stems from a fan-version of the third edition game called "Shattered Ascension" that was built in Tabletop Simulator in 2011 using the same components but a variant ruleset and gained a significant online community. After the publication of game's fourth edition in 2017, a similar Tabletop Simulator implementation was created in 2018 and is now used for online tournaments. Expansions, variants and optional rules Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition: Shattered Empire Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion called Shattered Empire in December 2006. It includes two new sets of playing pieces and additional system tiles, expanding maximum player number to eight. It also introduced several rules-fixes to address common criticisms of the base game. Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition: Shards of the Throne Fantasy Flight Games released a second expansion called Shards of the Throne in May 2011, with additions including new factions, technologies, scenarios and units. Variant rulesets The base game and its expansions come with several optional rules and the counters necessary to play them out. The simplest variant is the long game, where the winner must score 14 victory points, rather than 10. However, most variants are intended to allow players to customise the game-play in favour of their preferred mechanics. For example, there are alternative variants of all the strategy cards, which can drastically alter how players organise their turns. Some rule variants introduce new units, whilst others can introduce completely new mechanics, such as race-specific leaders and diplomats, or random encounters for the first player to land on each neutral planet. Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Prophecy of Kings Fantasy Flight Games released an expansion for 4th Edition Twilight Imperium in November 2020. The expansion contains seven new factions, some of which are based in the lore of Twilight Imperium's previous editions. It also brings in many of the systems and units that were first contained in 3rd edition. A new layer of technologies has been introduced giving more flexibility on how players choose their technology paths. The expansion also includes the Omega updates that were published in April 2020. It does not include any variant rules and is intended to be fully incorporated into the base game. Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Twilight Codex The Codex is the official web based publication, published by Fantasy Flight Games that highlights rule updates and showcases new content for Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition and eventually the Prophecy of Kings expansion. The