Godfire is an interesting game and has it merits. It has what I would call several problems. The first and foremost is that it tries much to hard to be so innovative that it goes right over the top. The most over the top part of the design in the 3d system. Having 11 levels has been found to be quite excessive. My gaming group has done what we call the impossible and remade the map. It is the same in hexes but only has 5 levels. This is a significant improvement in our belief. We put all the planets in the same hexes at either +1 or -1 as they refereed to the original map. Now for most people this is to much of a change to affect as it requires quite a bit of work, but if you are willing it really makes the game much easier and more fun to play. The main other problem we had with the game was the speed at which the game got going. It took well over 10 turns for any real development as the rules for development were so tricky. We tried several different rules and changes. First was to allow ANY party type to develop economy. This lead to a lot less changes in party's leading to a big savings in cash. Second we increased the tax level of both I regions. I-1's now produced 2 and I-2's produced 3. This made the progression more worth it. It now becomes much easier to get an I-2, and players will see many more mixed out worlds. These changes lead to an increase in the # of units in play which lead to a much more brutal game, especially on the small map that we use. Sometimes we used the old map with new systems or new map with old systems (to lessen the amount of units.) Revolutions annoyed us a lot also but we realized that they are important to the game. Their randomness is what got to us. So we made a rule, we called it pre-emptive bribe. In a pre-emptive bribe a player may pay 1-3 GB during a roll for switching parties. He/She must pay this bribe before the roll and before determine which direction if switching out of moderate. Each GB so spent adds ONE to the roll for switching. Spending 3 makes revolution impossible. Pre-emptive Bribing is not counted against spending as it is considered secret. You can not stop a revolt that occurs because of a sudden drop in loyalty, only ones from attempted party changes. An alternate rule that we feel is fun just for it's own use is getting rid of the ability to raise the national loyalty with GB. Instead the only way to raise a party's loyalty is to have a region come under that's party control. You still must pay one for the party loosing control or lose a level of party loyalty. We also play with Richard W. Smith's Trade rules. We always have neutrals trade with all until attacked. Combined with our boosted economies on the system cards this can make for a much faster and larger game with many more fleets zooming around the galaxy. (We are pondering making a map with 7 levels because with all the extra money our 5 level map is getting awfully crowded quickly.) By Joe Lott 2003