The game stared at approximately midday and Steedo called the win with 5 or 6 points at about 8.15pm! I was in joint 4th with Sylon and Carrie on 1 point ..... A mighty total for 8 hours of game play. I think DK and Snake-eyes came in with 3 or 4 points each.
So what did I think about Twilight Imperium?
I liked the universe building at the start - reminded me of the first edition on Mighty Empires. With our set up we had the warmonger races all on the same side of the board and Sylon ended up with 4 red edged systems limiting his ability to expand and get resources. I had managed to get a nice little set of planets around my homeworld, but was sandwiched between the bugs and humans. I took a pragmatic approach and didn't play to my race's aggressive strengths.
I got the resource management side of the game - and created quite a nice armada including the flagship. The technology side I was a bit slower up the grasping of how to improve my stuff. When we did the political/assembly section we all enjoyed it - but only once in the entire game. This did bring something to the game and is something we should have done more of, as some of the consequences of the vote are very nasty.
The movement of ships and locking up of systems did seem to me to be clunky and slowed things down - it was difficult to assemble ships, troops etc. into the right place - one of the reasons I ended up with fleets on my borders but didn't go much further. I get that tech development and building fleets takes time, but moving the things about shouldn't.
In retrospect I was too cautious with my fleet and protective of the planets that I had collected up - a quick smash and grab for the capital planet would have mixed things up. I also think that the fears of wars on 2 fronts (and getting involved in long and pointless border disputes with each other (which we only weaken us) stopped Cylon, Carrie and myself utilising our races' strengths. I think that I should have used the trade card more often to get trade goods to spend on bonuses to die rolls in fighting - and to get better trade deals for the Barony (and cancel others deals). Perhaps a re jigging of races' positions might have helped.
I think the scope of the game is perhaps too epic - 8hrs is a long time and a big commitment (and use of the ever precious brownie points). When I had the time to go to the local club the games had to be set up, played and packed away in 3hrs - which seems like a more reasonable length of time for a gaming session. I do wonder if this sort of game has been superseded by online empire building games where you have the computer doing lots of things in the background. Not that I have really played any for ages - I had a ago at a middle earth one when the hobbit came out, but I didn't do any in-app purchases I got beaten up and then gave up! Before that I played Sid Meier's Civilisation on my old 386PC which was ok.
But would I play Twilight Imperium again ......yeah I would. I had a good laugh with friends which is the reason for playing most games.
Morts
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