Everyone knows that Homeworlds is my favorite game ever, and it’s also well known that I’m a peace-loving hippie. These facts taken together mean that sometimes I find myself extolling the virtues of the game to pacifist friends who cringe at the inherently violent nature of the game’s goal.

Homeworlds is also a very complex game, being both difficult to learn and difficult to master. Even when you know how all the rules work, it can be quite a challenge to find a path to victory, particularly since many players get tripped up by the counter-intuitive combat system.

With these two issues in mind, I created the following variant, which I call Peaceful Homeworlds. This game is designed to use most of the same rules and concepts as the original, but with no combat and an easier, less genocidal objective.

Overview: Peaceful Homeworlds is an interstellar exploration game in which two star empires race to mine rare crystals from distant asteroids.

Setup: Peaceful Homeworlds uses the same set of pieces as the original game. That said, if possible, you should replace the red pieces with some other color, since they will have a different meaning in this game. Also, players are required to choose non-Gemini star systems that do NOT match the opponent’s. (Gemini stars are those whose pieces are both the same size.)

How to Play: The game is played just like regular Homeworlds except the goal is different and there’s no way to capture other ships (although catastrophes can still happen).

Goal: To win, players must send ships into the Neutral Zone (aka “no-man’s land”) where they can collect cargo pieces of the 4th color. The first player to return home with half of the total supply of these gems is the winner!

Mining Crystals: The energy crystals can be mined at any star system which is not connected to either player’s Homeworld. Also, small ships aren’t built to carry cargo, they’re just scouts. Medium ships can be loaded up with small crystals, and large ships can carry medium crystals. A large can also carry a small crystal, but it cannot be overloaded, i.e. a large cannot carry a medium and a small at once. A turn action is required to mine the crystal, and you cannot leave with it until the following turn. Once harvested, you can combine a small and a medium to form a large crystal. You don’t have to do this right away.

Homeworld Visits Are Forbidden: You are never allowed to send any ships to your opponent’s Homeworld. (That would be considered an act of war.)

How to Win: Cargo is unloaded instantly upon sending a ship back to your Homeworld, and as soon as you have collected 9 pips worth of crystals, you win! (Since there are only 18 points available, the other player can’t get more than you once you have 9.)

Update #1 [2/14/21]: Rule Clarifications

Here are the answers to various questions that have come up since my original posting:

No Overpopulation of the Homeworld: It is illegal to cause damage to your own star system. Yes, it would be a clever way of reducing travel time to the asteroid field, but the ecological damage that would befall our civilization would be too high a price for our people to pay just to get these crystals more quickly. Therefore, you may never have more than 2 ships in your home system that are of the same color as one of the pieces in your binary star.

More Details on Mining:

• Only one crystal can be mined in a turn.
• Yes, a Large ship can carry two Small crystals; however they must be mined one at a time.
• Crystals remain in the Bank until mined. Crystals can be collected in any order, unlike the removal of other pieces from the Bank.
• You can repeatedly mine from the same asteroid as many times as you wish, or you can mine from numerous different asteroids.
• The crystals have no power in the game, other than providing victory points. They can never be used as ships, nor turned into stars.

Destroying Crystals: If a ship carrying a crystal is destroyed by a catastrophe, the cargo it was carrying is also destroyed. Similarly, if a catastrophe is called on the crystals themselves, the ships carrying the overpopulated crystals are destroyed by the explosion. Yes, sacrificing a ship causes the destruction of any crystals in its cargo bay. When crystals are destroyed, they are immediately returned to the Bank. Once a crystal has been brought back to the Homeworld, it is immune to catastrophe.

Combining Crystals: Yes, you can also combine two harvested Smalls to make a Medium, or three harvested Smalls to make a Large. However, once combined, crystals cannot be broken back down to make change, nor can two Mediums be turned into a Small and a Large.

Transferring Cargo: You can also choose to spend your turn moving the crystal(s) from one of your ships to another, provided both ships are the same system.

Update #2 [3/4/21]: The Bruno Rule

One additional rule seems needed:

On-Demand Crystal-Merging: If at any time you wish to mine a particular size crystal but can’t because no pieces of that size are available in the Bank, and yet it would be possible if the other player were to combine some of their crystals, you may compel your opponent to immediately combine crystals as needed to allow your mining operations to continue.