Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

The Space Empires 4 Board Game!
1) Download the card sets linked to below and unzip them.
2) In the graphics viewing program of your choice*, load the pics, and print them with the minimum paper margins allowed (.25")
3) Once the pages have printed and dried, cut out the cards and tape the pages of the map together. Grab some dice and a pile of small coins, then call up a friend to play.

*MSPaint works fine for this. Step-by-step:
1) Double click one of the BMPs to load it up.
2) Click File, then Page Setup
3) On the bottom right, type 0.25 into the four boxes
4) Press OK.
5) Click File, then Print.


Rules (PDF - Zipped 'cause shrap dosen't like .PDF)
Game Map (BMP - RARed)
General Game Cards #1 (Shields&Armor) (BMPs - ZIPped)
General Game Cards #2 (General Components) (BMPs - ZIPped)
Race Card Set - Amonkrie (BMPs - ZIPped)
Race Card Set - Eee (BMPs - ZIPped)
Race Card Set - Jreanar (BMPs - ZIPped)
Race Card Set - Phong (BMPs - ZIPped)
Race Card Set - Xiati (BMPs - ZIPped)

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Maybe by that time, my son will be old enough to want to play board games. We got him a couple Last Christmas, but we still haven't played them. He's only 3. I hope one day to play Risk and Battleship with him.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img] You can't go wrong with Risk! Brazil to North Africa! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Here is a list of board games that are great for kids:
Board Game Geek

On a related note, Has anyone played Twiglight Imperium? They are coming out with a New Version

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

So, of the ten or so people who have downloaded it, has anyone had a chance to play yet?

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

I downloaded it and read the rules, and I like the core idea (an SE4 boardgame!), but I would probably make a lot of changes to the rules before I would want give it a spin.

I could elaborate if you are interested in feedback...

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Go ahead!

One simple variation:
- Use 1d10 for the to-hit rolls. This reduces the effect of ECM/CS and hull bonuses.
Or, 2d6... which gives a different curve, in which small modifiers help more than in the 1d10 case.

EDIT:
I've attached a dice grapher program. Set the number of dice, and the number of sides with the scrollbars, and it generates a nice colourful bar graph showing you what chance you have to beat the other player or tie.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

I haven't had a chance to try it (my wife didn't give it a second look, and don't ask about our aborted first attempt at a game of SE4 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif), but it looks good. I don't know that I'd change anything. Well, I take that back. I'd definitely change somethings, since I'm a hopeless tweaker, but I don't know what I'd change without trying it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Ok, here's that feedback...

The Map:
- The player in the Upper Left one less planet "available" than the other three players (there should be another planet in between the damaging warp to the lower left and that Methane planet).
- The map works well with two or four players, but not so good for 3 players (since the player sandwiched between the two players would have a harder time expanding). One fix would be to make the map a balanced 6-player map, since that would accomodate 2, 3, 4, and 6 players. Another approach would be to make the map out of "tiles" so you could line up your systems depending on how many players you have... maybe they could connect with themselves, or they could connect to a hexagonal hub...

Downtime:
You can reduce the downtime between players if you split up the turn so that each phase of the turn is done by all players before progressing to the next phase. For example, in a two player game, turn order would go like this:

Research - Player A
Reserach - Player B
Ship Purchases - Player A
Ship Purchases - Player B
...
Administration - Player A
Administartion - Player B

It's even better if you can do each portion simultaneously, by introducing things like simultaneous (hidden) orders or bidding. For example, in the research phase, you could flip over X research tiles (X being the number of players) then bid on each of the tiles (obviously you'd have to have more items to research than currently listed!) For the movement turn, each player could place hidden orders on each of his ships/fleets, and then resolve movement one order at a time, alternating between players. (check out the Game of Thrones boardgame for a good example of how this works).

Elimination:
I personally don't like boardgames of 3+ players where someone can be completely eliminated from the game (eg, Risk, Monopoly) since that means you could leave someone out of the "fun" for the rest of the evening! So I'd rather see different victory conditions, such as: "The first person to colonize X planets" or "The person with the most Victory Points after X number of turns" or a combination of the two. The latter two options also have the side benefit of being able to better control how long the game would take to play, making the game more appealing to people who have to "schedule" their time to play games...(ie, us married folk!)
But again, this is personal taste, so do as you will...

Research:
I thought that the research was too random, and didn't have enough choices. (I also couldn't find in the rules how Research Facilities were supposed to work, so that maybe that alleviated some of the randomness???). I would probably come up with significantly more options, and not let progress be determined by a die role. I like either auctioning research (as mentioned above) or simply buying research (with minerals or with "research points" that would be generated by research facilities (or a combination of the two)).

Movement:
I like simultaneous order giving. Two obvious Orders are Move and Defend - but maybe throw in some other orders for good measure (though they would obviously need mechanics to go with them) such as Retrofit, Patrol, Lay Mines, etc). Anyway, everyone places all their orders face-down, one order per ship/fleet. After all orders are placed, reveal them, and each player executes orders one at a time. (eg, Player A moves one fleet, then Player B moves one fleet, etc, etc.) In the Game of Thrones boardgame, certain order types are executed before others: so you might resolve all movement orders before you resolve Retrofit orders.

Combat:
I would simplify it where possible: I'd get rid of the "called shot" (though possibly make a researchable component that lets you do that). And I'd also get rid of the defense roll... the attack roll is probably good enough. (ECMs could work like so: Any ECM in the enemy fleet reduces/eliminates the Combat Sensor bonus of all ships in the other fleet).
I wonder if keeping track of damaged components is too hard or not, but I like your idea and would playtest it (I also wonder if moving the ships around the map would also cause problems (ie, it would be difficult to tell at a glance what forces an enemy has in any given system - you'd have to pick up each fleet and flip through the ships, while not messing up the components on the ships...)

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Sounds like a great idea.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Some replies:
I've never hear of the Thrones game you're talking about, but I based the mechanics on the Axis and Allies board game.

The map is arbitrary, really. Anybody can make a giant picture, throw on some SE4 planet portraits and then draw some lines between them.
The one provided can be considered an example, with harder/easier starts for handicap purposes.
In the game I played, the number of colonies didn't really enter into it anyways. We both got one colony built, and then fought and glassed before any more could be started.

Once we got into the flow of things, there was very little downtime.
While the other guy is pondering his movement, you take a look at your mitt full of components and decide what ships you're going to build.
The administration is mostly "Ok, 10 bucks for my homeworld, 2 for the little colony, and toss back 5 for maintenance. Grab 3 more component cards."
Repairs are rare, and a lot of the rest is special case items. Buying mineral miners on the colonies is a quick given as well.
The hidden orders would take a long time to write down and then unveil properly, I think.

Victory conditions were mostly unspecified.
If you lose all your stuff, you're obviously out, but house rules for victory are easily added.

Research might stand to use more items, but too many tech modifiers to the components could get hairy. Its based on AnA; most of the time you don't have the funds to devote to research instead of bolstering your defenses.
A simple modification might be to collect one coin for each research facility, and put it in a special research pool to spend on a roll when you get enough collected.

The damage is fairly simple.
Components are either flipped over (damaged), or removed permanently (destroyed).
We arranged the ships around the planet/sector they were in, and it fits 4 ships fairly easily (components were partly piled to avoid spillage)
More than four ships starts generating combat penalties, so the fleets shouldn't get much bigger.

We also only used one page of ships, since we were tired of cutting, so we were limited to three of any one type of hull and that helped keep the numbers down too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As for construction, we simplified it a tad, by just laying down the components with the hull, since the surprise is minimal, and events during the turn never conspired to require a different design.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Hmmmm looks fun!

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Hey! I didn't know you played SEIV too?

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Looks like it works great then for two-player... How long did it take you guys to do a turn? Maybe downtime wouldn't show up until you did 3-4 players?
Also, if you guys weren't really expanding, you might want to consider either 1) trying it to see if it is more effective - and then see if that has an impact on turn length or 2) making it more tempting to expand (easier to do, better rewards, etc), or 3) Excluding the option to expand and simplifying the game down to what you like: good ol' fashioned ship-to-ship combat.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

You wouldn't write them down. You would make Order Tiles (or cards, or whatever you want to call them) and place them face down over your fleets. After everyone has placed them, flip them all over and start executing them one by one, alternating players.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Wouldn't the order tiles have to be specific rather than generic?

Such as "move to system X" and "Attack ship Y"?

As for the expansion rate, I was going full out on it, although I was admittedly hampered by a run of bad luck in the cargo bay department http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I did manage to smash the opposing transport before it could finish the colony, and built 3 transport hulls to drag coins to the colony to help build it up faster.

Our warships simply did the monkey smash faster than the transports built colonies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


I'm not sure how long the turns actually took, since it felt like only a minute, but when we looked up, it was 1 AM.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

No, they would be very generic, such as "Move". You decide where they actually move on your turn. If you had three fleets with a move order, you would decide which fleet to move first (and where to move it. The ships in the fleet could move all toghter, or you could split them up and move each ship to a different system). Then one of the other players would execute one of their Move orders. Combat would occur when enemy ships were in the same sector.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Why not just mark them as moved or not, then...

BTW, this game deals in individual ships, not fleets as such.
We only had one front line, and the biggest battles were 3 on 4, including my standard-armor-and-ecm decoy transport.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

This game looks interesting if only I could get my wife to play it. Hmm...

Anyway, can we get a Version without the black backgrounds - my lowly printer is afraid of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

There's a difference, because you have to decide which ships are going to move, defend, etc BEFORE you see what the enemy is up to. Like I said, though, this works best if there are more things to do besides simply move... and again, better with 3+ players than with two.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

I've got some printer-friendlier, white-background Versions up on imagmeodserver.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/BoardGame/

It looks better with black, but that does take a chunk of ink to do.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

That's a sign of a good game! When did you start, and how many turns (roughly) did it take?

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

We started cutting things out after cleaning up dinner, so it must have been 9 or so with an interruption for an hour or so.

The first few turns were full of confused paper-shuffling, but by about 5 turns in, I managed to get my colony started despite the lack of cargo bays. There was another 5 turns or so of sending reinforcements to the slaughterhouse while I built up the colony before we finished.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

You should standardize the playing cards so that they fit on a typical avery-type "business" card label or some other form of heavier paper so they can be more robust.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

They are all made from the common SE4 portraits...
128x128 for the components, 192x192 for the ships and 256x256 for the colony cards.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Here's a link to a review of a new space-based boardgame called Battlestations. Looks like a neat cross between board game and RPG.

BoardGameGeek

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

So, I was looking this over in detail some. Question about ship design. Am I correct that general spots can hold any component? So you can put weapons armor or even cargo bays on you escort hull if you want?

Have you thought about adding fighters?

Events?

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Yes. General slots can hold anything you want.

I'm open to adding fighters, but I'm not sure how they'd fit in with the game mechanics.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Well you could have fighter bay components, and add a carrier hull.

Fighters could be a simple unit that you construct at any planet and can be moved around in cargo bays or launced from fighter bays or from a planet. Since they don't warp and there's no system movement they wouldn't be able to move on their own and couldn't retreat from combat.

You could add weapon platform and sattelite units as well for planetary defense.

I'm thinking each fighter bay could hold a certain number, and launch them at the start of combat. Anyway, fighters in combat would move around like ships. From that point they would be treated like another ship. Unlike ships they could be targetted by PDC as well as regular weapons. Make them harder to hit by regular weapons. Normal hit chance by PDC. But when hit they are destroyed a lot easier then ships. Any hit scored takes them out. And no crippling. Just destroyed.

Since they are fast and manuverable give them more rounds of combat then other ships. But they are small so they do less damage. Not sure how you'd handle that. They have to beat the defense roll by 2 or 3 to score a hit. That would save you from having to track partial damage.

Re: Space Empires IV - Board Game!
 

Oh, and events. You could add a deck of event cards. Add an event phase to each turn and have the players roll dice. You don't want events all the time, so maybe a double one's mean you have to draw an event card. And some event cards would be good events.