Empire's End BGG ↗

Your rating: 7.0

My BGG Comment

SPIEL 2023. Mr Space Base does a civ game. There is some shared dna with SB. You’re 11 slot empire is in decline. For the start you have a building in every slot that gives you either some resource during production phases, some strength during military action or some building bonusses during building phases. But between those 3 phases are the catastrophes. And when those come up you better have some resources to pay to avoid getting hit… just like with No Thanks, the first person not to put something atop the catastrophe gets to take it and has to flip the slot determined by the catastrophe card to the “burning” side losing the bonus. As a slight mitigation they get to place the catastrophe which itselfs provides a bonus under a slot of their choice where it will help until that slot goes up in flames. The sequence of phases is fixed. There are 3 types of resources and coins as a joker. Slots can be repaired during building phase but if you spend too many resources to repair a slot you might just end up in the position that my partner had where he could not bid anymore and had to take a whole bunch of catastrophes. Even if they burn a slot already destroyed, it just skips over to the next one. I liked it fine. But my partner went down a dramatic decline after a few rounds and we had to end the game early because it was too frustrating for him to continue. We might have been missing some mitigation rule that might have helped him get out of the hole he dug for himself… the problem is No Thanks is a short silly game and this is not. Here having to bid first for the next catastrophe after you just got one because you have no resources… kind of makes some spiral inevitable and I doubt that this is correct. But maybe the game is just that punishing. I’ll check. I can’t buy it anyway after this experience.