by genji256
Hello everyone,I am close to finishing my first IA campaign. I play the Empire and 4 friends, from two different groups, play the Rebels.
My issue is that 3 of these players are quite vocal about which actions to take and the 4th has a hard time voicing her opinion. Thus, she quickly loses interest, which further emphasizes the behaviour of the other 3 since they consider she is not invested enough in the game.
As I would like everyone to have a good time, I am wondering what could be done to handle such a situation. The first one is to confront the 3 players, which I might resort to next time since no one is so sensitive that they won't accept an honest discussion on the topic.
I was wondering, however, if there were more subtle ways of encouraging everyone to participate. I proposed the rule that only the acting player gets to comment on the optimal move unless they ask others for advice but that had limited effect since, at the beginning of a round, a lot of the discussion is about who plays when.
The issue is emphasized by the fact that they get regularly crushed and I have to play nicely for them to score some victories so I am wary of proposing rules that further handicap them (such as "no talking if you are not in the same room as the acting player" or "1 minute per turn").
Any piece of advice? To be clear, I do not ask how to handle things at a personal level as, again, we are completely fine with having this discussion. I am more interested in extra rules, which are easier to enforce than fighting natural tendencies, which would naturally bring more equality in players' contributions.
Thank you for your help.
PS: it so happens that the three vocal players are male and the fourth one is female but I would rather this not to seep through the topic as I do not believe BGG to be the best outlet for these discussions.