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Empires
30m - 60m
2 - 5 Players
Ages 14+
This mechanic requires you to place a bid, usually monetary, on items in an auction of goods in order to enhance your position in the game. These goods allow players future actions or improve a position. The auction consists of taking turns placing bids on a given item until one winner is established, allowing the winner to take control of the item being bid on. Usually there is a game rule that helps drop the price of the items being bid on if no players are interested in the item at its current price.
Auction/Bidding
The simultaneous action selection mechanic lets players secretly choose their actions. After they are revealed, the actions resolve following the rule-set of the game.
Simultaneous Action Selection
In games with a trading mechanic, the players can exchange game items between each other.
Trading
Variable Player Powers is a mechanic that grants different abilities and/or paths to victory to the players.
Variable Player Powers
54.00
€
30 day low:
Out of stock
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Kickstarter – Gamefound
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Thematic
Ελληνικα Παιχνιδια
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Gyges
Rather disappointing. It does accommodate large numbers of players briskly with low rules overhead, which is nice, but the trading never really takes off because resources are so scarce and coarse. No one tends to have any surplus, so there's precious little opportunity to trade. What you're left with is some blind bidding, which ends up being fine but nothing compelling. A shame, because Sidereal Confluence shows us how awesome a trading game can be with lots of players and asymmetry--I was naively hoping for a lighter, quicker imitation.
NowOrNever88
Heard its like a shorter Sidereal Confluence in 30-60 minutes as a euro style game for 5-10p that actually works so would like to try, since Sidereal takes 120-180 minutes, which is too long for my normal groups. Heard SC is "basically it's just trading cubes for other cubes, and then running them through your engines." And that the player who trades most is more likely to win, not the player who trades best deals. Overall seems like mainly just another trading game. Thoughts on trade based games: if it's made to be too mathable and unfun as you know exact figures but mathable enough and it becomes hard to plan strategically since you don't know what trades will be accepted or not and are at Mercy of other plsyers. Similar to auction games it rewards experience but punishes newbies who dunno how to valuate stuff. Still somewhat okay sometimes for variety or change of pace but I prefer other planning and strategic heavy games after playing ones like Sidereal Confluence, Chinatown, Bohnanza, Catan, etc.
realityfoible
Empires was... fine. The experience I've had so far is that this is a negotiation trading game where players don't have much reason to negotiate or trade. It seems the same resources are always scarce around the table, which means the only thing players ever needed is the one thing no one wants to sell. Depending on what's available via wars, some asymmetric player powers will be godly while others will be useless... but not in ways that promote exchange between players like in Sidereal Confluence. Rather, there's a strong rich get richer dynamic. On paper, there's a lot I like in Empires. I'm particularly fond of how the the different currencies cycle into each-other, and the dynamic goods market. But in execution each game ends with most of my players bored or frustrated. I think to myself "Next time, that'll be the game where we might get war tiles that give the table something interesting to negotiate, and we might get a globalized economy dynamic happening." But that next time just hasn't come. Thankfully, it's short.