I’m in the market to find a reasonably priced copy of Eclipse 2nd Dawn. I already own Xia and Firefly. I have no interest in TI4, maybe I should? But I feel as though whatever slot TI4 would occupy in my collection, Eclipse would do a better job of it.
I think Eclipse promises to bring more “exterminate” to the table than Xia, but less “explore” and certainly less “sandboX” (I made a new X, so now we have to talk about 5X games)
I have no direct comparison to make but I do want to echo the sandboX emphasis in Xia. At the end of the day it’s a grand pick-up and deliver game, and a really, really dicey one. I bloody love it, but it won’t sit well with certain sensibilities.
My experience of Eclipse is that it’s amazing on first play, because the Euro mechanics Roger describes are really lovely and the ship upgrade possibilities are exciting. But then (for me) it wears off quite fast, and I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly why. Maybe because it turns out that certain ship upgrades are just better than others.
In some ways it’s like Scythe, which is also a Euro with build-engine-plus-fighting, but I found that Scythe lasted longer in want-to-play terms.
I haven’t played Xia.
I’m beginning to think that exploration itself might be a bit of a non-starter in competitive games.
A non-starter in what way? Is it hampering the competitive side? Are there specific games you have in mind? Just curious because I don’t have many games I would place in the exploration genre—hence this question—and the only competitive one would be Leaving Earth which is very much it’s own thing.
Edit Oath has some exploration but I haven’t explored the game enough to have much of a say about the nuance of the mechanism within the game.
Either the exploration makes a real difference or it doesn’t, and it’s very hard to make a real difference while also not randomising the winner. Fine for casual games, not so great for 4x marathons.
This is only a half-baked thought I came up with on the spur of the moment. It seems apparent that deck digging is not that distinct from tile-laying, so maybe the problem for competition is merely one of familiarity - it’s much easier to become familiar with a deck of distinct cards than it is a stack/pile of visually similar un-named tiles.
I think Oath has an out or two: winning may not be your only goal, and the sites and deck cycle only slowly between games, making familiarity possible. The total number of sites and the impact they have is also quite limited, while also being memorably distinct.
Eclipse, to bring this back on track, has a bunch of very different tiles that shape the game quite a lot while also not being memorably distinct, so it’s hard to get a handle on the distribution and odds involved.
Or maybe it’s not about familiarity at all - just action economy. In Eclipse, every action is important, and “wasting” one on a bad explore feels bad.
[getting a bit off-topic now] Inis does exploration quite well, I reckon
No actually, not off topic. After I recently made a virtual shelf for my collection I realized how few exploration games we have and exploring is one of my partner‘s favorite things in all kinds of games. So maybe I should have chosen a different title.
Re: Inis. Thank you for reminding me that this indeed counts into the genre. I have yet to play more than a two player though thanks to 2020+
Ah, I can see how that would be frustrating in a game where every action counts.
I agree about Oath. There are a very limited number of locations to explore each game. I have had some not-so-useful draws from the world deck but it feels from my solo impressions as if this is not an issue. Also, I need to play more Oath.
And isn’t that a cool thing? 
I think so, too. When Quinns held up that tray with technologies I almost wanted to drag it out of the screen 
However, there is also my Mitspieler (co-player is not a word is it?) to consider. And I feel like he would much more enjoy Xia or Firefly (not available I checked again).
I’m told that the universe setup in TI4 does a fairly good job of allowing a reasonably balanced game while still having random elements – but I haven’t played it and I barely remember TI3.
Probably “regular gaming partner”.
Boardgameprices.co.uk lists several shops in Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands that claim to have copies.
Not quite, because anyone you play a game with in that moment regular or not is your Mitspieler. I really like the word because “Mit” really translates to “with” and emphasizes the fact that we are playing together even in a competitive game. I have not found an adequate translation.
I feel as if English needs this word. Perhaps the Middle English “mid” (as you would find on “midwife”) prefix to the effect “midplayer”.
Or probably just better to take the loanword and keep it “mitspieler”, since nobody understands the mid in midwife anyway
I actually see Eclipse as more exploration, or at least the way we play, where conflict with other players is minimal or a final pyrrhic action of the game. Beyond that you can explore your own little pocket of space, connected by the centre. But we mostly play as a family game where conflict is in general avoided. I know this is not the optimal way to play but we have fun anyway (all based on 1E - have no desire to spend £££ for 2E).
TI4 to me is much more about sneaking to the objectives (both community and secret) which increases the chances of annoying other players, but also makes it a less dramatic thing - it is often solely to get an objective, once you have that objective you may no longer have an interest in that area of space.
While we’re talking about exploring (sorry to derail slightly), 7th continent is probs the most exciting exploration game I’ve played. It has other flaws and issues but it really nails the excitement of exploration, for me at least.
Germans are so good at making words for things that need words I don’t know why we don’t just use their whole language. @yashima please give us the correct word for a build-engine-plus-fighting game.
Absolutely, and yet due to the other issues namely us dying from cold or hunger we haven’t taken it out of the shelf for over a year. But it won’t be leaving the collection either.
We like our compound words for complex issues but we do not usually have a ton of different words for similar things that need nuance. The concept of a Thesaurus was unknown to me until I started learning English. So each language has different strengths which is why loanwords are a decent solution
The Build-Engine-plus-Fighting game? Maschinenbau Wettkampf Spiel. We actually use engine-building as an English loanword to describe the genre. Maschinenbau is en engineering discpline and not a good translation at all
Sorry to snip most of the thought, but this is again pertinent to Xia both for commentary and as a bit of a heads-up since it ties into one of the game’s quirks. Namely, exploration is pretty wild and embraces the wildness rather than do anything to mitigate it. Again, this isn’t going to sit right with some folks. The tile stack does seem pretty well tuned, but you absolutely will reveal huge expanses of space, clusters of planets, ridiculous hazard fields, etc. Probability simply won’t produce a lovely, balanced map, like, ever.
However, I think it works really well here, since there isn’t a single over-arching goal for players to pursue. Xia is just a race for VP (FP) at the end of the day, but the structure of its missions and events, and the freedom afforded to players means it’s a game about ruthless opportunism rather than one of grand designs.
It’s (yet) another contentious feature of Xia, but I think it’s pretty neat that they embraced the chaotic nature of random exploration and all the issues it can present, not by mitigation or structured draws, but with its action economy and mission/avatar flexibility. Luck shits on everyone constantly in the game, but there’s always a way to eke out a few extra credits/fame, and the player that hustles best is going to win every time (most of some of the time).
I feel like I’ve simultaneously rambled and not made my point, but in short: Xia has ALL of the stuff you don’t like about exploration in these types of games, does nothing at all to address them [directly], but manages to work just the same. I think it’s also another pretty key example of why Xia doesn’t fit the same mould as Eclipse/TI.
Sorry for the double, but after that meandering wall I figured a text break was worthwhile.
Xia and Feudum are two games in my collection that come from sort of “renegade” designers; basically a couple of unknowns coming out of nowhere with stupidly grand first designs, clearly no editors on hand, standing firm to their vision and, in more than a few cases, explicitly bucking modern design trends. In short, they’re weird games with issues that have seriously impassioned fans (and detractors). Cult favourites, basically.
Hopefully I’m finding those weird, in-between points that help identify where Xia sits within the “grand space opera”… space. It’s one of those games that’s so hard to recommend without caveats since you can easily see a fan of the genre really loving or hating it.
I really like XIA, but I think this might be more in line with your specifications. And it appears to be in-stock.
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-762-space-empires-4th-printing.aspx
I haven’t read everyone’s responses here, so my apologies if I’m covering turf that’s already been covered. But:
As somebody who owns… almost every, if not every “Big Space Game” (Star Trek Ascendancy, Forbidden Stars, Outer Rim, Xia, Space Empires 4X, Red Alert, Dune, Rex, Dune Imperium, Empires of the Void I and II, Eclipse, Eclipse 2nd Dawn, Twilight Imperium 1st-4th Edition, etc…) and many of the smaller space games (Quantum, Ascending Empires, Talon, Android, Ironclad, Space Hulk, etc…), I have thoughts. And the first of which is that my thoughts aren’t probably that useful, since I love this genre with the passion of a thousand suns.
That’s not to say I own everything. It’s impossible unless you have infinite money, and even then you wouldn’t have time to play all of them.
That stated, Eclipse is pretty good. I found it disappointing compared to TI3, which was its contemporary at the time, but it did a few things better than TI3 (tech trees, in particular, and exploration, which TI3 had a module to do but it was clunky and not particularly satisfying). And then TI4 came out and it was everything I wanted (and continue to want) in a space-opera-in-a-box.
Xia is a sandbox game, and a pretty good one at that. The exploration elements are very swingy, but the game itself is pretty good aside from a few key problems (the big one is the runaway-winner issue, where it can be very, very difficult to pull up after one player starts doing really well… the easy solution to that is that if you’re getting your teeth kicked in, maybe it’s time to call it). I also don’t like that not all paths to victory are equally viable in each game (the Merchant method relies really, really heavily on finding the right planets and/or resource fields early), and there is a lot of fiddly steps between each turn (worse with higher player counts, since there is always
The Pirate, The Merchant, and The Cops that have to be activated and moved, plus some board elements).
Now, I own, but haven’t played Eclipse 2nd, but I suspect it will be pretty good at the same things the original did well (exploration, neutral enemies you can beat up, interesting asymmetric races that aren’t a pain to learn, and of course that gorgeous/brilliant tech tree/ship upgrade system) and struggle in the same places as well (no meaningful diplomacy or trade, and player elimination being a very real, very present threat). I also expect TI4 will continue to be better with 3-6 players and Eclipse 2nd will probably be better with 2, but I doubt I would ever personally play Eclipse with 2… and I think Star Trek Ascendancy does exploration way, way better than Eclipse, which is a statement of some weight since Eclipse does exploration really well.
As for Xia, I like it, although it is swingy and relies on dice a bit too much for my tastes (and I’m always skeptical about a game where it sometimes makes more sense to suicide yourself to get back to a planet with a new ship rather than limp back because you ran out of fuel/power). I think Outer Rim has much stronger narrative chops, but it’s also much, much more “on rails” than Xia (there are literally only 2 paths through the galaxy), but it also hands NPC/neutral factions much better.
Oh, as an aside: Space Empires 4X is great as a wargame with 4X elements, and Forbidden Stars is really a knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth, but both work very well with 2 players, but the focus is on the combat, as opposed to the other 3X-options. Talon if you want a straight-up-fleet battle is good, Red Alert is great and clean and fast, and Quantum or Ascending Empires if you want your space game to be silly rather than strategic are both really solid.
I do not know if that helps or not!