Eclipse - One of the Few Worth Risking Blindness For

SuperflyTNT wrote:

RobertB wrote: Some of the Rise of the Ancients Rare Technologies (I think that's their term for it) fixes Eclipse's overpowered missiles problem, somewhat. The expansion is definitely cool, in that you can mix and match all of the new features.

I think the fix is to simply remove missiles from the box. Ancients tends to de-value combat quite a bit, making it more like a multiplayer solitarie game.

Funny enough, i think RotA is a direct high five to the euro-lovers who complained it wasn't Euro enough

I don't think RotA necessarily makes it more solitaire-like. You have the black hole things that warp you to other sectors, letting you get in behind people and mess them up. You also have new techs like the Anti-Matter splitter which let you inflict more destruction. Stuff like the carrier ability that lets you carry fighters aboard cruisers/dreadnaughts incites more fighting as well.

Lastly, the Rho Indhi Syndicate is probably the most vicious race in the game and best suited to rushing people early.

I just have to pop in to say that Asmodee didn't have any input regarding Eclipse. Eclipse is the love-child of Touko Tahkokallio and originally published by Lautapelit.fi. Asmodee is just the game's american publisher.

I won't argue that the game's interface is rock solid.

But add me to the group that dislikes this game.

For reasons, you'd have to dig out the discussions from the archives. The worst was that the last two turns seemed to take forever.

Another Eclipse fan here.

There are, however, a few issues that stop it being an all time great for me. The biggest is that once everyone understands how to build the best ship designs, the game effectively becomes a race to grab the necessary technologies before anyone else does.

I also find it a colossal pain to teach. I'm not sure why this is. A lot of moderately complex games (TI3 is a good example) have a kind of "click" moment where things fall together and you can start predicting how the game is going to run. Eclipse isn't like that. It's not enormously complex, but it does seem to be enormously unintuitive.

I love Eclipse as well, but I don't think it's comparable to TI:3 not because it's a worse game but because it just isn't the same game. It seems like it because at first glance they appear to be doing the same thing... but how they get there is so different I don't feel like they scratch each others backs at all. I find it a little depressing that everyone wants to compare them pretty much any time it comes up. I think it hinders how we think about Eclipse because too often people don't talk about the game itself.. but rather how it lives up to TI:3, either by 'killing' it or by not living up to it's precedent. Both of those approaches do the game and it's designer a disservice. In fact I kind of feel this way about most games. I prefer they be judged on their own merits without having to resort to the familiar shorthand or 'X game in 20 minutes". I used do it all the time but these days I prefer to see someone attempt to just explain it and let me make comparisons in my head if I so desire.

When I teach guitar I will show kids major and minor chords pretty early on. At that point they usually have no pre-conceived idea of what a chord should be so I resist telling them cliche's like "major chords are happy and minor chords are sad." because I don't want them to limit how they think musically and would prefer to to let them associate these things in a way that's appropriate for them.

Eclipse is great, but it's not TI:3, and the reverse could be said as well.

Eclipse is a game I wish I liked more than I do. A lot about it is great, but there are also some stupid things I can't get past. You can throw a scrub ship into a battle knowing it will get destroyed right away and still may pull a VP tile more valuable than someone who really invested in the battle. The endgame, where people are just buying stupid techs they don't care about for VPs is athematic and boring. There's just a lot of gamey bullshit around it. I'm not interested in TI3 but I'd love a smaller, shorter game and really hoped Eclipse would do it for me, but it doesn't.

Legomancer wrote: Eclipse is a game I wish I liked more than I do. A lot about it is great, but there are also some stupid things I can't get past. You can throw a scrub ship into a battle knowing it will get destroyed right away and still may pull a VP tile more valuable than someone who really invested in the battle. The endgame, where people are just buying stupid techs they don't care about for VPs is athematic and boring. There's just a lot of gamey bullshit around it. I'm not interested in TI3 but I'd love a smaller, shorter game and really hoped Eclipse would do it for me, but it doesn't.

I've developed a theory about this VP thing: Sometimes, actionable intelligence is more vauable than a weapon and its wielder. So, you lose X ship and crew, but before they died, they gave you valuable intel on enemy troop strength, weapons loadout, etc. YES, I know it's open information, but this is the best I can come up with to make it make sense.

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Legomancer wrote: Eclipse is a game I wish I liked more than I do. A lot about it is great, but there are also some stupid things I can't get past. You can throw a scrub ship into a battle knowing it will get destroyed right away and still may pull a VP tile more valuable than someone who really invested in the battle. The endgame, where people are just buying stupid techs they don't care about for VPs is athematic and boring. There's just a lot of gamey bullshit around it. I'm not interested in TI3 but I'd love a smaller, shorter game and really hoped Eclipse would do it for me, but it doesn't.

I've developed a theory about this VP thing: Sometimes, actionable intelligence is more vauable than a weapon and its wielder. So, you lose X ship and crew, but before they died, they gave you valuable intel on enemy troop strength, weapons loadout, etc. YES, I know it's open information, but this is the best I can come up with to make it make sense.

You know, it doesn't have to make sense. Why can't a game reward you for doing crazy awesome shit like making a suicide run into an enemy fleet and exploding like hot confetti in the dark cold of space?

Says the guy who changed shivving inmates into robot prisoners to appease the masses of pussies.... LMAO

SuperflyTNT wrote: Says the guy who changed shivving inmates into robot prisoners to appease the masses of pussies.... LMAO

Hey it's not published yet, so who knows. I'm way slacking on this.

JonJacob wrote: I love Eclipse as well, but I don't think it's comparable to TI:3 not because it's a worse game but because it just isn't the same game. It seems like it because at first glance they appear to be doing the same thing... but how they get there is so different I don't feel like they scratch each others backs at all. I find it a little depressing that everyone wants to compare them pretty much any time it comes up. I think it hinders how we think about Eclipse because too often people don't talk about the game itself.. but rather how it lives up to TI:3, either by 'killing' it or by not living up to it's precedent. Both of those approaches do the game and it's designer a disservice. In fact I kind of feel this way about most games. I prefer they be judged on their own merits without having to resort to the familiar shorthand or 'X game in 20 minutes". I used do it all the time but these days I prefer to see someone attempt to just explain it and let me make comparisons in my head if I so desire.

When I teach guitar I will show kids major and minor chords pretty early on. At that point they usually have no pre-conceived idea of what a chord should be so I resist telling them cliche's like "major chords are happy and minor chords are sad." because I don't want them to limit how they think musically and would prefer to to let them associate these things in a way that's appropriate for them.

Eclipse is great, but it's not TI:3, and the reverse could be said as well.

I'd say TI3 and Eclipse are both 4X games, where as TI:3 is a more a DoaM (A super trumped up Axis and Allies if you will) and Eclipse is a Civilization game (A super streamlined advanced civ.)

Legomancer wrote: Eclipse is a game I wish I liked more than I do. A lot about it is great, but there are also some stupid things I can't get past. You can throw a scrub ship into a battle knowing it will get destroyed right away and still may pull a VP tile more valuable than someone who really invested in the battle. The endgame, where people are just buying stupid techs they don't care about for VPs is athematic and boring. There's just a lot of gamey bullshit around it. I'm not interested in TI3 but I'd love a smaller, shorter game and really hoped Eclipse would do it for me, but it doesn't.

I mean... if you look at it politically it makes thematic sense. Your one guy dying is your Doolittle Bombers, winning you potential PR and propaganda in the face of overwhelming odds, and everyone buying up tech at the end is your space race/super capitalist/military industrialist society where building and buying more things is more important than actually fighting wars as all societies decide they have too much to lose monetarily.

Grand abstractions to be sure, but if every turn in Eclipse is a decade or a century by the end I'd want to be winning by outspending my opponents rather than fighting them too.

Does everyone see a swell of tech buying at the end of the game? I usually see a couple of players trying to fill out their tech rows for VPs but it's not particularly noticeable or widespread.

We seem to be of the opinion that using all of your actions to invade other players (preferably with Neutron Bombs) as much more beneficial. If you can destroy a hex even with a single Interceptor Bomber and then take it, that's a much larger swing than the 1VP another tech will get you.

I love Eclipse, but Legomancer is right - Turn 9 can have some totally bullshit moves because there is no Turn 10. IMO, if I have a ship that isn't fighting at the end of the game, then I'm leaving points on the board. Clash of Cultures has the same problem unless you use the alternate ending card.

charlest wrote: Does everyone see a swell of tech buying at the end of the game? I usually see a couple of players trying to fill out their tech rows for VPs but it's not particularly noticeable or widespread.

We seem to be of the opinion that using all of your actions to invade other players (preferably with Neutron Bombs) as much more beneficial. If you can destroy a hex even with a single Interceptor Bomber and then take it, that's a much larger swing than the 1VP another tech will get you.

Not often. Usually, the last turn is spent delivering the culmination of the previous 2 turns' plots. Rarely is it "buy lots of tech for 2 VP" when you can just start, and lose, 2 fights for 2 VP tokens that might be more valuable than the opponent gets. Doubly so if it's 2 different enemies, so you're not basically trading points with one.

My usual end-game is spending the last 3 turns building ships to defend my borders, and then building enough on top of that to invade 2 additional territorires. Sometimes that means exploring 2 more territories, but mostly, it's going after the galactic core or a couple of very valuable places, like an inner-sphere planet someone was dumb enough to Monolithify. Dumb ass deserves to have me take it.

RobertB wrote: I love Eclipse, but Legomancer is right - Turn 9 can have some totally bullshit moves because there is no Turn 10. IMO, if I have a ship that isn't fighting at the end of the game, then I'm leaving points on the board. Clash of Cultures has the same problem unless you use the alternate ending card.

Yep, variable end is required now in my house for CoC, but once you implement it it basically solves 95% of the problem, because if you really max VP at the end of the turn and you don't hit the roll, you essentially the lose the game because you're hanging in the wind.