Overview & How to Play

This is Twilight Imperium 4, or TI4. Let’s head into this world of Mecatol Rex, Dreadnaughts, and even Space Lions like the one on the box cover.

Players are trying to get 10 victory points to become emperor of the galaxy by controlling entire alien races. They take turns moving and building ships, using 1 of 8 Strategy Cards that grant specific actions for a round, all the while politically maneuvering their way to score public and private objectives. Examples of that include:

• Having control over multiple locations on the board

• Spending a bunch of resources at once

• Researching technology

• Taking over someone else’s home system (near the end of the game)

Oh, and then the place called Mecatol Rex, that’s the space system in the middle of the board. It’s can give you points every round if you hold it… but you’re frequently surrounded by everyone in trying to do so. That’s a real quick gist of this massive game.

Pros

TI4 just has sheer presence. Everything screams space, with detailed miniatures for your battleships, to double-sided faction boards, and planet cards. Speaking of planets, the world of Twilight Imperium is straight awesome. There’s an included lore compendium that explains all 17 factions, and for more intel, there’s an entire backstory on each of the faction sheets. You can read about humans, called the Federation of Sol, to the wacky ones like machine viruses (Nekro), or space plants (Arborec)!

Gameplay for TI4 is utterly fantastic and not that hard to get into. All players really are doing are putting a command token on the board, which encompasses attacking, conquering planets, and even building ships. There’s also something called Strategy Cards that each player acquires one of before a round and then affects strategy. See, these grant a special action for that round, and since you can see what everyone else is also taking before the round starts, you can start countering them. Even more fun, is that when a player actually triggers their specific Strategy Card, everyone else has an option to use its Secondary Ability if they want!

For how long TI4 is, like 5-6+ hours for your first game, it maintains to be very accessible and not punishing at all. There’s a nice first game included, and the nature of the game never asks for people to conquer each other’s home planets until the very end of the game. Building up tons of ships after a disastrous fight is easy, since there are diminishing returns on buying for those who are stronger.

We have to go back to Mecatol Rex, which is such a fun focal point of the game, where there’s a 'King of the Hill’ thing going on. Holding the center, Mecatol Rex can give points every round if you also nab the Imperial Strategy Card. Realistically, no one will really be holding onto Mecatol Rex for long, which incurs constant conflict. Oh, there’s also wormholes all across the board for players to attack each other through from across the universe.

Politics in this game gets cemented through an entire politics phase, where the Galactic Council can get unlocked, letting players vote with the strength of their planets on Agendas and Laws. These cards are no joke, giving players bonuses, but can also change the rules of the game. Maybe there’s Anti-Intellectual Revolutions that make researching technology more punishing. Or Fleet Regulations that will disallow stockpiling of ships.

TI4 is by no means just any big game, its longer in runtime than most. So a major concern in these long games is downtime, but we’re proud to announce that there shouldn’t be any downtime while playing. You won’t ever have a lack of things to do or think about in the game, you’re constantly discussing trade or politics, thinking about what to upgrade or buy, or sifting through your action cards for your next major war expedition. The list goes on and on in this game that just flows amazingly well.

“Oh, maybe that guy is getting a little too close to that wormhole for comfort, I better talk to him about that. Or, I really need that guy to play his strategy card now so I can get the benefit, is there a way I can nudge him into doing so?”

Every mechanic in the game is just very simple in nature to not overwhelm players, while at the same time being thematically logical and progressing the space opera story.

Cons & Nitpicks

Really, the only real problems are some imbalance with factions, namely the Federation of Sol and Jol-Nar Universities being too strong. Sol has army troop spawn that is too versatile. Then the Jol-Nar specifically can grant too easily attained victory points if objectives line up with their researching skills. While this weird tuning is annoying, these aren’t a big deal because the game is so highly political, so table discussion can smooth out these slight bumps in power. Then, you can just choose from the other 15 alien races to play! So many available races are very clearly balanced around each other.

Final Thoughts

Now Twilight Imperium 4 has a lot of things going on for sure, but it is relatively simple for its massive scope and always thematically logical so that people can grasp it and NEVER be overwhelmed. What should scare players in this game is the other players from all of the politics that is encouraged, never the mechanics.

Crazy conclusion we got from this: Twilight Imperium 4, despite its massive time length, tons of mechanics, and huge scope, is a game that ironically promotes a casual mindset. You’re NEVER going to win without politicking well in some way, everything on the board that happens is always just going to be a talking point at the end of the day, because the PEOPLE are the key part of Twilight Imperium. Friends are just gonna mess with each other, politic cards are going throw a big wrench into machinations, and secret objectives and action card randomness are just not gonna make some people happy.

The game just wants you to focus on the incredible theme, politics, and story that will always arise, so don’t tunnel too hard on winning. Rather, celebrate how awesome the experience is—everyone is on their feet in that final round to see which action card or die roll will determine the fate of the universe.

There’s complaints that this game is just a dumb bloated space opera that takes too long where cool stuff just kinda feels like it happens, and there’s not much strategy. To this we would say that its impossible for TI4 to have so much variance in dice rolling, action cards, and hidden objectives without the insane politics to balance everything out. The variance is tackled really well too, you roll a ton of dice to minimize crazy outcomes in combat, and the guy that is drawing a bunch of action cards is a perceived threat that you can work into politics.