I don’t often play board games. When it comes to putting a game on the table, I would much rather be rolling some dice or pretending to fly little starships around the board. However, one of the gems of our collection is Ian Cooper’s Ascending Empires produced by Z-Man Games. Part resource management, part research acquisition, and part manual dexterity, Ascending Empires is a science-fiction themed game that 2-4 players can play in about 75 minutes.
Ascending Empires puts you in control of one of the human empires that has grown out of the ashes of a great Civil War. You maneuver your starships around the game board, discovering and colonizing planets. Colonizing various types of planets allows the players to research and develop new technologies to gain an edge over their opponents.
The game board is set up with 28 spaces for planets. Each player sets up their homeworld as defined by how many players are in the game. The rest of the spaces are randomized by four colors of planets or asteroids, again, depending on how many players are in the game. Finally, a store of Victory Points is set aside, determined by… you guessed it – how many players are in the game. When the last of these Victory Points is claimed, the game ends and the players go through and total up their scores.
The game focuses on moving your starships around the game board by flicking them in the desired direction. Your aim and your power need to be precise – flick a ship too hard and you may throw it off the board destroying it. Too softly and you won’t get it to where you want it to go. If your ship lands in a small area around the planet, you may flip it over if it is unexplored.
If you are the first player there, or there are no other players pieces on the planet, you may land a troop there to occupy the planet. Troops are a finite resource that can be distributed to any planet the player has occupied, using them to launch starships, build structures, or shore up defenses. At the beginning of the turn, as long as they player has troops in reserve, he can distribute two troops amongst any of the planets he occupies, as long as there are no more than three things on the planet.
Enemy players can in turn blockade your occupied planets by parking starships in the orbit of a planet. This prevents the player occupying the planet from doing anything with his forces until the blockade has been removed.
Troops can be removed from a planet in order to build structures. Players can build Colonies and Research Stations by removing 1 and 2 troops from an occupied planet respectively. They can upgrade a Colony into a City by removing the Colony and 1 additional Troop. Building a city also allows the player to place another Troop or Starship into his supply. These structures are limited, so it becomes important to manage how you are building them. If you’re out, you cannot build more unless they are returned to your supply during play.
Research stations are special, and are used to develop new technology. There are four colors of planets – Orange, Grey, Purple, and Yellow. Each of these colors is represented in a different technology track on the characters reference card. Each of the tracks allows the players to do new things or expand the scope of things they can already do. For example, the orange technology tree increases a Starship’s attacking abilities and eventually allows players to build more powerful Battleships. Meanwhile the brown technology tree focuses on military strength, allowing you to recruit and place more Troops each turn, and eventually recruit them to unoccupied planets. Each technology tree has four levels. Researching each level requires you to have a requisite number of Research Stations built, which are limited to one per planet. In order to increase technology, you will need to continue exploring and building Research Stations. Victory Points are earned if you are the first person to research that level of technology.
If you are not of a mind to win the game through technology advances, you can take the fight to your enemies as well and try to win a military victory. Starships will attack enemy ships if they are within range of each other. Starships can attack planets they are blockading. Each piece has an Attack Strength or Defense Value assigned to it. The person with the higher number wins the exchange and destroys the loser. Two Starships will destroy a lone ship. Three starships in orbit above a planet with two Troops present or a Troop and a Colony will destroy those pieces. The winner earns Victory Points for every piece they destroy.
The game is over after the final victory point has been claimed. Every other player gets one final turn and then end of game bonuses are given. The player with the highest Victory Point total is the winner. Occupied planets provide additional Victory Points as do surviving Colonies and Cities. Diversifying your holdings by building Cities in different quadrants of the board can also give you additional Victory Points.
It’s impossible to go into all of the various things that can happen in a game, but that is the broad stroke view of how it is played. A player’s building resources are few, forcing them to make difficult decisions in how they are going to place their troops and buildings and which ones they can sacrifice in order to build elsewhere. Blockading an enemy planet so they can’t use it is effective, but it ties up valuable Starships that could be exploring the rest of the board. Exploring itself can get dicey, especially if your hand-eye coordination is a little bit off, or if you’ve been enjoying several adult beverages while playing games over the course of the evening.*
If you’re looking for a game with a solid science fiction theme, I would encourage you to take a look at Ascending Empires. I’ve always had a heck of a lot of fun whenever it gets put in the table, no matter how many players are involved. And from someone who isn’t a big board gamer, that’s high praise.
*Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…
Ben Erickson
