Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition - Shut Up & Sit Down Review

okay let's do this when the name twilight imperium is mentioned six lumpen syllables as if your tongue was trying to cross a ball pit people who haven't played it always say the same thing oh isn't that that huge game that takes like eight hours and the answer is yes this game is more expensive than other board games we recommend and it does demand acres of tabletop making an ordinary reference pair look like just one of its misshapen planetoids and it can take eight hours or more if you play with five or six people who enjoy each other's company but this scale has come to define twilight imperium eclipsing even the fact that it has a lion a space-faring lion on the box and i don't think that's entirely fair because you see twilight imperium isn't just huge being huge doesn't get you four beautiful additions across 20 well for sporadically beautiful additions across 20 years being huge doesn't save a company as we described in our twilight imperium documentary this game isn't just huge it's really huge and really good so i'm going to talk about the differences between third and the new fourth edition later in this review i'm going to start though by talking about why for as long as shut up sit down has existed we have had a lion sized crush on this game the story of ti is that the emperor is dead hooray and you play one of 14 different accidentally colorful alien peoples each with their own rules maybe you're a coalition of pirates maybe you're a mercantile lion maybe you're just a really upset plant each player gets their own plastic bag of ships begging to be built a weird collection of cardboard triangles and this embarrassingly exciting sliding rules reference in the center of the table lies a galaxy and in the centre of the galaxy lies the planet mechatol rex once the home of the galactic council and long since bombed until it resembles a really really really really really really really big car park at its heart twilight imperium borrows a lot from traditional pc strategy games on your turn you send ships to claim planets for your empire and each planet provides resources to build more ships so the beginning of everyone's game of ti starts with their empires snatching up planetoids like greedy toddlers stuffing sweets into their slimy more basically imagine star wars if everyone was the evil empire right up until you develop borders with your neighbors after playing a single turn of toilet imperium you might make the assumption that now you get it this game is about opulence as you thumb through your own personal deck of technology deck of technology to discover you're going to be looking at the stats of your flagship a ship unique to your race that's going to exacerbate your playstyle that would be fun to get on the board every planet you conquer you take that planet's card from the deck so you can read a description of the world that's now yours it's all ridiculously opulent like having a double scotch in the bath but once you start getting borders then the real game will emerge and it's even better now this is where we deviate from strategic video games because the point of ti isn't to slather the map in your color or to get your friends in an economic chokehold until they tap out from lack of fun to the brain instead the winner is just the first person to get to 10 victory points or 14 which i've not tried but i really want to but how you get victory points is only revealed slowly throughout the game one condition after another and these are sometimes warlike you might have an objective that's like controlled eight planets or a secret objective that's punched the player who's winning in the nose but lots of them aren't lots of them are like build the unfathomably expensive monument have this cybernetic technology which means to win in ti you want to stay rich powerful and flexible which means aggression can be good but fighting is bad which means a table of competitive players in ti don't resemble this so much as they resemble this the skeksis from jim henson's excellent the dark crystal my goodness have you seen the dark crystal if you haven't watch it today and then leave a comment on shut up and sit down.com if you haven't seen the diamond crystal let me lay it out for you competitive players in ti are going to be amoral hyper violent and cowardly nobody wants to fight which means when you have a border you talk so now we've arrived at what i consider the game and why twilight imperium means so much to me i'm going to give you a couple of examples so i was playing twilight imperium fourth edition recently and i grabbed mkhitaryacs and sat on it like a mother hen because that actually gives you a victory point every turn there were two other bigger hens huge fleets that were ready to swipe me off with their metaphorical massive thighs but both of these players knew that when they invaded and took my territory they'd be damaged and weakened which means the other player could then move in and destroy them and be the sole surviving hen which meant that this relatively straightforward tactical puzzle became a very complicated diplomatic puzzle similarly another example i want to give you is that one of the best plays you can make in ti is arranging with your neighbor because you're all sat in a circle right to de-escalate your borders and having a formal alliance and trading ceasefire cards that's quite good but it makes the rest of the galaxy real nervous and it's just likely to create alliances around the table elsewhere but if two players can do it secretly quietly through sort of whispered conversations maybe a cheeky text message and then they still trust one another to do that and they slip their ships away from one another without anyone else noticing that's real good that's fun and that is so twilight imperium so now at last we have all the pieces that assemble to make twilight imperium the legendary game it is it is a war game where war is real bad it's a war game where one player moving just one ship just one system over will result in a conversation so petty that the rest of the table of players will be smirking so what can the proud people of the khan do for you troubles me to say that this morning it became knowledge of my people that a hakan destroyer approached our territory invalidating the previous handshake agreement we had that you weren't going to be dicks mate two mates mate it's one ship it's just one ship and it's just resting there for a minute yeah just sitting there we're gonna go somewhere else soon we're gonna go either side of the universe completely different place i don't want it near us this i'll move it in a bit but i don't really see why it's such a big deal for just having one chip well i mean it's one what do you want right so it was just one planet i just needed that one planet but i'm gonna stop now i'm all done and we can go back to being space friends right space friends yeah our retaliation our fleets are going to block out the sun of your home oh you're like this we're about to play our national anthem this is also why we don't recommend twilight imperium as a straightforward dudes on a map war game because it's so hard to get to the table compared to the faster cheaper but still excellent game of eclipse which is going to be enjoying a second edition in 2018. no you buy twilight imperium for a unique hybrid colorful experience that is so much more than the sum of its parts right it's a strategic game which is really good involving decks and cards and tokens and ships and conquest but one that is so difficult and complicated because you have to deal constantly with the humans at the table so you're looking up at your friends and you're smiling and you're talking and you're smiling because this game has so much more to it than other negotiation games you might have played like the game of thrones board game or diplomacy because in those games everyone has to be an aggressive salesman because only one player can win richard garfield has a valid complaint that those games are kind of all the same game where you obscure how well you're doing you convince players it's in their best interest we should work together and then you backstab them eventually and it's kind of inevitable and everyone except the winner is sour about it twilight imperium as a negotiation game as a game of just playing and interacting with other people around the table which you are doing so much for hours and hours and hours it doesn't do that because it offers all the pieces necessary to be not a galactic competition but a galactic community let's start with the fact that once a player has arrived on mkhitaryan all the debris out of the conference room the galactic council will meet every turn meaning all players will come together after all the fighting and petty negotiation to vote on new laws drawn from a massive twilight imperium-sized deck you have no idea what's going to come up maybe you'll be meeting to designate the holy place picking a planet in the galaxy that then becomes worth the victory point maybe you're uh voting on whether to suppress an anti-intellectual revolution which would make it harder for everyone to research tech which is pretty good if you've already got more tech than everyone else maybe you're voting to designate one faction around the table to have the minister of peace which is going to make it harder for everyone else to attack them now this is so good for several reasons that are all so ti first off does it sound like fun my goodness it is fun but second off it is a social game with players looking up saying things laughing lying it's entertaining if you like just hanging out with people but third off it is still deeply tactical like everything else in ti because to vote you actually have to spend planets yes those planets that you use to build ships are instead spent in vote form which makes this phase very complicated and it forces players to ask what really the value of that new rule is for them which is very difficult but maybe best of all within this galactic senate phase it is the opportunity for players to balance this wild game importantly not balance the game but balance the game as they perceive it which is even better if you think a player is being too aggressive difficult then hey this is a great time to handicap them if you think one player is losing or you know maybe not a threat it's a phase which benefits them which smooths out the entire experience of the game there's also commodities every turn players replenish their commodities which are useless great tokens stuff their faction just makes like hair balls or pollen or ash but by handing these tokens to a player you share a border with they flip and become a kind of super currency and that feels unbelievably nice it feels pleasant it feels like you've achieved something and then there's promissory notes everyone gets four plus a faction specific one stuff like trade agreement ceasefire and support for the throne that gives that player a victory point all of which can be negotiated traded talked so that players aren't stuck just making pathetic hand check agreements if they want to be friends no they really can support one another in really creative inventive ways as ways as varied as your friends are imaginative and the best thing about these in a decision that makes me want to hug everyone involved fantasy flight you can trade them away two players exchanging a ceasefire and shaking hands that's a sweet moment everyone around the table can enjoy that but two players trading ceasefires and then one of them turning around and going if you sell that to him i'll kill you and everyone bursts out laughing that is twilight imperium i'm going off my script a little bit now because i'm wondering if i was wrong maybe scale does define twilight imperium but not in the sense that it's an eight-hour game not in the sense that it's huge but in the sense that contained within this galaxy is simply the freedom to play how you want uh on the back of every character sheet same as in third edition there's a backstory for your race but in fourth edition it's actually quite entertaining and well written and combined with all your race's rules you can role play if you want you can be an aggressive wargamer or you can be an upstanding member of this galactic community you can you don't have to as i say be the aggressive salesman in traditional negotiation games you can work towards really forging a lovely alliance with your neighbor or you can decide you've got a real grudge with this neighbor and throw the victory just make sure they don't win and on the subject of expressing yourself and freedom we should talk briefly about the strategy cards which are honestly a huge part of twilight's imperium you see there are eight of them and every round begins with a player picking one um which means that actually it smooths the game out you don't have to after you take your turn fall asleep because all these other players around the table have to take ponderous turns occasionally people are going to be triggering the technology phase and doing their super technology power that they drafted because other players can spend tokens from their strategy pool which is the side of the game i'm not talking about today because geez i have to stop somewhere to get a nice secondary version of that power so like it's less plodding because a player takes turn than a player and then everyone takes a politics phase and then keeps going keeps going and everyone takes a trade phase keeps you engaged it keeps the game also really dynamic because uh whatever turn you were going to take suddenly the board can change a little bit it's exciting but these strategy cards are another example of twilight imperium saying how do you want to play it is a huge choice if you really love the idea of getting all the technology until your race is just better better through science that sounds a bit wrong um then you can do that um it's just your choice if you want to do trading just because you love it you can do that when was the last time a board game said what do you want to do what do you sell what do you find fun as opposed to what is the most efficient path through this labyrinth of rules to quote richard garfield again he once said that the nice thing about randomness in a game is that it creates unusual board states players can look at the the in this case the galaxy and go oh that's interesting i've not seen this before in ti it's not random you can sink your teeth into it and know that the best player will probably win but still you get really interesting board states purely from players being human never mind these aliens you know um when two players are having a deadly grudge match because they just hate each other from the last game that becomes a tactical consideration that everyone else can take advantage of and of course the other thing about this freedom maybe even better than this is when you sit down to play ti you have no idea what's going to happen between ti third and fourth i must have played this game 10 11 12 times every single game has been completely different including one game for all you hyper-competitive nerds out there who aren't sure about this whole freedom thing sounds a bit wiffly but fluffy to you well i have had the pleasure of playing ti with one player a game designer sorry a game uh a student of game design who sort of was silent for the first five rounds of ti said oh i like this which was a bit ominous and then got six victory points in one turn it is possible to get unbelievably good at this game to display incredible intelligence as well as incredible heart and if that doesn't sum up the game i don't know what does but this game is so big so grand so everything that board games can be i can't seem to make a point in this review without them needing to make the opposite point so if the design is so modern so clever so clean equally it does exhibit a fantastic bit of 80s design which is kind of i don't want to say been lost but been forgotten you see i haven't talked about how combat works in ti when two fleets finally clash which might actually be quite rare in a given game um so so many wargames dudes on a map games these days have combats that are sort of complicated that involve cards custom dice special rules until they fog up the whole experience so it's difficult for players to spectate it's difficult for people to even see who won quickly ti just has some dice yeah there are loads of ship types there's a lot to learn there's a lot of tactical considerations but ultimately when two fleets meet you just roll dice and then ships get blown up and you roll dice and ships get blown up and players can watch and it's suddenly this point at this point the game's intelligence just stops falls off a cliff and you're just rolling dice and it's great oh my goodness they did they were onto something in the 80s um players can from the other side of the table see drama they can see excitement they can see well partially it's good because it's so quick but also partially it's good because when i land my three ground forces on your planet which has one ground force in my invasion and then we both roll the dice and i get no hits and you get one suddenly everyone on the table goes oh and i go ah as this sure thing turns around and i lose a soldier and then we roll another round i'm running two dicey roll one and it happens again and you've eliminated this soldier these guys are heroes and then you roll the dice again a third time and if i win then everyone goes oh if they win everyone goes hey it's a moment it's a moment that brings everyone not just into that fight but onto that planet and then perhaps you'll actually look at that planet's card to find out where you're even fighting it'll be uh rich in exotic plants and animal life because now you're all curious you'll care about that planet that one planet in this enormous galaxy of peoples and happenings and stuff so should you buy it well let's refer to this handy chart reasons to buy it it looks great it's completely unique it's a great war game it's a fantastic engine for conversations and negotiations and enjoying your friends and you can play a virus who's not invited to the galactic assembly begets to bet on the outcomes of votes like he was going to a horse race reasons to not buy it it's stupid i mean if i remove my enthusiast tap for a second there's no arguing with the fact that this game is too big it's really quite good with three and then it only takes three to four hours but if you want to see everything it can be if you want to play it with a four or five or even six players which i've never done because it's just unfeasible five players already takes all day it requires a table that's three foot by six feet that said i just have to give it the shut up and sit down recommends seal because shut up and sit down was founded to show people everything board games can be and twilight imperium is almost literally everything board games can be if money is no object and you're salivating over it i think you should buy twilight imperium fourth edition but if money is a little tighter let's talk so here's a thing with the release of fourth edition stocks of third edition are having their prices cut the price is very massively by region but it looks like the new edition is about 105 pounds dollars whereas old third edition is just 60 pounds dollars so that raises a very important question which is what's different when i first saw fourth edition i was disappointed because they hadn't changed much then i went back and looked at my copy of third edition and it was a lot less pretty than i remembered it so in addition to the art being way nicer and the copywriting being way nicer um i was wrong to doubt fantasy flight that not much had changed in fourth edition because actually um this is the kind of addition that proves that fantasy flight are the best in the industry at the curation and evolution of design this entire game has changed slightly in just the best ways like every single deck has been rebalanced and made more interesting all of the technology the tech tree that you used to have to build along with everyone referencing the manual has become a simple system of icons whereby if you get a cybernetics upgrade that gives you a cybernetic icon that lets you research more advanced cybernetic cybernotics cybernetic technology um the strategy cards have been rebalanced everything is nicer smoother simpler more balanced but here's the thing if i didn't own fourth edition and someone called me up and said do you want to come and play my copy of twilight imperium third edition i would still say yes because while everything is better it doesn't change the fact that ti third edition is still awesome so i made a flowchart starts with this question are you hot for space lions do you go wild for laser combat in the galaxy if the answer is no just don't buy toilet imperium you buy several other great board games instead i'm gonna sneeze there's a space sneeze for you if the answer is yes i ask you how is your money if it's fine buy twilight imperium fourth edition if it's bad ask yourself this question will you realistically only play this game once a year if the answer is yes just buy 12 imperium third edition you're gonna have to spend about an hour cutting their miniatures out of sprues but you know what you've saved so much money you've saved 50 bucks however if you think you're gonna play often and my goodness you can it's balanced you could make a toilet imperium club call it the twimpers player every week if that's what you're gonna do and you don't have money i would ask your friends if they can kick in a few bucks if everyone kicks in five ten dollars you are well on your way to affording twilight imperium fourth edition and enjoying a very serious game of serious galactic politicking stop dancing around the issue why wasn't i invited my birthdays have always been intimate gatherings which is me and the other barons now if you want to [Music] [Music] i just wanted to know if you still wanted to talk about nuclear disarmament pretend we're not here and i heard someone was having a birthday [Music] oh [Music] you

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 1,118,318

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Shut Up Show, Board Game Review, Review, Shut Up, Sit Down, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition, TI4, epic, epic boardgame, long boardgame, huge, massive, Twilight Imperium 4, FFG, Fantasy Flight Games, SU&SD Recommends

Id: PLybps39ZwM

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/CeramicCow]

Only thing that daunts me about this game is teaching a group of friends

[u/MingyMcMingface]

Man, I really wish I had enough friends to play this game with.

[u/emerald_bat]

Love the Dark crystal reference and the Hacan national anthem.

I do have a quibble about rules. He seems to imply you don't renew planets both before and after the agenda phase. I don't believe there is a situation in the game where you would have to decide on resources versus votes, just voting on the first card versus waiting for the second card.

[u/KunfusedJarrodo]

I love how much he loves this game. It makes the video very fun to watch.

[u/PeteA84]

I really like this review. I know they aren't going to be completely objective with their love of TI, but they've always been honest about what's important to them and that other reviews are available.

Personally in our group we own TI:3. we've perhaps played it 4 times in 3 years and it's a fantastic game. Would I love to own TI:4? Absolutely.

Did Quinns remind me why I love it and why not buying TI:4 is the right decision? Yes he did.

[u/Aro2220]

Half my collection are games I'll never get to the table.

This game would be even worse than any other game in my collection to get to table.

But damnit if it's not in my shopping cart. Damnit...I want it.

[u/[deleted]]

Checks all the right boxes, and all the stuff about the player interaction being where the real game resides is spot on. It's awesome to see some love for my favorite board game of all time.

[u/Devotion80]

...seems a bit weird to criticize Diplomacy and (Board)Game of Thrones for being the same thing, when the latter IS Diplomacy but in Westeros.

Strength of Diplomacy is that you can explain it fully to a new player in five minutes (which doesn't mean adding depth in TI is a bad thing).

[u/MrBananaGrabber]

I really want to see a TI4 Let’s Play from them. Hell, SUSD should auction off playing in a game of TI4 with them at the next SHUX.