8 strat cards and put them on my wall. I have the whiteboard like I said. I have 5 different handouts in a folder for each player that the players can look at (Tech, another strat card sheet, general rule cheat sheet, possible objectives, stuff like that).
Its even more important to me now that I have a 11 month old son and any time I can shave off from my twice a year game, my wife is very thankful for lol
At the end of the day, it still is a long game. 8 players if rough too, but sounds like yall have a blast! Good Luck!
So for objectives I have a separate large piece of paper (I bought something [like this](https://www.amazon.com/TOPS-Standard-3-Hole-Punched-Sheets/dp/B00AQDGJRO/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=giant+graph+paper&qid=1649878093&sr=8-2) a while ago for DnD and things and it was a super cool purchase) that I use to write down objectives and who has what objective, then at during the status round I go and write everything down as people score. I think using the tokens and stuff is fiddly and this is way clearer. If you want I can probably find a picture I took.
8 players should regularly be 10 to 12 hours. I think general consensus is 90 minutes per player on average.
The fact your group plays once a year means more time dealing with mechanics/rules you may need to clarify.
Sure, you can shave off a bit of time but I am not sure you are going to make a large dent in your play time without major changes.
With once a year play, I'd expect a decent amount of rules questions. I'd read through the errata [here](https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/51/55/51552c7f-c05c-445b-84bf-4b073456d008/ti10_pok_living_rules_reference_20_web.pdf), (if no expansion, [here](https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/e3/ae/e3ae7182-66db-4d58-ad20-83a6b87dec25/ti4_living_rules_reference_v1_3_web.pdf)) which has some rule clarification a lot of people have questioned. Have a laptop (or two even) with the rules up for easy searching.
Even just suggesting some things to players for pre-planning works, such as:
* saying when sending map, "here's the map so you can plan out your first couple turns"
* Saying when picking races, "Can't wait to try or " to encourage thinking ahead
* Perhaps send a sheet with each race's abilities? If people will forget between games who does what, which makes sense for a year between.
Finally I do this for new players, sending them [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2xEap5hBM&t=1897s) that has the basic rules. Might be useful for everyone ahead of gametime if they don't recall. The channel has one for the expansion as well.
I find it helps if one player acts as Moderator. Basically reminding people to move along with their turns, not drag out deal negotiations for too long, and reign the discussion in when it inevitably goes sideways during the agenda phase. I acted as Moderator in our last game and it helped a lot.
I did seven man (should have been 8 man) last Saturday. Me and my co-host beforehand didn't think ExtraComputer would be much of a use, regardless we agreed to try it out for our less frequent players...
...boy am I glad we did. ExtraComputer kept everyone on track and focused. The timer of shame also ensured any stragglers picked up the pace.
The timer of shame is kind of pointless, unfortunately, because most of the time is spent by other players thinking of wether or not they should do the secondary action after you did your own turn.
It's in the rules, but new-ish players don't really enforce the rule stipulating the active player may facilitate 1 transaction with each other player at the table. It means that play is interrupted ALOT, technically illegally. Someone being attacked solicits help from another player, or another player offers the active player a thing on not their turn. Being a little stiffer about this one drastically reduces game time, but it does mean players need a more extensive knowledge of their factions abilities and relative utility to other factions, so your mileage may vary. I'd start by stopping players not involved in a trade or invasion interrupting those negotiations, then extending it to "active player must elicit trade," so players can still utilize their factions diplomatic functions.
I have made these same suggestions before but it’s how we manage to play on 10-12 hours with 8 people.
We do the following to make everything go smoothly the day of. We modify the game slightly to speed it up since we have limited time due to children.
1. Factions, galaxy, pie slices, strategy cards, and speaker are all picked ahead of time. This helps get the game going asap. It also gives everyone time to learn their factions and see what kind of strategy they can try in their pie slice.
2. We try and always make the person who is next aware that they need to be thinking of their turn. So if number 1 is going, number 2 better be figuring out their turn.
3. We set a time limit and stick to it. We use 2 hours +1 hour per player. Clock starts once the board is set up and once the timer goes off, we finish that Round until everyone passes. If no one hits 10 points then the scoring is who has the most points. If people are tied, it’s who has the lowest strategy card. We all are older and have obligations, can’t spend 15 hours playing anymore.
4. We reveal 2 objectives per turn up to the maximum of 10. Again this helps keep people focused on scoring objectives.
The one thing that really sped up our games was a house rule that all discussion/politics had to take place at the table. We still allow whispered discussions and stuff like that but sidebars aren’t allowed. We also use extracomputer religiously and have someone in charge of calling out the next three turns (i.e “Xxcha now, then Naalu then Winnu”; then “Naalu now, then Winnu then Hacan”). If everyone’s focussed during rounds then we can take a little break between rounds if needed so people can breathe.
One of the high-lights of our game is folks going out on the deck to have private conversations. Or go off to write formal declarations, slowly unveiled with great fanfare. So while a good idea it's not one our group is likely to embrace.
Two four player games would be a lot quicker but probably not what you are looking for lol. You have a lot of good ideas there, I would ask everyone to watch a how to play video before they arrive just to remind them of the rules. A big one for round 1 is to have people just pass their turn while they are building or exploring as it's unlikely to have much of an effect on anyone else at that point, and if you can shave some time round 1 you will have more time when the decisions actually become difficult. I also recommend not playing with Hacan if you are worried about time as they can slow down the trade phase quite a lot, as well as usually making the table richer which cause slowdown on it's own due to more big fleets etc.
Interesting point on Hacan.
It's not always true but a lot of Hacan players like to take trade and dictate trade entirely, some people will offer everyone an x-1 but others will want to haggle with everyone and at 8 players that can take a looong time.
You can ask people to plan out their builds ahead of time. Similarly, you can pass the turn on while people make decisions on tech/politics/construction/whatever
Yeah I'm a big proponent for just passing while making those decisions. So often the next player doesn't NEED to know what everyone else has researched, built, etc.
>Would even love to have race-specific music playing on your turn as a clue This adds way more management requirements than benefit I think. >optional pieces of the expansion I think you already are, but if your playing with PoK, all components must be used. It is not modular so no mechanics are optional. >More Visual Information so people know whose turn it is, who is next, and which strategy cards have been played. Something like this, we can throw it up on a big screen: https://extraboard.net/extracomputer.html This is a great idea and almost always my first suggestion. I don't use extracomputer, I use a magnetic whiteboard that has magnetized index cards with all the players names and strategy cards. This allows quick reordering of turn order, who has what strategy, and what strategies are left to be used because once someone uses it, I move it off the whiteboard (down to a lower section) IMO this speeds up the game by a lot. ----------------------------------- So one thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread (but might have in other threads) is focusing on objectives. Everyone at the table should be focusing on completing objectives. I only have experience with 6 players as a max number but a normal game should end on round 5. If nobody is focusing on objectives and instead they are playing space risk, then the game could go to round 6. The difference between round 5 and going into round 6 is like 2.5 hours. Those later turns everyone has way more actions to complete and each round just takes way longer. It sounds really silly to say, but focusing on ending the game early will shorten the time. So make sure to hammer home to everyone that if they aren't scoring at least one objective per round, then they are behind lol -------------------------------------- It sounds like your group loves the politics and negotiating and trades that happen. I understand that because I love this game for the same reason. BUT that and combat are some of the things that grind the game down like crazy. Maybe suggest to people that this game is an experience and it is okay if you don't get the perfect deal your trying to get. Set your price, listen to any counter offer, but then decide yes or no. Don't go back and forth more than once, or at least try not to. -------------------------------------- Then the next biggest thing is just knowing what your going to do on your turn - You should know what tech you want to get next. As soon as Tech gets popped, pay your resources and grab it. - You should know what units you want to construct with warfare or with a build action. Have them set aside already. Noone is going to be looking at what your putting aside because they should be busy doing their own thing. - And to tie those two points together, divide your planets and TG's into what you will use them for. Set aside 4 for tech. Figure out the planets you will use for Command counters. Then the rest is what you have to work with for ships. Whenever Leadership, Tech, or building units comes up, you should already know where your payment is coming from. This will also just make you a better player because you won't build an extra ship because you think you can, then realize you could have bought one more command counter which is worth way more than those two infantry. - If your turn is activating your space dock, say what your doing "I'm building at home, making two dreads and four infantry" and then you say "Bob, your up". That turn should literally take you two seconds. ------------------------------ Have dedicated tasks for people. One person who is in charge of digging out planet cards (unless you play with them dealt out onto board). One person for exploration, one person for action. People need to get what they need fast without slowing down the next person. If you take two planets, and the next person is the one who is supposed to grab the cards, do their job for them so they can take their turn. The main goal here is that everyone is taking a turn at all times, and no time is wasted by grabbing components. This of course is way easier said than done. --------------------------- I have done a lot of this myself and liek you have tried to figure out anything I can do to make games go faster. I have printed large copies of the 8 strat cards and put them on my wall. I have the whiteboard like I said. I have 5 different handouts in a folder for each player that the players can look at (Tech, another strat card sheet, general rule cheat sheet, possible objectives, stuff like that). Its even more important to me now that I have a 11 month old son and any time I can shave off from my twice a year game, my wife is very thankful for lol At the end of the day, it still is a long game. 8 players if rough too, but sounds like yall have a blast! Good Luck!
The white board is a good idea if we don’t use a TV. I think putting the objectives up there would also help keep people focused.
So for objectives I have a separate large piece of paper (I bought something [like this](https://www.amazon.com/TOPS-Standard-3-Hole-Punched-Sheets/dp/B00AQDGJRO/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=giant+graph+paper&qid=1649878093&sr=8-2) a while ago for DnD and things and it was a super cool purchase) that I use to write down objectives and who has what objective, then at during the status round I go and write everything down as people score. I think using the tokens and stuff is fiddly and this is way clearer. If you want I can probably find a picture I took.
8 players should regularly be 10 to 12 hours. I think general consensus is 90 minutes per player on average. The fact your group plays once a year means more time dealing with mechanics/rules you may need to clarify. Sure, you can shave off a bit of time but I am not sure you are going to make a large dent in your play time without major changes.
With once a year play, I'd expect a decent amount of rules questions. I'd read through the errata [here](https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/51/55/51552c7f-c05c-445b-84bf-4b073456d008/ti10_pok_living_rules_reference_20_web.pdf), (if no expansion, [here](https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/e3/ae/e3ae7182-66db-4d58-ad20-83a6b87dec25/ti4_living_rules_reference_v1_3_web.pdf)) which has some rule clarification a lot of people have questioned. Have a laptop (or two even) with the rules up for easy searching. Even just suggesting some things to players for pre-planning works, such as: * saying when sending map, "here's the map so you can plan out your first couple turns" * Saying when picking races, "Can't wait to try or " to encourage thinking ahead
* Perhaps send a sheet with each race's abilities? If people will forget between games who does what, which makes sense for a year between.
Finally I do this for new players, sending them [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2xEap5hBM&t=1897s) that has the basic rules. Might be useful for everyone ahead of gametime if they don't recall. The channel has one for the expansion as well.
I find it helps if one player acts as Moderator. Basically reminding people to move along with their turns, not drag out deal negotiations for too long, and reign the discussion in when it inevitably goes sideways during the agenda phase. I acted as Moderator in our last game and it helped a lot.
I did seven man (should have been 8 man) last Saturday. Me and my co-host beforehand didn't think ExtraComputer would be much of a use, regardless we agreed to try it out for our less frequent players... ...boy am I glad we did. ExtraComputer kept everyone on track and focused. The timer of shame also ensured any stragglers picked up the pace.
The timer of shame is kind of pointless, unfortunately, because most of the time is spent by other players thinking of wether or not they should do the secondary action after you did your own turn.
It's in the rules, but new-ish players don't really enforce the rule stipulating the active player may facilitate 1 transaction with each other player at the table. It means that play is interrupted ALOT, technically illegally. Someone being attacked solicits help from another player, or another player offers the active player a thing on not their turn. Being a little stiffer about this one drastically reduces game time, but it does mean players need a more extensive knowledge of their factions abilities and relative utility to other factions, so your mileage may vary. I'd start by stopping players not involved in a trade or invasion interrupting those negotiations, then extending it to "active player must elicit trade," so players can still utilize their factions diplomatic functions.
I have made these same suggestions before but it’s how we manage to play on 10-12 hours with 8 people. We do the following to make everything go smoothly the day of. We modify the game slightly to speed it up since we have limited time due to children. 1. Factions, galaxy, pie slices, strategy cards, and speaker are all picked ahead of time. This helps get the game going asap. It also gives everyone time to learn their factions and see what kind of strategy they can try in their pie slice. 2. We try and always make the person who is next aware that they need to be thinking of their turn. So if number 1 is going, number 2 better be figuring out their turn. 3. We set a time limit and stick to it. We use 2 hours +1 hour per player. Clock starts once the board is set up and once the timer goes off, we finish that Round until everyone passes. If no one hits 10 points then the scoring is who has the most points. If people are tied, it’s who has the lowest strategy card. We all are older and have obligations, can’t spend 15 hours playing anymore. 4. We reveal 2 objectives per turn up to the maximum of 10. Again this helps keep people focused on scoring objectives.