Kris Hall: Nigel Buckle and Ascendancy

Space empire games have been popular recently.  I tend to like this genre, at least in theory, so when I heard of a new design called Ascendancy, I decided to see if the designer, Nigel Buckle, would agree to an interview.  It turns out he would.

Kris: Is Ascendancy your first design?  What is your background as a designer?  How did Ascendancy come to be designed?

Nigel: No, Celtic Quest was my first published game. I’ve always played games, and for as long as I can remember I’ve tinkered with rules – that lead on to designing my own mechanics and then whole games.

I design games that I want to play – I then try it out on my long suffering friends, if they like it then I’ll work on it further, but until JKLM published Celtic Quest I had no luck getting responses from publishers .

I designed Ascendancy because I wanted to play a short space empire game as a boardgame. I’ve played games like Outreach (SPI), Stellar Conquest (Metagaming) and enjoyed them, but current gaming tastes are for much shorter games. Furthermore I enjoy games with a technology tree, and I wanted to implement this in a game.

I had the original design in place before Celtic Quest was published in 2005, but I was told that “Space games don’t sell”. Fortunately attitudes seem to have changed.

Kris: There have been several galactic empire games that have been well-received.  Among them are Twilight Imperium, Galactic Emperor, and Race for the Galaxy.  And still to come is Supernova.  What does Ascendancy offer gamers that these other games do not?  And can you give me an overview of the game mechanics?

Nigel: Depends what you’ve played of course (I haven’t played Galactic Emperor or Supernova). The main features of Ascendancy are:

1. Scale - in Ascendancy you are fighting over entire sectors of the galaxy and moving vast fleets around - so there’s no micromanagement of resources to design and buy ships, track fuel or save up for technology, defences or other units. Game lasts either 6 rounds or 9, and each round represents about 100 years.

2. Game play - each round you direct the focus of your empire in 3 specific areas (of course your empire is doing lots of things in the time, but from the game perspective you set these 3 agendas), if you want to research (for example) you pick Research - that lets you select a new technology. If you want to move your fleets, you pick Move and that lets you either move all the fleets out of a sector, or move all fleets in range to a sector (your choice). None of these require action points or saving up resources or collecting fuel counters etc - limit is you have choice of 3 from 5 each round.

In the long game there is one additional action you can use – a Reserve Fleet Action, which requires you commit a fleet for the round (so it is not available for use on the map) and possibly resources too. This represents an additional push your Empire is making in a particular direction, but at the expense of fleets and resources. So you might invest in gaining more technology or an additional movement for example.

3. Non-player Empire - most of the galaxy is controlled by a non-player power, the Empire. They are sitting on all the resource rich areas - players are out on the edge in barren space, so part of the game is attacking the empire for the resources. The Empire develops as the game progresses, building fleets and gaining combat technology to make taking sectors harder.

4. Multiple routes to victory - you gain victory points for a number of areas, you choose the route you want to take, maybe you plan to annex most of the galaxy, maybe you plan to build monuments, or maybe you want to wipe out the empire, or win the technology race.  In the short game you get victory points for nearly everything, in the long game you have to choose which areas you will get your points (through achievement cards).

5. Dice-less combat. Combat is deterministic, you factor the number of fleets in the combat, any defences and what technology each side has and then work out fleets lost (one side will lose, no co-habiting allowed). Once you’ve got the hang of it combat is fast (see point 7).

6. Pressure - you can’t do everything. You can only attack from or into one sector a turn (unless you research to increase this), you can only attack adjacent sectors (unless you research to increase this too). You only have a limited number of fleets to both defend and take new sectors; and you only have a limited number of rounds to get it all done. The technology is in short supply - so it’s not just a matter of what you need it’s a matter of how critical is it and what do you do if someone else grabs the technology you were planning to get next time?

7. Reasonable playtime. Short game should be playable by new players in an hour and the Long game in about two.

In the Long game you pre-plan your 3 focus cards simultaneously, so everyone chooses and plays them facedown at the same time. They are then revealed and resolved in order - this helps to keep downtime to a minimum, everyone is working out what they will do in a round at the same time. There’s no waiting around for 20 minutes while 2 other people fight a space battle.

Kris: How many players can play?  How long is an average game?

Nigel: 2 to 4, and play tests have shown the claimed time is realistic, the short game takes an hour, the long game two.

Kris: What is the relative complexity level of the game? 

Nigel: Ascendancy is not a hard game to play – the individual mechanics are quite straightforward, however there is a learning curve for the game. It is strategic rather than tactical, to do well you ideally need to have a plan and try to optimise your actions to put the plan into effect. The technology cards build combinations, and a large part of the game is using those.

For example there is a technology called Escape Pods which lets you put your first fleet loss in each combat back to your home sector, this is quite powerful, but the problem is your home sector fills up with fleets and you’ll need to move them to other sectors. As your Empire grows you’ll struggle to move the rescued fleets as well as those in other sectors. Two other technologies can help – Sub-space Radios lets you take two move actions, so you can use one to move your fleets from your home sector and the other to expand your empire and Hyperdrive lets each of your fleets move a distance of two sectors rather than one, of course having both will give you maximum movement flexibility. But that is three technology cards, instead of those you could have chosen 3 others. It is all about selecting the right technology to match the strategy you are following, while at the same time reacting to what your opponents are doing. Fall behind in the technology race and you could be eliminated – it is not nice being in a position where a stack of three of your fleets can be eliminated by a single opposing fleet, as the stacking limit is 3!

The long game is more strategic than the short game. In the short game you get victory points for doing everything, in the long game you need to spend a politics focus action to take an achievement card that will give you end game victory points for a particular aspect of the game. For example taking the achievement expansion means each sector you hold at the end is worth 10 Victory Points, if you don’t take this achievement your sectors are worthless (to you). Of course you can spend 6 actions over 6 rounds taking all your possible achievement cards, but then you will struggle to fulfil them – players need to decide which achievements they are going to take in the game and then plan their game accordingly.

Kris: Can you tell us a bit about the combat system of the game?

Nigel: The combat system is quick to resolve, deterministic and heavily effected by technology. There will only ever be combat between two sides, as combat is resolved after each player finishes movement.

Ignoring technology for the moment, the way combat works is:

Compare the opposing fleets, largest fleet has initiative and fires first inflicting a loss. Then the smaller fleet fires back (if any survive). This is repeated until only one side is left. So if I use 4 fleets to attack your sector that has 2 fleets defending I’ll win and have 3 fleets left. If I attack with just 2 we will both be eliminated.

Technology alters this, for example, if you have Shields you ignore the first loss in combat. So in the example above if I had Shields and attacked the sector with just 2 fleets the end result would be I’d take the sector with no loss.

How does that work? First round of combat losses are inflicted simultaneously as we both have 2 fleets - you lose 1 fleet, I lose my shield. Second round of combat I have more fleets than you so I’m firing first, I fire your last fleet is eliminated and the combat is over.

Falling behind in the arms race is bad - but not necessarily a disaster, the stacking limits and movement system mean it is hard for to take multiple sectors in a single round unless you can take each sector with a single fleet, and if you have a way of getting more fleets onto the map you can make up for the lack of technology with sheer weight of numbers.

In summary, if you bring more fleets to the war or have a technological edge over your enemy you will win, but winning a war doesn’t guarantee you will win the game.

Kris: What was the biggest difficulty you had designing the game?  What are you most proud of in the design?

Nigel: The learning curve – with my regular playtesters the gradual changes meant they were all happy with the game. Blind testing on other groups showed very quickly that the long game was a little too much, too many choices and the initial choices having a big impact on the game. Ascendancy is not a game where you can play poorly in the early game and expect there to be a catch up mechanic to keep you in the running, furthermore the early actions (such as technology choice) have a cascade effect later in the game. This problem was overcome by the introduction of the short game, which removes some of the choices from the game while keeping enough of the mechanics to act as an introduction to the long game but still be interesting enough to play in its own right.

I believe I’ve achieved my original objective of having a space empire game that is playable in under 2 hours, and if you play the short game under 1 hour. This was achieved by considering all the elements of the design, and where appropriate abstracting and simplifying to reduce play time while still keeping the feel of a space empire game. I’m also proud of the implementation of technology, this element has a major impact in the game. I decided to make my technology tree broad rather than deep (there are two levels, technology and improved technology) and have the players concentrate on the interaction of technology cards rather than obtaining particular card as a pre-requisite for other more interesting/powerful cards.

Kris: When is the earliest that gamers could expect to see the game published?

Nigel: JKLM have announced that the game will not make Essen, but be released in mid-November. My understanding is the delay is down to additional languages being added to the print run.

Kris: Thanks for the interview.

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