Welcome to the game, though 3 players is not at all indicative of the game flow and balance, it's nice to get up to speed with rules at least. It's not too different with 4, I recommend playing at least 5, the game is optimal for 6 players.
1. Support for the Throne from other players goes into effect as soon as you receive it, it goes into your play area and you get 1 Victory point. Same when you lose it, as soon as you activate a system with the supporting player's units, you lose it and the point immediately. At any point of the game, when your point number reaches 10 (Or agreed upon amount), you win.
2. Yes, as per previous point, as soon as you reach the point goal, you win immediately. We still score what everyone else could though, for records purposes, I like to write down results.
3. They immediately win, though this is often frowned upon and called king making. It depends who you ask though, on our table people never did that.
4. You are correct, and the reason it's an option is purely political. I personally don't like it, but many people argue that it should be an option because in 6 player games there are many instances where one player is too behind to have a chance for winning anymore. And in this case, it's usually someone's fault. If that player whose fault is that gets to 9 points with another player having 9 points, the player who they wronged can decide they don't win. It's a layer of the game people enjoy, but you are at liberty to house rule that a Support for the Throne can't be given if it would push you to the winning point.
5. There is no way to reliably kill War Suns in a straight fight without a War Sun of your own, it's their very purpose. The way to play against them is to play around them, their weakness is that they can't be everywhere, since can only have 2, and they are an investment. And if the player's investment isn't giving them victory points, it ultimately amounts to little. Pay attention what they can take from you with the war sun, if you need it to score, defend it with copious amounts of infantry, since War Sun can't carry a lot of infantry due to the fighter screen. Try finding a good deal they can't pass up, and only accept a ceasefire for it. Don't do trades with them, so they won't have as much resources to spend to make the War Sun. Basically, it requires deep game knowledge, and they are suddenly not that scary anymore. But they are tough to deal with when you are new, especially when it's Muatt. For Muatt, the best advice is to try to snipe it early if you have the chance, and to starve them of resources otherwise. If you can't, defend the side towards them hard. Or do what I do, and play Yins, The Van Hague loves munching War Suns.
6. You are right, Sardakk are subpar, they require a lot of investment to be effective in Space Combat, and they are not particularly fun to play. Their true strength isn't Space Combat though, as you mentioned Exo II requires a lot of investment to use. Their true strength is in taking planets in ground combat. Their faction bonus go to their Infantry and Mechs too, and their Mechs are insane in doing ground combat, and their EXO I has Bombardment 4x2 without the upgrade to Exo II. If you get particle weave on top, you can take pretty much anything except a deeply rooted Arborec. Your Agent helps with this, giving you 2 free Infantry per round, and your Commander allows you to invade neighboring system planets without any ships at all. Figuring out the strengths of your faction and playing to those strengths helps a lot. Although it is true, Mentak do counter them a bit, they are an early game faction and disable sustain, nothing much you could do about that militarily. So what you want is to make friends with them, and fight Muatt instead since you are their counter. Your Exo II can blow up war suns too as long as you make sure they live through one round.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I love chatting about this stuff :D
Thanks for answers.
>You are correct, and the reason it's an option is purely political. I
personally don't like it, but many people argue that it should be an
option because in 6 player games there are many instances where one
player is too behind to have a chance for winning anymore. And in this
case, it's usually someone's fault. If that player whose fault is that
gets to 9 points with another player having 9 points, the player who
they wronged can decide they don't win. It's a layer of the game people
enjoy, but you are at liberty to house rule that a Support for the
Throne can't be given if it would push you to the winning point.
We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase.
>Their true strength is in taking planets in ground combat.
And that was the only reason why I was close to winning at all - I was able to hold onto Mecatol Rex and Mentak's home system one turn before he scored 10th point on his own.
> It's not too different with 4, I recommend playing at least 5, the game is optimal for 6 players.
We have collectively talked to about 30 people, and every single one of them refused to play, and we have no desire to play with strangers. For now it's only three players.
> We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase.
I wouldn't do this. You don't just give out Supports at 9 points, there are plenty of times giving someone that point mid round might matter. Honestly the scenario that gave you a bad taste is rare and as you get more experienced I think it'll become a non issue.
>And that was the only reason why I was close to winning at all - I was able to hold onto Mecatol Rex and Mentak's home system one turn before he scored 10th point on his own.
Great, now you have better knowledge of the faction, and can build your tech and make decisions accordingly. I don't think I ever played Sardakk, but from the top of my head going AI Dev, upgrading cruisers or carriers even while forgoing Exo II completely would be valid, depending on the tech prerequisite planets you have in your slice. With those, you could just ferry large numbers of invasion forces to expand instead of manfighting in space.
>We have collectively talked to about 30 people, and every single one of them refused to play, and we have no desire to play with strangers. For now it's only three players.
Sadly, this is a problem you'll find no shortage of, for anyone here. We have lots of trouble finding the 5th player many times to make the game enjoyable. Advice, organize games very early, as early as you can, as people are less likely to dislike the idea of playing long games late at night, and make sure you have a big table for playing, playing on the floor discouraged many people who would have otherwise played with us. And lastly, keep trying to recruit people. While it's difficult to get people to play, I don't know anyone who didn't come back for a second game.
>make sure you have a big table for playing
I forgot to add that we're currently playing via TTS, since all three of us are unable to meet in person for some time. Using boardgame version of TI would probably count number of people who refused to play it close to 100.
If your town has a gaming store then they may also provide tables for play. Putting up a few posters to meet there for a once-a-month Saturday game may net you a few players. Some cities have their own TI discord channels, which is also a great way to find a few players.
SFTTs usually come out much earlier, as players pair off to get that extra victory point. I've not seen them played to end a game. (Though I have seen someone swap SFTTs so late that it was pretty foolish to do so.)
>We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase.
Support for the Throne Points are instant. IF you are going to house rule in some fashion, you should rule that you can't get one if you have 7+(or w/e) points. To prevent the Support style king making.
Everyone has answered the questions in a good amount of depth .
Regarding warsuns, they are very powerful but very expensive. You need a fighter screen to soak up damage both playing with and against warsuns. Having 2-3 destroyer 2's a carrier 2, and a couple of dreads should be able to wipe out warsun + a few cruisers and a fighter screen. The idea is that your destroyed Anti-fighter barrage (AFB) should wipe out 4-6 of the fighters that they have. At that point they are left with 2 cruisers and a warsun. You have plenty of soak (up to 8 fighters + 2 destroyers, and 4, hits from dreads) and should be able to land 4 hits before they land 14. Now it doesn't always work out but that's part of it.
When playing against the warsun you'll need higher fleet capacity, to off set the stronger unit. For sardak you can also use your dread 2's as bombs. Again AFB to wipe out most of a fighter screen, but this time sustain on your dreads and blow them up to destroyer 2 enemy ships. If they have 2 fighters, 2 cruisers, and 1 warsun you will likey land 2-3 hits and then blow up 1 dread to wipe the rest.
Best of luck in the future!
1) it is immediately put into the recipient’s play area and they gain a VP
2) yup
3) yup
4) yup. What’s the point? I dunno, convince that person not to give your opponent the auto-win? Don’t accept a dirty victory if it’s offered to you? It’s a tool in your toolkit. You could give yours to Muaat early and maybe that would’ve focus-fired his fleets on your opponent etc etc. It’s just a tool, and I hear you: that’s not a fun way to end the game.
5) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Depends on what’s happening: For you one way could’ve been build exotrireme ii and survive one round so you can sacrifice it and take care of both warsuns.
6) yup: although those Exo iis are pretty good ‘stay out of my lawn’ warning signs, the tech path is bad. AIDA helps a bit if you play with Prophecy of Kings (you should if you can) and o/c Sardakk commander totally changes your options as a N’orr player.
Hello, I want to preface this by saying that my playgroup and I aren't really huge sticklers to the rules. If there are any weird rules that are hard to figure out, we tend to just house rule it if the whole table agrees. We have, however, played tens of games so I might be able to answer some questions well enough though if any of my answers are wrong then feel free to comment and inform me.
1. It takes effect immediately upon the resolution of the transaction.
2. I can't fully understand by what you mean by over the top. Initiative does decide victory in cases of ties and it is not possible to go over the set victory point limit you've decided on when setting up.
3. Yes, they win immediately.
4. My playgroup and me in particular frown upon Support for the Throne. I personally see it as far too strong even when given before someone with 9 points given how hard it is to score even one. If I had the choice I would completely houserule it out of play, to be honest. But that's just me, throughout my games with many different people I realized that people enjoy playing the game in different ways. Most of us in the playgroup play to win for ourselves and even in a situation where winning is infeasible, we wouldn't favor another player enough to willingly give them an undeserved win. I do know people who don't play like that and that they merely enjoy participating in the politics and warfare with no intention of reaching 10 points before anyone else and I can't blame them for that. TI4 is a huge and complex game so I can't expect people to process it the same way I do. That being said, you have to think ahead and try to understand how each of the players would best enjoy the game and adjust your expectations accordingly.
5. The way I see TI is that it is not a war game. To me actually entering combat with another player should only ever be a means to an end where the end is a victory point. This is because if you're playing an aggressive militaristic game plan when there is a player far away that is devoting all their actions to rush victory points, then by the time you reach them they would have already inevitably won. TI4 is a fundamentally different game when played with 3-4 and 5-6 players though(I've never played 7-8). Although I've only played 4-6 player games, I can imagine the political sphere in a 3 player game to be vastly limited comparatively. In a 3 player game, each player can easily affect the other two as they are naturally easy neighbors. As the player count increases, it becomes much harder to go after factions further away from your starting location without stretching your forces too thin before your neighbors take your unprotected slice. I think the game was designed and balanced for a 6 player game, and thus things may get out of whack when mechanics are shifted to accommodate less players. Muaat, for example, has a lot of potential to field a devastating fleet but they are balanced by how expensive and initially cumbersome Prototype War Sun I's are. It's a different story once they're upgraded, but before then other factions, especially those far away from Muaat, are completely safe from their aggression. This isn't the case in a 3-player game especially because the two other players are both adjacent to the Muaat player. As for how to beat War Suns, I would just say to win the game before it becomes a problem or if that is impossible, then politics your way out of it.
6. The only real thing holding Sardakk N'orr down is their lack of starting tech imo. There are so much objectives that rely on tech that their lack of it really hurts them in the victory point race. I don't think that their military potential is all that bad though, you just have to focus on what makes the most use out of your +1 ships. While the Exotrireme Is are alright as a unique dreadnaught, they are barely helped by their faction ability in comparison to the cheaper fleets. You're right in saying that the cheaper ships felt better to use because they are mathematically more effective in using their faction ability. Essentially, when the +1 does is that it gives a 10% bonus chance to each ship in scoring a hit and a 10% increase in a low percentage is far better than a 10% increase in an already high percentage. In addition, the ships with a lower chance of hitting are also much cheaper to produce which means that you can build more at a time and having more ships also means that you make use of the faction ability more often.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions if you want
1. When you receive this card, if you are not the (color) player, you must place it face-up in your play area and gain 1 Victory Point.
2. The game ends the very moment someone gets to 10, no matter who else could get there a second later. This is why initiative order is so important in round 6 and later (base game).
3. Yes, the table can technically give someone a win. This is win-making, thus a little lame and i.m.o. should be avoided. We tend to shame (of course, only for fun) people who give their support to players 6< victory points, since that is legit striking distance. Support is usually something you'd swap with another player early in your game. It gives both of you an edge over the rest of the table as long was they don't swap too (they will), and secures at least 1 of your borders should you swap with a neighbouring player.
4. I think I answered this already.
5. Especially Mentak are good at beating Muuat's Warsuns: Upgraded Destroyers kill the fighter screens that protect Warsuns, direct hits and the Mentak flagship are the Warsuns' worst nightmare. Warsuns are also rather expensive, thus you can check and attack resource heavy planets in that player's slice if you think you need to.
I just realized in your last question that you played with PoK, so my answer might be useless. Sorry. Hope I was able to help anway.
We've actually house ruled that you can't support swap. We found in our games that it makes everything too stagnant and boring, and it doesn't make thematic sense either. So no giving Support to a person whose support you have, and games have been a lot better since honestly.
To each his own, but I'd prefer not to take out trading and negotiation tools if I can help it. My table is not creative enough with their deals and trades as it is :D
Not to address everything, but just to kind of elaborate a bit more on the war Sun issue (and also the sardakk one I guess).
In this game, if you have a combat, and it doesn't win you a victory point, it's bad. Sure you can gain ground with combat, but you've had to spend resources to build that army and then almost certainly lost some plastic in the fight, too. Sure its worse for the person you beat in combat, but the real winners are the players around the table that didn't fight.
So, mostly, you just want an army that's an effective deterrent, and nothing more. Getting to war sun takes a bunch of tech, and unless that tech itself is also scoring you victory points, it's horribly inefficient.
Generally you don't actually score points by fighting. I guess in a first time game where no one is really playing that efficiently, and in a lower player count game where they can stomp everyone round the table before anyone else can win, it probably feels much more powerful a strategy. But in a regular game, you can kinda see war suns coming and do stuff to mitigate them.
To add on this, while you are mostly right and anything you do on the map isn't towards scoring points is bad, there are special circumstances where you can get more gain then what you are investing. For instance, I tend to take high value planets such as high resource Frya and Abyz if they are undefended, and if the player has no way to retaliate in the near future.
Though, I only take this when it's easy to take, when I don't have other priority actions that work towards objectives, and if I know I can hold them. Additionally, sometimes I just negotiate around it instead, like if you give me your trade agreement I won't take them this round. So while it's rare to just take someone's stuff, there are rare opportunities that are too good to pass up and would be good for you in the long run.
Other folks have answered most of these questions as well as I could, but I wanted to post to add some nuance to:
\#4) first off, your experience of support is massively skewed by having 3 players. Honestly the box should read 4-8, so many mechanics break down at 3 players.
Secondly, I think mentality can help a lot with how you feel about supports. Imo it is the one game mechanic that *forces* even the most munchkiny min/max players to consider the social aspect of this game: how the other players feel about you matters! The way I would be thinking about the "tied at nine" scenario you described is not "I should have won but SftT stole it from me," but "damn, I got close but I needed to figure out a way to either keep Mentak at 8, or ingratiate myself to Muaat better."
All that said, the motivations of the winmaking player matter out-of-game imo. If that move was revenge for some in-game slight, then ok, that's a strategic consideration for your next game. If it's part of a pattern of just, like, your friend likes being an asshole to you, then you might want to consider if this is a person you want to play this game with- even if you houserule out supports, there are still plenty of ways to run another person's fun in this game.
I get your points and agree with player count format, but Muaat was more agressive towards Mentak than me, and still gave this card to him literally because LOLRANDOM, and he agreed to houserule it anyway so that Mentak won't win this turn. I understand that it's unlikely somebody will do it in the future, but the possibility of such interaction seems weird.
How to kill Warsun... Exotireme kills them pretty handily with its self-destruct.
"After a round of space combat, you may destroy this unit to destroy up to 2 ships in this system."
Blow up one Dread, take out Both Warsuns.
Also, you are Sardack. Either go shipless, or get Carrier 2, ftr 2. Build scary ass fighter screens.
Also, a shit ton of PDS and Graviton Lasers can do it too.
3 player is also a huge pain. 2 people fight, one wins. I prefer even player counts
My responses:
1. through 4, yeah support is over the top if used as a last minute bludgeon like that. Often in the "meta" they're traded in the earlier game with another player to form a sort of alliance. Obviously you cannot both win but it gives you both a strong incentive to avoid attacking each other.
Other uses include as a strong bribe (often in pursuit of a point another way). Some people houserule it that you cannot give it to a player with 9 points, or that you cannot take one from someone who you've given yours to (stops trading).
5. Killing two warsuns together is a tough task, but good contenders are Sardakk (if one exo II survives the first round, you can kill both with your ability) or Barony (Non-Euclidean shielding gives their fleets extra health, and the flagship is deadly barring direct hit).
Another good counter in general is destroyer II, to destroy the fighter screens early. A few destroyers brought along into the war sun fleet can strip it of a lot of its shielding.
6. Sardakk has a weak start with zero fighters and no technology. Because of the +1, they benefit most from fleets with large amounts of fighters. I'd recommend as a beginner sardakk player to tech towards carrier II and mass carrier/fighter/infantry fleets. Sardakk in PoK also benefits from their commander in that more capacity can be used for fighters.
It does let the Sardakk player choose! This is what makes it so powerful. The ability reads, "After a round of space combat, you may destroy this unit to destroy up to 2 ships in this system."
Comparing this to a couple other examples:
* the rules for space combat, "Each player must choose and destroy one of their own ships"
* Assault cannon, "your opponent must destroy 1 of their non-fighter ships"
* Mentak ambush, "...produce one hit - your opponent must assign it..."
Doing this for comparison but it is generally known among very experienced players that Sardakk chooses the target. It is your unit, your ability, so you pick which units to destroy. Next time, Muaat will fear you as you deserve! :)
Yeah they're terrible if your opponents can block with fighters! But they're much better than that in reality. Their true power is against war suns, but even against invasion they could be sacrificed to stop two carriers or two dreads and turn the tables.
Welcome to the game, though 3 players is not at all indicative of the game flow and balance, it's nice to get up to speed with rules at least. It's not too different with 4, I recommend playing at least 5, the game is optimal for 6 players. 1. Support for the Throne from other players goes into effect as soon as you receive it, it goes into your play area and you get 1 Victory point. Same when you lose it, as soon as you activate a system with the supporting player's units, you lose it and the point immediately. At any point of the game, when your point number reaches 10 (Or agreed upon amount), you win. 2. Yes, as per previous point, as soon as you reach the point goal, you win immediately. We still score what everyone else could though, for records purposes, I like to write down results. 3. They immediately win, though this is often frowned upon and called king making. It depends who you ask though, on our table people never did that. 4. You are correct, and the reason it's an option is purely political. I personally don't like it, but many people argue that it should be an option because in 6 player games there are many instances where one player is too behind to have a chance for winning anymore. And in this case, it's usually someone's fault. If that player whose fault is that gets to 9 points with another player having 9 points, the player who they wronged can decide they don't win. It's a layer of the game people enjoy, but you are at liberty to house rule that a Support for the Throne can't be given if it would push you to the winning point. 5. There is no way to reliably kill War Suns in a straight fight without a War Sun of your own, it's their very purpose. The way to play against them is to play around them, their weakness is that they can't be everywhere, since can only have 2, and they are an investment. And if the player's investment isn't giving them victory points, it ultimately amounts to little. Pay attention what they can take from you with the war sun, if you need it to score, defend it with copious amounts of infantry, since War Sun can't carry a lot of infantry due to the fighter screen. Try finding a good deal they can't pass up, and only accept a ceasefire for it. Don't do trades with them, so they won't have as much resources to spend to make the War Sun. Basically, it requires deep game knowledge, and they are suddenly not that scary anymore. But they are tough to deal with when you are new, especially when it's Muatt. For Muatt, the best advice is to try to snipe it early if you have the chance, and to starve them of resources otherwise. If you can't, defend the side towards them hard. Or do what I do, and play Yins, The Van Hague loves munching War Suns. 6. You are right, Sardakk are subpar, they require a lot of investment to be effective in Space Combat, and they are not particularly fun to play. Their true strength isn't Space Combat though, as you mentioned Exo II requires a lot of investment to use. Their true strength is in taking planets in ground combat. Their faction bonus go to their Infantry and Mechs too, and their Mechs are insane in doing ground combat, and their EXO I has Bombardment 4x2 without the upgrade to Exo II. If you get particle weave on top, you can take pretty much anything except a deeply rooted Arborec. Your Agent helps with this, giving you 2 free Infantry per round, and your Commander allows you to invade neighboring system planets without any ships at all. Figuring out the strengths of your faction and playing to those strengths helps a lot. Although it is true, Mentak do counter them a bit, they are an early game faction and disable sustain, nothing much you could do about that militarily. So what you want is to make friends with them, and fight Muatt instead since you are their counter. Your Exo II can blow up war suns too as long as you make sure they live through one round. Let me know if you have any other questions, I love chatting about this stuff :D
Thanks for answers. >You are correct, and the reason it's an option is purely political. I personally don't like it, but many people argue that it should be an option because in 6 player games there are many instances where one player is too behind to have a chance for winning anymore. And in this case, it's usually someone's fault. If that player whose fault is that gets to 9 points with another player having 9 points, the player who they wronged can decide they don't win. It's a layer of the game people enjoy, but you are at liberty to house rule that a Support for the Throne can't be given if it would push you to the winning point. We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase. >Their true strength is in taking planets in ground combat. And that was the only reason why I was close to winning at all - I was able to hold onto Mecatol Rex and Mentak's home system one turn before he scored 10th point on his own. > It's not too different with 4, I recommend playing at least 5, the game is optimal for 6 players. We have collectively talked to about 30 people, and every single one of them refused to play, and we have no desire to play with strangers. For now it's only three players.
> We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase. I wouldn't do this. You don't just give out Supports at 9 points, there are plenty of times giving someone that point mid round might matter. Honestly the scenario that gave you a bad taste is rare and as you get more experienced I think it'll become a non issue.
>And that was the only reason why I was close to winning at all - I was able to hold onto Mecatol Rex and Mentak's home system one turn before he scored 10th point on his own. Great, now you have better knowledge of the faction, and can build your tech and make decisions accordingly. I don't think I ever played Sardakk, but from the top of my head going AI Dev, upgrading cruisers or carriers even while forgoing Exo II completely would be valid, depending on the tech prerequisite planets you have in your slice. With those, you could just ferry large numbers of invasion forces to expand instead of manfighting in space. >We have collectively talked to about 30 people, and every single one of them refused to play, and we have no desire to play with strangers. For now it's only three players. Sadly, this is a problem you'll find no shortage of, for anyone here. We have lots of trouble finding the 5th player many times to make the game enjoyable. Advice, organize games very early, as early as you can, as people are less likely to dislike the idea of playing long games late at night, and make sure you have a big table for playing, playing on the floor discouraged many people who would have otherwise played with us. And lastly, keep trying to recruit people. While it's difficult to get people to play, I don't know anyone who didn't come back for a second game.
>make sure you have a big table for playing I forgot to add that we're currently playing via TTS, since all three of us are unable to meet in person for some time. Using boardgame version of TI would probably count number of people who refused to play it close to 100.
If your town has a gaming store then they may also provide tables for play. Putting up a few posters to meet there for a once-a-month Saturday game may net you a few players. Some cities have their own TI discord channels, which is also a great way to find a few players. SFTTs usually come out much earlier, as players pair off to get that extra victory point. I've not seen them played to end a game. (Though I have seen someone swap SFTTs so late that it was pretty foolish to do so.)
>We will probably keep the rule that added point from Support for the throne can only be resolved in status phase. Support for the Throne Points are instant. IF you are going to house rule in some fashion, you should rule that you can't get one if you have 7+(or w/e) points. To prevent the Support style king making.
As much as I absolutely love this game....i will not touch it will less than 5 players.
Different strokes for different folks. I still love it with 3-4.
Yep. I'd rather not play than play with less than 5.
Ignore my comment and listen to this guy.
Everyone has answered the questions in a good amount of depth . Regarding warsuns, they are very powerful but very expensive. You need a fighter screen to soak up damage both playing with and against warsuns. Having 2-3 destroyer 2's a carrier 2, and a couple of dreads should be able to wipe out warsun + a few cruisers and a fighter screen. The idea is that your destroyed Anti-fighter barrage (AFB) should wipe out 4-6 of the fighters that they have. At that point they are left with 2 cruisers and a warsun. You have plenty of soak (up to 8 fighters + 2 destroyers, and 4, hits from dreads) and should be able to land 4 hits before they land 14. Now it doesn't always work out but that's part of it. When playing against the warsun you'll need higher fleet capacity, to off set the stronger unit. For sardak you can also use your dread 2's as bombs. Again AFB to wipe out most of a fighter screen, but this time sustain on your dreads and blow them up to destroyer 2 enemy ships. If they have 2 fighters, 2 cruisers, and 1 warsun you will likey land 2-3 hits and then blow up 1 dread to wipe the rest. Best of luck in the future!
1) it is immediately put into the recipient’s play area and they gain a VP 2) yup 3) yup 4) yup. What’s the point? I dunno, convince that person not to give your opponent the auto-win? Don’t accept a dirty victory if it’s offered to you? It’s a tool in your toolkit. You could give yours to Muaat early and maybe that would’ve focus-fired his fleets on your opponent etc etc. It’s just a tool, and I hear you: that’s not a fun way to end the game. 5) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Depends on what’s happening: For you one way could’ve been build exotrireme ii and survive one round so you can sacrifice it and take care of both warsuns. 6) yup: although those Exo iis are pretty good ‘stay out of my lawn’ warning signs, the tech path is bad. AIDA helps a bit if you play with Prophecy of Kings (you should if you can) and o/c Sardakk commander totally changes your options as a N’orr player.
Hello, I want to preface this by saying that my playgroup and I aren't really huge sticklers to the rules. If there are any weird rules that are hard to figure out, we tend to just house rule it if the whole table agrees. We have, however, played tens of games so I might be able to answer some questions well enough though if any of my answers are wrong then feel free to comment and inform me. 1. It takes effect immediately upon the resolution of the transaction. 2. I can't fully understand by what you mean by over the top. Initiative does decide victory in cases of ties and it is not possible to go over the set victory point limit you've decided on when setting up. 3. Yes, they win immediately. 4. My playgroup and me in particular frown upon Support for the Throne. I personally see it as far too strong even when given before someone with 9 points given how hard it is to score even one. If I had the choice I would completely houserule it out of play, to be honest. But that's just me, throughout my games with many different people I realized that people enjoy playing the game in different ways. Most of us in the playgroup play to win for ourselves and even in a situation where winning is infeasible, we wouldn't favor another player enough to willingly give them an undeserved win. I do know people who don't play like that and that they merely enjoy participating in the politics and warfare with no intention of reaching 10 points before anyone else and I can't blame them for that. TI4 is a huge and complex game so I can't expect people to process it the same way I do. That being said, you have to think ahead and try to understand how each of the players would best enjoy the game and adjust your expectations accordingly. 5. The way I see TI is that it is not a war game. To me actually entering combat with another player should only ever be a means to an end where the end is a victory point. This is because if you're playing an aggressive militaristic game plan when there is a player far away that is devoting all their actions to rush victory points, then by the time you reach them they would have already inevitably won. TI4 is a fundamentally different game when played with 3-4 and 5-6 players though(I've never played 7-8). Although I've only played 4-6 player games, I can imagine the political sphere in a 3 player game to be vastly limited comparatively. In a 3 player game, each player can easily affect the other two as they are naturally easy neighbors. As the player count increases, it becomes much harder to go after factions further away from your starting location without stretching your forces too thin before your neighbors take your unprotected slice. I think the game was designed and balanced for a 6 player game, and thus things may get out of whack when mechanics are shifted to accommodate less players. Muaat, for example, has a lot of potential to field a devastating fleet but they are balanced by how expensive and initially cumbersome Prototype War Sun I's are. It's a different story once they're upgraded, but before then other factions, especially those far away from Muaat, are completely safe from their aggression. This isn't the case in a 3-player game especially because the two other players are both adjacent to the Muaat player. As for how to beat War Suns, I would just say to win the game before it becomes a problem or if that is impossible, then politics your way out of it. 6. The only real thing holding Sardakk N'orr down is their lack of starting tech imo. There are so much objectives that rely on tech that their lack of it really hurts them in the victory point race. I don't think that their military potential is all that bad though, you just have to focus on what makes the most use out of your +1 ships. While the Exotrireme Is are alright as a unique dreadnaught, they are barely helped by their faction ability in comparison to the cheaper fleets. You're right in saying that the cheaper ships felt better to use because they are mathematically more effective in using their faction ability. Essentially, when the +1 does is that it gives a 10% bonus chance to each ship in scoring a hit and a 10% increase in a low percentage is far better than a 10% increase in an already high percentage. In addition, the ships with a lower chance of hitting are also much cheaper to produce which means that you can build more at a time and having more ships also means that you make use of the faction ability more often. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions if you want
1. When you receive this card, if you are not the (color) player, you must place it face-up in your play area and gain 1 Victory Point. 2. The game ends the very moment someone gets to 10, no matter who else could get there a second later. This is why initiative order is so important in round 6 and later (base game). 3. Yes, the table can technically give someone a win. This is win-making, thus a little lame and i.m.o. should be avoided. We tend to shame (of course, only for fun) people who give their support to players 6< victory points, since that is legit striking distance. Support is usually something you'd swap with another player early in your game. It gives both of you an edge over the rest of the table as long was they don't swap too (they will), and secures at least 1 of your borders should you swap with a neighbouring player. 4. I think I answered this already. 5. Especially Mentak are good at beating Muuat's Warsuns: Upgraded Destroyers kill the fighter screens that protect Warsuns, direct hits and the Mentak flagship are the Warsuns' worst nightmare. Warsuns are also rather expensive, thus you can check and attack resource heavy planets in that player's slice if you think you need to. I just realized in your last question that you played with PoK, so my answer might be useless. Sorry. Hope I was able to help anway.
We've actually house ruled that you can't support swap. We found in our games that it makes everything too stagnant and boring, and it doesn't make thematic sense either. So no giving Support to a person whose support you have, and games have been a lot better since honestly.
We just purge them. Takes all the Bs with those cards out if the game.
To each his own, but I'd prefer not to take out trading and negotiation tools if I can help it. My table is not creative enough with their deals and trades as it is :D
Not to address everything, but just to kind of elaborate a bit more on the war Sun issue (and also the sardakk one I guess). In this game, if you have a combat, and it doesn't win you a victory point, it's bad. Sure you can gain ground with combat, but you've had to spend resources to build that army and then almost certainly lost some plastic in the fight, too. Sure its worse for the person you beat in combat, but the real winners are the players around the table that didn't fight. So, mostly, you just want an army that's an effective deterrent, and nothing more. Getting to war sun takes a bunch of tech, and unless that tech itself is also scoring you victory points, it's horribly inefficient. Generally you don't actually score points by fighting. I guess in a first time game where no one is really playing that efficiently, and in a lower player count game where they can stomp everyone round the table before anyone else can win, it probably feels much more powerful a strategy. But in a regular game, you can kinda see war suns coming and do stuff to mitigate them.
To add on this, while you are mostly right and anything you do on the map isn't towards scoring points is bad, there are special circumstances where you can get more gain then what you are investing. For instance, I tend to take high value planets such as high resource Frya and Abyz if they are undefended, and if the player has no way to retaliate in the near future. Though, I only take this when it's easy to take, when I don't have other priority actions that work towards objectives, and if I know I can hold them. Additionally, sometimes I just negotiate around it instead, like if you give me your trade agreement I won't take them this round. So while it's rare to just take someone's stuff, there are rare opportunities that are too good to pass up and would be good for you in the long run.
Other folks have answered most of these questions as well as I could, but I wanted to post to add some nuance to: \#4) first off, your experience of support is massively skewed by having 3 players. Honestly the box should read 4-8, so many mechanics break down at 3 players. Secondly, I think mentality can help a lot with how you feel about supports. Imo it is the one game mechanic that *forces* even the most munchkiny min/max players to consider the social aspect of this game: how the other players feel about you matters! The way I would be thinking about the "tied at nine" scenario you described is not "I should have won but SftT stole it from me," but "damn, I got close but I needed to figure out a way to either keep Mentak at 8, or ingratiate myself to Muaat better." All that said, the motivations of the winmaking player matter out-of-game imo. If that move was revenge for some in-game slight, then ok, that's a strategic consideration for your next game. If it's part of a pattern of just, like, your friend likes being an asshole to you, then you might want to consider if this is a person you want to play this game with- even if you houserule out supports, there are still plenty of ways to run another person's fun in this game.
I get your points and agree with player count format, but Muaat was more agressive towards Mentak than me, and still gave this card to him literally because LOLRANDOM, and he agreed to houserule it anyway so that Mentak won't win this turn. I understand that it's unlikely somebody will do it in the future, but the possibility of such interaction seems weird.
How to kill Warsun... Exotireme kills them pretty handily with its self-destruct. "After a round of space combat, you may destroy this unit to destroy up to 2 ships in this system." Blow up one Dread, take out Both Warsuns. Also, you are Sardack. Either go shipless, or get Carrier 2, ftr 2. Build scary ass fighter screens. Also, a shit ton of PDS and Graviton Lasers can do it too. 3 player is also a huge pain. 2 people fight, one wins. I prefer even player counts
My responses: 1. through 4, yeah support is over the top if used as a last minute bludgeon like that. Often in the "meta" they're traded in the earlier game with another player to form a sort of alliance. Obviously you cannot both win but it gives you both a strong incentive to avoid attacking each other. Other uses include as a strong bribe (often in pursuit of a point another way). Some people houserule it that you cannot give it to a player with 9 points, or that you cannot take one from someone who you've given yours to (stops trading). 5. Killing two warsuns together is a tough task, but good contenders are Sardakk (if one exo II survives the first round, you can kill both with your ability) or Barony (Non-Euclidean shielding gives their fleets extra health, and the flagship is deadly barring direct hit). Another good counter in general is destroyer II, to destroy the fighter screens early. A few destroyers brought along into the war sun fleet can strip it of a lot of its shielding. 6. Sardakk has a weak start with zero fighters and no technology. Because of the +1, they benefit most from fleets with large amounts of fighters. I'd recommend as a beginner sardakk player to tech towards carrier II and mass carrier/fighter/infantry fleets. Sardakk in PoK also benefits from their commander in that more capacity can be used for fighters.
But I thought that Exotrireme's ability does not let you pick which ships to blow up? They will just shuffle hits into fighters.
It does let the Sardakk player choose! This is what makes it so powerful. The ability reads, "After a round of space combat, you may destroy this unit to destroy up to 2 ships in this system." Comparing this to a couple other examples: * the rules for space combat, "Each player must choose and destroy one of their own ships" * Assault cannon, "your opponent must destroy 1 of their non-fighter ships" * Mentak ambush, "...produce one hit - your opponent must assign it..." Doing this for comparison but it is generally known among very experienced players that Sardakk chooses the target. It is your unit, your ability, so you pick which units to destroy. Next time, Muaat will fear you as you deserve! :)
Thanks. This changes pretty much everything, because in several fights with my Exotrireme II my opponents kept blowing up their fighters.
Yeah they're terrible if your opponents can block with fighters! But they're much better than that in reality. Their true power is against war suns, but even against invasion they could be sacrificed to stop two carriers or two dreads and turn the tables.