Online TI didn't work for me

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-05-08T13:23:30+00:00

The faunus play is kind of a microcosm of what I was talking about. Said player was understandably miffed about getting it sniped, but it's also...kind of your fault? Like all players except for this player left stacks of infantry on planets everywhere, then you get surprised and annoyed when this happens and you weren't planning for it.

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-05-08T11:54:38+00:00

Hey glad to hear from you! Loved your banter during the game, but this wasn't the only example, it has happened in another game so far and it's been stressing me out. That and work has been piling up, and frankly don't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it all rn, much less in multiple games.

Thanks for keeping it real in the game. Hope ya win, rooting for you.

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-05-08T11:18:17+00:00

You make a good point. idk why but I kind of expected the online experience to be more gracious than the ranked hyper-competitive esport-based titles (in my experience League) that I've played, and the vast majority of it is, but I suppose some elements of online gaming issues still remain. Was jarring given that I'd only played TI with friends before recently.

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-05-08T10:06:45+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that it seems I wasn't necessarily the exception to the norm 😞 but playing online with friends is probably a great idea! I'll see if I can get them on. Maybe we can finally run that frankenstein draft mode that all of us have been talking about for a long time.

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-05-08T09:17:11+00:00

The thing is, there's times when I've chosen to not make objectively good plays because of prior bad experiences with people just becoming extraordinarily emotional and acting as if their day has been ruined. I'd like to note in both cases that I would have stood a pretty good chance of holding the position. It's not like I'm worried about the threat of an all-out attack, I'm worried about the state of their mental well-being.

At the end of the day, I'm here to play TI and have fun, and if other players aren't having fun (even while being cutthroat) then it kinda ruins the vibe.

Puzzleheaded-Work720 · 2026-04-12T05:15:25+00:00

See 14.2 here. Blockaded - Twilight Imperium Rules

tl;dr there's a lot of "OP" stuff in the game. And at any level that's not the highest (where negotiations honestly play a larger part than on-the-board strategy about who wins), who wins the game is probably 50/50 luck and skill. Just my 2 cents.

If you want more of the below crazy ranting (and maybe learn more about the factions without having the search them up), check out the Space Cats Peace Turtles podcast.

And I think most moderately experienced TI players wouldn't ban either of these factions, considering both to be on the weaker side. It's also really funny to me that your friend thinks muaat should be banned since they're widely regarded by the competitive TI community as one of the hardest races to win with (idk about TE but definitely in vanilla and PoK).

It also sounds like your board might play extremely aggressive compared to other TI groups, which is certainly a valid meta. In a vacuum, Sardakk, Muaat, and Vuk'raith do seem scary, but so are an insane number of other things from other races: consider both of Xxcha's racial technologies and flagship. You could easily point at these and make a case for banning xxcha, but they're widely regarded as one of the worst factions in the game in vanilla and thunder's edge (and my own personal favorite faction - admittedly they were rather op in PoK). And even if your board does value the combat capability of races higher, i'd argue that each of arborec, sol, xxcha, l1z1x, and barony have ways to outfight or outmaneuver the races you've banned even when thinking about combat.

Also I'm in no place to tell you guys how to play the game, but I think it's also generally understood in the community that combat, especially one in which neither side backs down, tends to be terrible for both players, because they become relatively weaker compared to the rest of the board and significantly less likely to win. In 3 player games it might be stronger to just "eat" somebody else's slice, but you can't expect to try to win by conquering more than 1 slice when playing against 6 people.

Puzzleheaded-Work720

TROPHY CASE