cerveza_fiesta, on 15 July 2013 - 10:27 PM, said:
Yes, I rather liked the alliances too, with the house rule for delaying them until mid-game.
Alternatively, the house rule could be that you need to maintain diplomacy with a player through 2 cleanup phases before you can form an alliance with them. That way no round-1 diplo could not possibly become an alliance before round 3 and people would generally need to be careful who they form diplo with if alliance is their intent in the future. Just an idea, what do others think of that? I'd also be up for a mod that penalizes both players for intentionally breaking an alliance (like EM and Khell last game) where one lagging player leaves the alliance in order to free up other's score.
I like keeping the 1 GC, though some kind of greater incentive to compete for it would be cool...like an increase to its VP score. Possibly Boardgame geek has some advice on this.
I'm also with IH RE the homeworld thing. Just use the ancient homeworld mechanic already in place (though they only recommend it for low player games). If they were sparsely scattered in tier 3 it would be interesting I think. A nice boon for a militarily strong race near the start, or a cool barrier for weaker races to break down later in the game. Maybe add a house rule that they're all warp portal connected so that board connectivity improves as the game progresses.
RE the draco and Planta specifically - they are removed from play in 6-9 player games because their racial bonuses are too advantageous relative to the other races...not because they're on the back of one homeworld tile or another. I'd be fine with being free to choose all other races, but those two specifically have an established game balance issue in high player-count games. We should not include them unless the player count is low.
Are Planta and Draco really removed from those games by the book? I figured they were unbalanced mostly in smaller games, where a Draco walling off ancients and a Planta outgrowing the other 1-2 players too quickly, but a game where ancients are fair game for all other players and any Planta has two neighbours, make them more balanced, imho. I'd use the ancient worlds in any single game without a second's hesitation. Those cruisers are frickin' awesome and really force a player to strategize for them.
As for a 'bigger' game: all concerns about set-up aside (people run 14 player games of Twilight Empire, 10 player games of diplomacy, and so on, so it can be done): I think the main factor against it is that such a game on this forum might be susceptible to player attrition rather than un-balanced gameplay. We've seen it in other games like diplomacy: people leave midway and don't always come back.
This game will take in total several months if not half a year, now multiply that with a larger galaxy for all, leading to longer rounds...
Gameplay wise, we have to face the fact that the expansion(s) added so much new stuff and mechanics already that there's bound to be some snags (SS's double pulsar hexes is a purely chance based result but nonetheless is a significant factor in 3.0) - if Eclipse (ever) gets a second big expansion, it will be undergoing even more changes, most likely. Furthermore, if everyone gets into the 20/20/20 resource territory as a consequence, you'll see a lot of similarities in fleet construction especially that currently don't exist because we don't have the availability /resources to pay for them, and faction strengths/weaknesses become totally different.
Magellan for example with their resource production that is currently as strong as a 10% resource buff mid-game would be marginalized to less than half that, whereas the cheaper ships for Mechanema would magnify their already good combat potentials.
For 4.0, I would totally go for the alliance system. I understand the reason for not including them but I think that this game suffers from some of its side-effects anyway (I would say the negative ones), without any consequence like the alliances have (the averaged points, that can really, really fuck you up). The system would also add oomph to the more turtling/ less combat dependent species especially (Lyra, Hydrani & Planta) if it allows them to ally rightly, while jack-of-all-trades species can combine powers and really challenge, as well.
Everyone is entitled to his own wrong opinion. - Lizrad