From: Dave Townsend Subject: Freedom in the Galaxy, Replay & Opinions sought Anyone actually playing any games? I attended at mini-con last weekend, and actually managed to get through about a third of a Freedom in the Galaxy game. (I played a lot of other family games [German and Cheapass, kind of opposite ends of the cost spectrum], but I figure that's not entirely appropriate here. FitG is definitely a wargame, though.) Warning: the following will sound like gobbledygook unless you're reasonably familiar with the game. This was my first time out as the rebels. We (I say "we" because we tried it multiplayer, with one Imperial and three Rebels players) began, inevitably, with most of the "average" characters; you know, the guys -- Odene Hobar, Scott Rubel, Adam Starlight -- with 3 strength (good, but not great) and no special abilities. We did have Dr. Sontag, though. Left out, to be found by Gain Characters missions, were Agan Rafa, Ran Jayma (big, beefy guys), Bridne Murcada (good special abilities), Professor Mareg (crucial), Yarro Latac (great at repairs), and Oneste Woada (great at diplomacy and ignores irate locals). Discussing our pregame strategy, we decided to do Gain Characters and Gain Possessions like mad, to create as many mission groups as possible, then begin the Diplomacy/Coup roundup. We fell into trouble almost immediately, as few missions succeeded in the first turn (one, maybe two out of eight) and our character concentrations always seemed to fall in the path of the Imperial Strategic Assignments. Our mobility was severely hampered by the Planet Secrets, which we couldn't discover because our Gather Information missions failed and we had neither Professor Mareg nor the Advisor Android. We felt that landing "blind" on a planet secret was foolhardy, since the "Trap" would effectively end the game. We gradually accumulated all of the characters. Naturally, Professor Mareg was last, and didn't appear in time to discover more than one secret before we ended the game on account of time. Naturally, as we were concentrating in increasing Rebel potential, the Imperial player was going Diplomacy-wild and subsequently there were many patriotic planets. We started getting desparate around turn 5, and switched over to Diplomacy even though we were still missing characters and had virtually no extra possessions. One rebel player went so far as to land blindly on a Secret world, which turned out to be the Slave World, and managed to get a rebellion started. The huge resulting resources were most impressive -- if you're going to have only one rebellion, the slave world is the place to do it -- but due to the Strategic Assignment cards, we were unable to capitalize on the results of our Domino effects. Finally, we got really desperate in the last two turns, and moved in on the capital of the second province in hopes of starting a rebellion before the Imperial player got a chance to tax it. We came this -><- close, being hosed by the Action deck card that has a "C" in the Wild environ for a coup, but causes one mission to abort, so if there's only one mission group in the environ then the "C" does you no good. However, we failed, the imperial troops moved in, and we tacitly agreed the game was over. I've long been of the opinion that the Rebels don't really have much of a chance, but it sure is fun to try. All my previous experience has been as the Imperial player, but now having played as the Rebels, my opinion hasn't fundamentally changed. Anyone disagree? I want your strategy tips. One co-rebel observed that the problem with the rebels is that they're so brittle -- one big mistake (or one piece of bad luck) and it's pretty much game over. We lost one mission group entirely on the tiny chance that a level 1 PDB would allow a spaceship detachment to attack an incoming spaceship, the subsequent breakoff attempt would fail, and the spaceship would roll the 6 needed to elim the rebels. But it's practically impossible to start a rebellion if you take no chances at all. If you agree that the Rebels don't stand a chance, how do you think the game should best be balanced? (We were playing with Nicky Palmer's rules, which help the Rebels immensely once the Rebellion gets going, but aren't much help in the crucial first couple turns of the game). I've thought of: * Lowering Imp taxes (I think that the Imps can afford way too much way too soon) * Letting the Rebel(s) select the starting characters, instead of random choice. * Adding some columns to the detection table, because it doesn't seem fair that it's a big win to get your evasion value up from 7 or 8 to 9, but of no value at all to increase that value from 9 to 10 or 11. * Switching the tables over to 2d6 instead of 1d6 to average out the luck extremes. Any opinions on these changes (or better ideas?) Final thought: I was struck by how awkward the game is to play. The mission cards lack information, stats for irate locals are in the Charts & Tables but the environ creatures are in a separate Galactic Guide, the circular star displays on the map look cool but make it hard to tell at a glance with the loyalty and PDB levels of the planets are, and finding the planets of the starfaring races to implement the domino effect pretty much requires you to know where the races are (or look them up in the Galactic Guide, uck). I'm thinking about making some play aids to solve these problems. Let me know if you'd be interested in seeing them. --DaveT; townsend@patriot.net Subject: Re: Freedom in the Galaxy, Replay & Opinions sought From: Allan Bell >I've long been of the opinion that the Rebels don't really >have much of a chance, but it sure is fun to try. All my >previous experience has been as the Imperial player, but >now having played as the Rebels, my opinion hasn't fundamentally >changed. Anyone disagree? I want your strategy tips. I like the colour in this game but haven't played it enough times to come to an absolute conclusion. The notes seem to imply that you have to get a rolling rebellion by getting planets with similar racial groups close to rebellion and then one will help tip the others into rebellion. We use the HyperCard stack (available on grognards) put together by Danny Stevens to avoid the shuffling and wearing out of cards. It also makes the game go much faster. I was hoping that the PC version of HyperCard Player would be available soon but it is still a while away. I might have a play with making it a Java + HTML version so it can be used on PC and Mac. That would be a nice learning project. Or Danny might get inspired. I found one problem with the rebels was that to make a group strong enough to survive irate locals I had to put 2-3 (preferably 3) rebel characters together. This made them reasonably invincible but then you don't get as many missions going. Single character mission groups allow many missions but one or two irate locals and they are dead. You didn't mention rebel camps. I think the goal of the characters is to set these up and let the camps do the diplomacy work. Camps are not affected by irate locals and when the imperials use their characters to do counter diplomacy work they are just fighting a losing battle. You can have more camps going than he can put imperial mission groups into the field. He also has to put 2-3 characters together to avoid irate locals himself so it is a losing battle. The imperials are better off letting the planet rebel and then crushing the rebellion. I think this is where the strategy of getting many planets ready to rebel (but not yet rebelling) comes in. Get lots of the planets unhappy and try to make them all rebel at the same time. Nice in theory but probably hard in practice. If the game goes long enough the rebels should always win so the question of balance is whether the length of the game is correct. The other trick is to make sure you land on planets with at least two areas so if the rebels are detected they can move to another area and get lost in the crowd. But I agree that there doesn't seem to be enough characters to do everything you want. Still, if you get lucky on the rebel camps then things can look grim for the imperials quickly. This game would be the basis of a great computer game to manage some of the detail and flesh out the encounters but even a computer assist program makes the game move along quickly. ..anyway, that's my thoughts. It is getting me itching to try another game. Allan --------- Today is the first day of the rest of your life. ...but then again, so is tomorrow. From: Francois Charton Subject: Re: Freedom in the Galaxy, Replay & Opinions sought Dave Townsend wrote: > > Anyone actually playing any games? > See D. Ferris' musical opinion on this... > I've long been of the opinion that the Rebels don't really > have much of a chance, but it sure is fun to try. All my > previous experience has been as the Imperial player, but > now having played as the Rebels, my opinion hasn't fundamentally > changed. Anyone disagree? I want your strategy tips. > I have played FITG (the galactic game) many times several years ago, but remember it as a pretty balanced game (maybe leaning slightly towards the rebels...). IMHO, Rebel victory hinges on the domino effect: you don't win by having planets rebel one after the other, but by pushing many planets, preferably on multi-planetary systems and with star-faring races, to neutral or better loyalty levels, and then having a few successful diplomacy or rebellion mission trigger a chain reaction, through the domino effect. It makes your missions count double or triple. Without it, the Rebels cannot win. So, Rebel strategy in the beginning of the game should be: go from planet to planet, move them to "neutral" loyalty or better, and go away, until you have enough of them to be able to start rebellion and hope for chain reactions. For this, you need to conduct as many diplomacy missions as possible (I usually planned two thirds of my missions to be "diplomacy" or the like). If you can spend a few missions to get new characters, or to assassinate a bothering enemy character, that is great, but invest in Diplomacy, they are the missions which win the game. To counter this, the Imperial player will rely on taxation: non patriotic planets can be shifted in your favour through lower taxation, and patriotic ones can be taxed more, helping you to build your forces to crush the rebels. In the meantime, the Empire should use his troops and characters to try to eliminate as many rebel characters as possible: the less of them, the fewer diplomacy missions for the rebels. The beginning of the game (say the 5-10 first turns of the Galactic game) is crucial. Many planets are patriotic, and so unaffected by the domino effect, and the Imperial player, who does not need a big army, can use taxation to shift planet loyalties. If the rebel player cannot shift enough planet loyalties (through aggressive diplomacy missions), the Empire will slowly push planets towards "patriotic", to be able to tax them more, and then buy armies to crush the rebels. This is (IMO) why the strategy you suggest favour the empire: gaining characters is a long term investment: each mission has a 1 chance in 6 to succeed and you need about three characters to build a new "character team" (ie to be able to conduct more missions). If you spend too many missions on building your character teams in the earlier phases of the game, the Empire has plenty of time to shift loyalties in his favour, and to build enough forces to crush you. Conducting more diplomacy missions in the beginning of the game will make the imperial player's task harder in two ways: he will have to counter your diplomatic missions, and he will have more trouble to build a large army. Francois From: Dave Townsend Subject: Re: Freedom in the Galaxy, Replay & Opinions sought Francois Charton wrote: > To counter this, the Imperial player will rely on taxation: non patriotic Well, and counter-diplomacy. The Imperial player in our game was very effective at that. > This is (IMO) why the strategy you suggest favour the empire: gaining > characters is a long term investment: each mission has a 1 chance in 6 to > succeed and you need about three characters to build a new "character > team" (ie to be able to conduct more missions). If you spend too > many missions on building your character teams in the earlier phases of > the game, the Empire has plenty of time to shift loyalties in his favour, > and to build enough forces to crush you. Conducting more diplomacy > missions in the beginning of the game will make the imperial player's > task harder in two ways: he will have to counter your diplomatic > missions, and he will have more trouble to build a large army. Well, I arrived at this strategy from seeing previous attempts to do the "Early Diplomacy" strategy fail because of the small number of mission groups which can be formed. For example, the Rayner Derban/Kogus/Zina Adora group really can't perform more than one mission at a time. In our game, the Tourag group was also pretty weak (three str:3 characters plus one str:1(?)) and couldn't really be split without reinforcement, either. As Allan Bell wrote, Base Camps are a good way of increasing the number of missions, too. We had a couple established, but they never did anything. All of which doesn't mean that you're not right, only that my empirical experience (albeit with rookie players) was that the rebels need more than four missions/turn. Interesting discussion. Thanks for posting! Guess I'll just have to keep playing until I get it right. Darn. --DaveT; townsend@patriot.net