An expansion for Exodus: Proxima Centauri

For the past year there was one question we had to answer over and over again, "will there be an expansion for Exodus?". I must admit that we avoided that question for a while because we were simply not able to give a straight answer. That has changed, we are actively working on an expansion for Exodus and we plan to release it in Spiel '14 Essen.

The expansion topic revolved around yet another question, "how come there are no races in Exodus?". The game play is symmetrical, all player have the same starting resources, they have access to the same technologies and the same actions. Their development throughout the game is different, but this happens because each player has a different strategy for victory, not because the game forces them to go on a specific path.

The expansion comes with good news for those who wanted various player abilities and an asymmetric game play according to the race or faction (since all the parties involved in the struggle for dominance are humans, we will call them factions rather than races). In the expansion, each faction will have specific powers, access to a new set of technologies and even a different set of actions. Let's take them step by step.

Today I will talk about technologies.

At the beginning of the war for establishing a star empire, every faction started from the same common ground, a balance kept in place by the all-mighty Centaurians. But with every cycle that passed, the factions evolved differently. Therefore, they focus their research in different areas and some of the new found technologies were not accessible to the other factions.

The technologies we have prepared for the expansion will provide several interesting abilities:

• defense against Weapons of Mass Destruction - this is a set of technologies that we have thought about before the release of the first edition of Exodus, but we kept it boxed because it would add a new layer of complexity to the game. It is however appropriate for the expansion

• new drives will allow even faster movement and a more conflicting way of expansion. The most advanced engine core will be the Hyperspace Drive, a technology which may change the course of the conflict and allow unexpected Victory Points

• so far, the ships in Exodus have very straightforward weaponry. The Antimatter Cannons are the most effective, yet simple to use. The new Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Cannon will bring another level of battle tactics

• speaking of battle tactics, the expansion will bring new technologies which will change the structure of combat

• the expansion will also bring a core change related to research. A few of the new technologies will bring along direct Victory Points. This is possibly one of the biggest changes from the base game

Each player will choose a faction and will receive a separate player board with a specific set of technologies, most of them unavailable for the other players. This will not cancel the access to the base set of 28 techs, but will simply add to a total of approximately 35 technologies.

I will stop here, for the next post I will shed a bit more light on some of the other changes that the expansion will bring to Exodus: Proxima Centauri. 

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