The game's premise is a large-scale space opera. It is set in the unstable power vacuum left after the centuries-long decline and collapse of the previously dominant Lazax race.7 The old galactic central capital, Mecatol Rex, located in the center of the map, is maintained by custodians who maintain the imperial libraries and oversee the meetings of the galactic council.8 Players assume the roles of rising empires on the fringes of the galaxy, vying for military and political control, until one finally becomes sufficiently dominant to take over as a new galactic emperor.9
The first edition of Twilight Imperium was conceived by Christian T. Petersen while working as an importer of European comics. Drawing from a background of working at a Danish game importer, Petersen designed, published, and assembled the first edition of the game single-handedly.10 The final version of the first edition debuted at the Origins Game Fair in 1997. Fantasy Flight set up demos of the game in a high-traffic corridor to garner more attention, and ended up selling out of all of their available copies in under two days.11
The second edition of Twilight Imperium was published in 2000.12 It was the first edition of the game to feature art by Scott Schomburg and Brian Schomburg. It also introduced plastic spaceship pieces, replacing cardboard tokens that were used in the first edition.13
The third edition of Twilight Imperium, published in 2004, was designed at roughly the same time that Petersen was also working on A Game of Thrones, and his desire was to emphasize similar narrative development in this new edition's gameplay.14 He also looked to the mechanics of Eurogames like Puerto Rico for inspiration of how to represent complex mechanisms simply.15 The game box proved to be so large that wholesale distributors had to purchase custom-sized shipping cartons in order to make them fit.16
Development of Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition began in 2015. The original plan for the game was to seek funding on the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter, releasing a product with an MSRP of approximately US$250. Ideas pitched for this version included featuring only the six original races but each with unique ship designs, as well as presenting Mecatol Rex as centrepiece figure instead of a tile.17 However, this plan was scrapped in the summer of 2016 as the features were proving too costly to create within their budget. The revised version included all previous species introduced into Twilight Imperium, and was released at Gen Con in August 2017.18 Fourth edition was initially intended as a stand-alone game without any variant rules and expansions, but the expansion Prophecy of Kings was introduced in November 2020.19
The game consists of cardboard map tiles, cards, plastic units, cardboard counters, and player sheets. The map is built from hexagonal tiles, each showing up to three planets, empty space, or a red-bordered system containing an obstacle (with additional types added in the expansions). The centre tile is always Mecatol Rex, with the remainder of the galaxy built out in concentric rings.2021
Plastic playing pieces represent various starship classes and ground forces. Players are limited to the number of playing pieces provided with the game, except for fighters and ground forces. Counters are included for record-keeping, including command tokens, control markers, trade goods, and extra fighter and ground force counters. Cards are used to track planet ownership, trade agreements, technologies, public objectives, secret objectives, special actions, and policy voting agendas.22
Three to six (eight, with 'Prophecy of Kings') players can play, with games typically taking more than six hours to complete (approx. 1.5 hours per player), although players new to the game can take longer. The game works on a 'victory points' system such that players earn points by completing a combination of public and secret objectives.
Each player randomly selects a race to control. Either a pre-designed map can be used, or players can generate a map via a pre-game mechanic whereby each takes turns in placing map tiles to construct a galaxy map with Mecatol Rex at the centre and home systems around the periphery.
Players can choose from several alien factions (up to 25 in the 4th edition) to play as. Anywhere from three to six (or eight, with the 'Prophecy of Kings' expansion) of these factions will appear in a game, depending on the number of players. Each faction has unique abilities, home planets, starter units and technologies.23 Additionally, each faction has distinct characters and themes, and they each specialize in particular areas of the game, such as trade, combat, technology, or politics.24
Faction list below:
Play consists of up to 9 rounds (though usually less, depending on how quickly players gain victory points) -- each of which contain several turns. In each round, players choose a strategy card, which provides large bonuses to a particular gameplay mechanic and determines the order in which the players take turns during the round.
Players take turns to perform actions (building units, moving units, using strategy cards, using special action cards). Players are limited in the number of actions they can take during a round by their supply of command tokens, which are divided between strategy (used to access the secondary action of other players' strategy cards), fleet supply (limiting the number of ships that can occupy a system), and command pools (used for tactical actions). Players continue taking actions in turn order until each player has passed.
Units are purchased throughout the game using the resources from occupied planets. Combat is fought in rounds with each unit rolling one or more 10-sided dice to attempt to score "hits" on the enemy player, who is allowed a counter-attack with all their units before choosing which units are destroyed.
Politics and discussion play an important role in Twilight Imperium. Agendas are voted on at multiple points throughout the game, with each player's voting power being proportional to the quality and quantity of planets they control. Laws that are successfully passed can greatly modify certain game mechanics and thus change the flow of the game.
At the end of each round, players have the opportunity to score victory points for a public goal that has been revealed and/or for a secret objective assigned to each player at the start of the game. The first player to achieve 10 victory points is declared the new Emperor and wins the game. After the 6th round, the game also has a mechanism where the game has a chance of ending on any subsequent round and the highest scoring player at that point declared the winner.
A community-made implementation of the game was created in Tabletop Simulator.252627 It stems from a fan-version of the third edition game called "Shattered Ascension" that was built in Tabletop Simulator in 2011 using the same components but a variant ruleset and gained a significant online community.28 After the publication of game's fourth edition in 2017, a similar Tabletop Simulator implementation was created in 201829 and is now used for online tournaments.30 There is also the website Twilight Wars that lets you play Twilight imperium 4 online with strangers, as well as a Discord bot called AsyncTI4.31
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called The Borderlands in late 1997. It was the first expansion for Twilight Imperium First Edition. It adds two new factions, several new action cards, and several counters for a variety of new game mechanics.32
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called Twilight Armada early 1998 (in tandem with Distant Suns), making it the second expansion for Twilight Imperium First Edition. Intended to replace previous ships for the 6 colors of the base game, it includes 300 miniatures.3334
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called Distant Suns in early 1998 (in tandem with Twilight Armada), making it technically the third expansion for Twilight Imperium First Edition. A controversial expansion for the game, it added uncertainty and strategy to the game, some counters, and other game aids..3536
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called The Outer Rim in late 1998, making it the last expansion for Twilight Imperium First Edition. It adds 2 new factions, 13 new hexes which formed another exterior ring (hence the expansion name), and a few new game mechanics, with the intention of correcting some problems in the original base game.37
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called Hope's End in September 2001. It includes newer components, a reimagined technology system that includes an improved tree, new action and politics cards, and new factions to play as.38
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called Shattered Empire in December 2006. It includes two new sets of playing pieces and additional system tiles, expanding maximum player number to eight. It also introduced several rules-fixes to address common criticisms of the base game.39
Fantasy Flight Games released a second expansion called Shards of the Throne in May 2011, with additions including new factions, technologies, scenarios and units.
The base game and its expansions come with several optional rules and the counters necessary to play them out. The simplest variant is the long game, where the winner must score 14 victory points, rather than 10. However, most variants are intended to allow players to customise the game-play in favour of their preferred mechanics.40 For example, there are alternative variants of all the strategy cards, which can drastically alter how players organise their turns. Some rule variants introduce new units, whilst others can introduce completely new mechanics, such as race-specific leaders and diplomats, or random encounters for the first player to land on each neutral planet.41
Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion for 4th Edition Twilight Imperium in November 2020. The expansion contains seven new factions, some of which are based in the lore of Twilight Imperium's previous editions. It also brings in many of the systems and units that were first contained in 3rd edition. A new layer of technologies has been introduced giving more flexibility on how players choose their technology paths. The expansion also includes the Omega updates that were published in April 2020. It does not include any variant rules and is intended to be fully incorporated into the base game. It also adds new flavor to ground combat by adding a new infantry type called the mech.
The Codex is the official web based publication, published by Fantasy Flight Games that highlights rule updates and showcases new content for Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition and eventually the Prophecy of Kings expansion. The predominant figure behind the codex is Dane Beltrami, the head developer of Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition.
The third edition significantly changed many of the game mechanics. While some of the core elements remained the same, the game as a whole was completely revamped. Here are some of the more significant differences:
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Hall, Charlie (2021-07-31). "The world's biggest tournament for the world's longest board game". Polygon. Retrieved 2021-08-07. https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22600004/twilight-imperium-tournament-video-space-cats-peace-turtles ↩
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