Eminent Domain Origins and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory -- progress!

I've been devoting the last few weeks of Friday playtests to Eminent Domain origins (the Terra Prime reboot) and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (the title I'm leaning towards for EmDice). I think it's been going well overall, and I feel like progress is being made. Here's about where I'm at with each of those:

Eminent Domain Origins

In addition to making changes to Terra Prime that I've been wanting to make for years, I'm also hoping to improve and update the overall experience Here's how the recent changes have played out so far...

• Add one "any module" slot to the command ship.

I tried this, and have had mixed feelings about it. In the next play I will remove the extra module slot, and instead turn one of the Weapon/Shield slots into a Weapon/Shield/Cargo slot.

• Add 1 "any resource" hold to the command ship.

I have been liking this change, and I think I will likely keep it.

• Allow "Offload Colony Marker" at any time as a free action (describe this under "Load Colony Marker" and remove "Offload" as an action altogether)

This is absolutely a change I am keeping, as it makes sense, it removes an action from the action list, and frankly I've wanted to do it ever since the game came out.

• Use expansion setup: space hexes face up from the outset, with face down Exploration tiles on top.

I do like this change, but I'm struggling with a related aspect (see next).

• Set direction on tiles, so there's no possibility of illegal placements or configurations.

This is something I'm not too sure about. In the last test, I tried ignoring the "no 2 adjacent sectors may contain planets" rule and simply set the tiles out completely randomly. This had the effect of parts of the board with colony locations quite close together, while they were more spread out in other parts of the board. However, I also added 2 additional paths out of Terra Prime, which effectively shrinks the board a little bit.

In some ways, I think the completely random setup is beneficial, though it also means I might need to add resource tokens, because there could be more colonies in the game.

In other ways, I'm not sure it's ideal. I never liked the idea of having colonies in every space along a path, I liked that they had to be spread out a little bit (kinda like the settlements in Catan). But I'm not sure I have a good reason for that. However, the problem I'm running into now has to do with scoring for colonies...

Originally, I tied the scoring of colonies to 2 things... the type (color) of the colonized planet, and the distance from that colony and Terra Prime. I added extra points if there were asteroids in the sector, because you had to "brave" them to colonize there (though honestly that was a little fiddly and unnecessary). The idea was to make placement of the tiles more interesting, and to make colony choices (which color?) more interesting. That was also the reason for the "no 2 adjacent..." rule -- to make the planets group up together so you have to choose between them.

I think that scoring scheme was a mistake. The higher value planets are already found farther away from Terra Prime, and you already want to choose them (you'd seldom choose a blue planet over a red one, even if the red one wasn't worth 3 more points). What I wish I had done is reward the amount of total stuff in the sector (in addition to distance from Terra Prime). However, just scoring 1 point per icon in the sector (which would be the simplest way to count it) might not really be enough.

One solution is to dictate the orientation of the tiles, and then simply print numbers in the sectors (I could increase the numbers as the sectors get farther away from Terra Prime). This could replace the distance calculation as well -- you would just add up the numbers in the sector and that would be your score. However, there are some issues with that as well.

I'm currently debating whether it's better to have to count distance and add that to some value based on what's in the sector, or to simply add values printed in the sectors (which would mean a bit more work to re-design the tiles, and the unfortunate aesthetic of having to print numbers in the sectors).

• Re-examine distribution of hazards on exploration tiles (I haven't done this yet).

Still not sure about this. If I do it, I suspect I could change some of the alien clusters to "1 Warship + 2 Scouts" for example.

• Clarify reward sequence (all simultaneous, so you CAN keep goods gotten as rewards for colonizing).

This is a done deal for sure!

• Change Weapon module cost (a simple $20 each. Or even just $10?)

I've been playing with $10 weapons, which seems OK so far. I might nerf alien scoring (1vp/alien killed instead of 2), especially if I end up reducing the colony scoring a little bit.

• Consider changing the Shield action (people have trouble with "Do one, the other, or both: Buy a shield module for $10, charge shields for $10"). Maybe recharging shields should be free?

So far I've been using the original shield rules (1 action: optionally buy 1 shield module, then optionally pay to charge all shields).

• Change Delivery Optimizer to "+1 LP when you complete a demand tile. At game end: 1vp per demand tile collected."

This seems OK, but it's hard to tell because it's rarely used. I might like to force a heavy delivery strategy to find out.

• Start with energy on your built-in shield?

I have been doing this, and it seems OK so far.

On a similar note, I've been having colonies immediately produce as soon as they're created, so there's less wasting actions waiting for the new colony to produce. I've also tried ignoring the "no planet adjacent to Terra Prime" rule as well, all of this hopefully just speeds up the game a little bit.

In an effort to further streamline the action list, I will try ignoring the limit on Exploring, and just have that be wrapped into the Move action, and wrapping the Pacify and Attack actions into one. If I remove the Explore limit, then it might mean I ought to allow exploring out of a wormhole (I'd rather not do that), which leads to exploring 2 tiles at once (or that).

Finally, the Afterburner module (pay 1 Energy for 2 actions this turn) seemed WAY too good. I think it was probably a little too good before, but it didn't seem that bad because to power it efficiently you had to fill your module slots with shields, which limited the number of weapons you could have, making Afterburners pretty good for non-alien-fighting strategies, but alien hunters might still want regular weapons. Or else you could go with 2 shield modules, 1 Ion Cannon (pay 1 energy for 2 weapons this action), and some Afterburners if you wanted to kill a few aliens along the way.

But with the additional module slot, you could pretty easily get 3-4 shield modules and 2 Afterburners, and do 7 actions per turn, only needing to spend one of those actions every 3-4 turns to refuel. That felt like too much, even if the player who did it didn't score very well (I think it took him too long to set up and start abusing that).

So losing the extra module slot might make the Afterburner OK again, but I might try another version. We talked about this... 

Pay 1 energy: After each -> spent on a move action for the rest of this turn, you may immediately take an additional move action.

I'm not 100% sure that's any fewer actions really, but it means you have to spend those extra actions moving (and you only get them if you move), which means the Afterburner is good for zipping around the board, but not for doing a ton of other stuff. I'll try that out next playtest, but I might go back to the previous rule, as long as I remove the additional module slot.

Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory

I'm trying out "Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory" as a title for EmDice. So far it's my favorite of anything that's come up or that I've thought of. I'm open to suggestions for better titles!

With the recent changes (summarized below), I think the game has improved. Maybe the tech board could use a little more tweaking, and maybe the planets should be worth a little bit more (3vp instead of 2? 2vp apiece plus a bonus for most of each type?), but I think the game is in pretty good shape -- even better than t was before. Here are some of the new tweaks I've made recently:

• Added a 5th player's worth of dice. This required 12 more fighter/resource tokens for the pool (I don't know if that number is exactly correct or not), and a rule that probably should have been there anyway: If there are not enough planets to refill the Planet row at the end of a Survey role, the game end is triggered.
• Combined Produce and Trade icons onto the same die face. In retrospect this seems so obvious that I'm ashamed I hadn't already done it! For the same reasons I did it in the card game.
• Added a Politics icon for the 6th side of the die. You may discard a Politics icon at any time to change another active die to any face.
• Reduced the cost of most of the technology, except for the 3rd and 4th techs in the Advanced tree (which by definition have the benefit of an extra research icon from Improved Research), and the 3rd and 4th techs in the Diverse tree (which seem very powerful, and have the same planet requirement as the previous levels in that tree). The idea being that the higher level techs in the non-advanced trees should be easy enough to get without needing Improved Research, because you only have that if you are on the Advanced tree.
• Swapped some other techs around so that the other trees (non-Advanced ones) are more useful/powerful. So far this has led to more diverse play, which is a good thing.

In the last test and again in the next test I'm going to try no planet requirement for the 1st tech upgrade. That way you can research on turn 1 (rather than your only options being Survey, Colonize, or Warfare), and there's precedent in the EmDo expansions with things like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles that don't require planets.