Flashback Friday - Eclipse - Love It or Hate It? Do You Still Play It?

Played it once.

Never played either, tbh. Eclipse is on its face more appealing than 4 hour negotiation cold war to make dealt VP objectives.

“50% of the fun in 25% of the time!”

Hell yeah

RobertB wrote:

3, yes, 4, not a chance.

There are certainly some clever concepts in ECLIPSE and the physical system design is one of the best I've seen. But after repeat play we found there wasn't a ton of variety in game play style; at player counts over 4, one or two players invariably get hosed with crappy tile draws and are left without much production and fall behind . Sold it a few years ago. They have a new edition that funded a year ago on KS with some tweaks I guess, I'll be interested to see what changed . I suspect the same underlying issues will remain .

I really enjoyed my plays of the app version, but I sold my physical copy, unplayed because I never, ever get games like this to the table any more.

This is another one of those games where I'm the only one in our group that doesn't really enjoy it.
It's been a while, but I remember players getting hosed by early, craptastic system draws - wild swings that massively affect build-up, like you can get in Star Trek Ascendancy.

dysjunct wrote: Tried playing the app version and decided that I couldn't be bothered after about 10 minutes.

I've only ever tried the app version as well. I probably got through 3 or 4 games before I gave up. I can't recall a game with a more jarring disconnect between how cool it LOOKS, and how boring it is to actually play. Playing it in real life has to just be excruciatingly dull.

Put me down as a fan of this game. I must be because despite being such a shelf toad that I never bothered to punch Shadow of a Rift, I still haven't sold it. Even when prices were high before 2nd edition was announced. Its a fairly quick and harmless resource management game with a better setting than the Mediterranean or Bulgaria in 1237 or whatever. While not a perfect game it does check a lot of my boxes for space empire-building. In fact, I'm in the camp that likes any good space empire-builder so will gladly play Eclipse, Twilight Imperium, Space Empires 4X, Ascending Empires, and so on.

Ultimately, it's a "fake" multiplayer wargame. All the cool stuff, the upgrades, the fighting and the theme are eventually revelead as dressing for a typical eurogame. It's a game about efficiency through and through and you end up researching and attacking just because it gives points.

I think the difference is as follows. In "real" multiplayer wargames, fighting is a tool. You use your troops to pursue objectives and you would rather not do it because it's a waste of resources. In Eclipse, fighting is a way to score and you fight because it's the mechanism the game gives you to turn production into victory points. If battles didn't give you points you wouldn't fight at all.

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I'm going to take this thread to promote March of the Ants, which is the best game of this "genre" in the market. It's very cleverly crafted, with deterministic combat, tight economy but also focused on tools like the big games in the genre do. Very underrated title, when I played TI4 I kept thinking a couple games of March of the Ants would have been more fun.

Arguing that fighting exclusively serves as turning production into points ignores the fact that hexes are worth points, and are usually just as much, if not more of a determinant on the end game score. We see lots of jockeying for position starting in turn 7, and the center hex is worth a substantial amount (more than 10% of a winning score typically).

This is also why neutron bombs are so terrifying as people will run scorched earth tactics at end game, razing hexes simply to deny points.

That argument, to me, would be like saying the secret objectives in Twilight Imperium are exclusively there to turn production into points.

I find this an interesting take, because the designer of March of the Ants has said his goal was to make a sort of simpler and faster version of Eclipse.

Erik Twice wrote: Ultimately, it's a "fake" multiplayer wargame. All the cool stuff, the upgrades, the fighting and the theme are eventually revelead as dressing for a typical eurogame. It's a game about efficiency through and through and you end up researching and attacking just because it gives points.

I think the difference is as follows. In "real" multiplayer wargames, fighting is a tool. You use your troops to pursue objectives and you would rather not do it because it's a waste of resources. In Eclipse, fighting is a way to score and you fight because it's the mechanism the game gives you to turn production into victory points. If battles didn't give you points you wouldn't fight at all.

---

I'm going to take this thread to promote March of the Ants, which is the best game of this "genre" in the market. It's very cleverly crafted, with deterministic combat, tight economy but also focused on tools like the big games in the genre do. Very underrated title, when I played TI4 I kept thinking a couple games of March of the Ants would have been more fun.

It is both simpler and faster! And in many ways, the games are similar in design. But in March of the Ants, combat is deterministic, the winner loses a bunch and the loser is wiped out. You cannot hole in a corner and win through superior economy because most of the scoring options require you to control ground. This means you are either trying to hold it yourself and trying to deny it to your opponents.