Introduction to playing Twilight Imperium 4th edition online

 

I got invited to play the legendary space civilization conflict boardgame Twilight Imperium 4^th edition.  Six players gathered to play and we all connected online using the Twilight Imperium app, Twilight Wars.

If you have never played before, like myself, Twilight Imperium can be quite intimidating.  There are 17 factions in the base game alone and that can increase to 24 factions in the expansion, Prophecy of Kings.

Getting up to speed from zero on the rules will take you some investment of time, but this blog post should help smooth that process by pointing out some excellent guides found around the internet.

First of all you want the Learn to Play basic rules, provided by Fantasy Flight Games themselves here.

A very well put together and entertaining youtube video that should be considered a companion piece to the Learn to Play pdf is “Twilight Imperium (4th Edition) in 32 minutes” by RTFM.  The RTFM video goes over the steps of setup, activating a system, and detailed section on space combat.  The Strategy cards and their uses are explained in the latter half of the video. 

Once you have those down, you may want to plug the holes in your knowledge gap about the rules by checking the wiki.  I went there to read up on promissory notes which is lightly covered in the Learn to Play pdf. 

That’s great and all, but what about beginning advice about starting the game by picking one of the 17 factions?  That is found in the wiki as well, under the List of Factions by Play Complexity page.

Next you may wish to know how the interface for Twilight Wars, the online app, works. These tutorial videos by youtube user Twilight Wars are brief, to the point and extremely helpful. I found Tutorial video 3: Setup phase and core tactical steps to be very useful in consolidating and implementing what I learned by reading the pdf and watching the RTFM video.  To look into how the Twilight Wars app differs from the main game because of coding limitations, go here.   

The above teaches you how to play but not necessarily the best choices you should make for your faction in order to win.  Here is a youtube library with strategy guides for the factions by Rulebreaker Boardgames.  I chose the Emirates of Hacan faction as my first faction to play, because the wiki stated they were of limited complexity, they had a strong dominance in trade, and who doesn’t like Space Cats? Hacan’s strategy guide is here. 

Beyond this, you may want some advice on what Strategy cards to choose at different phases during the game.  Beyond the Board has you covered with this analysis. 

So was all this homework worth it? I’m currently enjoying myself and I’m waiting on turn 2 to start.  I’ll let you know whom of the six of us wins! The complexity for Twilight Imperium is significant, but I hope some of the pitfalls and your questions were answered by this guide compellation.