Factions/Im'dril Nomads

Im'dril economy is extremely strong but fragile and must be tended carefully to make it grow. Their needs are well defined (octagons, black, and brown), but nearly insatiable. Recommended for experienced players who are comfortable with complex bargains.

## Background

The Im'dril are a people with a rich culture tempered by inequality and poverty. Trade with aliens promises to swiftly fix this, but sudden change brings social revolution.

An interstellar nomadic civilization of artists and explorers, the Im'dril are divided into genetic lineages whose inherited instincts cover various technical skills. The Im'dril lineages result in an inflexible economy that struggles against a population that cannot change their professional focus. The miners and prospectors can never produce enough raw resources to meet the demands of the engineers, leading the latter to make up the Im'dril lowerclass. The influx of alien resources will change all this, but what the new society will look like no one knows.

## The Confluence

Im'dril are perfectly adapted for microgravity, are nearly immune to radiation, can survive in vacuum: for short periods of time, and do not evolve. This, plus the apparent lack of other sapience in the galaxy, had led Im'dril religions to celebrate themselves as unique in the cosmos and somewhat divine. Contact with aliens is changing these views. Im'dril instinctively refuse to keep good records of their deep history, which goes back at least one million years. Now, some Im'dril have begun to question where they came from, and how they came to be what they are.

## Gameplay Information

* They have zero colony support.
* Their cards need fleet support.

### Fleet Support

Im'dril fleets provide a number of Fleet Support to help run certain economic converters. The portion of the economic card on the left shows how much Fleet Support it needs to run that converter.

To run a converter, each fleet symbol at the top left must be matched by a symbol in the center of a fleet card. The support from a single fleet can be broken up among multiple cards, and a single card may be supported by multiple fleets.

If the Im'dril trade their cards to another player, they will need to loan enough fleets with them or that player will not be able to run the economic converters on those cards. If the Im'dril accept cards from another player that lack the above symbols, they do not need to support those cards to run the converters on them.

### Fleets

During the Trade Phase, the Im'dril can run the converter on their choice of fleet card to "discover" that fleet: it enters play and they gain a point. The fleet with a star on it starts in play.

### No Colonies

The Im'dril do not have colony support. They may bid on colonies, but would need to trade them away as they can't use them. If the Im'dril hold any colonies at the beginning of the Economy Phase, they must discard them to the bottom of the colony deck.

## Advice

The Im'dril have the strongest economic potential in the game - if they can completely turn on their economy they will do extremely well. It will take them about nine turns to do this, but the game is only six turns long. The solution is for them to go massively into debt to the other players to get the resources they need to turn on their economy. They should trade for resources this turn and pay for them next turn. Their economy is strong enough that they can afford a substantial mark-up: as much as five small cubes next, turn for a single octagon right now.

On the first turn of the game, they should try to run two of their three most valuable converters: Galactic Exploration, Microgravity Assembly, and Faderan Relic Caches. To do this, they'll need to play a fleet with at least two support. They will need to unlock additional fleets as they grow their economy. As fleets are expensive, they try to get them to enter play at the last moment, just as they need them.

Without colonies, the Im'dril economy is quite fragile: they can't recover if they spend most of their resources on technologies. They should avoid inventing technologies until turn four. Instead, they should use those resources to continue speeding up their economy.