Sharing an absolute surprise hit – Ascending Empires
My gaming group has an appetite for fairly heavy games like Caverna, Cthulhu Wars, Kemet. We play the likes of King of Tokyo and Tiny Epic Games for lighter breaks. Until a few sessions ago we had never seen nor played a dexterity game but had fun with Terror in Meeple City and on the back of that, gave the 4X + finger flicking game Ascending Empires a go.
It was funny, compelling, engaging, entertaining and bounced high on the must play again list.
The way it blends meaningful strategic and tactical choices with finger flicking shenanigans is truly a marvel. There is a tech tree to pursue and a limit of how much of it you can possibly complete. Do you go balanced across the movement, defence, production or offence themed threes or focus on just one or two of them for higher tier benefits? Do you develop whatever is easiest based on the planets nearby you or go in search of those that enable your preferred research? I spent a big chunk of the game locked into combat over a purple planet I needed to advance my defence tree and could possibly have done much better by adapting my strategy instead.
As you spread across the galaxy you also make choices about where to build research bases, colonies and cities. Where and when you do this really matters. Deploy cities prior to upgrading production tech that gives you bonus units on city creation and you’ll get fewer benefits but with the trade-off that your planets with cities can defend themselves pretty well. Build research bases prior to developing the defence tech that adds defence for them and you make them a prime target for attack but if they aren’t, you might be able to rush research.
One playthrough is just enough to glimpse the deceptive depth underneath the finger flicking mechanic. As for that, wow. Maybe a little skill, maybe a lot of luck, but nothing more so than die-rolling and less arbitrary. Plus deciding what to try to do whilst also taking into account your skill or lack of it presents challenging tactical dilemmas. Take the easy route of ramming an enemy ship to ensure mutual destruction? Try to blockade a nearby enemy planet to prevent it being used as a launch pad for aggression against you? Maybe try and take out that vulnerable research base on a more distant planet? Maybe just manoeuvre to defend your own space and avoid outright conflict for a while?
The guy that won our first game was the first to get to a defence tech that granted 2 VPs whenever one of his ships was rammed. Mistakes happen, and he got a whole bunch of VPs once the galaxy was filled up and conflict escalated.
I was so taken with this I’ve looked into other similar games, with Catacombs and Flick Em Up both looking promising.
Any Londoners reading this? Our gaming group has space for a few new die rollers. We game in the Canada Water SE London Area on weekends and typically play for most of a day on Saturday or Sunday. Newcomers welcome, ping me!
