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Review of Space Empires: Close Encounters
Blurb from the publisher: 'Space Empires: Close Encounters is the first expansion to Space Empires: 4X. Alien races meet up close as they encounter each other for the first time in ship boarding engagements and planetary invasions with different types of ground troops. The strengths and weaknesses of each alien empire are brought out with roughly 20 unique racial abilities. The expansion takes advantage of the streamlined nature of the game system to add more technology and cool sci-fi detail in very simple ways. While it is designed to be used as a whole, the expansion is modular and players can choose to use only the parts that they like.
The strengths and weaknesses of each alien empire are brought out with 25 different Empire Advantages. Also included is an Experience System so that your ships become more proficient over time. There is a big benefit if you can keep your ships alive! This expansion adds more counters of each ship type to accommodate groups at different experience levels. Military Academies in your empire can give your ships a head start in accumulating experience.
Titans, super large ships beyond dreadnaught, make their appearance and can both carry fighters and destroy planets, but have liabilities too. Unique ships allow you to design your own ship complete with special technology. Deep Space becomes more important because unique technology cards can be gained by conquering the non-player Alien planets. Facilities built on planets, flagships, react technology, and much more, are all in this game expansion.
New scenarios are added for both 3 and 4 players. A new alien empire solitaire scenario is included as well as another solitaire scenario where a player can attempt to fight off an invading mass of Space Amoebas.
The system is exactly the same, but more awesomeness is added!'
What you get: Your USD 59 or equivalent will buy you Space Empires: Close Encounters, the first expansion in the 4X sci-fi line of Space Empires: 4X. The expansion is composed of different modules that can be added to the game as a player sees fit. It is reminded that the original game could accommodate from one to four players within a handful of hours. Expect that time to increase even more, even though the expansion does not increase the player count.
In addition to the 16-page full-colour rulebook and the 24-page Scenario Book that can be found on GMT's website free of charge, the box contains the following: three counter sheets, 4.5 Counter Sheets (counters from the original game in the thicker format)*, 25 Racial Advantage cards, 30 Alien Technology cards, 4 cardstock Fleet Displays, one cardstock Battleboard, 4 two-sided Reference cards, one Production Pad without facilities, and one Production Pad with facilities.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have owned and played this expansion for a few years; this is not your average playtest. I own the expansion's 2012 First Printing, not its subsequent Second Printing. The only difference that I am aware of is that my copy included the counters marked with an (*) in the components above, in order to update the thinner original counters from the base game. The Second Printing did not include them since the current printings of the base game have been updated a long time ago.
Gameplay: Close Encounters is a modular expansion with many, and wildly different, innovative elements in relation to the base game. I will present them in the order of the rulebook irrespective of their impact in the game.
The New Homeworlds produce 30 CP instead of 20, and can be used in place of the old ones. Logical, seeing how larger the current tech tree is and how more wealth the empires need to produce.
Ship Experience and Military Academies add an extra level of nuance to your fighting ships' capabilities. Ship groups (not isolated ships) now have five different levels of experience, from Green to Legendary. When groups with different experience combine, the unified group retains the lower level of experience. Military Academies can only be used with experience, seeing how they improve the ships' status. If Military Academies are not researched, all ships start as Green. If they are, ships start at the second level, while if they have been augmented to level two, ships become easier to promote. Experience can only be gained by ships that are combat capable. A group may gain experience when it destroys a ship. The result is decided through a modifiable die roll. Experience is awarded immediately, i.e. in the midst of a battle. The benefits it provides are additional attack strength against ships of less experience, reduced attack strength for the enemy if the difference is two levels or more, no possibility of attacking by the enemy if the difference is three or more, while ships in the highest two levels pay half maintenance. Legendary ships are also harder to hit.
Boarding ship technology allows for the capture of ships. Attacks are handled slightly differently, the result however is rather expected: the captured ship is now controlled by the player that boarded it. In a fun twist, captured ships can use all the technologies they possess, but cannot hand it over to other ships. Scrapping such ships can yield technological benefits if the initial owner was more advanced in technology.
Security Forces is the counterweight to the Boarding technology. As soon as you research it, your ships become harder to board; even more so if you augment it.
Titans are Space Empires' Death Stars. They are massive ships that do not retreat from combat, cannot be screened, deal two damage per hit, are immune to boarding and take reduced damage from mines, while they are impervious to hits from a variety of ships. Depending on the technologies you have Titans can carry Fighters, while they cannot attack colonies in the common sense; they reduce the planet to cinders instead. I kid not; the planet is removed from the board.
Fleet Markers do not change the rules, they do however make it easier to track the presence and movement of huge concentrations of ships.
The cost of Mine Sweeper technology has been reduced, while the cost of the Mine technology has been increased. The former also extends to level 3. All in all, mines retain their usability, but not their desirability.
Movement technology costs are decreased, a new Movement Tech 7 has been inserted, while Reaction Movement is added to the mix. The latter leads to Exploration Technology Sensors being upgraded to level 2, allowing certain ships to respond to a battle in adjacent hexes. This reaction happens before fleets are revealed and before combat starts. The reacting forces act as if they were in the now contested spot in the first place.
Battlecruisers gain additional mobility thanks to the Fast Battlecruiser tech.
The 30 Alien Technology cards form a face-down deck. When an barren planet is colonized or captured for the first time, the player draws two cards, keeps one and discards the other face down. Depending on whether non-player aliens are used or not, these cards might cost CP to activate. Examples of alien tech include Minesweep Jammers, Combat Sensors and Stim Packs.
Empire Advantages adds asymmetry to the game, seeing how each player starts with an initially unknown special ability that will be revealed at an appropriate time during the game. As an example, Shape Shifters can use any ship counter as a decoy (and mark it on its ledger as such, of course). The first time a decoy group is eliminated in combat, the card will be revealed for what it is. Other examples include Power to the People (non-fighting ships move at the same speed as combat ships) and Traders (+1 CP per planet connected by an MS pipeline). The rulebook presents two methods towards obtaining Empire Advantages: a semi-random draw (draw two, chose one) and open bidding.
These are all however hors-d'œuvre. The advanced expansion rules cover Transports that carry ground units which come in five varieties: Infantry, Marines, Heavy Infantry, Militia and Grav Armor. Their name is rather telling. They interact with things on planets, not with space ships or what have you. Militia are not purchased like the rest; they are instantly created the moment a colony gets invaded in a ratio of one Milita per CP. Marines and Heavy Infantry on the other hand behave differently if they defend a planet compared to attacking one. Players also receive free troops depending on the number of unblockaded 5-CP colonies they have on the board.
Captured Colonies now regress economically.
Players begin the game with a Flagship each. These ships pay no maintenance and have a handful of tricks up their sleeve. They also have cool names, usually related to real history or sci-fi: Enterprise, Thunder Child, Argo, Victory. Hah!
Research and Industrial Centers are a new rule that alters the way production and research works. Namely, only they can contribute towards research by producing research points. Up to 30 RPs can be carried over from turn to turn. RCs and ICs are placed on a planet, yet each planet can only hold one of them.
Terraforming Technology allows resources to be harvested straight out of nebulae.
Unique Ships allow the player to put forth his own designs before the beginning of the game; only his empire can use them, nobody else. These ships are not rule-breakers; they simply allow players to spring surprises upon their opponents within a well-defined framework. Each unique ship can have up to two special abilities, examples of which include scanners, shield projectors, warp gates and heavy warheads.
Finally, the rulebook provides a number of bullet-point variants that can affect a game like playing with higher production of minerals, higher research costs, bloodier combat etc. Players can either agree to these parameters or roll randomly.
Scenario-wise expect small maps for two players with starting positions right next to one another ('knife fight'), team games of 2 vs 1 or even 3 vs 1, Planetary Gate scenarios (with gates linking different planets), Space Amoeba scenarios, solitaire ones, and even cooperative ones. Does anybody here remember the Doomsday Machine from ST:TOS?
The strong points: If you are wondering why I just reviewed an expansion that was first published in 2012, the answer is that first, it is always widely available. Most importantly however, it is one of the best expansions ever published for any game. Each rule adds something, a twist, a nuance, a revelation. You don't have to use them all, if you do however the dividends are enormous. Space Empires: 4X was a very rich and complex game already. With Close Encounters it shoots straight out the stratosphere when it comes to replayability and variance.
Take the new asymmetrical abilities for empires as an example. They are not balanced against one another; some might point towards the military, others towards ships overall, while others still might be oriented towards the economy, the empire's main engine. Yet, allocating these is not done through a simplistic draw. The two-card semi-random draw allows for secrecy, while bidding on the (players plus one) cards at the beginning of the game gives a very clear indication of how each player will tackle his game. This works wonders when it comes to replayability, since it will force even the most conservative of players to revisit their approach. Depending on the scenario you use, it is not unheard for a player to simply pick one of the last two remaining cards, and use his CPs in more traditional ventures. Solid stuff!
Equally solid are the Alien tech cards that the players can claim when colonizing planets in the void. Many scenarios forced upon the players a rather rhetorical question: why invest so heavily in order to terraform and connect a planet in the middle of nowhere, when I can attack and claim a poorly defended colony from an opponent? Not only I win a colony, but the opponent also loses one. This equation is no longer as straightforward. Alien Tech can be instrumental towards expanding your empire, be it because your military gains a boost or your economy becomes easier to manage. Creating colonies in otherwise uninhabited space creates further engagement, reduces dead space, and is likely to increase interaction (see: friction) between the players. Isn't that what everybody wants?
Every change in Movement tech is about turning the game into a more aggressive and expansionist experience, the Reaction Movement technology however is one of my favourite new rules. It addresses an issue that drove many players mad: the close-but-no-cigar situation. It was very annoying to see your fleets stand aimlessly a single hex away of where the real actions was, especially when they could have made a difference. The rule does not make attackers risk-averse, it makes the game more fluid... if you care to invest in the technology, of course.
In the same line, the rules on experience make you really care about your military. You might have taken a risky gambit in the past, now however you want the most possible units to survive, seeing how they will give you serious advantages. It will sound counterintuitive, but this rule increases aggressiveness. How will you gain experience if you never attack anybody? Attacking however does not mean mindlessly leading your fleets to the slaughterhouse. Engagements just gained a new perspective.
Titans are a blast, and yes, this is a bad pun. When you move with one or more of those against an opponent you mean business. This isn't about conquering a colony, it is about total annihilation. Introducing such machines in the game means that near the end game the board might start emptying from features, while fleets will get substantially heavier than they were in the past...
...an approach that is also favoured by the movement changes brought to the battlecruisers. Titans and battlecruisers are clearly not comparable, yet there is an obvious conceptual change in what the game expects an empire to field as a robust fleet. No more jumping from lighter ships to heavier; the better distribution of perks means that all ships can be seen on the board at some point in time.
The totally new rules about transports, ground combat, and captured colonies literally create a new game within a game. This might not reach a combined arms approach (this is not a wargame after all), it does however increase the complexity of managing economic development along military expansion. Colonies feel less isolated since they have boots on the ground. Creating invasion forces is costly, yet players would obviously prefer to conquer colonies than to destroy them. Your job is to make the cost of that prohibitive, so that even when an opponent attacks you and wins, his hand will be forced towards destroying the colony. Remember: under the new rules you no longer have to build a colony from scratch; you retain your opponent's, reduced by one measly step. You also get a peak in his Empire Advantages and his Alien Tech cards; for a game that hides so many things, this fact in itself can be extremely motivating. Do it to others, don't allow it to happen to you.
Flagships are fun, and especially if you have a Trek junkie running the blue empire or a Greek playing the yellow one. The first thing these ships emulate is that just because you started playing does not mean that your empire did not exist before setup; there are crews and ships which are better than others. This makes them likely to see more action at the beginning of the game and add real experience to their predetermined infamy. Boarding or destroying one isn't necessarily a big deal if it happens in mid-game or later, there are however bragging rights involved. You can't allow the Enterprise to perish in a trivial encounter!
The terraforming of nebulas and the research and industrial centers can add a lot to your economy. The former is expensive but will pay dividends in the long term depending on how early you start working on it. It also adds a lot towards imperial friction that I commented upon earlier, by reducing dead space on the board. The latter system adds a lot more money into the game, allowing you to produce tech at the same time your centers spit out big and expensive ships. This is all about the game's scope and epic feeling. You might or might not want to always use the R&I rules depending on how experienced your co-players are.
Depending on how committed your are, you might also want to create new ships before the game. Cleary, this is an option designed for mega-fans. There is already enough diversity and variety going on, that encountering new ships is going to make a difference only to dedicated groups that play Space Empires systematically, and where the appearance of brand new designs is likely to create new stories and in-jokes. The fact that few might use it however does not mean that it is not well-made or that it shouldn't have been there. Few games offer such options.
The production values are what one expects to see and on par with the base game. Resealable bags are generously provided for the dozens of irreplaceable tokens. The artwork does the game justice, even though it is not memorable in any way.
The weak points: Space Empires' first and foremost issue is the lack of automation in its book-keeping. It is really easy to screw up the whole game by forgetting to calculate a single variable throughout the game. If the base game is an accountant's wet dream, this expansion makes it look more like the convention of their syndicalist association. This is not unheard of. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization might be an extremely cool board game, its electronic iteration however makes it substantially easier to handle; the PC is doing all the counting for you and eliminates the possibility for any mistake, not to mention that it allows take backs before the end of your turn. Here you calculate everything on your own without supervision. The more the game progresses the more the possibility of making a mistake becomes higher than the possibility of not making one. There should have been ways to tackle this.
The expansion opted for a rather curious design choice of keeping certain tech and empire cards hidden until the end of the game. Take Holodeck and Traders as an example. The first reduces maintenance costs for a certain type of ships, while the latter increases the CPs you earn for planets connected to your pipeline. How can you possibly hide this information from other players during the game, and be obliged to reveal it only at its end? Any experienced player worth his mettle will instantly confirm what your CP on the board is. Discrepancies will lead to expected questions as to whether you are mistaken in your calculations or cheating. Player mistrust is the last thing this game needs, seeing how easy it is for the most observant and law-abiding player to miss something. In our games cards are revealed the first moment they start having a recognizable impact. For the aforementioned two cards, that would be on the first turn you pay less for maintenance, or the first turn you gain extra CPs. This whole issue should have been addressed differently, and even more so because learning the content of such cards is a benefit provided by capturing a foreign colony.
Expect a serious increase in duration, always depending on the number of players and the scenario you run. The worst offenders are the boarding and the ground troop rules, by far. It depends on the scenario, of course, yet for some of the most committed ones and a four player table you can easily game from morning till late at night.
If I had reviewed this expansion immediately after its release I would have seriously wondered about the inclusion of certain rules and options here as opposed to the base game which had come out only one year before. Eight years later there is a point in this, and even more so because the expansion is filled to the brim with usable stuff.
Since I mentioned the table, make sure you have a gargantuan one. The expansion does not make things much worse, the base game alone however was already very demanding.
Conclusion: Space Empires: Close Encounters amply demonstrates what an expansion can do for a toolbox-like game when the designer and the publisher have crystal-clear vision and focus. Engrossing and mechanically sound, its desirability is irresistible for those who are into the accounting-heavy base game. You don't need to use every module in one go, they are all however so well-designed that you will be tempted to test each of them at least once. On the other hand expect a multifold increase of the game's duration as well as an increase in the potential inadvertent mistakes that players may make. Space Empires is not a game to play with cheaters.
To find out more about Space Empires: Close Encounters and GMT Games take a look at http://www.gmtgames.com.
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