u/DebonairTeddy

*About a month ago I set about trying to convert all of the Endless Space 2 races into factions for Twilight Imperium. I'm pleased to say that I've mostly finished up my project, and will be unveiling all twelve factions one by one in the coming days! Endless Space 2 is a 4X strategy game that has vibes that are very similar to Twilight Imperium. I did my best to keep the factions as close as possible to the playstyles they liked to adopt in the strategy game.*

*A huge shoutout goes to Ascendantempires.com. This website is what I used to make all of the factions, and is an incredibly well made tool for any other potential creators. It isn't completely finished yet, but I found it incredibly helpful for tinkering with designs that were kicking around in my head.*

So the final race released for Endless Space 2 and the final faction I made for the Endless Twilight Project. The Nakalim were released for the Awakening DLC for ES2 and it was... Really bad. The DLC came with some really toxic mechanics and the new race was pretty much unplayable garbage. Thankfully it has since been fixed with an update and the Nakalim are in a much better spot. The idea behind the Nakalim is pretty simple: they start with all of the early game technologies, which make them really, really strong early, and they have ancient temples they can awaken for free planets if they go out and explore them. But they are hampered by being really slow at researching any new technology.

I thought that was interesting design for a TI4 faction, and the Nakalim is one of the first I conceptualized. What would a faction be like if it started with a huge early game advantage but lacked a way to capitalize on that? So the Nakalim start with four one-prerequisite technologies, including the ever sought-after gravity drive. Their starting fleet is absurd with two dreads and a carrier plus infantry, fighters, and a PDS. They have a powerful early game agent that gives them even more free plastic. But this is all contained by having a really bad home planet and by not being able to research tech in the normal way. Like the Nekro Virus, the Nakalim don't research they just get Command Tokens (though at a worse rate than the Nekro). Their only way to get new technologies is to collect relics and purge fragments, which creates a tension between "Do I save these fragments to get a relic offering more long-term advantage, or do I purge these fragments now to get some technology I really need."

Their ability to climb the tech tree is interesting in that they can skip around the tree and not worry about prerequisites and also get multiple techs in one shot, but the cost is pretty steep and difficult to maintain. They do have some consistency with their legendary planet ability and their promissory note, but you will need some luck or really generous neighbors to get there in your techs. The Nakalim hero is also pretty weak, making your home planet much better and giving you a free relic count, but not really doing anything that shakes up the game.

They're a race I'm very eager to see in play because I think they're hard to evaluate in a vacuum. Everything is about their stellar early game and we don't really have a faction like that right now in TI. And speaking of wanting to know how these factions play out, now that all twelve factions have been revealed I am officially putting the word out there looking for playtesters. I am currently working on implementing the factions into the Discord Async bot, and I hope that will be ready in the next week or two. I also want to put these factions on the TTS mod, but that will take a teensy bit more time since there are some PNGs I still need to make and I'm focusing on finishing the Async implementation first since that has a more active homebrew/playtesting community. If anyone would be interested in being a playtester, please let me know in the comments or send me a chat on Reddit I would be happy to add you to Discord and to my playtester list.

That being said, thank you so much for those who have been here for all twelve faction reveals and thank you so much for the thoughtful critique and kindness I received in the comments! I'm glad I had a community of people excited about this board game I could share my crazy ideas with. Let me know what you think of the Nakalim in the comments and have a wonderful day.

About a month ago I set about trying to convert all of the Endless Space 2 races into factions for Twilight Imperium. I'm pleased to say that I've mostly finished up my project, and will be unveiling all twelve factions one by one in the coming days! Endless Space 2 is a 4X strategy game that has vibes that are very similar to Twilight Imperium. I did my best to keep the factions as close as possible to the playstyles they liked to adopt in the strategy game.

A huge shoutout goes to Ascendantempires.com. This website is what I used to make all of the factions, and is an incredibly well made tool for any other potential creators. It isn't completely finished yet, but I found it incredibly helpful for tinkering with designs that were kicking around in my head.

The Umbral Choir ended up being a very interesting design. In Endless Space 2, the expansion that brought the Umbral Choir to the game as a playable race also brought in a Hacking mechanic, and it was very much a core part of the Umbral Choir experience. The Choir has a gameplay style where they can "hack" your systems and fleets, giving them various advantages while being very difficult to interact with. The Choir's home system is completely invisible, being very difficult to detect as it otherwise looks like just a normal anomaly on the map screen. As such, the Choir was really difficult to interact with and you couldn't often fight them in a normal way.

So, that is some of the playstyle I tried to port over to TI4. The Umbral Choir have an identity all around waiting out the other players and striking them where they are most vulnerable. This mostly takes the shape of them activating systems that other players have already activated, which is how I decided to visualize "hacking" into a system. I also made it so their home system couldn't be taken, giving them an element of uninteractability similar to Saar or the Crimson Rebellion. With these powerful bonuses, I also decided to give the Choir a crippling malus in the shape of the "9" token, a complement to the Naluu's "0" token.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of adding a 9 token into the game, but I like the way it pairs with the Choir's identity in activating already-activated systems, since other players will have a chance to use systems before the Choir takes their turn.

Well, that's all for them. I hope you enjoyed this look at the Umbral Choir, but let me know what you think in the comments. Tomorrow will be the final race reveal, so come back then to see the Nakalim Progenitors.

About a month ago I set about trying to convert all of the Endless Space 2 races into factions for Twilight Imperium. I'm pleased to say that I've mostly finished up my project, and will be unveiling all twelve factions one by one in the coming days! Endless Space 2 is a 4X strategy game that has vibes that are very similar to Twilight Imperium. I did my best to keep the factions as close as possible to the playstyles they liked to adopt in the strategy game.

A huge shoutout goes to Ascendantempires.com. This website is what I used to make all of the factions, and is an incredibly well made tool for any other potential creators. It isn't completely finished yet, but I found it incredibly helpful for tinkering with designs that were kicking around in my head.

The Hissho are one of the more complicated factions I designed for this project. Basically, they have an extra resource called Keii that works alongside these special cards they have, called Observances. Each Observance works kind of like a law that only affects the Hissho player, giving them a way to earn Keii, a way to lose Keii, and a way to spend their Keii. These Observances are actually a third agenda that shows up after the other two are done, allowing the entire table to vote on which Observance the Hissho has to follow in the coming round. This fits into their identity as being honorable, sticking to the codes set for them even if they're not always entirely in control of what those codes are.

In Endless Space, the Hissho really benefited from "building tall", or only really concentrating their efforts into a few systems. I moved that into here a little bit as well with their faction tech, allowing them to stack up all of their structures and removing the downsides of doing so. In the computer game, they are also known for their access to early Behemoths and have special technologies for building around them, so naturally I made them a War Sun faction. In Endless Space, your Behemoths can either be offensive powerhouses or defensive economic boosters, so I attempted to adapt that over as well by allowing them to either have War Suns that can dominate combat, or ones that can be powerful mobile factories.

Out of all the factions, Hissho are one of my favorite aesthetically and one of my favorites to play in Endless Space, but I'm not sure how well they will be received. I went back and forth on a bunch of different ideas, and I like where they ended up. But let me know what you think, and look forward tomorrow where we introduce our second-to-last faction, the Umbral Choir.

About a month ago I set about trying to convert all of the Endless Space 2 races into factions for Twilight Imperium. I'm pleased to say that I've mostly finished up my project, and will be unveiling all twelve factions one by one in the coming days! Endless Space 2 is a 4X strategy game that has vibes that are very similar to Twilight Imperium. I did my best to keep the factions as close as possible to the playstyles they liked to adopt in the strategy game.

A huge shoutout goes to Ascendantempires.com. This website is what I used to make all of the factions, and is an incredibly well made tool for any other potential creators. It isn't completely finished yet, but I found it incredibly helpful for tinkering with designs that were kicking around in my head.

The Vaulters felt like a natural inclusion into TI4, with a focus on both exploration and technological advancement. Those are both things that translate well into TI4, and it felt very natural to make them. I like the idea of being given a completely random home system to work with, and I gave them access to an extra planet with the Argosky in case they are in a situation where their home system is really crippling. They have two powerful late game techs, giving them both extra mobility and military power in ways that represent their identity in Endless Space 2.

Their leader suite is a little unique too, in that their hero doesn't have the normal unlock condition of heroes, instead only unlocking if Auriga is ever discovered and placed on the board. Auriga itself is a very powerful legendary planet, giving a tech synergy and a hit of enigmatic device each turn. The idea is to make the Vaulter player have to fight to control Auriga, and their hero can give them a bunch of free techs that could enable the kind of plays to make that happen.

They're a faction I'm a big fan of currently. I think they're both very thematic and fun to play, and I'm hopeful that they will be as fun to play as I'm envisioning. But let me know what you think, and look forward to tomorrow when I will reveal the Hissho Bushiden!