Twilight Imperium

[GTSchemer]

So I've played a few games of TI4 on here now, and I have to say: the digital implementation is incredible. You’ve taken an extremely complex game and made it feel smooth and intuitive... seriously, you should be proud of this.

That said, I’m finding that I’m just not enjoying the experience as much as I hoped. Turn-based games take so long. I have one that’s about to hit the three-month mark, and sometimes there are days between turns especially if other players are in combat. By the time it’s my turn again, I can’t even remember what I was planning to do.

There have also been occasions where players have quit mid-game, which is incredibly frustrating and makes the whole experience feel like a waste of time.

Maybe a real-time game would be better, but if I’m going to spend that much continuous time on a game, I’d rather just play it in person.

All that said, I’m still genuinely glad this implementation exists. It's a great achievement & nice to know people can choose to scratch that TI4 itch.

Thank you for the kind words, but I agree that ultimately, the best experience will come if you find like-minded active players, and ones who are not going to quit when they get mad. Adding those people to your friends list and playing games with them specifically may be a lot more enjoyable.

Games can finish in a week to a month with rapid players, but it really needs to be people in similar timezones or at minimum, people who check BGA throughout the day.

[Leruni]

I have the same experience after starting 3 games; it's a fantastic implementation GTS - great job! However, does anyone know how matching can be made with players in similar time-zones and with similiar activity? TwilightWars is not at all as convenient to play (although parts of PoK is nice), but pace is much better adapted since in each game people advertise for time zone, moves per day, ...

[GTSchemer]

I have the same experience after starting 3 games; it's a fantastic implementation GTS - great job! However, does anyone know how matching can be made with players in similar time-zones and with similiar activity? TwilightWars is not at all as convenient to play (although parts of PoK is nice), but pace is much better adapted since in each game people advertise for time zone, moves per day, ...

I wish I had an answer for that. As far as I know, BGA forum rules don't allow players to use the forum to arrange games ahead of time.

To be fair, most games aren't like TI4, but for TI4 it would be really nice if there were a way to advertise "I'm looking for 2 more players who are active in US afternoon/evening hours in the next 2 weeks" or something.

[Borek]

Asmidee owns both BGA and FFG, including TI4. I don't believe there is no way to contact Asmidee to implement time zones matchmaking on BGA.

[GTSchemer]

Asmidee owns both BGA and FFG, including TI4. I don't believe there is no way to contact Asmidee to implement time zones matchmaking on BGA.

Even if BGA had a timezone field, it's more complex than that. I can think of at least 3 factors that strongly affect TI4:

A. No matter what my timezone is, my PLAYING hours may be unique. Maybe I work a night shift and play during the day, or vice versa. Matching just by timezone is not ideal.

B. I may check BGA very frequently, or I may check once a day. BGA has different timer speeds once beta is supported, but this doesn't make a game feel any better if you end up with a slow player who didn't understand exactly what they were getting matched into. You can kick them and abandon the game, but it would have been better if the other player had more detail about the sort of game that would be happening.

C. You could be looking for a highly aggressive game, or a peaceful game, or a trade-intensive game or whatever. It's hard to quantify these until you get to know players, which is why finding friends and then playing with them may be the ideal approach. But if you do that once rankings are enabled, would BGA automatically flag you as a potential cheater because you typically play with a specific other player? Who knows. It's complex.


For me as a player, if I had a way to view a list of tables, with a short description on each one, that would be ideal. You can sort of find that using the old "Play Now" lobby system if people use the advanced description field, but...I imagine most players don't know about that field, and even if they do, I'm not sure the old lobby system will exist in the future.

[Borek]

Yes I found a few friends to play with, we even finished a few games, but suddenly one friend went on a one week break out of the blue and we had to close 5 games, because no one wants to play a game with one move over day, not to mention one move per week. I'm at a point where I stopped joining new games, because the lack of a time limit for your move is ruining my experience. Unless something changes I plan to wait for ranked games only, where I can find people with a proper attitude and time availability.

[brh2113]

So I've played a few games of TI4 on here now, and I have to say: the digital implementation is incredible. You’ve taken an extremely complex game and made it feel smooth and intuitive... seriously, you should be proud of this.

That said, I’m finding that I’m just not enjoying the experience as much as I hoped. Turn-based games take so long. I have one that’s about to hit the three-month mark, and sometimes there are days between turns especially if other players are in combat. By the time it’s my turn again, I can’t even remember what I was planning to do.

There have also been occasions where players have quit mid-game, which is incredibly frustrating and makes the whole experience feel like a waste of time.

Maybe a real-time game would be better, but if I’m going to spend that much continuous time on a game, I’d rather just play it in person.

All that said, I’m still genuinely glad this implementation exists. It's a great achievement & nice to know people can choose to scratch that TI4 itch.

Agree strongly: the implementation is phenomenal, playing it is incredibly fun, and it's amazing that this exists and the UI supports it all.

Where we differ is: I'm only playing games with people I actually know, so they won't quit, don't take an absurd amount of time to move, or do something asocial and destructive to ruin a game 6 weeks in. I have a hard time imagining how this game could work with elo, arena, ladders, etc. given that a season is 90 days and many games take that long to play, but if that doesn't end up really working out so much I don't think it matters: at the end of the day if you find good people to play with that you trust not to leave or throw the game 6 weeks into it, you'll have a great time. So I'd expect most people will organize pickup games with the TI4 Discord or known friends, rather than use BGA anonymous matchmaking.

We've been having so much fun that several of us bought physical copies of the base game + all expansions and are coordinating flying to meetup IRL and play Thunder's Edge!

I do hope in the future once the base game is implemented FFG backs implementing PoK here too.

[Leruni]

For me as a player, if I had a way to view a list of tables, with a short description on each one, that would be ideal. You can sort of find that using the old "Play Now" lobby system if people use the advanced description field, but...I imagine most players don't know about that field, and even if they do, I'm not sure the old lobby system will exist in the future.

Exactly like the last proposal; a single sentance specifying "Looking for so and so active players from this timezone" is enough to start with, never seen this description field Optionally, I've understood that there are discord channels for other TI4 asynch games, not sure if anyone here is using that and could setup a matchmaking channel for BGA. The one weakness of this platform is the chat function is hard to track, so having a dedicated channel externally for chat would solve that, but not sure what the policy is here.

[FDHenneberg]

While using the forum repeatedly just to find a table may not be appropriate, I think it’s perfectly ok to have a thread looking for recurrent players, I’ve seen that often. They then add each other as friends. Alternatively, you could start a group on BGA or a Discord server. AFAIK, there are no rules against “manual matchmaking”. In fact, that’s mainly what BGA groups are used for. Some board gaming podcasts have BGA groups of their own, this is generally also a great way to find like-minded players.

[GTSchemer]

All known edge cases have been handled for the Nekro flagship, so the last missing Nekro feature is now the agenda phase Galactic Threat mechanics (which are similar to, but NOT the same, as playing a rider).