Twilight Imperium

[Karapotta]

Hi! I'm really looking forward to this. I could play it in alpha, but as a beginner I might rather wait for the beta when all the factions are in etc, for the more complete experience.
How close are we to hitting that 100% on the progress bar for it to get out of alpha?

Probably a long time, unfortunately. I was informed by BGA that they require zombie mode to handle passing or acting in all possible situations, rather than merely eliminating a player who gets angry and quits, even though the publisher felt elimination could work in such a situation.

Full zombie support involves reviewing, designing, and testing upwards of 100 different logic points for automatic play, so I fear the time involved will be immense.

In the meantime I am working on the remaining factions.

Just saw your response. Thanks for the update!
Makes sense this is a really big one to get done.
Appreciate all the work and excited to play it eventually!

[gkozhev]

Pretty sad to hear that you need to spend such an enormous amount of time on zombie players, cuz I have never seen anybody trying to continue playing a game where somebody had left. Instead of investing this time into Prophecy oh Kings. But at least this code might be used in Thunder’s Edge with neutral forces =D

Its also interesting will the zombie’s upgraded PDS shoot into a neighbouring system when it’s activated or pass

[brh2113]

Hi! I'm really looking forward to this. I could play it in alpha, but as a beginner I might rather wait for the beta when all the factions are in etc, for the more complete experience.
How close are we to hitting that 100% on the progress bar for it to get out of alpha?

Probably a long time, unfortunately. I was informed by BGA that they require zombie mode to handle passing or acting in all possible situations, rather than merely eliminating a player who gets angry and quits, even though the publisher felt elimination could work in such a situation.

Full zombie support involves reviewing, designing, and testing upwards of 100 different logic points for automatic play, so I fear the time involved will be immense.

In the meantime I am working on the remaining factions.

I don't know if it's FFG who wants the zombie mode support or you, but either way I'd encourage rethinking. Most multiplayer games on BGA simply end immediately if a player leaves the game, giving the leaving player a loss + extra elo penalty + extra karma penalty, and giving the remaining players a tie amongst themselves. It's generally infeasible to play out the game the way it would have played out anyways, so even if there was some sort of AI support or zombie support it'd feel a bit hollow.

IMO TI is a game that takes too long to be played well with pick-up games of pure strangers, and so I expect most games to be coordinated to some extent in forums or discord or among friends, where leaving is less of an issue anyways.

It feels like trying to implement this properly instead of doing what most BGA multiplayer games do would be very complicated for questionable gain.

[GTSchemer]

Just an update, the Creuss flagship is still in progress / testing.

*edit* The flagship is now working, even with gravity rifts, so I should be able to deploy if all testing goes well on Tuesday (US time).

[mightygerm]

Is there / can there be a way to “pass priority “ to a player until they accept or reject a transaction?
The situation I’m in is I want to offer some trades to players before I take my action, as my action depends on if these trades are accepted or rejected. But I don’t think BGA will notify you (like when it’s your turn) of a pending trade offer, only if it’s your turn or if you manually check the game. It’s the sort of thing that only takes a second in live play but kind of strange in asynchronous.

[gkozhev]

Is there / can there be a way to “pass priority “ to a player until they accept or reject a transaction?
The situation I’m in is I want to offer some trades to players before I take my action, as my action depends on if these trades are accepted or rejected. But I don’t think BGA will notify you (like when it’s your turn) of a pending trade offer, only if it’s your turn or if you manually check the game. It’s the sort of thing that only takes a second in live play but kind of strange in asynchronous.

For now you can text them directly a private message, that what we usually do in our games with other random players

[RicardoRix]

If play does pass to another player like this at will, then players could abuse this behavior repeatedly when they are losing to try and stall the game indefinitely.

[GTSchemer]

If play does pass to another player like this at will, then players could abuse this behavior repeatedly when they are losing to try and stall the game indefinitely.

There's a big suggestion somewhere discussing all the details. Short version, some version of this may happen, but yes it will probably need guardrails because of potential abuse.

[GTSchemer]

In time for Halloween, the Ghosts of Creuss have been deployed.

This mysterious faction specializes in wormhole synergy and unusual movement.
* Treats alpha/beta wormholes as connected, even ignoring Enforced Travel Ban.
* Ships move further if they start in the Creuss home system or on an alpha/beta wormhole.
* Home system exists off the normal map, only accessible through delta wormholes.
* Can place and move alpha/beta wormhole tokens for additional wormhole paths.
* Can sell the ability to place and move alpha/beta wormhole tokens.
* Can guarantee a hit at the start of combat if a wormhole is present.
* Flagship contains a mobile delta wormhole, and can move before other ships.

Delta wormholes can be viewed by using the wormhole layer toggle as usual:



As always when a new faction is added, please watch for any bugs. Also, read abilities very carefully, since Creuss is complex. A few notes in particular:

• Note that both Creuss and enemies can use the Creuss flagship wormhole. This means if Creuss leaves their home system or the Creuss gate without a ship, an opponent in combat may use Skilled Retreat to move a fleet directly to the Creuss home system / gate!

• To move the Creuss flagship first, plan a normal partial movement using only the flagship. Then, plan other moves as usual. Those other moves will be allowed to use the delta wormhole's new location. Note that there is no mechanical difference between moving the flagship "with" and "after" other units. In all such cases, ships move simultaneously and use the starting location of the delta wormhole.

• In the rare case of the Creuss flagship being destroyed by a gravity rift and causing later planned moves to be invalid, the other moves simply do not happen. This was discussed with FFG, and the other ships which can no longer move are simply placed back on their starting location(s).

While players test Creuss, my immediate priority is to catch up on any outstanding bug reports. Thank you for your patience.

Once bug reports are handled, Nekro is the final base game faction to add. Nekro is complex and has a very high number of edge cases due to technology mixing, so I expect at least a couple of weeks to carefully program and test.

[DaveLarson]

Thanks for your hard work and it's great that you have only 1 faction left to do.