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Jeff A
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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Starting about 2 months ago I have been going to two board gaming groups, Mondays at my friend Chris's and Tuesdays I host. It has been pretty great and I am going to keep it up.
On Monday January 30th I played a game that was new to me, Hansa Teutonica. I really enjoyed Hansa Teutonica, even though I came in last place, and even though my situation that evening wasn't the best. I have been having this weird issue with my hearing lately, due to some sort of problem with my sinuses or something. I was pretty much completely deaf. So hearing the rules explained was pretty much a no go, I just gleamed what I could, which was a lot. I didn't however fully understand the scoring or the situations that ended the game and so my play was definitely not all it could have been. It is a game that I would love to try again.
On Tuesday January 31st, we played a 5 player game of Eclipse. Sigh.
My hopes were so high for Eclipse as I watch the developer guide etc but I think I am going to have to revise my rating. I will NOT go so far as to say that the game is broken or anything, but I will say that there are some definite issues that I take with how the game plays. It will not see my gaming table again under the base rules. I am not sure what rules need to change but I am sure of a few things.
1. I believe that I play games to have fun. I want the others playing the game to have fun too. I can honestly say that I have not played a game of Eclipse and had fun. That is probably because I have never won a game of Eclipse. But that being said, the chances are that if I won, and had fun there would be at least 1 or 2 others at the table that definitely didn't have fun.
2. I have come to realize that I enjoy games with a mechanic that holds the leader back, so that at least the other players all feel they have a chance. And when that leader is overtaken, they should also still feel that they have a chance.
Eclipse only has one mechanic to hold a leader back, the cost of taking actions, but that mechanic does just as good of a job at holding back the rest of the pack as well.
Basically here is my beef, almost everything in Eclipse is suited to be easier when you are wealthy.
-Actions cost you more but chances are you are having no problem populating orange planets and the only thing it does is keep you from taking MORE actions than those you are beating.
-Research, Better technologies cost more research. While it could be possible for you to snag a key tech before your opponent, if you are getting beaten up, good luck paying for it and upgrading your ships, and building new ships <- Because when you are poor, you tend to be poor in all resources.
-Upgrading, You need to be able to research expensive ship techs in order to upgrade them, the only real tech for the poor is improved hulls as it doesn't require you to also research and upgrade power sources.
-Building, same as research, when you are wealthy you tend to be able to build more ships. Yes you have more to defend, but your ships tend to be stronger as well so you don't need so many ships out there.
-Move, only issue is the rich can have it easier at affording better drives, but they do need to move further.
-Explore is the only real action that is the same if your wealthy or poor, but the chances are that by the time your society has been crushed by the Galactic emperor, there are no more tiles to explore anyway. I haven't played a game that had tiles to explore past round 4.
So what right? Thats the way the game was designed, thats how it should work. Well no, not on my table. In my frustration while lying in bed last night I thought up a few possibilities that I am going to look into.
These are the few things I will looks at for house rules and why.
1. Taking the Galactic Centre should be less of a boost, it is already giving you more production, 4 VP, an ancient discovery. I am thinking no ancient discovery and 2 influence disks required to take it. Why?
The ancient discovery is just a bonus for what reason? If you took the center you are probably doing pretty well. As for the influence (this one I am not sure about), its another way to hold back the (theorectical) leader, and only the leader, just a bit by making actions more costly.
2. Ancient tiles that give you a resource (+5 Research), I may reclassify these as Ancient outposts, they would go on the hex like an orbital. You will get the instant bonus, and can populate the ancient outpost with a cube from the corresponding track.
The next is probably my favorite so a little back explanation. I feel that the start of the game and your economies can be too easily boosted to the best or held back too greatly by simply not getting planets of a certain type. Every game I have played I either got too few money planets so I could not effectively act, or like last night, my money was fine, but I only ever discovered 1 materials planet. I could not build anything to effectively defend against the oncoming 2 upgraded Dreadnaughts and a Cruiser.
3. All non advanced planets are considered Grey. This will lower any issues with bad luck drawing tiles. You still could get a better or worse sector by drawing one that has 3 planets vs 2 or 1, or one that has only an Ancient (see #2 Ancient Outpost), but it won't hamper anything as you can choose which track to take the cube from.
I feel this also makes advanced planets a bit more valuable as if you took most of your non advanced planets for money, then you may really need advanced mining. You can effectively play to your advanced planet draws.
Now I am not fully sure about these house rules as they were the late night, can't sleep, rantings of a pissed off loser, but I think they could help if refined. One thing for #3 is maybe if there are two planets in the hex you just influenced, you have to use 2 difference population tracks, this will at least keep it from being everyone can do 12 actions per round but build nothing etc.
Alright well I will think about this more.
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There's very little bad luck in tile drawing, just bad strategy in using those tiles.
