How to Play Eclipse: Second Dawn – Actions, Economy & Combat
Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy is an eight-round 4X strategy game. Players expand into sectors, research technologies, customize fleets, influence systems and fight when fleets meet.
On your turn, take one action
- Explore: reveal new sectors and decide whether to orient/connect them into your empire.
- Influence: place or remove influence discs to control sectors and adjust your economy.
- Research: buy technologies from the shared technology market.
- Upgrade: redesign ship blueprints with researched components.
- Build: construct ships, starbases, orbitals or monoliths when allowed.
- Move: move ships through connected wormholes and potentially enter conflict.
Actions increase upkeep pressure
Taking actions exposes influence discs on your player board, increasing the money you must pay during upkeep. Expanding to new sectors also consumes influence, so economic capacity limits how aggressively you can act.
Population cubes drive production
Colonized planets remove population cubes from your player board. Exposing income, materials and science tracks increases what you receive during upkeep, linking expansion to future production.
Combat resolves after players pass
When multiple players or ancients occupy the same sector, battles resolve during the combat phase. Ship initiative determines firing order, dice determine hits, shields and computers modify accuracy, and hull absorbs damage.
Upkeep closes the round
Pay the money cost shown by your economy, collect production, refresh relevant components and prepare for the next round. An empire that cannot afford upkeep may need to abandon influence before the next cycle.
The game ends after round 8
Final scoring adds sector tiles, reputation, discoveries, technologies, monoliths and other faction/game effects to VP already earned.
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Publisher reference: Lautapelit.fi. Checked September 21, 2026.