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Notes: -These rules have been tested using 6 of the ten races. There are still many things
to be modified but I believe they are good enough to represent a starting point. Please
message me regarding anything you might like or dislike, things you want to modify or
anything else that crosses your mind to make this document better, I’d appreciate any
help I can get making the game work for all of us who don’t have patient gaming friends.
-From time to time I will make italic markings on the text to explain why or how I came
to various conclusions. This will make the document longer to read so if you’re not
interested just skip those.
-Obviously I’m not taking credit for any idea listed here as there is none personal or at
least original, rather a mix of various mechanics I encountered in other games. I do want
to thank the designer Christian T. Petersen and FFG for this wonderful game and by no
means am I planning to spoil their work, rather I’m trying to adapt it to frustrated TI
players everywhere.
THE PLOT
The GOOD campaign: Your once united federation of planets fell to the might of a
ruthless conqueror and as soon as he took control of Mecatol Rex he exiled you to the
outer ring. Years pass and your little community expands, taking control of the system
and setting it’s eyes back on the Imperial throne. Now it’s the time to begin your quest
towards freeing the galaxy from the evil tyrant and reuniting it under your democratic
leadership…or something :P.
The BAD campaign: All the above reversed. You’re sick of pitiful democratic council
and it’s endless winnings so you gather an army and start taking system after system with
the goal of achieving enough fame to kick the president back to his proper place, the
outer ring and claim the throne of an evil empire that will last for eons to come. (Insert
evil laugh).
Regardless, the goal of the game remains the same: acquiring 10 VP before the other side
takes you out and you do that by completing your objectives.
SETUP
1. Randomize the Home Systems and choose one to represent your race or take any
one you like. Take the corresponding Race sheet, Control Markers, Trade Cards
and Command Counters.
2. Select a color for you and the corresponding Technology Deck and select another
color for the AI player.
3. The Action Cards Deck: because many cards refer to another human player it’s
very hard to make a list of all the cards to be removed. You can do 2 things: either
you shuffle the entire deck and discard/ redraw any card not usable in this solo
variant or remove those cards prior and then shuffle the deck. In the absence of a
detailed list option number 1 seems the most convenient one.
4. The Political Deck: I haven’t found a way to integrate this yet, due to the fact that
it’s very hard to negotiate with yourself ;). Secondly, there are many things to
keep your attention busy so adding those would complicate a bit the game. Since
there are another 6 races involved in the game and only 2 sides playing it (more
on this later) I guess it would be fairly easy to determine a sort of random voting
system. Add it if you have a larger attention span than mine :D. The downside of
not using the Political Deck is that influence points of the planets are hardly
used in this variant and of course much of the flavor is gone.
5. Take your planet cards face up and put the remaining planets in the play area.
6. Place the 8 Strategy Cards in the play area and the Bonus markers.
7. Create the objective deck. Use the standard rules but read the objectives first
before shuffling them. Some of the blue and red objectives refer to other human
opponents, so no point shuffling them. Place the Public objectives somewhere
near the scoring track and then PLACE THE FIRST 2 FACE UP. In the standard
game you get objectives displayed even if you do not select the ISC card yourself.
In this variant you MUST pick ISC to get the objectives and doing so has some
nasty consequences. Hence the need to start the game with a little head start.
8. Place the Victory Point Track and 2 markers. A control marker for you to indicate
the points you have and a marker for the AI to indicate his aggressiveness level.
Many of your actions will make the AI marker go up the track to indicate the fact
that the AI is aware of your actions and is planning a counterattack.
9. Create the galaxy. Use the rules to create a 6 player galaxy with the following
exceptions/additions: The inner ring is made up of 6 other randomly drawn Home
Systems. If you plan to use the Political Deck also, then treat those as a galactic
council. Every time you take a vote, the 6 races will cast theirs at random
between you or the AI, you will use the combined influence of your planets and
the AI will use the influence provided by Mecatol Rex…x2…or more…or you can
make some sort of system to integrate your current position on the VP track. Like
the farther you are, the more likely the others will vote with you…I don’t
know...still has to be tested. Anyway, back to the galaxy. Place all the other
systems randomly, starting anywhere you want and going clockwise or
anticlockwise. Go round the board till you get a 6 player galaxy. You may not
move to another ring until you finished the previous, you may not place Special
Systems adjacent to another Special System or your Home System. You might get
good systems nearby, you might get crappy ones or empty fields…life in the great
void is even harder than here on Earth :D
10. Place your starting units and technologies as stated on the race sheet.
11. Place CC on your race sheet as per standard rules.
Much like the original game, the game is divided into phases:
- the strategy phase
- the action phase
- the AI phase
- the status phase
I won’t go into details about them all, just use the standard rules. Rather I will highlight
the differences in each.
Shuffle the SC without looking at them (duh!) and then do the following:
- place one SC down with the inactive side up and put a bonus marker on it. If there
were other bonus markers, they stack. If the AI player gets the SC card with
bonuses, they are lost.
- place another 3 SC face up in the AI play area. Those are the cards played by the
AI player, so order is important, don’t mix them as they are placed down.
- Choose 3 cards from the remaining 4. Those are the SC you can use on your turn.
- Place the 8th SC down with the inactive side up and place a bonus marker on it.
Much of the game relies on the need to constantly adapt to the other players. You may
not always choose the best card but are rather forced to change your strategy each turn.
To simulate this I have opted for the system above, which seems to be working rather
good, giving you enough options but also enough restrictions.
It goes very much like the one in the standard game, except for the AI player. Whoever
hold the lowest nr SC goes first. No matter what you do, the AI player will always play
the topmost SC in his stack. So an action turn would go like this (let’s assume you have a
lower nr SC)
- your move: play action card, play SC, tactical or transfer
- AI player plays his 1st topmost card. You may pay CC to react to it
- your move: play action card, play SC, tactical or transfer
- AI player plays his 2nd SC
- your move: play action card, play SC, tactical or transfer
- AI plays his last SC
- your move: play action card, play SC, tactical or transfer
- AI gains one TG (put it on Mecatol Rex, this is where the AI armada is gathering)
and his marker advances 1 step up the track (this is to ensure that even if you do
nothing on your turn, the AI player may still advance and may have a slight
chance of attacking you)
- your move: play action card, play SC, tactical or transfer
- AI passes
- You play until you must, or choose to pass
All the rules from the core game are used during the action phase
During play-testing I noticed that the amount of CC I had was always going up and the
Logistics SC was rather useless so I made up this rule to put it to use. Another option
would be to pay with the influence of your planets whenever trying to attack AI systems,
but I liked the CC rule better.
- Outer ring: move the marker 1 step for every planet you conquer
- Second ring: move marker 1 step if winning the space battle and another 1 step
for every planet you conquer
- Inner ring: move the marker 2 steps if winning the space battle and another 1 step
for every planet you conquer
- Mecatol Rex: move the marker 3 steps if winning the space battle and another 2
steps if conquering the planet.
You are allowed to build at the end of the tactical/transfer action just as you would do in
the standard game. The only difference is that now you must place an EQUAL amount of
TG on Mecatol Rex every time you build something (build…meaning paying for
technologies doesn’t count). This will be the pool the AI player will use to buy ships and
strike back at you, so be careful, the more you build, the larger his armada will be. Note
that you DO NOT give TG to AI pool if you use action card or technologies to purchase
something, only when paying with your own TG or by exhausting planets.
It might seem like you’re giving the AI player a lot of advantage by doing this, but trust
me, because of this it makes for some interesting decisions and timings…when to use the
SC, when to hold back and wait for the right moment to strike, where to build and how
much.
War
GF/planet PDS/planet Fighters Destroyers Cruisers Dreadnaughts
sun
Outer
1 - 2 - - - -
ring
Second
2 - 4 1 - - -
ring
Inner
2 1 6 2 1 1 -
ring
Mecatol
3 2 8 4 2 - 1
Rex
Of course feel free to tweak this table any way you want to. If you feel it’s too hard to get
through those defenses, lower them a bit. For a more challenging game, add a few
GF/spaceships. However I wouldn’t modify the ones in the Outer ring, you need that ring
less defended or else you won’t progress much.
If the AI wins the space battle and you have GF, proceed to invasions. Again use your
common sense when deciding what to attack and how much to send. If he wins the
invasions too, you lost control over those planets and they revert to AI ownership.
The victorious AI fleet will stay in the system and not move further, becoming stationary
defenses from now on. Sometimes there will be more, sometimes there will be less
spaceships remaining after the combat. It all depends on how you played so far. If you
gave him enough TG to build war suns and you left border systems undefended, then you
deserve to loose those for the rest of the game ;).
Another side effect of AI attack is loss of Trade Routes. Each time the AI attacks you
loose ALL the trade agreements currently activated ( more on this when detailing SC)
After the AI attacks, whether successfully or not, move his marker back to 0. His
bloodlust is satisfied for now :D. Proceed to Status Phase.
It goes much like the original game set of rules, with a few exceptions:
- if you took the 10th VP, you won the game. Note that like in the core standard
game you cannot qualify for objectives unless you own all the planets in your
home system.
- You receive just 1 CC from reinforcements, not 2.
Proceed to next round.
RACE ABILITIES
Like the SC, I tried to keep as much as possible from the standard game and only tweak
those aspect related to this solo variant. Anything else, like starting tech and units are left
as they were designed in the first place.
UNIVERSITIES OF JOL-NAR: identical to the standard game
THE L1Z1X MINDNET: identical to the standard game
THE NAALU COLLECTIVE: identical to the standard game
THE BARONY OF LETNEV: identical to the standard game
SARDAKK N’ORR: identical to the standard game
THE MENTAK COALITION: identical to the standard game, except the last paragraph.
Since there are no players to take TG from, just take 1 TG anyway each turn.
THE YSSARIL TRIBES: identical to the standard game, except for the last paragraph,
which becomes obsolete.
FEDERATION OF SOL: identical to the standard game
THE XXCHA KINGDOM: identical to the standard game
THE EMIRATES OF HACAN: You get the amount of TG listed on your agreements.
The AI attack can cancel only one of your current trade agreements, not both of them.
Ok, that’s about it, hope this is of some use to you and please send comments and/or
suggestions. Cheers!