It's Masters of Orion 1 and 2 and the scrapped influence concept of MOO3 converted into a board game and then back into a digital adaption of the board game. What a board game conversion does is make every single decision point matter. You don't spend oodles of turns between major decision points. It also tries to shorten the game for the benefit of everyone at the table to the most interesting portion of the game, so that the game doesn't shamble on like a zombie after the outcome is assured. The game ends at the moment of highest tension and intrigue, with all players trying to take the most advantage of all decisions made prior to that point to get whatever opportunity for victory points they can, whether through technology, discovery, conquest, diplomacy, or even building wonders (monuments to your greatness as a civilization—that can be captured). The game rewards all the major styles of play, allowing a successful early rush, say, to be rewarded but without making the rest of the game have an obvious outcome. Similarly, unsuccessful opening gambits won't cripple you... Players that are behind gain the benefit of a more easily defended empire and cheaper exertion of influence. It's quite elegant and I like it a lot. Computer strategy and board games have a history of successful cross-pollination. I'd like to see future 4X space games start from here as the chassis of new games instead of the original Civ style turn structure where implementing a single strategic decision might require many microsteps, and where significant choice points are spiky with a lot of "next turn..." in between. If someone were to make a longer to play, more involved with deeper systems version of this game, with a return to galaxy maps and so on, I'd want to play.
Finally won a game! ...against a peaceful AI. Regardless, I'm slowly getting the hang of it. It's less intimidating than I originally thought, put perhaps actually more intimidating as well. It's that not horribly difficult to learn, probably near impossible to master type of game. One thing, aren't plasma missiles a bit broken?
Yes. It's widely known that you can make glass cannons with plasma missiles and gluon computers. However, if you add Phase Shields you lower their chance to hit dramatically. They only fire on the first turn so if you survive the first volley you're safe.
They seem so if your goal is to (a) win every space engagement (not requiredwhile they take one system you can take another) (b) without material advantage (i.e. lower, equal or near equal material costs of your fleets) and (c) without losses, relying only on technology to protect your ships. These three strategic choices are commonly made together by new players of strategy games, and the fact that they even *are* choices doesn't always register. It could be because the starter assumption is that (a) if you take a system, you feel you must hold that system, (b) tactical losses cause strategic setbacks and therefore (c) signficant resources should be spent to avoid tactical losses. Plasma missiles, if deployed in high enough concentration at great influence cost to upgrade, build, and move can often net the player using them one sector of VP a turn. You can win handily against a plasma fleet if you are willing to spend equivalent resources to do so, but in something more than a two player game, why go for a Pyrrhic victory? Instead of thinking how to beat them in space combat, think of how to defeat the player employing such a strategy. Pin their ships with cheap sacrificial interceptors before they can move into valuable sectors as a unified fleet. Threaten their home sector. Sitzkrieg them (save money or use robotics or quantum grid to perform neutral actions like upgrades and research until they have passed and then attack their weak spots (the nature of plasma missile ships is that the player must have weak spots). Try to slow them, rather than win engagements, and make your move on a weaker player. Throw starbases into intermediate sectors so that they can't concentrate firepower in a single turn. And plan aheadif you gain a technological edge in armor and weapons, or if you deny heavy armor, plasma cannon, drives, etc. to another player and take a decisive military edge in the type of standard ship that's good for ancients, GDC and midgame conquestwhat do you think they are going to do? Of course they are going to go for plasma missiles. Watch who gets them and knowing they are going to have the ability to threaten your ship designs with superior initiative and guaranteed damage, and you don't want to spend influence redesigning your fleet to counter it, engage their existing fleet before they can upgrade, and go for their green worlds. In short, look at their whole empire, not just their combat weaponry.
Excellent post. Thanks for insight on the true strategy of this game - I'll keep it in mind as I slowly scale up to more players and higher difficulties.
Hi Although the board game design certainly offers a lot of interesting decisionmaking, I can't sing along in the praising. I should state right away that I'm on ipad2 and the game is really choppy, and I mean low single digit frames per second when panning or sliding in panels. Come on, we're talking about static pictures being moves around the screen. I can play modern combat 3 and real racing just fine but this causes my ipad on its knees. In my world this has to be due to poor programming and optimization. Do I regret my purcase? Well, I love board games and like to support them being converted to ios but this is not a good example from my (ipad2) point of view. The choppiness and stuttering really breaks the experience for me. There should at least be a warning about the photo slideshow on older devices, in the app description. Hoping for an update to fix this so I could play the, what it looks like, interesting board game. 2/5 Pedroapan
Can some veterans of the physical version comment on which species is most challenging to use? Just from looking at the stats it would seem the Orion Hegemony has the least advantages as compared to the others.
Orion seems easy at first, but it's actually quite hard, as their economy is bad and trade ration is ridiculous 4:1. Plus they have to fight a lot and this is never cheap. Next species difficult to master is Eridani. Their economy is also pretty bad, but easier to fix (you just need the Adv. Robotics + Quantum Greed), but they start with decent techs and 2 randomly chosen Reputation Tokens, so you have a good start, have to handle the economy and, because of their initial techs, fight a lot. On the other hand Planta and Hydrans are probably the easiest. You can play aggressively with Planta in the early game, then start defending in the mid game and with Hydrans you can just focus on researching all there's to research, build monoliths on the last round and have few occasional battles against Ancients in the early game, to get the tokens without spending too much Materials.
This is by no means an expert opinion, but after playing about 25 games I've won with every species, except for... the Eridani. I'm playing only games with them now until I win, but it's been 5-6 losses in a row. Something about the pile of money you get initially, but the difficulty of building a longer term economy, and figuring out how to balance that has made it tricky to figure out how to be successful for me.
Lots of veterans say they suck, that the loss of two influence discs is too crippling, but I've had a lot of luck winning with Eridani. They start with leads in almost every category: several valuable technologies, reputation, superior dreadnoughts, and a heap of money. The key seems to be to me, figuring out which opportunities are worth the investment of your massive stockpiles. Eridani can take advantage of anything that appears on the board, whether they be lots of ancients, advanced colonies, an easy wormhole path to a neighbor's homeworld, discovery tiles, ship parts, whateverand they can reap the benefits of the best advantages on the board sooner than everyone else, meaning they pay out exponentially more (in 4x games even a small early bonus is worth a LOT). So before you take your first action as Eridani, take stock. What reputation tiles did you draw? (If you drew 4's don't get diplomacy happy!) What technologies are available (even expensive ones)? Did a neighbor explore to the center and turn up a nice non-ancient tile with wormholes pointing your way? Do you want to go first next round or no? Did Planta leave you an explore action away from a path into their backfield? Did Orion send their cruiser after a distant ancient? Can Hydran defend against your neutron interceptors now that they are in bankruptcy from research and exploration? Is exploration turning up multiple advanced economy colonies in addition to the one you started with? Then ruthlessly exploit your opportunity. The danger of playing Eridani is that, because they have so many more options than other races, you have more than enough fuel to burn your own house down. I can't stress enough that you are your own worst enemy as Eridani. Don't spend your pregame "loan" on risky gambles with no profit! If you're roleplaying as Eridani, get into the mindset of the old master, always watching, let the others do the running about this way and that, while you deliver one or two expertly timed but devastating strikes to key points. Develop an empire that matters and let your earlier VP leads (such as grid tech) carry you to victory.
I second that, although I will say background apps should be closed. It was a wee bit choppy when I first loaded it, but I had Sorcery, Leviathan, and Crabitron all running it down.
