Solium Infernum: Turn 9

A manuscript has been snaffled up, which can often be worrying, because manuscripts usually mean tooling up Praetors for single Praetor vs Praetor combat. However, a lot of manuscripts arrive in pieces, and are collections so this might be just the start of a collection. Lets hope.

The Conclave has decided to confiscate any Prestige gained from Places of Power this turn, however, there is already a 7 turn Prestige drought, so I doubt this will shake anyones will.

In rolls my Unexpected Tribute event, and what a sight for sore eyes, 5 or 6 tribute deliveries with some really valuable composite resource cards turn up.



Again, the map has become fairly static, especially for me, although with my new found resource glut, I'm figuring on tooling up a Legion or two and making an advance for the Palace of Gluttony that I've got cordened off.



Searching through the Praetors, its time to bag myself a decent one. My eyes are drawn to Naphula's ability to block Combat Cards. In any Legion to Legion combat this may be a decisive power. So I make a bid for the Preator Naphula.



Here you can see my wealth, and the stacking system I've adopted for sorting the tribute cards, so that I can quickly find composite cards, or look through singles, to determine the best mix when paying for items at the Infernal Bazaar.



Finally the wealth goes to my head, and I decide to make a bid for a Melee boosting artifact for my melee bereft 'Chosen of Stal' Legion. The Adamantine Golem artifact adds 4 onto the melee score, but also adds the Stunning Blow special, which if successful doubles the amount of damage, but also reduces the opponents attributes to 0 for the remainder of the combat. My Chosen Legion has a deep infernal attack, and to add some initial melee might soften the opposition with this artifact in place.

Solium Infernum: Turn 8

Starting off with a Prestige drought isn't good, but it is across the board for 7 turns, so it will affect everyone equally.



I managed to secure the 'suicide bomber' relic the Orb of Oblivion, so when I get a spare turn, I'll have to tool up my weakest Legion with it.

I am awarded the regency this turn, and as such I get to choose between the existing event card I hold, and a new alternative. Luckily, the new card presented is 'Unexpected Tribute', which is essentially a tribute/resource windfall, something that will help my ichor deficit tremendously.



Theres not much happening on the map this turn, I think the majority of the land grabbing has finished, we're now in the phase were players start to beef up their Legions, play their events, and begin the diplomatic process of picking fights, or psyching out their weakest opponents.



With the prestige cost of making a demand on another, Leverpastej has had his total paired down a little, which has the fortunate knock on effect of boosting me to the top of the Prestige leaderboard. But its early days yet.

Solium Infernum: Turn 7

Is seems the Vendetta has been formed, and Leverpastej and Melfice will now come to blows for at least a turn or two.



I've got Renge Darkfiddler on my North Western border, presumably with an eye on the Palace of Gluttony, but in order to make a play for it, he'll need to initiate a Vendetta with me, and until I've tooled up one of my Legions, I'm not ready for conflict.



I'm desperately short on ichor, and even with my high level of Charisma pulling in 4 tributes, choosing 3 of them to keep, I'm not finding much ichor on the slimey dinnerplate. My souls are doing well, and they're important when making bids, because the more souls you can add to a bid, they count as +2 to the overall bid value, so if you really want something, stuff it with a few more souls than necessary. Looking at Legions (not that I want any more to be honest, they're too much to manage, and move, with only two orders per turn) I can't afford any, and Praetors all seem to require lots of ichor, sadly, so I thought perhaps equipping my weakest Legion with a decent artifact might give it some poke if a Vendetta is on the cards.

Out of all the artifacts, well the ones I could afford anyway, the Orb of Oblivion seemed to give me that suicide bomber send off. Rather than stoke one or two of my paultry attributes, if my weak sauce Legion goes under, they have a decent chance of taking the opponents Legion out also. Figuring it might stop an Archfiend in his tracks if I can take out his advancing Legion with a fairly weak one of mine.



If it sounds like a desperate tactic, it is. Without any tribute to beef up my Legions, or secure some Praetors I'm a bit stuck, and the paranoia is starting to set in, especially with Melfice snagging The Beast!

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.

AI War: Fleet Command

AI War is a game that almost passed me by. A 2d space based RTS that sailed past stealthily cloaked and headed for the nearest warp gate 'outta here'. Luckily my Impulse client explore page slyly winked a small ad for the game and like a distress beacon it caught my passing attention.


The game presents itself in 2d, all craft and structures are flat sprites. The backgrounds are rendered 3d planets and starscapes, but are purely for flavour - they do not affect the flow of the game. The scope and scale of the game however is big, you have large planetary systems as your main conflicted play area, interconnected via warp gates into a web weaving and winding itself into a chaotic galactic tapestry. The game setup allows you to randomly seed the generated Universe and select the number of planetary systems available. The connections between systems are "spun" in a chaotic fashion, and they can lead to isolated systems, ideal for defense, or well linked "junction" systems giving you many paths to travel and explore. Zoom is your friend, and as you plan your movements and offensives you will rarely notice the 2d sprites, because your broad strokes of battle will usually be made on the max zoomed iconic representations anyway. The sheer number of units that can be deployed is astounding, 10,000+ is not uncommon. The game was inspired by the similar large scale conflict and zoomed out operational approach that Supreme Commander adopted.

What is not obvious upon your first play with the tutorial levels is the nature of the more strategic scale of operations you will play out. It is your goal to scout and explore a path through the systems to locate specific advantageous enemy structures and either destroy them or capture them. This almost surgical precision applied to your offense is your greatest strength, because if you advance aggressively through the Universe conquering all you meet, you will quickly meet your demise, because with each takeover the AI's aggression turns up a notch. With every conquest, you're essentially stoking the AI into a frenzy and into more advanced tactics to employ against you. A more carefully planned and well considered approach is needed to balance the AI aggression as you make your way forward. Destroying its data centers deny the AI valuable computational resources and thus reduces the AI's aggression level. Capturing Advanced Research facilities will open up to you some of the more specially developed equipment that the AI can use against you, equalising the odds when it comes to tech vs tech conflicts. Another key tactic to employ is to secure your travel lanes, by blockading warp gates and holding the AI enemy at bay whilst you planet hop your way around the most economic and efficient path.

So, in essence, you are:

1. scouting and pathfinding
2. exploring and searching out key targets
3. plugging and unplugging warp gates
4. capturing planet systems to install resource gathering equipment
5. eeking out scientific knowledge from new planetary systems
6. managing your manufacturing and fleet content so that when you find the AI core base you can annihilate it!

The unique draw of this game is that you're plunged into a randomly seeded Universe, where the AI can be scaled in difficulty and tweaked with various play styles into very different opponents. As the name suggests the AI plays a very important role in the games appeal, and as such it can be tailored to your needs, and pacing. The developer has provided a very detailed explanation of the unique features of the AI, from its swarm intelligence to its completely emergent sub-commander logic, and a layer of fuzzy logic applied over it, so that its not always predictable and precise. Another feature is that the game supports up to 8 players working cooperatively against the AI, so gather your disparate fleets to survive, live long and prosper (the AI also scales depending upon the number of players involved in the conflict). Sadly, the game doesn't support player versus player combat, with the main focus of the game pitting the strategic and tactical capabilities of the human player against this finely crafted AI.



There are a large variety of hardware on offer and many of the techs will open up new tactical possibilities, with free downloadable content being available in the form of new community requested features and ships. Some examples of the equipment you can utilise (in addition to the usual range of fighters, bombers and starships) are: defense turrets, mines and mine repairers, tractor beam turrets, laser turrets, long range sniper turrets, missile turrets, force field shields, de-cloaking devices, detectors of incoming ships through warp gates, to name a few, and I've really only scratched the surface in terms of the unit specialisations. I am assured that as you play the game, increasing AI difficulty levels and AI play styles, you will find new uses for existing equipment and you will discover new equipment and new tactical ways to deploy them.

I would recommend watching the video guides presented by the developer to get a feel for how to get started with the game, and to see an explanation of the "bigger picture" strategic game.

Since you specify the parameters of the Universe you play in, there are a lot of replay opportunities and the degrees of AI difficulty and play style will also further add to that, so you're getting a lot of indie-fuelled strategic play for your $20. But you are also encouraged to become part of the AI War community, and participate in its future evolution and development. With DLC already being rolled out regularly, and a planned expansion in the works, you too could be a part of its emergence.

Whilst playing the game, I'm reminded of other games, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stars!, but also see glimpses of Battlestar Galactica's desperate plight of jumping through a Universe full of Cylons and having to "box clever" to stem the tide of the AI toasters and jump your way through secured corridors of space, picking up what little resources you can... but then I do have a vivid imagination for those sort of things.

JUMP!

Conquest: Medieval Realms

I've only played through the first and second scenario in the first campaign. Its not a bad game if you like boardgame territory grabbing. The key to winning seems to be divide and conquer.. all about cutting the enemies supply of money by slicing territories in half and reducing their income so they can't support the army raised. If the territory does become financially compromised, then you simply lose your men, and the surrendered flag shows up in their hex. This can lead to devastating defeats, if you're not protective enough of your territory.



Units face off against each other based on level, and there are no exceptions to the rules a level 2 unit beats a level 1, a level 3 unit beats a level 2. So you have to make sure you have the coinage to purchase the appropriate levelled unit. In order to gain cavalry and ranged units, you have to spend some money on converting forest land to archery ranges, and building stables. You start with pikemen. You can buy a higher level unit straight off if you have the gold, or you can buy lower levelled units and upgrade existing ones with them. Their zone of control regardless of unit, is a single depth ring of six hexes around your units current position. Although you can attack by moving onto a lower levelled unit's hex. Your movement will be restricted if there are higher level units exerting zones of control in front of you, or defensive buildings such as forts and castles.

Presentation is very boardgame, and the miniatures are well realised. The UI is very minimal and functional, obviously done on a budget, with the art assets mainly being tied up with the miniatures. There are some historical facts included in the campaign, which is a nice touch to add some credibility to the very abstracted boardgame presentation. The second scenario in the War of the Roses campaign, is actually at Sandal Castle in Wakefield, England (a place where I lived and played as a teenager) and I was quite disappointed to see that the castle grounds are depicted as a mere large hexagonal set of walls. Not quite a historically accurate abstraction of the place I used to climb over all those years ago.. but you know, it was exciting to finally see a wargame depiction of the siege at Sandal Castle.



There are a one or two niggly issues I have with the game, first the miniatures don't drag and drop as you'd want, as you pick it up with a left click on the mouse, the unit drops to well below the mouse cursor, and you place the unit by putting the mouse cursor over the destination hex, and sadly NOT by placing the miniature down over the hex. This single very nitpicky interface quirk, really did drop me out of the illusion that its a boardgame with lovely metal miniatures. Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any feedback when the AI executes its turn, all its moves are resolved in an instance, and your carefully laid plans and defences just disappear or shift about without much in the way of understanding at what the enemy has done. You can often read what might be coming next from the AI's current position and indeed, you strategy is probably geared towards this, but it would be that much more rewarding if there was an option to play out the enemy's actions, or at least have some sort of summary of what happened on a piece by piece basis. The tutorial option on the menus mentioned tutorial scenario's, but from what I can see, the tutorial consists of three pages of information with diagrams to explain the game.

The game does support network play, and even comes with editors for custom skirmishes or scenarios or even custom campaigns, so I'd wager there is a lot of replayability, especially if a modding community gets off the ground. I cannot really comment on the effectiveness of the network play, since I've only really dabbled in the single player game.

Overall, for the money, its worth a go if you enjoy the more abstracted gameplay of a territory grabbing boardgame. Whether the AI can stand up to the more seasoned wargamer, I'm not sure, but with the ability to play against human opponents it could become quite a "chess like" battle of wits.

Advanced Tactics: WW2

It has to be said all this WeeWar stuff has got me into a right lather about strategic war games, but WeeWar is a bit light, for those quick lunchtime sessions, so I've been looking into other similar games with much more depth.

I was recommended Advanced Tactics: WW2 (which is more of a war game engine with a comprehensive scenario editor), and it has totally enchanted me.



The level of depth to the play is quite refreshing for someone who plays a lot of lightweight strategy and is always frightened off by the proper 'grognards' stuff. The supply mechanism alone is worth its weight in gold, because now you have to factor in logistics as a major part of the battle. Chains of supply, and troop movements are all necessary. It comes across more like a Steel Panthers with added depth. The interface is a bit quirky, but it does the job, and the photo stuff is a nice touch. Plus it even supports bonus cards and research trees for unit upgrades. Anyway, I could spout on all day about this feature and that complexity, its no easy ride to begin with, because the tutorial scenario is very brief and the manual is more of an interface and rules list than any sort of instructional guide.. however, there is a decent community on Matrixgames forums, and looking over their AAR's (After Action Report) has opened the game up a bit more for me, after my tentative steps into getting my ass handed to me by the basic training scenario.

If you have some time, and you are interested in complex fulfilling wargames then give this AAR a read, it has pictures and turn by turn based explanations. Its by a person who has just begun exploring the AT game, so it also presents the beginners view on things, and some of the old vets chip in here and there to help out.

This really spices up the tiles and hexes for me, and gives a blow by blow account of what he encounters and how he reacts to the games AI.

There is a scenario building community here, complete with a Scenario bank full of downloads for extra games to spend hours mulling over..

Its been a while since a PC strategy game has caught me by the nollocks and worked me up into a frothy latte. Worth the entrance fee, and I'm ashamed I've put this game in the same mail as 'WeeWar'.

Spectromancer

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="335" caption="Combat in the Spectromancer arena"][/caption]

Spectromancer is the next incarnation of the Astral Masters non-collectible card duelling game. Several of the Magic the Gathering designers got together with the Astral Masters developer and have come up with a new game, holding the same level of interest as AM, but with different magic fields, a single player campaign, and an online duelling arena with ladders and tournaments etc. The artwork is as usual top notch, and the game comes across more polished and dare I say it, more enjoyable to play. At a budget price of around £13 its certainly worth an investment if you enjoy fantasy themed card battlers, especially if you like the idea of a single player campaign, where your strategy and tactics have to evolve and shift to overcome advantages of the AI players.

Lux Delux

Probably not what Conquer clubbers want to hear, but, I had my first few games of Lux Delux Online this evening, and bugger me if it isn't hard and fast speed Risk.

http://sillysoft.net/lux/

Managed to set up a game with me and my bro, and two bots. Playing through, combat is speedy and all on the right click. However its still all about the Risk. There are seemingly endless maps and the game comes with a map creator if your'e feeling artistic.
Alot of the online games have turn limits imposed, so say 30secs or 50 secs, so it plays very fast indeed. Some of the players who connected to our game as guests and then had a session when I ticked a new game over, were quite robust players, used to the speed Risk game.

Obviously could be a groovey game to get some folks together and have an evening of playing through some of the 400+ maps available. Top stuff. Conquer Clubbers into Risk big style should enjoy Lux and its offline/online capabilities. It has a selection of bots with different AI skills, and you can even try your hand at programming their AI code if you're up to the job.

Give the demo a try at least, if you're sucked into CC. And for 13 quid, Lux Delux certainly delivers that Risk fix when you're not CC'ing it. :)

Age of Empires

I've been giving this a bash recently, grabbed it at £19.99. I do like the overall presentation. The medievil/semi historical touch is very nice, on a handheld that has so many saccharin cutesy RPG nonsense. I like the combat animations too, very nicely done, not cartoony, not too pixellated that you can't get a feel for whats going on. My biggest criticism is the crowded nature of the game in play. Get a few isometric 3d sprites next to each other and you're in trouble to find which one is which, without having to skim over them individually to see their info in the top screen. Target selection does seem tricky, and can lead you to do a dance with the redo menu over and over before you get it right. But I'm using the stylus, not the d-pad and buttons. Taking a village for instance requires you placing iso 3d units in front and behind, and then defensive units spawn on top of the 3d building sprites and it just looks overly messy. Cavalry units taking up the most space and making it even more difficult to see whats going on. Its nice to see the iso sprites moving about and what not, but sometimes I just want an overview of what units are where so I can think about the strategy and not worry about placing wrong units in wrong positions etc.

I must say it has some clout for a handheld strategy game. And even the initial tutorial levels give you something to think about (specifically stopping the battering ram knocking down your church). Worth a punt for that sort of price. But it does have some interface issues, with crowding on the screen. Perhaps I'll try it without the stylus and see if its less frustrating?

Dreamlords

http://www.dreamlords.com

I bought into the Dreamlords game, you can pull the client and pay 19 odd euros and off you go. The idea of lunchtime web based management, readying yourself for evening 3d play really appeals to me. Sort of keeping the enthusiasm pot on the boil throughout the day. The web client is nicely done, if a little slow to respond. The 3d RTS client though is a bit rough around the edges (and I'd previously decided not to buy the game based on the fact it looked like another rough around the edges RTS game - and I've bought far too many of those in the past). I want to like it. But the first few missions/quests have been quite tedious. And many of the encounters on the starting map, are exactly the same. So the grind is there. If you want an MMO-ism. I've just got to the point where I can have some different units, but getting your cities off the ground seems to be a slow process. Being dumped into a guild by default was a bit of a shock, mainly because most of the guild spoke italian and not english. I've still got some hope left for this game, and a months play paid for, I intend to delve deeper... but I'm not sure it will ever climb out of the doldrums of curiosity rather than soar to the heights of Planetarion.