So this is a blog about me writing my game Giant Stone Head but I often digress into stuff about board games in general.  Today I’m going to digress even further to talk about computer games – although with a wiggle I’ll lunge back towards my main topic by talking about the difference between the computer game and a board game that does the same thing.

So the computer game is “endless space” and the board game is “eclipse” which I talked to about six months ago and have played 3 or 4 times more since then.  I’ll admit I’ve only played Endless space once – and unless there is some multiplayer action I doubt I’ll go back to it.

Both games are space themed 4X games - explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate- or conquer the universe as I tend to call them.  I used to love this type of game – hell I could beat Master of Orion on impossible despite the computer cheating in an outrageous manner and dropping stacks of 9999 dreadnaughts on your systems out of nowhere.  Which even though it’s twenty years ago I can still remember how I did it as well – it was a terrible abuse of the “black hole generator” technology, the ship design rules and the computer AI.  Ask me how if you see me in person.

Anyway – despite this ancient love it’s been a while since a 4X game has got me to play it through to the end – so what ever Endless Space is doing wrong it’s doing a bunch of stuff right as well.  It was hard enough that even on medium I had to start a couple of games to build enough momentum to win. 

But while playing it – I looked at the game with board game design eyes and came back with some stuff that made me go hmmmmmmmm

Length – Eclipse is a finely tuned game that takes you from start to end in about 3 hours.  Endless space took about 18 hours – a length of time that’s longer then twilight Imperium.

Fiddlyness – I often look at stupidly complicated board games and think “this is why they made computer games” but for all Endless space is well made – I found my self thinking “this is fiddly – I’m making a lot of little decision that have obvious answers to make things happen.”  Move that fleet there, build that there, combine these fleets, refit that.  Develop a tech and go into every system to see if you want to build that there…..

Game End – I won endless space – hours before I won it.  This might me being supper cautious but when the end came it came so stupidly quickly that it was clear I had in fact won hours ago.  My technological and fleet edge was so big there was literally nothing my opponent could do – even if he won a fight against one of my big dreadnaught fleets there were ten more of them coming along behind. 

Combat – eclipse combat is dice rolling – and damage assigning.  It’s simple – and actually the key part is having made the best ship before you get in to a fight.  And not just a best ship – a best ship to face what your opponent has.  Which often leads to the comedy situation of two people jumping there fleets into together and then refitting them to counter what the other is refitting there ships to do…..  It’s not very involved – but can be quite cool.  Where as Endless space combat is just as dependent on having your ships fitted out but you’ve got no damned idea what the opponent is carrying till the shooting starts.  Also you get to pick a card that affects things – and can in a rock paper scissor way knock out the opposition card.  But with the computer picking randomly (it choose cards that boosts weapons it does not even have – so I believe it’s randomly) that goes out the window and your choice is pretty much blind.  Add in a two minute animation of your ships blowing stuff up and you can lose a lot of time to watching fights.  Hey – I’ve seen 7 enemy fleets hurl them selves against the same Dreadnaught fleet and die without inflicting any damage.  So despite the dice rolling fest – I’m more involved in combat in Eclipse then I am in endless space.

Decision Making – the number of little obvious decision I had to make in endless space was massive.  Do I build this thing – does it actually add something to this system?  Will it cost lots for little benefit?  Well then that’s your answer.  The number of really key – well informed decision  that were not trival seemed very few.  As opposed to Eclipse which has narrowed your game down to a key decisions – expand – build- research.  And what is the order – can you afford to leave that tech for a little while or do you need to go now?

Viewing both of them through the lens of board game design – it’s clear that Eclipse is a much better designed game then Endless space – and as I say Endless space is the first computer 4X game I’ve played to the end in a while.

I’ve seen a lot of stuff that talks about how important board game stuff is in prototyping computer games – but the lesson I’m taking home is that lessons can go both ways.  If I encounter a board game that fiddly - with that many obvious or random decisions I'd think they were mad....