Then you clearly need to take a breath and step away from the keyboard instead of blinding yourself with rage. At this point you're just being disagreeable for the sake of it, as there's literally nothing for you to argue against here. I've personally witnessed AF successfully used as a stepping stone to help guide less-confident players to Eclipse, just as I've used San Juan to lead others into Puerto Rico, and the latter two are not even the same genre of game (one is a lighter card game, the other a considerably denser boardgame). There's truly no point in you trying to invent arguments as to why you think the one game couldn't help ease somebody towards the other, because I've seen that it can, and has. A game doesn't need to be of equal complexity or depth to work as a gateway or stepping stone, largely because that would quite literally defeat the purpose of it serving as such. Despite your claims of "elegance", you certainly wouldn't find many people over at BGG prepared to recommend Eclipse as a starting point for somebody concerned about complex boardgames, and with good cause.
I can't say I agree with the assessment that Eclipse is trying to overwhelm anyone with information, or that the game would be improved by requiring more memory and headmath. There are games that test your memory and mental discipline at keeping a variety of bits of information straight, games like Concentration. That's not the point of this game or any other strategy game I care to play.
To anyone on the fence about this, I got it yesterday and well its VERY punishing. if you get fun out of learning binary backwards while learning a new language and balancing on your head, then you'll love it. The rest of us average intellect people best avoid it. The idea is top notch, the concept is excellent, the graphics are great but its as user friendly as a russian 1980's microwave manual with half the pages missing.
While the game is absolutely complex, I don't think that it is completely unapproachable. I'm very new to board gaming in general - only just getting into the genre over the past few months on my iPad. I've never played the physical version of Eclipse, but I feel like I'm starting to understand the concept and flow of the game. By no means am I a competent player yet (still getting my butt kicked by the AI and definitely not ready for online), but if you're willing to spend some time with the in-game manual and the PDF manual for the physical version (found at BGG) it'll start sinking in eventually, and it's definitely rewarding when it does. On the other hand, if you are looking for a game where you can play the tutorial once and jump right in I would definitely suggest passing on this one, as I was still quite lost one time through the tutorial. Glad I decided to stick with it though.
What? Sounds fun... I suppose?! Seriously, if you're into board games, you most likely have seen worse (meaning more complicated) than Eclipse. If you're not, then it's probably hard to grasp at first, but it should really be possible for anyone seriously interested in gaming. I recommend listening to the How To Play Podcast for the board game version (which is the same game). It's really good and made me understand the game before ever having touched it.
We really need a persistent chat log. The fact my chats disappear when I log off makes async games hard. My game would crash if I did an explore. Didn't matter where, no matter what it would crash. I tried 10 times. Eventually passed to get past it. We need the ability to chat with other players async so I can explain why I'm taking so long.
Are you serious? The game may take some time to learn, but it is not hard. It also has some pretty heavy chance aspects, so you will win some and lose some no matter what skill you are. I'm not saying everyone is going to be good at this game, but the average person can at least know what's going on fairly easily.
Totally serious and btw I love 4X games. if you think its not hard maybe you're brilliant or I'm just stupid.
Seeing as I'm stupid and I get it, I just don't think you actually gave it time. I played the tutorial, felt lost until I did what people have to do in these complex board games, read the manual. The manual clears everything up and breaks everything down to much easier to understand. There's a lot going on, and it'll require you actually putting in some effort, as this isn't a simple game. But for me, I get this much more easily than even Stone Age, Le Harve, Kingdom Builder and a slew of there. If you find the theme exciting, which I did, putting in the extra bit of effort isn't a problem.
After more futzing about and reading BGG's Eclipse forum, I finally figured out how to get plasma missiles. My purple Terran Empire got it in turn 8 and I managed to equip it on turn 9... How did I trigger diplomatic relations? I was fooling around in a 6 player local no AI game and somehow I got a screen that asked one of my players which resource he wanted for it...
Getting Plasma missles, just to clarify it for anyone else, requires 2 things: The technology needs to be available to buy. You can tell whether that's the case by looking for the number above the missles. No numbers means it hasn't come up and the number relates to how many are available. I don't know how many missles are available to come up in the game. You need to have enough pink resources available to purchase it. I forget the full cost, it might be 14 with no discount and then a few less with a full discount, you get a discount by purchasing more items in the row. As for diplomatic relations, those occur when in a 4+ player game your territory touches the territory of another player. You get to choose what they pay you for you not attacking them, and they won't attack you. If you even move into their territory, it breaks relations, labels you a traitor and you lose the support. So even if you don't plan on attacking them, you cannot move into a hex owned by them if you don't want to lose that pact.
Wait a minute. Do you meant that all I need are enough pink points and for the plasma missiles tech to come up at the beginning of the round to buy it? I thought I had to fill up the top research row until I reached plasma missile. No wonder it took me 8 turns...
Yup I often just save up and ignore everything else. As long as you have enough research (pink) you can buy whatever in whatever order you want
Several days in and I still can't play this. It might as well be in russian tbh, I find it totally confusing and unplayable. and since the game itself works ok, I cannot get a refund, so I've totally wasted my money, anyway deleted it now and I move on and will learn from this and only buy board games when they are on sale.
Oh I thought this was for a different thing. That's what I get for not paying attention to post titles. What do you find so confusing? And if you actually want to learn and are struggling, either find someone here or on Boardgamegeek who can help walk you through a game as its being played. Trust me, if *I* can get this game, ANYONE can. Wait, I've just looked through you posts, all of them have been complaining about, well, everything. Seriously man, can you take joy in anything? This game is excellent, and I don't understand why you can't get it. It's far from impossible if you actually give it a chance, spend a few minutes reading the manual and NOT being so negative about this, or everything it seems.
Still on the fence with this one. Looks cool but I'm unsure. I guess a sale would be enough to change my mind though.. *hint hint*
There seems to be some kind of iTunes point cards discount thing going on in the other threads, so you can grab those cards and voila, instant discount. What Eclipse really boils down to every turn is either: You buy one of the technologies on offer using your pink points OR You choose to flip open a new sector tile to see what planets and goodies/threats there are there, then decide if you want to claim that sector using your orange points. Then you get to send up to three/four of your colony ships to claim the planets in that sector tile. These planets will produce either orange, pink or green points each for you every round OR You can choose to upgrade two of your ship types with two pieces new tech that you had bought or found. All your current ships of that type immediately get updated according to this newest template OR You can build up to two ships and choose which of your sectors to plonk them down in using your green points OR You can move two of your ships to another sector tile OR You can abandon sector tiles to save on spending orange points, or claim abandoned sector tiles (not too sure about whether you need to have had a ship there before). After all that, is combat time. Then your banker will come in and if you do not have enough orange points to pay for all your sectors and actions performed, he will give you a choice of converting your pink or green points into orange points. If that is insufficient, Mr. Banker will force you to sell off your sectors to cover the shortfall. After 9 rounds, the game ends. Winner is the one with the most victory points. These are given for each sector you hold, the combats you won, as well as from sectors where you found them as free gifts... Now, go download Eclipse.
One last question. I'm looking at this and Starbase Orion, I only have £7 on my iTunes account, which would you recommend? (Without being biased)
I could never get into Orion. Don't know why, but it never sucked me in. Eclipse, however, hooked me immediately. My recommendation is to watch a gameplay video of this and give Orion: FC (the free version) a go. They are similar in some ways, but I consider Eclipse to be designed with the goal of keeping things very streamlined and keeping the goals fixed and time defined. You have specific and exact tasks that are accomplished each turn, and I find that cohesiveness very appealing.
