Twilight Imperium
Think I hated this. Had a lovely time playing due to people - but didn't get one with the game.
The set up was a bit odd - and very RNG. There might have been ways to counter it, but 3 of the players seemed to end up with all the best planets near them.
The we spent hours building up small fleets in our areas. Theere didn't seem to be anything to really encourage small skirmishes.
The objectives were all military focus and all "Defeat X HP and win a battle" or similar - but that last bit made it much less likely for people to start a fight they weren't sure to win (and everyone had decent units) and also withotu committing enough to keep their own areas safe. Rebellion's versions of "destroy x HP of units in a fight you initiate" is much better for keeping game flowing with small skirmishes.
So we all slowly built up large fleets - without seemingly any alternative routes to victory or points. Despite being a trade focused race that couldn't help me outstrip others military advantages - but one one wanted to risk their larger fleets and they had to win the conflict.
Fighters and Planet Defense systems seem ridiculously OP (in different ways) to the point of being near game breaking.
Diplomacy also didn't seem to have many particularly fun cards come up - and the split of planets/votes made some players pointless. (e.g. it was IIRC 4,5,7,14,11 - unfortunately for us the 14/11 players nearly always thought along the same lines so votes were dull)
All in all a rather boring "build up" for a few hours - with anyone having as slight military advantage pulling ahead, which we didn't find away to counter.
Then eventually it came up to a stomping. It was always going to happen - it's just who gambled first. In the end one player went for it when they'd build enough to be sure enough of victory to risk units.
It was a complete dick move, but the only move he could make (to try and beat his personal objective). He stomped his neighbor in pretty much 2 moves. There was little the neighbor could do now to carry on playing (both to score points or in terms of game moves due to loss of planets/unites). Very disheartening for him - he actually left a round or two later because he was completely out of the game.
He'd have stay to do defense roles in a game he couldn't progress or contribute to (even in a shitty king-maker way) as people raked over his corpse for points.
I got stomped trying to get points because i just couldn't win fights (overlapping planetary guns are beast) - so got firmly stuck middle of the pack. I could have push myself from 3rd to 2nd by passing a law - but it would also have made one person the winner over another so didn't bother. Hate "king maker" plays.
2 on 4 VP, 1 on 3 VP, 1 on 2 VP and 1 on 1 VP. We were never in danger of getting close to 10
Generally the game petered out at the end. We just decided to stop. Of the 4 left 2 couldn't really win, and 2 could with lots of faffing (and support from the first two).
Rather disappointing all in all - definitely surpassed by other games (I spent the entire game wishing I was playing Rebellion instead). Enjoyed it because of the people, chat and bit of jokey RP