Eclipse

[Ulminati]

I was torn between General Gaming (assuming the name change isn't permanent) and strategy gaming. But previous Kodex Kritikal Konsensus was that cardboard games went into GG.

So. Eclipse.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse

Anyone else played it? It's really good, although some techs are a bit unbalanced. (Especially plasma missiles). It feels very similar to Twilight Imperium but the game is faster and generally features a lot more player interaction. Whereas Twilight Imperium games often end up having the players sitting on their pile of slowly expanding plastic (with maybe 1-2 fights towards the end), eclipse usually sees a lot of smaller fleet engagements as ships are cheap(ish) and rewards for fighting immediate. What I paticularly like about the game is the resource system, made up of Influence (round discs in the picture above) and population (wooden cubes). Every player has a civilization sheet like this:

You'll notice markers for Science (pink), Economy (Orange) and Materials (brown) on the right side. You can also see some of the influcence discs have been moved to actions (INFluence, BUIld and MOVe haven't got any on them. EXPlore, UPGrade and RESearch do). Likewise, some of blues population cubes have been moved to planets of the same colour in areas he has Influence in on the map. Every turn, he currently generates 10 economy, 6 research and 8 materials. At the end of the turn, he will have to pay -10 economy in upkeep for the actions he has taken. It is quite possible (and common) for players to go bankrupt during a turn, forcing them to retreive influence markers from the map (and population cubes if he had populated any planets in the systems he abandons) as his empire crumbles under the economic strain.

Above the population cubes are the players researched technologies (bought for Science when you perform the Reserach action. A number of random technologies are revealed and become available for research at different Science costs every turn). They fall into 3 categories. Explosion (offensive), Grid (defensive) and Cog (Economy). the more technologies you have of a given type, the bigger a rebate you gain (up to a set maximum as defined by the technology you're purchasing) on subsequent tech upgrades in the same category. Furthermore, having a lot of researched tech in a category is worth victory points (orange shield).

Along the top are the civilizations schematics for interceptors, cruisers, destroyers and starbases. Once you've reseached a technology, you can use th eupgrade action to place tokens with it on your schematics. This will give your ships better hulls, targetting computers (making it easier to hit), shields (making you harder to hit), more range, better initiative (making you hit first) or more energy (used to power weapons, engines and some of the best targetting computers/shields). Ships, starbases and some system upgrades (orbitals, monoliths) are bought with MAterials using the build action.

The track on the left contains ambassadors, which allow you to place a population cube on them as long as you maintain an alliance (and don't attack) the player that gave them to you. It can also contain reputation tokens, which are gained from fleet combat and are worth 1-4 victory points.

Playtime is roughly 30 min per player in the game. (So a full 6-player game takes ~3 hrs). Which is about half of what a twilight imperium game typically takes. The rules are fairly simple - especially if everyone plays one of the "human" factions since they're all identical jack-of-all-trades with no special rules. If you've been meaning to pick up a cardboard 4x game this comes highly reccomended.

 

[Destroid]

I can't help but think that level of detail in ship design is rather excessive for a boardgame. Another criticism I've read is that upgrading your money supply is pretty much better than doing anything else, as it allows more actions in the future. In our gaming group we call such things 'fishermen' after the game Vikings, in which fisherman are simply the best resource and others are only considered once they are depleted.

 

[Ulminati]

Well your money supply is limited by the # of orange/white planets you can conquer. Which in turn means ou'll need to expand influence and ships (materials) with sufficient upgrades (science) to hold them in case another player wants to pummel you into submission. Especially if you're playing an alien race who has a 3:1 or 4:1 conversion rate on resources. I've won several games with only a mondest supplyof money/science by stockpiling materials and appearing insignifigant, then building a bunch of monoliths for VP near the end of the game.

The only real criticism I can level at the game is that plasma missiles are simply way too good. And ship designs often end up being an engine with as many missile batteries as (in)humanly possible duct taped on.

The ship upgrade system is very good besides that one upgrade though. It helps differentiate the ships of various races and players typically only research 3-4 upgrades which they then apply to their ships.

 

[Destroid]

But do the ship designs have any meaning? Is there any strategy to them, or are the choices pretty obvious?

 

[MisterStone]

That game sort of reminds me of Armageddon EMpires, which was sorta cool. But at least AE is a computer game, so the number crunching is not a chore. This looks a bit obsessively complicated, which could be a good thing or a bad one, depending on who you have to play with. I am afraid I'd never find anyone to play this with me though.

 

[Ulminati]

But do the ship designs have any meaning? Is there any strategy to them, or are the choices pretty obvious?

If someone builds a bunch of missiles, get hull upgrades. If someone builds expensive weapons, get shields. If someone builds shields, get targetting computers. If someone neglects defenses, build targetting computers/engines to upgrade initiative and shoot before them. If you can't install your upgrade,s it's time for more/better power plants. The design choices are usually simple and straightforward, but there are different approaches to take when deciding what area(s) to upgrade in your ships. Further limited by what research you have available. If you find yourself fighting on two fronts using different design approaches (one got early plasma missiles, the other started with shields for instnace) you'll have to either build ships that are balanced to handle both, or specialize your different classes and send them towards the different players. In one game, for instance, I upgraded all my interceptors to have a single gun and a bunch of hull points, then sent swarms of them against a missile-using player to soak up his missiles. Meanwhile, my destroyers had their engines upgraded, since my other opponent had a small fleet armed with antimatter cannons (hurt like shit) but no shield/hull upgrades. By beatign his initative, I got to fire my salvo of shots first, reducing the impact of his antimatter cruisers.

That game sort of reminds me of Armageddon EMpires, which was sorta cool. But at least AE is a computer game, so the number crunching is not a chore. This looks a bit obsessively complicated, which could be a good thing or a bad one, depending on who you have to play with. I am afraid I'd never find anyone to play this with me though.

There's no number crunching involved at all. All relevant numbers are readily visible on the cardboard tokens/sheets. You can see at a glance how much you produce, how much you have in reserve, how much you're about to spend and any modifiers you get to d6 rolls/purchases. As empire building boardgames go, I give the rules complexity a 6/10.

 

[Destroid]

So. Eclipse.

Played it for the first time recently, it was a lot of fun, and I think it will be quite fast now everyone knows the rules. We played a six player game, but I can't shake the feeling that this will be best played with three or four. The tech and ship upgrading is handled quite well, and there are plenty of points to be had from any style of play in the game. It's a little surprising that the game is so popular given that a player can be pretty much put out of contention quite easily, or indeed removed completely, this is usually not a popular mechanic (with good reason).

The worst thing is the millions of pieces, which make setup/packup a little slow.

 

[Kitako]

If it hasn't bloom, it isn't for General Gaming.

 

[Ulminati]

This thread is Gazebo material if a mod spots it.

Anyway, Destroid, I'm goign to have to disagree with you on the player count. Eclipse works best with 6 players since that means there's far more competition for the really good techs. Especially things like plasma missiles which will define how you go about building your ships. With just 3 players everyone will be able to purchase everything eventually.

I think one of the points in eclipses favour over games like, say, Twilight Imperium is that it keeps turns short. In a 6-player TI game I easily end up spending 15-20 minutes between turns twiddling my thumbs. Eclipse does a really good job of keeping the game from boging down.

 

[Destroid]

Except the number of techs available is less in a smaller game.

6 players: 20 tech setup, 9 tech per turn.
3 players: 14 tech setup, 6 per turn.

It's not a linear reduction, but I think it would mitigate what you are concerned about. And of course, plenty of techs just pile up because no-one wants them. The main reason I feel smaller games will be more interesting is because of adjacency. In a 6 player game you are only really adjacent to 2-3 other players at a time, in 3-4 you will be adjacent to most and maybe all players at all times. This will give you far clearer sway if you feel someone is getting ahead, rather than having to rely on other players to get the job done.

 

[Ulminati]

I guess it depends on the players you play with. We have some pretty cool alliances in most 6+ player games with the people I usualyl play with, because not being adjacent to a player means you can gang up with them on someone who is.

 

[Destroid]

I'm not saying it's bad with 6, I thoroughly enjoyed the game and given the size of our group I will likely be playing many more 6 player games in the future. I just think it will play better with less.



Played my second game recently (and from the start, on my first game I subbed in half way through) very fun game. There's also a vassal module, so if people want to play a game (3-4) I'd be down for that.

 

[Destroid]

Well, I've played quite a few games of this now and honestly, I hope it doesn't become too regular with our group. Despite having played it a million times now, I still greatly prefer cosmic encounter for large groups, Eclipse has a lot of little number crunching moments and fiddly optimisations you can do that slow the game down. The surprisingly limited amount of player interaction is also a downer (of course, some players will push very aggressively, but you will spend most of the game building in solitude). It's a solid game, probably about on the level of battlestar galactica.