Imperium: Classics and Legends

I've only played once with three and it went fine, there is enough going on that it's sometimes welcome to have a bit more time to think before your next turn. Tuning the game for higher player counts just involves adding a small number of extra cards to the main, unrest and glory decks, the factions still run the same.

Regarding AP, I can certainly see someone hitting the wall with this. It isn't particularly heavy but I would describe it as opaque with a cornucopia of choices that require travelling a learning curve to be able to quickly assess. There are plenty of moments where it feels crucial to do the right thing without it being particularly clear what that should be. Most of my games have been 90-120 mins so it isn't a breezy card game by any means and I imagine a slow player could totally create a grind for the others with four at the table.

Will it work for your group? I honestly don't know, this isn't like the games you normally chat about on here but I personally think Imperium is great and I'll stand by my general recommendation on it. For twenty quid it's not like you'll lose much if it flops and you have to shift it on the secondary market, but you know your group better than I do!

The AP person could be rough because during mid to late game Imperium is asking you to make 10 part combination turns while everyone else is sitting thinking about their upcoming turn. Could create downtime.

Play with 3, don’t invite AP guy. Problem solved.

Msample wrote: Play with 3, don’t invite AP guy. Problem solved.

Not an option - not my hosting group and we don't 'not invite' in either of the groups.
Everyone plays differently (I moan a lot when I get bad luck or play badly) so we just put up with, and mock , each other in the euro group - I actually don't like many of the games they play, and don't even show up for some, but go along for the social time. And as for my AT group we just give each other shit non-stop.
So the game will rise or fall on its gameplay ... hopefully .

I watched an hour play-thru tutorial (Jongetsgames) and the gameplay looks pretty straightforward for multiplayer, I see that an AP player may cause some extra downtime but to be fair to my euro group they're a lot better at heavier euros than me (they play Through the Ages a lot while I keep away from it) and this looks like it will be quite easy for them ... so outlay is one step closer.

That’s quite a good comparison, because TtA also has that shifting card market where you don’t need to take cards but kind of have to take something in order to keep progressing, and there is that opacity of which card is going to benefit you several turns later or is too dangerous to leave open for an opponent.

I think I've decided that this game is quite good. And, maybe more surprisingly, super thematic from a civ perspective and reasonably interactive. You have to pay pretty close attention to what other people are drafting if you want to win, especially in combination with their faction. And some of the factions are pretty bare knuckles in terms of completely altering your decisions about keeping resources around or just hanging territories on your board turn to turn.

It took me a long time to come around to this being fairly different than Dominion or whatever, which is also a good game but not to my taste. I think this game earns its length.

I have since my last post sold both of mine (weren't getting played) and then bought Classic again because it is a different game that I thought I should have in my collection.

Been playing this a lot against the bots using Classics while I wait for my copy of Horizons and Legends to ship hoepfully this week.

The bots are like, the arete of solo play opponents. They aren't complicated at all to run, so running them in person is easy and doesn't take a lot of cycles. They're individually made for the civs you're playing and they push in a direction that is a fake facscimile of the most common approach to that civ. They're also hard, even though there's significant variance in the their difficulty. I finally vanquished the Greek bot, I'd been comfortably beating most of the bots on lvl 3, but this one was keeping me at arms length and driving me crazy.

I've never been good at these styles of games but I will say the other thing the bot does that's great is teach you to play these games better. The Greek bot is sort of begging you to rush them down to end the game early, which has always been a big barrier for me in these games (successfully thin decking while scoring a sufficient amount). The Greek bot makes it difficult because it requires you to have your eye on the prize while they loot the share deck and the bot itself is programmed to steal which from you and return your cards to your hand and really disrupt you. I feel like I'm getting better which is great.