Eclipse - Avoiding Combat Disincentives

I’ve just picked up a new boardgame: Eclipse (2nd Edition). As well as being fantastically fun to play, it’s also supremely well-designed. One element in particular is how Eclipse addresses some common 4X problems around instigating combat: attacker’s guilt and a higher combat risk for attackers.

Particularly in boardgames, where players are sitting face-to-face, many players are uncomfortable with unprovoked aggression, even when the game requires it. Even a successful attack, if unprovoked, can leave the player feeling bad for victimising someone who did nothing to deserve it. This is natural, it is human, and, for designers, trying to avoid this problem can be frustrating.

The root of the problem, I think, is the losses of the ‘victim’ relative to uninvolved parties. We don’t see the same reactions to profiteering, for example, where one player exploits the position of another to gain money/points/whatever without that player losing anything in the process. We also don’t see the same reactions in two-player games: the game unavoidably pits the two players against each other, so there is no victimisation. I believe that the problem arises specifically from the fact that the victim was targeted over other players, and has lost something.

A related problem is the attacker’s risk: what if they attack and lose? Attacking usually costs something: in Eclipse, it costs turns, which translate to both time and money, and it risks ships, which have value. If the attacker then loses the battle, they’ve lost time, money, and ships, all to hand an opponent a bunch of points. This represents a far greater loss than the defender risks, and so disincentivises players from attacking unless they can muster overwhelming force.

It is the uninvolved third parties who often get the best outcome. They risk nothing, lose nothing, come out objectively better than the battle’s loser, and may be in a good position to threaten the winner of the battle, who may have gained points or territory, but likely suffered some material losses. It may be better to sit back and wait for others to attack, than to go on the offensive yourself.

These factors all discourage players from attacking, which can result in wargames involving rather less direct conflict than one might expect from the name. So, how did Touko Tahkokallio, Eclipse’s designer, solve these problems?

Several factors combine to reduce the losses suffered by an unsuccessful defending player:

• Destroyed ships don’t represent any point value, only the cost of building them. Losing a fleet makes no impact on your score.
• Both players gain VP from participating in combat, so even losing combat still gains a player VP relative to uninvolved third parties
• Combat VP is awarded by drawing VP tokens (worth 1-4 points) from a bag, and choosing one of them. Performing well in combat gives a player more chips to choose from: both keep one token, the winner just has a better chance of drawing a ‘good’ token. The values drawn are hidden from other players, avoiding the potential for an ‘oh, that’s bullshit’ moment if the loser gains more VP than the winner.
• Losing territory can actually provide a brief injection of resources: the ousted player gets one final turn’s resource production from that sector, without having to pay its upkeep.

This means there can be substantial immediate benefits for losing battles, significantly offsetting the sting of being targeted by a stronger player, and of losing an attack unexpectedly. These in turn lead to more—and more enjoyable—combat.

Fantastic design, and only a small part of what contributes to the game’s enjoyment!

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