How to Play in 5 Minutes

Hyper Imperium is a collection of home-brewed modifications and variants designed for the 4th Edition of Twilight Imperium. It requires the Prophecy of Kings expansion, which is where hyper-lanes are officially introduced.

Each of these modifications can be played in isolation or collectively as Hyper Imperium.

Design Objectives

The primary design objectives were as follows:

• More accurately recreate the experience of exploring three-dimensional space
• Fully utilise available hyper-lanes and additional tiles from Prophecy of Kings
• Only introduce features that reduce setup time or length of game play

Hyper Movement

The following basic changes to the rules are required:

• Home systems are no longer placed on the outer ring
• Instead, there should be one ring of additional systems
• Units may move from an outer ring to one of the opposite outer rings

There is an exploration variant that introduces additional rules:

• The only systems shown at setup are starting systems and Mecatol Rex
• When activating unknown systems, players can move in blindly or reveal that system
• By default, units may not move through unknown systems, only into them
• If revealing a system rather than entering it, the player also receives one commodity
• Units must end their turn on a hyperlane if it leads to an unknown system
• Exploring unknown systems connected to hyperlanes must be done from the hyperlane

Hyper Trades

Hyper Imperium allows for more flexible trading. However, in order to perform a trade that is not permitted by standard rules, you may only do so if both parties involved have promissory notes belonging to the other. The only exception to this is if you are the Space Lions, in which case only one of the parties involved needs to have a promissory note belonging to the other.

Shared Secrets

Shared secrets are designed to provide an additional way to score points.

Every time a player scores a secret or shared secret objective, a new secret objective is drawn and shared secretly between all the players who did not score the objective.

The first person to score a shared secret objective scores two points and the shared secret objective is then revealed as a shared objective, which any player can score as they would with other objectives, allowing them to score upon completing the objective or waiting until the end of the round when scoring objectives. At which point players may score for both a public objective, secret objective and shared objective.

This allows for a minimum of one additional victory point to be scored per round and for some players even permits an additional two victory points per round, drastically reducing game time.

Hyperlanes

Units must end their turn on a hyperlane if it leads to an unknown system. Exploring unknown systems connected to hyperlanes must be done from the hyperlane if not connected naturally.

Prior to the first agenda being revealed, each player with units in a hyperlane receives one Personal Agenda for each hyperlane they have units in.

System tiles with hyperlanes that have units in them can be passed through as though they were empty systems (regardless of direction) so long as the units moving through them have enough to not need to end their turn on that system.

Setup

For 4 to 6 players using the 8 player gamegenic game mat, first place your starting systems within their usual 4 to 6 player starting spots. Since all empty systems (other than Mecatol Rex) will be drawn randomly from the Undiscovered Deck later; the board is already setup.

Players must now trade promissory notes (as described later) and draw from the Personal Agenda deck in the same way their faction would draw from the Secret Objective deck.

Movement

When activating an unknown system, players can move into that system blindly by first committing their units to that system and then drawing from the Undiscovered Deck to determine what system they have moved into.

Alternatively, they can explore the system by randomly drawing from the Undiscovered Deck and not moving any units into the system, and instead receive one commodity. By default, units may not move through unknown systems, only into them.

Components

The following optional components can be used to improve Hyper Imperium:

• Discussion Deck = 6 cards
• Undiscovered Deck = one card per available system tile
• Influence Deck = one card per total influence available across all system tiles
• Personal Agenda Deck

Discussion Deck

The discussion deck not only determines whether there will be more than one agenda, but also offers a random yet important additional decision for the speaker.

1. No more agendas — choose one player that must randomly give you a personal agenda
2. No more agendas — draw two personal agendas — keep one give one away
3. No more agendas — unless you ignore this card and draw again?
4. One more agenda — unless you ignore this card and draw again?
5. One more agenda — look first — must block one player by giving them speaker position
6. One more agenda — look first — you cannot vote unless you give up your speaker position

After all agendas for the current round are complete the cards can be returned to the deck and shuffled in preparation for the next round of agendas.

Undiscovered Deck

The undiscovered deck not only provides a streamlined way to enable truly random board setups and exploration options, but also offers interesting surprises and shocking twists.

Each available system should be represented by a card with a generic cover. When drawing the card, players must immediately reveal it to everyone. If it is a hyperlane, the player discovering it may decide the direction that it is placed. If it points towards another hyperlane, that system tile is removed from the board and can once again be explored.

Any units on a removed hyperlane tile remain in the empty space and are now known as being lost in hyperspace. Units lost in hyperspace can only move out by moving into any system that has a wormhole or waiting until their system is explored again.

Units lost in hyperspace may not discover systems.

Influence Deck

The influence deck not only streamlines the blind voting process, but also helps to even-out influence by providing a barrier to blindly spending it on agendas. There are only three kinds of influence cards within the deck:

• No vote = 45% of the deck
• One vote = 45% of the deck
• Two votes = 10% of the deck

Personal Agenda Deck

The personal agenda deck is not only the source of hidden agenda topics, but also provides a new asset containing valuable information that can potentially be traded at any time.

Examples of the agenda deck contents include:

• Miscommunication — the opposite occurs to selected player(s) / planet(s) / etc
• Corruption — players with most trade goods decides the outcome regardless of votes
• Sabotage — players spending most votes must destroy two of their own non-fighter ships
• Uprising — players with least number of planets decides outcome regardless of votes

Hyper Agendas

Prior to starting the first agenda of each round, but before and instead of automatically refreshing all planets, for each planet that has not been spent and contains influence, players are able to draw a number of cards from the influence deck equal to unspent influence and then refresh their planets as they would normally. Players now use the cards they have drawn from the influence deck for blind voting, rather than the influence on the planet.

After this, but prior to the first agenda being revealed, each player with units in a hyperlane receives one Personal Agenda for each hyperlane they have units in.

Before reading out the agenda the speaker must perform a Personal Agenda action by either:

• Selecting to play one from their own hand
• Selecting another player and randomly choosing one of theirs to play
• Drawing one from the deck and only revealing it after the votes have been committed

Speakers vote first and voting is conducted counterclockwise.

After the agenda is complete the speaker will draw from the Discussion Deck in order to determine whether or not there will be another agenda within this round.

Forced Promissory Note Exchange

Since the exchange of promissory notes are now encouraged in order to promote a more flexible trading system, each player is also required to give one of their promissory notes to each of the other players at the start of the game.

These notes must be exchanged blindly without revealing them until all players have given each player one of their notes. Promissory notes are the only things that can be traded freely regardless of faction, locations and promissory note ownership.

Mercenary Factions

Mercenary factions provide a way to not only allow everyone to build their own factions, but also ensures that everyone starts with an equal footing, and for the first time, perhaps even allowing everyone to start with exactly the same abilities as they would in a game of chess.

This optional rule is recommended to only be adopted if all players are doing so, and by doing so drastically alters setup by enabling everyone to pre-draft and only reveal their choices once all players have confirmed their own starting specifications.

Custom factions include the basic units that are shared by the majority of factions.

Players have a total of 100 points to be spent building their faction across the following specifications:

• Starting System:
  • Number of Planets (between 1 to 3)
  • Resources on each Planet (between 1 to 4)
  • Influence on each Planet (between 1 to 4)
• Faction Commodities (between 1 to 4)
• Faction Abilities (between 1 to 3)
• Starting Technologies (between 1 to 2)
• Flagship Abilities (between 1 to 3)
• Unit Upgrades (between 1 to 3)
• Promissory Note
• Mech Ability
• Agent
• Commander
• Hero

Hyper Factions

We have also developed two of our own factions specifically tailored to Hyper Imperium:

• The Remnant — humanoid millennia ago, they have now emerged from hyperspace
• The Wanderers — a race of bird-like nomads that worship a giant wormhole

We have taken inspiration for these from an up-coming game we are developing, which is based upon the open source space exploration video game called Endless Sky.

The Wanderers (100 points)

The Remnant (100 points)

Faction Abilities (100 points)

Combat and Movement

Starting Technologies

Starting System

Commodities

Resources

Influence

Sustain Damage

Flagship Abilities

Base Flagship: Cost 8, Combat 8, Move 1, Capacity 1, Sustain YES

Mech Abilities

Base Mech: Cost 2, Combat 8, Move 0, Capacity 0, Sustain YES

Leaders

Agent (exhaust to use)

Commander

Hero

Promissory Note

Unit Upgrades

Cost to purchase each ability depends on unit type. X = not available for that unit.