Board Game Arena

Hi there,

first of all, Gaia Project is a fantastic game with huge amount of play styles. There is no "but".

I understand, that playing it somewhat competitive, means choosing the right civ considering the map setting, victory tiles and technology position. Maybe even some mind gaming upfront. I am fine with that. But I recently had a conversation with another player about the top3 alien races, and he said, there is a statistic which pinpoints Ivits, Taklons and Itars as the races which win the most games per percentage by far.

And I did not know about that statistic before, and now, I am noticing in my games, that I am playing every game against those three races. And again, I do not mind losing. But it does not feel right if you can pick a race (disregarding whether you can play them), and you already have an advantage before the game even starts.

So either I start picking them as well to balance this game setting or I keep picking the lower tier races and just enjoy the game without competing for the top...

Neither option calms my inner monk.

Edit: Corrected some Grammar

sounds like it could do with an auctionVP setting.

Ivits notoriously have a large edge in 2p games; I don't think that can be avoided anyway, I just recommend you not to play 2p if you don't want to play/face Ivits.

Taklons and Ivits are just strong, versatile factions. Other ones are stronger each in its context, but these are two that are less requiring both in terms of player's experience and of specific game settings. They'll always be present as "safe picks", but I think that, as the BGA Gaia community matures, you'll see more of the other factions popping up.

And I am already doing my part by picking different races when I think they fit best into some maps with decent planet constellations.

But you have to realize that some races, even though you are playing quite well, will never be as strong as the aforementioned races. For instance, I played mad androids five times so far and really enjoyed in doing so. But I did not win even once, although I played them quite well.

So yeah, there should be some mechanics implemented, like victory points betting for prepicked races, or starting victory points variation.

Bonjour, pareil pour moi.

A chaque fois qu'un joueur prend Ivits, ça m'énerve, et j'en ai déjà marre. Car j'aime beaucoup ce jeu, mais voir des joueurs qui ont 300 points de maitrise (ou helo) prendre Ivits je trouve cela abuser. Laissez donc Ivits à des joueurs qui commence à peine leu jeu...

Unfortunately if you’re playing 2p games against good opponents ivits will always win (well not ALWAYS but almost) you only can agree with your opponent beforehand to ban them. In 3p games are kind of awkward and generally the faction that is less disturbed win the game but any faction could win. 4p is the most balanced way to play GP and yeah you’ll see some factions more often than others and that’s because some are more versatile/solid in a larger amount of setups and some are fragile and need very specific circumstances to be viable, and that’s not a problem. The real problem is that on BGA tables are very mixed skills and many people don’t know how to play against taklons itars and ivits and so by picking say taklons in first seat can pay off big time because you’ll most likely be charged mindlessly by at least one of the players, so a meta has developed that more expert players tend to pick those factions more because they know they can get away with a lot more than they should, then less experienced players copy them because they think that’s how you win but then they don’t because most often they will still lose to a more experienced player even playing another less solid faction. That kind of meta gaming unfortunately is not solved by auction, in the sense that you’ll see more factions in play maybe but games will be more random swingy and unfun, in order for auction to work effectively all players at the table need to be at a very high skill level, basically you wanna be able to play all factions and even more importantly AGAINST all factions before even thinking you’ll have a clue of how to bid in an auction. That said never feel forced to pick one of those 3 factions I have won arena games with every factions except lantids and Hadsch Hallas but I saw other games where they won too and all of these games these other factions won beating ivits itars and taklons so you don’t have to fall in the holy trinity meta if you don’t want to but you will need to understand how to play against those factions and you will face some frustrating games where someone else at the table will be giving away the game to another player but statistically that will also happen to you just as many times

i think auction among a limited selection of races solves the most important things:

players will see more races, without having to handicap themselves

no one can complain "oh, its 1v1, my opp. went 1st pick ivits so I auto lose"


do you need skill to navigate the auction? of course, but thats the point of playing most complex games anyway ^^

well in 1v1 it's easier but still my guess is most people will still pick ivits and then it becomes really to know how much you have to bid, is it 20vp or it has to be more than 30? most players will get bored after 20min of auction and just take the other faction that's not ivits too early, in the end ivits spammers still win.