I already reviewed the other expansions released between 2019 and 2023 (the Andorians, Vulcans, and Breen), but I wanted to save the Dominion for a separate post because the Dominion come with a whole host of additional features beyond just the new faction. Technically, the expansion is called "The Dominion War". In addition to adding the Dominion faction, this expansion adds rules for new Gamma Quadrant system discs, a wormhole system that connects the Gamma Quadrant to the rest of the map, and a team-based variant game mode with different setup and several new rules.

The Dominion faction can be played with or without the Gamma Quadrant rules in play. But for the most part, I'm going to assume that if you're playing with the Dominion, you're probably playing with the wormhole and Gamma Quadrant as well. Maybe that's a safe assumption; maybe it's not. It's how we've always played the Dominion.

The Dominion War expansion replaces the Bajor system disc that was included with the Cardassian expansion. The new Bajor is a larger piece that combines the Bajoran system, wormhole, and Idran system into a single cardboard "disc" which is placed at the center of the board during setup. This system is fixed and cannot move, and every player knows exactly where it is located. Further, Bajor is a level 3 wap-capable civilization with its own starbase, which makes Bajor very difficult to conquer or hegemonize until the late game.

The combined Bajor / wormhole / Idran system is always located in the center of the board.

Combining Bajor, the Wormhole, and Idran into a single system severely limits the possible configurations of the board when using the Gamma Quadrant. Thus, Bajor has to be at one edge of the Alpha/Beta quadrant portion of the galaxy. Bajor cannot be centralized (like say, being in between the Federation, Cardassian, and Ferengi territories).

I think I would have preferred if the Wormhole tokens were separate pieces that could be attached to any system similar to Starbases, or if they are special effects written on otherwise normal system discs, and that they simply treat the two systems as if they are adjacent. If I recall correctly, this is basically how the Borg Transwarp Conduits work. This would allow the Gamma Quadrant systems to be more of a separate play-space altogether, and the Alpha/Beta quadrant could still organically grow around wherever the wormhole happens to be. This not only more closely resembles the geography of the canon Star Trek galaxy, but it allows for a much wider variety of board configurations and greater replayability.

The Dominion coming through the wormhole

The Dominion is similar to the Vulcans and the Breen, in that all 3 feel kind of like they are simultaneously the hardest factions to play, and also the easiest. Much like with the Breen, the Dominion (if using the wormhole) has tremendous potential to be a turtle faction. The wormhole serves as a bottleneck, and it is very command-expensive to traverse that bottleneck. Ships and fleets must stop at Bajor or Idran, and then spend an additional command to cross from Bajor to Idran (or vice versa). Idran is also a level 5 hazard, which means any ships crossing the wormhole must also survive a die roll. This makes sneak attacks against the Dominion very difficult to pull off, since it may take an entire turn for a player to move fleets through the wormhole, only to not have enough commands left to actually attack any of the Dominion's holdings. Further, if any player takes control of Bajor, then that player serves as the gatekeeper to the Gamma Quadrant, and can potentially block other players from entering the wormhole to threaten the Dominion.

Crossing the wormhole can be very costly.

If the Dominion can build 3 or more culture nodes in the Gamma systems and fortify the exit of the wormhole, they can easily go into turtle mode and secure a relatively un-contested victory. And if the Alpha Quadrant powers fight amongst themselves over control of Bajor, with the Changeling Infiltrators interfering with everyone's movements and making their play less efficient, it's easy for the Dominion to sit back, cleanup whatever is left of the Alpha fleets, and coast to victory This might be why the Dominion does not have any abilities that grant opportunities for free culture (like every other faction has).

Last year, after my initial enthusiasm for Civilization VI began petering out (until the announcement of the expansion), I went on a bit of a space-4x bender. I spent some time with the rebooted Master of Orion. It was good, but I was underwhelmed by its limited scale and casual depth. I also planned on hitting up Endless Space 2. I played the first Endless Space briefly off-and-on, and I liked it, but kept getting diverted to other games and projects and never really allowed myself the time to get comfortable with the game.

But first, before diving into Engless Space 2, I wanted to tackle a game that's been in my library for over a year: Stellaris. This is an epic, space 4x strategy game developed by Paradox Interactive -- the same developer who brought us the infamously complex and detailed Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings series.

A gentler learning curve than Europa Universalis

I was hesitant to try Stellaris because of its relationship to Europa Universalis (and its notorious complexity), but I was surprised to find that Stellaris has a bit of a gentler learning curve. Instead of starting you out "in median res" with a developed European kingdom with armies already mobilized, alliances and rivalries already in place, and wars already in progress, Stellaris starts you out in control of a single planet in a single star system, with just a small fleet of corvettes, a construction ship, and a science ship at your disposal. You send your science ship to explore the other planets in your system, then on to the nearest star, and slowly explore from there at a much more comfortable pace that is akin to a game like Civilization or Master of Orion. Unlike with Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, I didn't feel like I needed to sit down with a history textbook in order to know what was going on at the start of my game.

You start the game with a single science ship to explore your own star system, and work your way out from there.

Don't let this initial apparent simplicity fool you. Stellaris is still quite deep, quite complex, and the galaxy that you'll explore really does feel vast. While the Master of Orion reboot has galaxies with a mere dozens of stars (very few of which contain more than one or two planets), Stellaris features a default galaxy size consisting of hundreds of stars, most with their own planets, which might (in turn) contain moons.

There's still going to be some trial and error, as you'll make a lot of mistakes and miss a lot of opportunities in your first few games. If you left the "ironman" mode disabled, then you'll at least be free to re-load earlier saves and try to play better if anything goes horribly wrong. However, Paradox throws a bit of a curve ball at players by disabling achievements if you disable ironman mode. You won't stumble into achievements in your learning game(s) or by save-scumming; you'll have to earn them in the Ironman mode!

You also won't be able to manually save while in Ironman mode. You have to wait for the game to perform an auto-save (which I think happens every few in-game months, or maybe every year?). This can be very annoying if you don't notice the "saving game" popup and don't know if the game has saved your most recent actions. It's fine to include a single save file for this mode, but they could at least include a "Save and Exit" option in the pause menu!

Interstellar is a rare hard sci-fi movie.

There has been a sad dearth of hard science fiction movies in recent memory. While comic book and alien invasion movies and the like have been proliferating (and some of them have been very good), there haven't been as many movies that have been willing to take science fiction subject matter seriously. The only mainstream releases that I can think of off the top of my head are District Nine, Inception, and Gravity, neither of which really wowed me. District Nine was alright, but I felt that its racism allegory fell flat since the aliens themselves considered the majority of their species to be mindless automatons. Inception was a fun ride, but nowhere near as clever or complicated as people made it out to be. And Gravity wasn't really "science fiction"; more like just "space drama" disaster porn.

That leaves the indie movie Moon and the surprisingly good Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as the only really good examples of high-brow science fiction that I can think of - and maybe Edge of Tomorrow can count as "medium-brow".

That's why I've been very excited about Christopher Nolan's new movie, Interstellar. It had all the trappings of a modern-day 2001: A Space Odyssey, which (confusing psychedelic ending aside - read the book!) is one of the best hard science fiction movies ever made. Interstellar definitely lived up to this expectation, but it's a much gloomier and more depressing epic than Arthur Clark and Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.

The space travel plot is, in fact, almost identical to 2001. A crew must travel in hypersleep in an experimental spacecraft to investigate an anomaly around Saturn (the original 2001 book placed the monolith in orbit around Saturn, but it was changed to Jupiter for the film). The sleeping crew is even overseen by intelligent robots. The rising action has conspiratorial undertones, and the climax dives deep into metaphysical fringe science.

Interstellar [LEFT] is very similar to Arthur Clark and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey [RIGHT]
in its detail-oriented depiction of space travel.

A lot of the science in the first half of the movie is solid, and it's actually integral to the narrative and drama between the characters. The second half takes a lot more creative license for the sake of plot. There are significant issues with relativity with regard to a black hole, metaphysical stuff about a "ghost", and some ham-fisted mumbo jumbo about the power of love transcending time and space. But despite some silly science, there's a very real possibility that audiences might leave the theater with a better understanding and appreciation of relativity.

So Interstellar definitely earns its comparisons to 2001...