The Gaming Den

So talking about Twlight Imperium 4th edition and people on the internet loosely associated with it made me want to talk about some other things, less related to that specific rule, or the rules in general.

And mostly I want to complain about a few things. And complain about some people "doing it wrong" (in less of a getting rules wrong and more of a sitting on a toilet backwards kinda way).

But, doing that touches on enough things I can pretend it's a review.

Twilight Imperium 4th Edition : This Imperium Keeps Having Twilights
There have been four editions of this game now. I own and have played 2nd edition, its expansion, third edition, its two expansions and 4th edition and it's one expansion.

Oh no wait, I've played the new expansion, but I don't OWN it yet because FFG never does big enough print runs and for some reason only SOME australian wholesalers (and therefore retailers) actually make orders in a timely enough manner to get ANY stock and AAAAAH, I ordered this fucking thing at announcement that it was going to exist I do that with nothing else, and other people in this country have been lucky enough to impulse buy the limited stocks of other retailers MONTHS AGO. I mean I'm not alone a lot of others have been screwed to varying degrees but I'm increasingly thinking it's going to be at least production run three or later before I see anything. Last time I'm ordering anything through these god damn...

ANYWAY back on track. There have been many editions. 2nd edition is torture, 3rd edition is great, 4th edition is 3rd edition with some minor but good tweaks and higher production value (and pricing).

It's a slim thing, but 4th edition is probably best edition. However, if you like stuff on the cheap, and with a bunch of modular optional rules 3rd edition is your go to. It has all the modular alternative rules and I imagine by now about half the price. 4th edition is expensive, constantly out of stock, and just plain doesn't DO optional rules any more man.

Whut do this game does?
It's THE big space strategy game. You play as various diverse factions with their own little star empires trying to take over the remains of the failed prior BIG star empire.

You invade places, you explore planets, you build ships, you have wars, you research technologies, you have factional super powers, you engage in diplomacy, economy, trade and even a horrific space united nations thing where do a wide variety of things like electing people as poopy heads for -1 points and then right after that the guy with any votes left just elects himself space pope for +1 points and a bullet proof space destroyer.

It's very competitive
So you win by points right. And you get points mostly from objectives.

You lose by going to war. It's just way too expensive. But then again, a lot of objectives will require you to go to war, and the biggest reliable objective, is a big planet in the middle of the map that paints a giant target on your back if you own it. And once you start to win, you better believe people will go to war with you.

So you need to be READY to go to war (which means you need to pay MOST of the cost of that) but you mostly try not to, or keep wars brief before returning to stalemates. Then someone starts to win, everyone jumps on them and the guy coming second almost always wins while "helping out" with that.

Also before that if you have not got all the space ships, your nieghbours, who do, will pick off whatever they want from your tiny empire to meet all the objectives and you wont meet objectives, and your empire will shrink and you wont be able to build all the space ships.

The game goes out of it's way to encourage conflicts with objectives, map layouts, limited resources, etc...

BUT the game also goes out of it's way to encourage trade and "diplomacy". It deliberately gives you a bunch of things that are of no value to you personally, but ARE of value to other people at the table, and you can give them those things, in return for their versions of those things, and all sorts of other stuff like, hey, sorry about invading that one planet I wanted for an objective, can we maybe not go to war if I BRIBE YOU with this card I have that lets you take my money later on or something.

A Grievance I have with negotiations rules
This is not a disagreement I have with people over how the rules work. This is a disagreement I have with the rules over how people work.

OK. So you can trade... stuff of hard mechanical value, cards and currency mostly. There are rules about how often and who with. You basically need shared borders and its one "Transaction" of game mechanical stuff per turn per pair of players and one has to be the player whose turn it is. There's more but we mostly don't care for this.

What we care about is BINDING deals and NON-BINDING deals. A deal is NOT a transaction. But a binding deal usually includes a transaction. A binding deal/transaction can ONLY exist WITHIN ONE TIMING WINDOW.

This is, insane. Partly because such things are poorly defined, but also because if you got anything from the other thread where I had a rules beef with people... timing windows are kinda tiny and restrictive.

Someone activates your system. You don't want them to invade you. You say "I will give you 4 trade goods not to invade my system". That was a NON-BINDING DEAL and you just paid 4 trade goods and use your only "Transaction" with that guy for the whole turn in return for a NON-BINDING promise of him not invading.

No you needed to wait until the NEXT phase of the turn and the "Move Ships" timing window and THEN the same deal would be "Binding" for both players!

This is just dumb. The rule "It's not binding if it happens in the future" is nice. It does help in a lot of ways. Some one paying me to "never ever attack them" and that being binding is dumb, especially in a game where I can give them cards that... aren't that but are a binding game mechanic to make it hard for me to attack them.

But "the future" being the very next fundamental minimum formal time increment from right now is too restrictive. If "now" for these purposes was "this whole turn" you could negotiate much more varied and flexible binding deals without having to worry that tiny technical timing errors will technically give one party an out to start and argument/fight at the table because YES technically he got paid not to move ships in, but you timed it very very slightly wrong and the game totally says its legal for him to screw you and take the money.

People don't actually do this, as far as I can tell, but the rules shouldn't be encouraging them to, as much for their own good as anyones. Basically, this is a rule I do not like.

Playing the game right
This isn't about rules. It's about STYLE man. Or perhaps emergent player dynamics within a rules set that has incentives for certain behaviors.

Everyone starts out with a land grab.

Players try to negotiate a peaceful border or two with immediate neighbors. They maybe get one safe border KINDA because no one will (or can) promise forever peace and it's stupid to do that anyway because if they get too much benefit from forever peace you WILL need to go to war with them and it will just make you look bad if you promised otherwise.

Minor dealings will occur. Occasionally someone will say "I want that planet that is sort of between us" and you'll be like narrowing your eyes and thinking "why do they want THAT planet?" while saying "No" or "What's in it for me?"

The most common dealings will be trade. I will get into that later. But mostly players will be limited in how much money trading gives them based on what borders they can form and whether they want to share profits to some negotiable degree with that specific neighbor at that specific time. If you are the guy who took the Trade card for the round you get some free cash, give out some free pseudo cash, the trade your pseudo cash for like, one other guys pseudo cash, you try not to make EVERYONE rich, you try and get a slightly better deal for yourself and the rest of the table does NOT mysteriously give you free extra money that exceeds that total by an additional 100% for no reason (Now WHY WOULD I SAY THAT I WONDER?).

Everyone is a bit cagey about everything, no one wants to give resources and points to other players unless they clearly get something out of it themselves or cannot stop them from doing it.

Then one day the incentives and cold war fleets get to big and everything explodes into conflict, some big objectives are met and the game ends with a victor.

Trade is the best edition change
Trade used to be different. I don't even remember how.

The big change is I think mostly that now there are Trade Goods (lovely cash you want and care about) and there are Commodities (useless cash you cannot spend that turns into trade goods the moment you give it to someone else).

When the guy with the Trade card uses the trade card he gets 3 Trade goods for nothing. He refills his commodities for nothing (each faction usually has a total commodities limit of between 2 to 4, so even if they already have some they will end up with that many total).

Then he goes around the table and decides whether to give each player a free commodity refill.

Now typically how this works out for groups I've played with in person is that no one really wants to give out free money, but if another player is doing badly, especially if they are far away you give them free commodities, for no fee or bribe, just so they can keep up the pressure on their neighbours for you and not king make by losing too hard. Otherwise you only refresh people who are then going to trade their commodities for your commodities.

If trade guy won't refresh your commodities for free you have to pay a different, very expensive currency to refresh them yourself. Players with 2 commodity limits do not, players with 4 very possibly do, and players with 3 will never be able to productively decide.

Because there might be limited trading opportunities you might be able to leverage a situation where you get a "favorable trade" and basically earn one more trade good than you pay out. If you are especially tricky. You do it twice. You probably walk out of being "The trade guy" with give or take 6 trade goods and that is TONS, you trade hard and walk out with 8 and everyone looks at you like "this guy is winning too hard" and starts planning to never let you do that again.

The Money Cats used to make all the money
There is a faction. They are "The Money Cats" ignore any text or crazy person to the contrary. That is their name. They are cats, and what they do is make money.

Their factional ability is to get all the money.

When trade goes off the trade guy does NOT get to decide if money cats get their commodities. Money cats just get their commodities.

And they get SIX of them.

Also money cats care not for borders, they can make transactions with ANYONE.

Also with the add on they can also refresh one other persons commodities once per turn for free independent of trade guy.

Basically. While most factions get enough stuff to trade with one or maybe two others and only have borders with like maybe 1-3 people, money cats have borders with everyone and can easily trade with 3-4 other people.

And first round maybe they are the ONLY people you can trade with so maybe they get lots of favourable deals.

In real games I've played this can mean first round (prior to the expansion and the extra commodity refresh) Money Cats might hold the trade card, get the 3 goods, make 3 favourable trades for +1 each and end up holding 12 trade goods. Then everyone at the table calls them OP and swears to never allow that to happen again AND it doesn't. But they still get lots of money.

With the expansion, maybe that perhaps +3 or so. But also. Anyone with an inkling of trade good value will be looking for ways to knee cap money cats on trades from round 0 and also, everyone says to money cats on every deal ever "you are rolling in cash, so money cats pay more cash, for everything, you give ME a favourable deal because you can do that and STILL end up with more cash than everyone".

And then in the end Money Cats being at the table just means EVERYONE has more money, and everyone is very careful about ever giving a deal that is favourable towards Money Cats.

More later I have to go for now
That thing in the heading.

And now, Ruining the game with Greed and Generosity : This is now a review of trying to play this board game online in Australia
I have owned Table Top Simulator since forever. I got it in the early days. It was bad then, buggy, laggy, no community and all the board games were self censored and incomplete for fear of copyright issues.

Then I ignored it for years.

Then my copy of this damned new expansion didn't turn up and I was like hey, maybe I can look at it on TTS I mean its been a damned month since it came out.

And hey TTS, still buggy, laggy and not great, but the community mod quality for the board game way up, complete components with, shock, text on, and scripted automation for a lot of stuff.

So I was like maybe I can play online. Well, you're gonna need to get into discord for that, so I put on my rubber swamp wading pants and did.

And I'm getting old because I'm getting this real sort of anti-whipper-snappers-on-my-lawn vibe from all these younger players with pretty much the same late twenties something millennial gamer personality/voice I can't tell apart thing.

But whatever, give the kids a chance, and the technology, which again, I'm getting old. I don't like this spirit voodoo voicey talk with these people who always have someone with unfiltered yelling and parrots in the background.

I am underwhelmed by the communities most basic function
There are various discord channels and groups and sub groups and I had tested out an online game of settlers with like 4 guys from the 4 corners of the planet and THAT was a laggy mess. So I joined the? maybe just a? Australian/New Zealand discord community. It's just some guy's channel, I don't know how this stuff works pull up your modern type dungerees and stop starting at me.

Anyway. Point is number one intention. Get games suitable to my time zone with players from nearby geographic area. Hope that means I can play at sensible hours and the lag isnt as bad.

Well. Not so much. Because Australian players in China think this is the place to join games.

And for some reason all the games start at 8:30 pm. And this game takes FOREVER.

I can't start playing a minimum four hour session at 8:30pm. I'm old (compared to these muppets) and I have to be weightlifting knee deep in a pond within an hour of dawn.

Whatever, a learner game is going at just 8pm. I'm in. Oh what one guy out of six asked for it to be 8:30pm instead so they just shifted it that far without asking what anyone else felt about it and just assumed we were all still in for it... fffffff....

And hey a begginer game, 2-3 players mostly just looking to learn what the community and the TTS software itself is like, 2 veteran players form the community.

And... then someone brought their mother.

She hasn't played board games before.

We are about 8 hours in at this point. Perhaps a bit more than half way.

But surely the experienced games are alright? No. Joined one of those. played two sessions, might need 1 perhaps 2 more... aaaand they can't get more than half the players back on any single night, its less "these three can make these nights and these three can make the other nights" its more "these two can never make any nights, this one can only ever make the night no one else can, and this two can only make half the nights, AND THEN THESE TWO SUBSTITUTE PLAYERS WE ALSO RECRUITED ALREAD also cannot make more than one night a week no one else can make"

OK.

So. On basic principles of being a matchmaking community for functional games THIS is a trainwreck. And it's not like they lack active population, it's busy. Just VERY badly organized.

Oh and this community is supposed to cover new zealanders, and starts games at 8:30pm for the east cost of australia[/b], often even at 9pm.

Then they ruined the game by playing it wrong
I generally would prefer NOT to be the one saying "stop ruining things you are playing it wrong!" but god damn it, they should stop ruining things, they are playing it wrong.

Remember how avoiding wars and their expense is a big deal for winning?

Remember how you create peace with cold war tactics, peace through strength, yes you could invade but I always keep enough defenses to make that too expensive?

Well what if you just sent a few whispers to players you knew well, and agreed to have peace AND never even need to build the military units to enforce it?

What if some guys just got all the people they were ever neighbours with to aggree to that. For no reason. People often agree to this in exchange for nothing, worse, they randomly agree to let the guy with no armies set borders that are wildly disadvantageous to them, sit there with rich planets and objective targets right near by and even if they have the means to they never invade? Even when behind on points?

What if there are games where it is expected that EVERY player at the table should be like that? Why should they be expected to be like that, its a tradition in the community. What? You don't adhere to community traditions you don't even know? Well, you don't get traded with, and I don't mean (just) the trade card, its got its own thing going on, I mean you can sit there with cards, resources, planets, any amount of potential barter and if you aren't a known member of an inner clique of inniates that know the traditions of the game as they see them, no one will ever ask you, openly or in secret for anything.

In fact what if all that happened for little reason other than this is a tradition in how they play the game and you can't go against that! It would be rude. Maybe competitive. They talk about competitive players in a weird way that makes you think they don't just mean the tournament scene, in fact they talk about it in a way that suggest such players are maybe also not even welcome in their tournaments.

So now a random anecdote about the latest version of that Guy
I sat in a game with what in context must have been the single most valuable alliance card at the table because of the way things were playing out.

For more than half the game endless whispers had exchanged between players who knew each other, elaborate deals surfaced as they traded resources of insignificance? Me? I just got frozen out of every deal ever. No reason. No contact. No response to advertising of what I had available. Did anyone want my valuable card? No? Maybe because it was of vast value if they wanted to enter conflict with each other, which sooner or later you really have to, but no they didn't want it because inevitable conflict bad?

And then the guy. The god damn bastard losing the game, the one who was playing a non combat trade faction (The Money Cats!). Who, despite having all the money to trade with all the people and being right next to me. The bastard who WAS the only early aggressor in the game, but people knew him and he only attack the new guy no one talked to so, whatever.

The guy who lost that fight handily what with trying it with basically no fleet because he couldn't do basic economy and logistics. And also didn't take note that my faction abilities were basically little more than a giant combat bonus in that one god damn place he attacked me.

THAT guy with like NO victory points other than one another player had randomly agreed to give him. He used his vast fortunes from being money cats to buy two of the biggest fleets in the game, FINALLY. Plopped one on the big important game winning planet in the middle of the board and another one in a solid defensive position.

THEN he asked me for that one alliance card in a whisper, If I gave it to him he would give vague promises of finally having a trade partner and feeding me action cards that HE had starved me of in well, ways, lets not get into the complexity of that.

And me I was like, hell yeah. Lets do it. In fact, there is one thing I want right now for... reasons (secret objective worth almost no points that you technically cant reveal) could he just fly one of his cheapest weakest ships into my defense forces please.

And as for what he wanted and the vague unreliable promises. I loved it. I was in 300%, in. Did he want the alliance card now, its ok yes he might lose it if he sends me that cheap ship I wanted worth literally 1 trade good. But I'd just give the alliance back again and he clearly needed it early to strengthen his fleet in the big victory planet right now.

No response.

He stalled out not god damn answering during my turn so I had to sit there for easily 10 minutes doing nothing waiting for a god damn response. And I was like screw this, and continued to maintain my defenses and beef up my economy and tech.

He sends me some passive aggressive message about "not being able to defend against everybody"... which I didn't have to since thank damn god the other neighbor hardly ever built fleets and sent them all away to play at taking organised turns in swapping planet ownership with two other players that never built fleets. In any real game he'd have been looking to pick up anything of value from my back line while I was busy with the weirdly aggressive money cat.

Money cat basically just begged me to move all my defenses away from the one planet he had attacked and now recently put his own fleets near.

Clearly though this deal is BRILLIANT for both him and me, even if he is an untrustworthy ass. He is losing of COURSE I want him to be the one to hold winning planet and keep everyone busy. A barely need ANYTHING out of this trade for it to be worthwhile. And for him? being able to very possibly hold win the game planet forever? It's his only possible chance of clawing back from last place in points.

I want the deal, he damn well SHOULD want it. Then it comes to voting and he is for some reason voting to blow up half my ships, I say "hey didn't you want something from me, including moving my fleet away from "your" border, could you maybe, not vote for that" and he was like "thats a threat thats it I'm picking the worst strategy card for myself so that I can next turn first turn simply drive my fleets into the one place on the map with strong enough defenses to kill them (at vast cost) and lose us BOTH the game!

So. That's fun. Then they didn't get the game organized again for three weeks.

I'm getting distracted by the one thing, I should talk about the other thing...

Trade was the best new thing, and they broke it so god damn bad...
OK, so maybe you have an inkling how trade and trade goods function, maybe even a hint as to the value of the trade card in normal games. Maybe a hint of the value of the incredibly rich money cats in a normal game.

But this community believes they have "solved" the trade card. It has a correct way of being used.

You should follow the way. If not people might not trade with you. Or make any deals with you. Or might even randomly attack you with full knowledge that it will cost them the game? (and with no real competency in economy or logistics or even fleet composition, things you need to do to win battles in this game)

Personally I haven't been told that, but it has played out like that, because of course not do you think I accept "its just the done thing" as an argument to control my choices in a game?

But I have seen plenty of posts by people on various internet communities talking about TTS players of this game flat out stating that "do it the way we do it or we will flat out punish you in this and every other game you ever play with us again".

So. What have they done to trade? What is their basic solution. They've created a second rate greed trap.

For them the player who takes trade gets the 3 free trade goods. They get their commodities, which means probably 3ish.

Then it breaks.

They go around the table and demand tribute to refresh each players commodities in turn.

It is also specific tribute. It is "X minus one".

Every single player is made the offer, you will be given all your commodities, AND a promise that given the chance they will be "washed" by an exchange even if the trade player doesn't have any more commodities to give away, they will trade you already "washed" functional trade goods for your useless commodities!

But you must pay them 1 trade good, OR promise to pay them one in future at the first opportunity.

This is. Insane.

Yes. It is a good deal to get IF YOU ARE THE TRADE PLAYER. But it is a bad deal for THE REST OF THE TABLE. However. It is the done thing.

So the Trade Guy, the guy that in a normal game gets 6 maybe 7 trade goods from picking the card, when everyone inexplicably agrees to do it, they get god damn 11 or 12 trade goods out of it. Its insane. It breaks the basic game balance. I mean to start with, that's basically as much money as the money cats should get and the money cats don't do anything else.

But also... IS it wise to give money to EVERYONE for one trade good? Well you better or retaliation would happen. But... for fuck sake they told that guys mom, in a learner game that she should offer this deal to her neighbour, the one who was winning the game on points, held the win the game planet, the only one with a fleet near her, the one blocking in her border, and the only one with totally undefended planets in reach of her infantry. They told her to give THAT guy money in return for 1 trade good.

And on the other hand is it always wise to demand tribute for a service (refresh commodities) that is nearly free? You should definitely feed money to that guy on the other side of the board who is doing poorly but is within reach of the guy who is doing too well and needs to be slowed down or stopped.

And why are you charging EVERYONE 1 trade good for this service, they have differing commodity totals. Why is it worth 1 trade good to "wash" the money cats 6 commodities but ALSO 1 trade good to do that for factions with only 2 commodities.

This fucking screws the 2 commodity factions. They literally have to pay out one trade good to earn one trade good, and they pay it to the person that everyone is already giving money too for no reason.

It. Is. Nuts. In every damn way.

But, greed trap "its better to get something right?" combined with no concept whatsoever of not over feeding people who take the trade card. I feel like a bad league of legends player "Of course money cats is stomping our entire team, YOU FUCKERS WONT STOP FEEDING THEM".

It doesn't just make the game worse and dull and undermine one of the most creative and well designed pieces of the game.

It breaks the entire game balance. If everyone at the table does this basically every two commodity faction in the game gets hit with a major nerf stick, and all the 4 commodity factions (and the money cats) get promoted to definitely better than you.

Point is they are playing the game wrong
Before this I was like, of course you cultivate good relations, of course you might make a deal to swap a planet for objectives, of course you don't want war if you can help it.

But I was a god damn warmongering asshole as far as these guys are concerned.

And the game I play, it's not their game, and they don't like it.

And the game THEY play, it's not my game, and it not only isn't fun, it feels humiliating and sleezy.

In Twlight Conclusion
Twlight Imperium 4th edition is an awesome fun game with people who aren't indoctrinated into a weird care bear cult so that a few people in the community can manipulate them for easy wins.

And you should definitely buy... Eclipse Second Dawn for the Galaxy. It's actively less fun but is mechanically superior in every fucking respect, does basically the same thing and it doesn't take as long.

But it is French.

And usually even more out of stock everywhere.

You know, if people want to play Twilight Imperium at 8:30 p.m., but you'd rather start a bit earlier, maybe you should look for a west coast american server.

I like your take in "In Twilight Conclusion". I've played Twilight Imperium twice. I won both times, but the games took fourteen and twelve hours to complete (8 mostly new players in both cases including me), and the winner of both games was decided by the seating arrangement because beginners are morons. I spent the whole time calculating how many lesser space games I could have played instead and how much happier I'd have been.

PhoneLobster wrote:This Imperium Keeps Having Twilights

Sounds like the AAA videogame industry, which died circa 2014, but dumb players' money keep it in a perpetual state of undeath.

TI is an hour of fun crammed into an entire goddamn day. I'll stick to Galaxy Trucker, thanks.