What is your opinion about war-oriented playstyle?
Hey, lads and lasses! My friends and I had been playing ti4 for 8+ months before quitting a year ago or so. We had a lot of fun, especially at the beginning. All unique races of the game, the complexity, the setting, the mechanics. We really enjoyed it and played a lot for many months (had to do it online cause huge distances).
Unfortunately, we stopped playing partially due to burnout, which is understandable, but on top of that, we started to notice some core issues with the game. They really started to hinder the experience for some of us at our table, so we stopped playing. But a few weeks ago I saw some videos about the latest ti4 expansion, it reignited the fun memories we had in this game and so I thought to myself that maybe we can start playing again.
Maybe you guys can use your own insight to shine a new light on this topic. Which of the points I’m gonna make are true to your table and which ones have an easy fix (maybe even homebrew). I think it's a good idea to hear other voices on this matter. Please keep in mind that despite the following rant we still enjoyed the game A LOT. We had 4-5 players, POK. We quit before the newest expansion (Thunder's Edge is it?) came out. Also it's been a while so the picture isn't as clear as it was back then. Alright, here we go:
Playing peacefully works much more often than being war focused (this was the biggest issue for me personally, hence the title). What I mean by that is:
- Building up even the mid size fleet is costly both resource, time and command token wise.
- Being aggressive puts a target on your back. There are multiple layers to that of course, but the main ones are imo mechanical and psychological. The mechanical one is more clear: you have more planets = more resources and influence = bigger threat to other players. The psychological one is much more tricky and it depends on the people you play with. But in general if you start fights, you’re seen as the aggressor by the rest of the table. You’re less likely to be trusted for the rest of the game and the one who took the beating from you will most likely seek revenge (rightfully so) by uniting forces/negotiating with other players that will take advantage of this alliance. Of course it's a very simplified version and there's more nuance to it: you could secure your own alliance/treaty with a 4th player, dice rng might be on your side, people might not mind you taking stuff from them etc.
- Starting a war conflict is very risky. Mostly because of the command token mechanic and the way it limits movement and response. It's very hard to defend on multiple fronts at the same time. Furthermore, by attacking one side you’re automatically exposing your other side. So you either gamble with 1-2 fleets or spend time and resources to build defensive fleets.
- Planets you take are given to you in an Exhausted state regardless of their previous state. Because of that you’re most likely to start a war because of objectives that are revealed gradually. This incentivizes waiting and playing peacefully.
- Many public objectives are static. The overwhelming majority of them can be achieved by peacefully sitting in the corner. Even the ones that require units over certain planets/systems can be traded peacefully. I think it’s a shame that there aren’t objectives that require players to actively hunt other players’ plastic or aggressively take over their planets.
- SFFT. We eventually removed it from our games, cause we didn’t like kingmaking. But also I watched a few games online and read a decent amount of posts claiming that SFFT swap is a very common practice. It’s done to secure one of your borders but also to speed up the game. When I learned about it I immediately thought it was weird. If you want faster games, then why not start with 1 VP or end at 9 VPs as a homebrew rule. The border security made even less sense to me, it “solves” the risk factor but it makes this strat mandatory, cause if you’re not doing this you’re at a much greater disadvantage than other players who do it.
By the end of our ti4 journey we had so many games repeating the same pattern: people being super cautious and friendly in the early game, slices having solid borders by the mid game, occasional skirmishes for objectives (but not big war conflicts), everyone chilling and focusing on objectives without threatening others, bloating big fleets until the last few end-game rounds when you have no choice but to make a move and trigger massive conflicts. It kinda reached a point when a few of us at the table started doing irrational moves just to stir the pot and have something different.
I also wanna share potential homebrew ideas I wanted to implement if we were to come back. Maybe you can point out the flaws and potential problems/exploits with them?
- The planet card is taken in a Ready state if it wasn’t Exhausted prior to the ground invasion. This incentivizes aggressive play not only because of objectives, but also economy. I think it can also prevent stalling from the defenders, because if you think that you’re about to be attacked you’d want to spend highly vulnerable planets as soon as possible, cause you don’t want the attacker to receive more resources. I can even see mind games you can pull off as an aggro player with a fleet next to badly defended systems.
If this change is too gamebreaking, maybe you can put a limit saying that “the planet is taken in a Ready state if there was no Bombardment of this planet during this combat”. It also fits it thematically since you don’t destroy a planet's infrastructure from space.
- Create homebrewed public objectives that are directly tied to destruction of units. Something like “destroyed X amount of other players' units”,“destroyed other players' units with a total Y resource value”, “destroyed Z amount of other players' non-fighter ships”, “captured X amount of planets which had other players' units on it”, and so on. Basically objectives that cannot be resolved peacefully. It will incentivize people to actually start moving and do more skirmishes. I mean people can still trade for this objective by saying: "can I destroy your x amount of units, I'll pay you Y and Z for this" but it's miles better than the objective where people can just park their ships next to other players' planets. That is because you'll be actually losing something (plastic) that can expose you to other players who didn't participate in this deal. Also It won’t be that difficult to track, just use custom tokens or write it down for everyone to see, so that there’s no misunderstanding/cheating once it's an objective scoring stage.
What do you think? (Thank you for listening to my TED talk).