Twilight Imperium has a lot of intricacy, just learning the rules can take time but actually learning the subtle long term impact of the very wide range of potential strategies, racial benefits, technologies, strategy cards, political cards, different resources and positions, just to name a few things, takes many… many plays.

There are however some established, classic strategic and tactical concepts that can always be deployed and while I’m not going to get too deep with the specifics, I have constructed a short list lof some of the top tips & tricks.

Mecatol Rex For The Win

The importance of controlling and denying control of Mecatol Rex, the central planet of the game cannot be overstated.  While most players will prioritize “production” and “military” instinctively, the truth is that in TI3, all players will ultimately build up military forces that will be fairly evenly matched.  More than that, war is a poor path to victory and even when facing a much smaller force, you will be sacrificing resources to go to war, weakening your position whether you win or lose the war.  This is mainly because TI3 is in the scope of things, is actually a pretty short game in terms of rounds.  Most games with experienced players will end somewhere between round 6-8.

Hence production is really about creating a line of deterrents, its like investing in the future mutual destruction of anyone who decides to go to war with you, but usually that investment isn’t going to be turned into Victory Points through an act of war.

The true defining and usually deciding factor of a TI3 victory will be the player who diversifies the best.  You need to have technology, resources, influence, command token advantage, fleet supply advantage, military strength and political/diplomatic control.

To that end Mecatol Rex is an amazing contributor.  Its a single planet that provides 7 resources (1 production and a whopping 6 Influence).  More than that though a wide range of secret objectives are only possible to accomplish through the control of Mecatol Rex, not to mention that its a platform of control as you can project your force from the center of the galaxy at any player.  Of course having 6 influence each round is amazing as it gives you political control during voting, its a core resource in several public objectives and its used in the secondaries of several strategy cards.  There are a lot of benefits to be had just by controlling the planet.

More importantly however is that simply by controlling it, you are likely denying several players the opportunity to complete their secret objectives (2 points) which is key since in the vast majority of games, a player that completes his secret objective will win the game.

Mecatol Rex as a result is a key, strategic position and a worthy investment in most games for you.  In particular controlling it early can create a stacking effect of benefits, the longer you control the better position you will be in.

Controlling Mecatol Rex is however not about space combat, its about ground combat and as such its all about getting ground forces on the planet.  Its unlikely that should another player or more typically players decide to take it from you, that you will be able to stop them.   Its a central planet, everyone will be able to get to it.  Invading someone on Mecatol Rex with ground forces however is a considerably more difficult task thanks to the logistics of moving troops, in particular if a defending player has really built up his ground defenses.  Hence taking control of Mectol Rex and keeping it in your grasp is key, even if you only control the planet.

Command Token Management & Stalling

All the resources, military and planning in the world will fail if you do a poor job of managing your most vital resource in the game, Command Tokens.  Without question the most common thing you will hear at the end of a TI3 game is about how someone would have one if they had just one more Command Token.  It cannot be overstated how critical action economy is in TI3, every move you make will cost you command tokens, you must conserve them, spend them wisely and do everything in your power to create a reserve.  If you find yourself playing a game of TI3 two command tokens at a time that you earn in the status phase, or praying that someone will kick of the strategy card that earns you additional tokens you are not only going to lose, you are going to lose horribly.

There are a number of really important conservation methods when it comes to command tokens but the topic gets fairly complex.  I think the simplest and most direct advise I can give is to simply ask yourself “Why am I taking this action”?

Simply put, you want to make sure every time you put down a command token that its with a very specific purpose in mind that garners a clear benefit, preferably one that will lead to a victory point.  You want to avoid dropping tokens just to “stall”.  Aka you don’t want to pass, but you have no worthy actions to take.  Often, in particular in early parts of the round it may be more prudent to pass.  More commonly however you are going to want to stall.

Knowing that at some point (likely all the time) you will be in that situation, you really want to find and hold on to anything that would allow you to stall.  Whether its a racial ability, an action card, a strategy card or something else.  You really want to have at least a couple of ways you can stall your turn each and every round of the game, barring perhaps the first round as this is largely for optimizing expansion.

You might at this point realize that some races are better equipped to do this then others, some even have an outright “pass” ability like the Yssaril Tribes.  Well, this is exactly why the tribes are often referred to as “the best” race in TI3.  The ability to stall, is very powerful and comes in handy throughout the game and it’s squarely because of this ability to conserve command tokens.  You will need to stall often with every race, but command token conservation is all about not stalling by spending command tokens.

Perhaps the best method of conserving command tokens is to simply build up a big reserve, so that you can spare command tokens to stall with. Some races benefit from this in one way or the other,  like Federation of Sol for example gets a direct benefit for simply spending a command token (get 2 free ground forces) while other races have absolutely no default way to do this, building a reserve is more important for these races.  In some cases it’s absolutely vital and a first priority.

Projecting Mutual Destruction

I have already mentioned several times in previous articles that TI3 is not a war game, but do not be fooled into thinking that means that there will not be war, nor that you can skimp on the projection of your military force.  In fact, this is not only a priority but constant.  You must always be building up a threatening, versatile force, ready to strike and bleed your enemies.

That said, the purpose of this build up is not a prelude to invasion or as a part of an ultimate plan to win a great war, its actually to project a military that is strong enough that anyone who attacks you would be assuring your mutual destruction.  It should be clear that to attack you, is to wage a war in which there will be two clear losers.  Its kind of like two world powers building up nuclear weapons, if the war ever does happen, its over for the both of you.

The reason is simple, you are here to earn victory points and carve a piece of the galaxy that offers enough resources that getting more from the control of other players in not necessary.  The galaxy however is far too small for everyone to get their fair share and as such, its inevitable that some players will have no choice but to fight for their claim.  You want to make sure that you make a poor target and that someone else appears to be a much better one.

Creating a proper military defense is not just about “more units”, its about creating nets of impossible odds and”stupid moves” that must be made to invade you.  You want to make it costly and that means DPS in a net protecting your key assets, lots of throw away fighters to use as cannon fodder and plenty of shooty units, preferably upgraded with technology.  Don’t skimp on ground forces either, you want to make sure that even if someone manages to take control of space, they are still not going to get your planets.  Finally you want to make sure that you can always counter-strike, so position your units in such a way as to ensure that if any spot is attacked, you have the means to make an immediate counter attack resulting in your opponent losing his units and gaining nothing for it.

Is this easy to do?  No its hard, it takes practice and there are insurmountable variables that can effect the decisions that must go into this.  This can only be learned through experience, but the important lesson you should take away here is that, the goal is always a threatening, costly defense that can only be overcome through a stupidly expensive engagement.  The goal here is to discourage attacks in the first place.

A Weak Mans War

One final piece of advice is regarding the relative starting strength and dynamic starting positions in the game.  TI3 is not a fair game, in each game there will always be players who have a clearly better and clearly worse start.  You might think that starting of in a position of strength is good, but its actually not.  Weakness leads to alliances and cooperation, strength leads to hostility and ultimately war.  Being in a weak position means you have just cause to agitate the fragile peace in the galaxy.  Out of a weak position you want to trigger wars, but you also want to make sure that your participation is just a gesture.

Play the wounded dog, in fact the longer you can maintain the illusion of being out of contention for the game the better (real or imagined).  Always remember that wars are not won on the battlefield, they are won through diplomacy, politics and manipulation with the your enemies enemy.  There is no better method to ensure victory than to draw in two players into a conflict between them with the illusion that you are taking sides.  When playing from a weak position your goal is to always create conflict between players.  Point out the possible moves, the possible threats to each other, theorize about how people will act, what actions they might take and never be afraid to make some shit up.  Put doubt in the minds of everyone and stir chaos, distract the shit out of them and push them to make mistakes.

Weak positions typically mean smaller military and fewer opportunities, as such you must create your own options, but often as it so happens it can be impossible to recover from a weak position.  Its in these cases you really learn the most about how TI3 is really played.  Its a mind game, a game of guesstimating about what people will, might or can do.  When you aren’t a threat, no one can accuse you and say “hey your trying to distract us so you can sneak in the win”, often identifying a weak position of a player is not hard to do.  Hence your weakness becomes your legitimacy, there is a sense of “he has no reason to lie” in the atmosphere that surrounds a player in a weak position.  Leverage the shit out of that, force everyone to play their hand in the open by being observant and vocal.

Its hard to play from a weak position, but it might surprise you to know that of all the victories I have ever had, starting from a weak position accounts for about 70% of my wins.  The truth is that there are no weak positions in TI3, there are just perceptions of that.  Winning from a weak position is all about the spin and to win you must be the spinster.

How that was all helpful, see you guys next time.

In our next TI3 article we are going to be talking about some theorycrafting surrounding this amazing epic.  We are going to talk about the meta game, table action, some do’s and don’ts and a few strategy tips to get you started all built around the theory of the Revenge Factor.

The Revenge Factor

The revenge factor is a concept that applies to a lot of games but no place is the theory more prevalent than in Twilight Imperium thanks to its rich political environment where everything is connected in one way or the other.

First lets talk about the theory itself, what is the “Revenge Factor”.  It basically breaks down like this.  In Twilight Imperium, almost every action you take is going to negatively effect someone at the table in some way.  Its a very confrontational game.  In a game of TI3 every player always has a general status of either being in contention or out of contention for the win.  While this status can change over the course of the game, the later the game becomes the less likely someone that is out of contention for the win will make a comeback and be back in contention.  This is important to understand because the revenge factor effectively kicks in when a players status changes from in contention to out of contention, whether imagined or real.

Another property of the Revenge factor is understanding that in Twilight Imperium, barring very unusual circumstances, you can always sacrifice yourself to take someone with you.  Basically if you realize that you are not going to win, you are likely still in a position to target someone and make sure they don’t win either through a wide range of actions, from playing cards, the way you vote in political rounds, using special abilities or just outright attacks, self-destructive or otherwise.

The Revenge Factor thus is the act of realizing that you are out of contention, identifying the person who caused you to be out of contention and then actively pursuing him/her and ensuring, while you won’t win, neither will they, aka, getting your revenge.

Anyone who has ever played a confrontational game like TI3 knows what this is, perhaps they call it something else but that element of “getting even” is always a prevalent force.  In TI3 this is amplified by the fact that there are so many ways to negatively effect someone at the table.

The “Revenge Factor” is a very real thing and I find in almost every TI3 game I have ever lost, its been as a result of this table phenomenon.  In a lot of ways, its really not possible to win a game of TI3 entirely on your own in most circumstances, external events, alliances and political maneuvering in which you end up getting help, either willing or unwittingly is an absolute must to secure a win.  If someone is really gunning for you, willing to sacrifice their own potential victory,  victory for you is very unlikely.  Again, in most circumstances, their are obviously often exceptions but to really come to grips with this phenomenon you must both understand it, embrace it and vigilantly prepare for it.

There are many different ways to deal with the “Revenge Factor”.

First and foremost, be conservative in how you negatively impact people.  Simply lashing out randomly or negatively effecting someone just because you can, in particular if there is no benefit to you (no way to earn points for it yourself) is a sure fire way to become a target of someones revenge.  Avoid this.

A good way to do this is to always ask yourself a simple question.  How does this action help me.  If the answer is not “I will get a victory point as a result”, its usually not worth it, at least not during the early and mid game.  Things change a lot in late game where there might not be enough time to get revenge but we will talk about how to manage the end game very specifically in a later article.

The second way to avoid being the target of revenge is to anticipate and prepare for it.  Holding coveted cards like Sabotage, sitting on a Diplomacy Strategy card, creating neutral zones using military units, simply having a much larger military or even arranging a negative action through diplomatic talks with the player so he knows “ok he is going to do this so he can get a point, in trade for X or Y”.  All these things and much more can be done to anticipate or curve someone lashing out.  Understanding what a player could potentially do in response and being ready for it is important but be weary of screwing with a player who has a hand full of action cards, is within striking distance of a system you need, has more command tokens than you or is in position to help one of your other enemies at the table.  Action cards in particular can create a lot of chaos, you never want to be the target of someones action card wrath.  They can do a lot of damage and its a common strategy to stack your hand for just this purpose.

Finally and perhaps most importantly hold out negative actions for the end game.  A typical game of TI3 doesn’t end with a player getting that last and final point in the final round of the game.  It more often happens that a player scores 2, 3 or even 4 points in a single round.  Often referred to as “making  your play”, essentially the act of setting up a way to score multiple points in a single round so that players don’t have time to respond and are caught of guard.  If your sitting on 8 or 9 points in the final round, odds are you are about to play a round in which every person at the table is going to be trying to stop you, but if your sitting on 6 points people will assume there is plenty of time to deal with you.  Hence sitting on those big Fuck You actions until the right moment and then unloading to score big in a single round is the most effective way to ensure no one ever gets a chance to get revenge on you.

Now that is not to say you should not make plays against people throughout the game, but remember the first part of this theory.  Players aren’t going to suicide it on you just because you play a Local Unrest on them in round one because they will still feel in contention for the win and won’t want to risk too much, but if you do something that really knocks them on their ass and they perceive that they are going to lose the game because of it, in particularly early or mid game, its a good chance you will have brought the wrath upon yourself and you will be dealing with a player taping your resources for the rest of the game on a suicide mission to take you with them,  making it difficult if not impossible to win.

That is in a nutshell the revenge factor, know it, learn to love it and of course always be prepared to institute your own revenge should someone foolishly go after you.  Stack those action cards, arrange your military on the borders of your enemies and always be ready to pay them back 10 fold for their foolishness.  You really want to set this precedence at the table.  Everyone should know that, to screw with you is to unleash the demon, make them pay for coming after you and let them know that if they take you out of contention, your going to take them with you.

That’s it for today, hope you enjoyed the article and good luck!