Federation

The Game

Federation is a game about interplanetary politics. It is a heavy Eurogame which uses worker placement as the core mechanism. The main playing area is the senate. It is divided into two halves, and each will support a different bill every round. Each half is a 3x3 grid of 9 spaces you can place workers - your politicians. The position you place your worker gives you a benefit (in typical worker placement fashion). It also determines which bill you are supporting, and which level of the senate you are gaining influence in. This is the interesting part of the game. When placing a worker there are several considerations to ponder. 

Many actions in the game let you gain influence in specific planet systems. As your influence increases, you get different benefits from these systems. Some give you resources and let you trade for better resources. Some let you produce resources every round. Some give you special abilities. Having influence in the planetary systems is relevant to the bills being voted for every round. The bills are in the form of players scoring points based on their influence in a specific system. So of course you want the bill related to a system you have strong presence in to pass. 

There are missions to complete. You need a specific action to gain access to these missions. You also need to spend resources if you want to maintain this access. This is tricky. If you are not quite ready to work on the missions, gaining access will be wasteful. When you have access but don’t think you’ll be using it for the moment, you may feel like “letting the membership lapse”. However if you do, later you will to spend effort to get the membership again. Is saving the trouble later worth the resource now? 

There is a race element in collecting discs of different colours. At every planetary system there are discs to be collected when you reach certain influence thresholds. There is only one disc per threshold, and it goes to whoever is first to reach that threshold. You can only take one disc per system. Even if you are first to the next threshold you don’t take the next disc. However claiming the first disc has forced your competitors to work harder for their first disc. They need to get to a higher threshold. Gaining influence in multiple systems is important because the points from having many discs is significant. 

The Play

I think of the game as a complex matrix. There are multiple layers you are competing in at the same time. When you make one decision, you have to consider several implications. There is resource collection and management. Some actions cannot be performed if you do not have the resources, and resources are tight in this game. 

The game is a complex progress management challenge. You want to increase your influence in the many planetary systems, the question is which ones first and how far do you want to go. 

The Thoughts

There is a lot to juggle in Federation. If you like challenging resource management games, this is one of them. The race to exert influence and grab discs can be brutal.