steven.d - Twilight Imperium IV

Twilight Imperium IV - Table

I started this around 2023 and I finished this in 2025

What?

The main goal was to create a table where each player had an equal amount of space and everything was within easy reach of everyone. No more questions like “Which strategy cards haven’t been picked yet?” or “Hey, can you give me this type of card?” or “what exactly is the objective again?”. You just rotate the middle level and have everything in front of you.

Of course, like with so many hobby projects, it got quite out of hand.

At some point, thinking of my Nemesis project, I was wondering if I couldn’t work with and Arduino, some LEDs and RFID scanners to track the turn order too. At first that seemed relatively easy, probably because I didn’t really know anything about electronics.

Anyway, at this point, after working off and on on it in the past 2 years, it’s finally as good as done, so I made a video!

The photos below are a bit outdated, but most elements should be present.

Shared Area

@todo

Player Area

Components

A player has his own play area, consisting of the following:

Faction sheet with overlay.
Faction sheet addition to store reinforcements, control, faction tokens, as well as 3 additional leaders (Nomad leaders + relic agent + some DS factions have additional leaders).
11 spots for planets, with slots for attachments.
a drawer where up to 16 researched technologies can be placed.
2 areas for hand cards like action cards, relic fragments, promissory notes,..
4 spots for faceup cards like relics, promissory notes, laws,..
4 spots for secret objectives (with a blocker in one space, unlocked by a relic).
a drawer for ships.
a drawer per tech category, along with a drawer for “bookmarks”.
a drawer for ground units.
cupholders attached to the table legs.

Todo:

add 4 spots to place legendary planet special action cards.

Electronics

Each player area also has an ESP-32 and the following electronics to support the smart functionality.

Buttons

The CARD button allows a player to:

indicate that they are using a card
cancel that with another press

The NEXT button allows a player to:

move the turn to the next player
use their strategy card when they used the card button prior to it
start the action round as Speaker

The PASS button allows a player to:

pass (makes sense if you think about it)

RFID Reader

Each strategy card has a matching RFID tag. These can be scanned at the RFID reader to assign that card to a player. This is then used by the table to determine player order.

There are a few additional tags that can be scanned as well:

a Speaker tag that allows a player to become speaker
a Naalu tag that allows a player to identify as the Naalu at the start of the game, or to work as the promissory later in the game. This influences the turn order.
a Kyro Sodality (Discordant Stars) tag, which assigns initiative 9 to a chosen strategy card.

Todo:

a Mecatol tag that tracks the control of Mecatol (for stats).

Turn LEDs

There are 6 turn LEDs, these have the following functionalities:

These turn on in the color(s) of the strategy card(s) held by the player, or white if none, when it is their turn.
These flash when the a player indicates they are using a card.
These show a scanning effect every few seconds, to remind a player that it’s their turn next.

Strategy LEDs

There are 8 strategy LEDs, these have the following functionalities:

These show which cards are currently available at the table. (selected and unused).
These flash the LED matching the current card being used by a player.

Score display

There is a rotary switch with a display on the other side. Players can change their score by turning the switch. Since the switch only has 10 positions, there is an addional button to toggle scoring to 12 or 14 points.

Game Reports

Since I’m working with ESP32’s I could actually connect the table to the internet, which allows certain actions taken at the table to be pushed to a JSON report file. I then created a small website that parses these reports and shows an overview of the game.

The time tracking needs some more tweaking, as some stuff like the agenda phase isn’t tracked separately, and the table doesn’t have a pause button yet.