Twilight Imperium: Prophecy of Kings Expansion Announced
Game Information
For the first time in years, a massive wealth of new content arrives for Twilight Imperium with the Prophecy of Kings expansion, bringing additional content to nearly every part of the game.
Two additional players can now join the galactic struggle, bringing the total player count up to eight. With seven never-before-seen factions and 40 new system and hyperfine tiles, there’s more to fight over than ever before.
The game’s existing factions also have plenty to gain from Prophecy of Kings with the introduction of 74 leaders and new mech units. New promissory notes, relics, exploration card. action cards, agenda cards, objective cards, and much, much more, make this an expansion that can’t be missed for any Twilight Imperium player.
- Expands player count to 8
- 7 new factions
- 2 new leaders for every faction
- New Mech Units for planetary battles
I'm confused about how I feel, I think. I'll definitely be getting it though.
Jackwraith wrote: So, just out of curiosity: What is the meta? You say "9 years", which I assume means because all of the races from TI3 are in TI4, right? So nothing really changed in the new version to make any of them function any better? Gary says the Winnu are trash (which they kinda were in TI3.) Nothing in the game function to make them viable or, say, slow down the Nekro?
Yeah, TI3 and 4 are pretty close but FFG's design crew tried to make TI4 better balanced. They supposedly did a pretty good job but sort of messed up with a few factions---which is natural.
The community is deep on TI4, esp on tabletop simulator. People have planned and known openings like chess (more variance than that but you take my point), and some factions are known to be strong contenders (Sol, Jol Nar) and some are known to be kind of trash that you don't generally play in a tourney game except as an insult/challenge (esp Winnu, Sardak Norr aren't supposed to be very good, Xxcha). There are win rate statistics and all sorts of stuff for thousands of games. See here:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c2fGqedk...LSRUKaKdo/edit#gid=0
These numbers aren't WAYYYYY off probably because there is self balancing at the table (28% win rate for top, down to 14% for Sardakk Norr) but the number of plays also is very telling about strength too---Winnu are so trash they are only played in *2%* of games even though of that tiny number of games they do ok. It's possible that they are only selected by really good players as a handicap, which might help explain why their win rate is ok.
It's one of these games that I have really enjoyed getting versed in, watching streams in the background, etc in but have no interest in playing unless I have a group of 4-5 friends who love it---it's a titanic box so I'm good hanging back unless this did happen. Like, if we got a group of fun casual in my town or here on discord with people I like I might buy the game and start playing on tabletop but there's no way I'd play with strangers or the community at large. Played at the high or tourney level, the game is very much like chess in that there are expected moves and there can be annoyance when you play outside of accepted efficient play because it fucks with other people's decisions.
"The 'buff' for Winnu is the seven new factions. That means less chance of randomly picking them."
But those numbers for the Winnu (miserable pick rate, decent win rate) are the hallmarks of a "specialist." Using Heroes of the Storm as an example, Genji and Medivh have miniscule pick rates because their skill floor is so high (i.e. it's difficult to 'git gud' with them.) But in the hands of skilled/experienced players, they can be devastating. People often wonder why this or that buff isn't made to them and it's because, in top level play, they're ferocious and they'd be dominant if they were strengthened. I guess it's open to speculation as to whether that's the case with the Winnu, but their abilities are so tied to MR that it seems more like they were simply added as the "story faction", since they really don't have any advantage away from the one world that most players of the game really want to seize, for a variety of reasons.
Jackwraith wrote: I guess it's open to speculation as to whether that's the case with the Winnu, but their abilities are so tied to MR that it seems more like they were simply added as the "story faction", since they really don't have any advantage away from the one world that most players of the game really want to seize, for a variety of reasons.
Yeah, if someone else manages to take Mecatol Rex before them, which isn't difficult given their crappy starting units/tech, their abilities are basically negated (don't have to pay the 6 Influence to take a fresh Rex, and they can put a PDS and Space Dock on the planet when they take Mecatol). They aren't likely to take it from someone who already has control of it. They are effectively a race with no abilities.
There seemed to be some experience people in the reddit thread implying they were playtesters and deliberately pushed the idea of the leaked image being a fake. The image popped up back in March (?) on the Discord and was dismissed as a fake. It doesn't appear the leak made it out of the Discord community the first time, which really surprises me. I didn't hear about it back then, but only when it resurfaced a month ago on reddit and BGG.
Edit - The lead developer of the TI4 stuff seems somewhat active in the online community, so hopefully that would lead to more thorough playtesting options.
Sagrilarus wrote: So, speaking as a guy that does formal testing as part of my job, getting a TI expansion right should be easier than other games, because there is such a strong player base to test in. Has this thing been knocking around, being tested by the guys that have 50+ plays in? It seems to me TI has a really deep source of knowledge to draw from for IV&V.
This is all anecdotal from watching streams and listening to podcasts, but one of the main design guys on this is pretty involved in the community, watches tournies, and releases ideas for fixes. So I think yes.
Dane specifically said the expansion is designed to be used as a whole and not as separate modules, which is nice, so as not to have fragmented rule sets when playing with different groups.
Nice of them to include hyperlane tiles. Glad I procrastinated in making my own.
The codex thing seems really interesting. Introducing variant cards for fun and scenarios on a regular basis should really change things up.
Those are just excuses though. The Root Discord was super welcoming to a newcomer, I'm sure the TI4 Discord is similar.
I just listened to the Space Cats Peace Turtles podcast with Dane (lead designer) that talked about the expansion and revealed one of the new races for the first time. He said there's a bunch of Agenda cards (the politics cards) that you just straight up remove from the deck with the new expansion because they were badly implemented in the first place. Specifically the Elect Planet cards, which always were kind of throw away Agendas. A lot of their effects have been repurposed for the exploration cards. You don't usually see stuff just removed because it didn't work. I like it.
As an addendum answer to Sag's question, there is an Action card in the base game called Confusing Legal Text that is frequently played wrong by newer players because the wording is confusing (not deliberately), and it has been a running joke on the podcast. They revealed a new Action card called Confounding Legal Text with basically does the opposite of the original card. One of the hosts said he felt like this was a troll aimed specifically at them, and Dane said, "You'd be 80% to 99% correct in that assumption." This episode was recorded weeks ago, so the hosts have been privy to the expansion info for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some input (playtest or otherwise) in the development.
The main problem is still the actual stuff you are voting on. A lot of agendas are forgettable and people just don't care about the outcome. Maybe you can't have every single vote be a huge, game changing issue? Must be hard to balance between boring and too swingy.
The codex seems to have some big changes---sort of a brave move to admit there are problems in the game and here are some hotfixes if you want them.
I listened to the SCPT podcast you mentioned. It was a fun interview. One of the things that really jumped out to me was a connect to another game I've been wanting to play for awhile. So they're talking to the designer and he basically says that he wanted to give people more things to trade and negotiate over with the expansion---powers, relics, etc other stuff that you can sell, buy, and trade in deals.
It super triggered my memory of the interview with the guy who designed Sidereal Confluence. Sidereal Confluence as originally constituted was a full bodied space 4x like TI:4, with war, a map, units, etc. But the designer kept distilling and distilling the game down to get it shorter and more playable and at one point decided that the most interesting part of the whole thing was the trades, sales and deals in the game so he got rid of the map and armed conflict entirely! Looking at high level TI:4 play, you can totally see this. The most consequential thing is the metadealing, since most people understand the strengths and weaknesses of the factions, what they can do, what the most efficient responses to everything are. This totally connected those two games in a way that I hadn't before, because I found the Sidereal designer's road to that game kind of idiosyncratic until I learned more about TI:4.
Learn To PlayGary Sax wrote: I'll read the rules so I'm at least familiar this week (I think they're online)
Rules Reference
Since they have them scripted in the module, I figured we'd use the pre-made learn to play maps. I set up a save file for 3 players, but if we are lucky enough to get 4, it's easy enough to do on the fly.