Solium Infernum: Turn 6

Let it be known, the War in Hell has begun! Last turn Leverpastej made a tribute Demand of Melfice, and after the Infernal Conclave messangers had passed the message on, the answer returned with a flat denial. Subsequently this rejection is grounds for a Vendetta to be declared upon Melfice if Leverpastej so desires it.



For my Archfiend Stal, theres a shortage of some ichor, and darkness mainly, these resources are needed if I'm to bid on some relics or even a Praetor Hero to add to one of my Legions, boosting their combat ability. So for now, I will attempt to grab some more cantons to eek my prestige higher a little, and I'll have to make more tribute demands of my minions, lets hope the blood and the black come dribbling in next turn.



You can see Leverpastej's and Melfice's Legions locking antlers to the South of my Stronghold, if a Vendetta is called they'll be going at it tooth and claw in the next turn or two.

Its hotting up in Hell tonight...

Solium Infernum: Turn 5

On turn 5, it seems the diplomatic demands have begun, with Leverpastej making a public demand against Melfice. And someone is tooling up with Praetors.



A swift turn for me, I was caught by the land grabbing, fiend blocking bug, and had to move both my Legions in place. I saw an opportunity to block access to the Palace of Gluttony, coupled with the chance to close another bridge into my forgotton plateau, so I took it. With both orders taken up, theres no room for Legion buying or Tribute demanding.



Lets see what happens next…

From Fumanstu:

I feel like I should weigh in with some comments here. I’m in the same game and, in fact, if you look at the second screenshot above that’s my legion in dark brown (all legions that don’t belong to you are displayed in dark brown) sitting on the bridge, eyeing up Spelk’s legion.

From the very start of the game, I’ve been aware that the initial phase of the game was going to be about the land grab. So I was pleased when I was able to take a low power POP as my own on the first turn. Since then its been about ensuring that I grab as many cantons as possible whilst trying to ensure that I retain access to as many of the nearby POPs as possible. Even if I have no intention of capturing them at this stage.

So this has led us to the current situation, at the moment I don’t want the POP that Spelk is attempting to fence off but also I don’t particularly want to have the option of capturing it later removed. So the question becomes do I use one of my two orders for the turn in an attempt to move in and grab the territory – I don’t know for sure that the order will succeed though because of the way the game processes moves. It may be that Spelk will go first and in that case my order will become invalidated and I really can’t afford to waste an order at this stage.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve got almost the exact same situation at the other end of my territory. I’m racing with one of the other players to try and secure access to another POP. It’s entirely possible that I could lose out there as well and then I’ll have lost a whole turn, which would be a serious setback.

So do I go cautious, regroup and use my orders to start planning something nasty for later? Or do I go in all guns blazing and hope that the moves work out in my favour and my opponents are the ones that are the losers?

And how long can me and Spelk maintain the uncomfortable neighbourly peace before things start to escalate? :D

Solium Infernum: Turn 4

I planned to record my dealings in a Play By Email game of Solium Infernum, but being swept up in a wave of enthusiasm I managed to tick over a few turns before remembering to explain myself, so we join the game entitled “Newbie Death Delight”, at Turn 4.

My Avatar, Stal, the Horse Head Fiend was rolled with Charisma and War in mind, I wanted to boost his ability to bring in plenty of tribute (the resources in the game) as well as be able to conjur Combat Cards for his Legions to equip, making them more powerful. The build was more thrown together out of hearsay from the Cryptic Comet forums, and tidbits gleaned from Quarter to Three forums, and I wanted to keep it simple to begin with, so I would be able to make informed decisions and not wild guesses.



The floorplan of Hell after Turn 4 looks like this from my perspective. Things have already started to slither around, my most loyal Legion The Chosen of Stal has already managed to capture a The Unholy Fountain, a Place of Power (PoP), directly north of his Stronghold (the building with the fiery red aura). This delivers an extra 1 point of Prestige per turn, so already we’re ascending in standing amongst our rivals.



After a quick slew of demanding tribute, I was able to bid for an extra supporting Legion on the Infernal Bazaar. Luckily a soul or two more than it needed secured the acquisition of The Order of Infernal Engineers.



This Legion wasn’t necessarily the best I could have bid on, but it was one I could afford with the meagre tribute I had available at the time. Rather than wait, I decided I’d grab a quick Legion, and start to mark off some of the territory, particularly to attempt to corden off The Palace of Gluttony to the west of my Stronghold. As you capture the unclaimed cantons (hexes) by moving a Legion across them, you effectively block out your opponents. They can only cross your cantons if a diplomatic Vendetta is arranged.

Since I’m currently a bit clueless about the subtle nuances of the game, I’m sticking (perhaps foolhardily) to a basic land control and Legion boost policy for the moment. I fear I might be playing the turns out more like a traditional wargame, but with limited experience of the more esoteric mechanics to employ against your demonic foes, I’ll stick with what I know for now.

During Turn 4, the Turn Log indicates that my rivals are also swallowing up their close Places of Power, as well as filling their ranks with Legions and Praetors (heroes that can be attached to Legions) from the Infernal Bazaar.



The remaining entries in the log show me that my Demand for more Tribute has delivered another batch of random resources I can select from to top up my dwindling pools of souls, ichor, hellfire and darkness.



And lastly the Regency has passed onto Leverpastej, indicating that he will begin the next turn with the first phase. The regency can be important because all players turns are resolved simultaneously, but are decided by the position in the turn phase, with the Regent being processed before those in the phase queue.

Finally, heres the diplomacy status screen, showing all players portraits and their prestige values at the end of turn 4.



As you can see, my early PoP grab has boosted my prestige from 10 to 21, but my Horse Lord rival Leverpastej has pipped me at the post with a prestige of 22. Players can prioritise their threat list (for free until turn 10), and often they’ll sort the list by prestige scores early on, so sometimes sucking up all the prestige initially can focus your rivals against you. Having said that, my reasoning was to provide myself with a base of prestige trickle whilst I can, and the longer the game runs the more prestige I will accrue. Since you have to use prestige to perform the diplomatic procedures to initiate a state of war (Vendetta, Blood Feud and even Insults), I figured its better to have some prestige to play with.

More next time…

HISTORY - Great Battles Medieval

HGBM, I've only given it the briefest of tries, but from what I've seen in just the tutorial, its got a lot of potential.



Its like Total War, only turn based, with Card based Specials. Now that ticks three boxes of mine in terms of gameplay.

The Total War series have always tried too hard to be too real time, and you often get a sense of too much UI chaos not enough strategy. With the turn based offerings here, and the unit placement being physical boxes on the map, you have more strategy like a traditional turn based hex wargame really. But you still get to play out the action in real time, only its pausable, using the space bar to issue more commands.

The graphics are not bad, a major step forward from previous titles, if the animation seems a little "stiff" in places. The idea of being able to employ certain higher effects provided by the battle cards, feels like it might give you more strategic decisions at the commander level, rather than just fitting the rock/paper/scissors jigsaw pieces together of combat.

Upon pausing the game, you can see clearly where your units are and where the enemy is, because they are highlighted in blocks of red and blue, so it becomes much easier to make offensive and defensive decisions based on layout and positioning, almost at-a-glance, something I'd say you'd have difficulty with any of the Total War series.

I must say from the brief nibble I've had, I like it, I like the turn-based principles behind it, I like idea of the cards, and the boardgame like shuffling of your troops during combat and pursuit.

I'd like to see the cards and the UI to be a bit more ornate and polished, but I look forward to exploring the strategy within the campaign.

Currently only available as a download for the PC at Slitherine's website, but in February 2010 it will be available on consoles.

Gratuitous Space Battles

http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/

You can pre-order this baby now and get a downloadable beta version to play with, until the release version becomes available. Its a bit of a scenario based spaceship designer and tweaker, that then pits your fleet loadout against an enemy and you can watch it in glorious 2d. Its more polished graphically than AI War (at the moment), but its limited to smaller skirmishes and gives you a more fleet based customiser than any resource collection or planetary conquest game. I'm not entirely sure it will match the replayability nor the AI quality of AI War, but it does seem to give you a ship building scenario based tweaker to play with. Worthwhile supporting if you're a space strategy fan methinks.

I've bought it, but I've not given it much time to be honest. Its definitely a game that needs some reading around the types of weapons and what not, because the first mission cannot be done with the default ship loadouts. I haven't quite fathomed out what I want, and what I don't want in my fleet yet. I've played the first scenario about 5 times now, with different types of ships, and all have failed abysmally. You have no idea what the enemy/alien ships are made up of, so its more of a case of learning what works, with trial and error, and sifting through the info on offer.

Theres no direct control of the fleet once you start a battle, you sit back and watch, but there are quite complex orders that can be given, setting target priority percentages, and range max and mins. So its all about the setup. Then its watch and re-assess your setup.

Its interesting, but I think it needs some time to set aside and digest all the information and setup options, before you're going to get any reward/payback from it. The battles are very nice to watch, nice missile/beam effects kicking off, ships on fire, fighter squadrons swirling in for an attack, shields pulsing etc. The trick is deciphering the battles progress into changes you need to make to the setup to be more successful next time.

Worth a punt if you are into space battles and tweaking spaceship loadouts. Like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, without the storyline, or the 3d. Big space fleets in epic combat. It contrasts nicely with the 4X/RTS style of AI War, you're getting two different mechanisms to play around the space battle arena.

The Myth of Hero Legends

If anyone has played and enjoyed Bimboosoft's Battle of Tiles on the PC, there is now a game on the iPhone/iPod that plays quite similar to it.

It's called The Myth of Hero Legends and its about a party of heroes, who you position and then slide along, and fight oncoming enemies. The party has mages, healers, fighters and archers/spear throwers, and you manage their physical positioning and their abilities fire off as they commence an attack. You earn experience and gold as you progress through the waves, and you can purchase/bribe enemy types to join your band to help against the onslaught. It has a chinese flavour to it, and the party arrangement isn't as tight as BOT, but its fluidity and smaller scale suits the iPhone better I think.

You tap your adventurer icon to select them or deselect them from the party, then to advance you swipe the screen in a given direction and the selected units move forward in that direction. As you do, the enemy move towards you. So you basically set up a movement and protection formation and advance, and see how the combat turns out. Its essentially turn based. If you healer is near a unit that takes damage he will heal it. If your ranged troops spot an enemy in their range they will fire. Similar you use the fighter as a shield for your weaker support troops. You tap and hold over the units or the enemy to see their stats. Although I don't think there is any equipment management or whatever, but your troops do level up as they do damage to the enemy. So it behooves you to keep all your troops rotated through a position where they can attack or kick off their specials, because thats how they level up I think. You can purchase incoming enemy and add them to your party if you can get them back fast enough. So you can take on their abilities and level them up.

Its right up my street, I can see me putting some time into it, because I was utterly charmed by BoT, and this is a smaller more manageable scale. With nicer graphics. I think its about £1.79 on iTunes at the moment.

Worth the effort if you like turn based party RPG-lite strategy.

Elements

Elements is a web based fantasy card battler. It has a rather simpler more casual mechanic than Magic the Gathering, but it is obviously inspired by that game.



It relies on a constructed deck to maximise your advantages on the card draws, and the synergy between certain card combinations. Rather than "mana" you have elemental Pillar cards that deliver a constant flow of currency to summon other cards, whether they be offensive creatures, or support cards such as spells, shields or weapons.

Each player has a guarenteed energy slot for their Elemental school (of which there are 12). The player also has an offensive weapon slot, for bonus attacks and a defensive slot for a shield or reflector of some sort. In addition to this, your permanent cards, such as pillars and artifacts or effects cards stack up at the back. Your creature cards are laid up front, where they exert an attack at the end of each turn.

Like in Magic the Gathering, certain Creatures have special abilities which can be activated before you initiate the attack by ending the turn. Some spell cards attack or destroy creature cards, some target the permanent support cards, or even the players life points themselves.

Theres no blocking as such, but each creature has an offensive value, and a hit point value that can be whittled down by offensive spells, until the creature dies.

A win in the game can reward you with gold coins (which you can use to buy more cards), rank points (to demonstrate how good you are, conversely losing a game can forfeit some of those points) and loot attempts (by spinning a slot machine wheel) to gain you some random free cards.

There is a deck builder and a bazaar where you can purchase extra cards, although I've not investigated the player trading mechanism at this time.

The game can be played against the AI at different levels, or you can take it online against other players (which costs gold coins to form a challenge), if they are of a similar skill rank.

The game presents itself well, and delivers a very easy to pick up casual card battler. It also has a quest based system, whereby you complete certain tasks, and you gain rewards. These quests start off as quite easy, such as buying a card, or selling a card, and become harder as the rewards become better, such as gaining a certain rank score.

Since the game is free to play, I can thoroughly recommend the game to anyone interested in a quick blast of collectible card gaming with the ability to change your elemental nature, customise your deck, play against other friends, level up your rank and link your Elements account into Facebook.

Its simple and elegant enough for everyone to play, yet has some complexity to keep card battling gamers amused for a while.

For more information check out the Elements Wiki.