The First Conflict

by on November 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
Posted In: Computer games

I’ve spent the last few days poking my way through the next Age of Wonders scenario, “The First Conflict”. Spare time has been a little sparse, so my playing was fairly broken up. It’s also a substantially bigger scenario.

In 965 LIR, Humans first entreated Lord Inioch for refuge in his kingdom. The Keepers welcomed Humans, convincing Inioch to grant them the Grey River Basin. Within the year, Humans had settled there with remarkable ease. Some closest to Inioch feared the power of these newcomers. Orcs and Goblins, led by a secret faction of Inioch’s Court, rallied, eager to destroy. Discovering the plot, the Keeper’s warned agents in nearby Elf and Halfling settlements, hoping they might keep the peace. Should war break out, who would the Humans blame and how would they view this “First Conflict”?

This is a large map with 34 cities and 4 sides. Given the backstory, I enabled allied victory, as the two factions don’t have any real desire for outright conquest of the region. There’s only four (out of the game’s possible twelve) races present, Elves, Halflings, Goblins, Orcs, and Humans. The default AI level seems to be Lords (midway up the scale), so I stuck with that).

I started as the Elves, and started expanding out from my one-hex starting city. The area was mostly pleasant, with some larger elven settlements that I talked into joining me. The map is dominated by a river confluence, with a couple major rivers coming down from the north (where I was) to join in the center of the map and continue south with some smaller rivers and streams joining in the south.

The option to build a navy was there early on, but I was too busy with other matters at first, and where there weren’t any bridges there were tunnels under the river.

Going west was slow as the major rivers were in the way, but to the south, I quickly ran into the Goblins at what was obviously intended to be the ‘natural’ border. There was a bridge across a stream, and on one side a three-hex elven city, and on the other a three-hex goblin city.

As I was building up on that front, I started finding human settlements, which I left alone, and I got a notice that the Orcs were defeated (lost their leader). I’m not sure what happened, but I’m thinking the Halflings got lucky.

The Goblins were trying to nail down parts of their area, and I started interfering. I managed to seize the city across the stream, and migrated it to Elves. I had summoned a giant eagle, and flew around grabbing magic nodes, and the like. He had a two-hex city that had been fortified in the corner… and the AI abandoned it at one point. I took it with the eagles and razed it, since I didn’t think I could hold it in the face of his hero. I lost the eagle, but not until after I’d razed another one-hex city.

The Goblins kind of wandered off after that. The AI was really interested in challenging my main buildup near the stream. I started taking a couple Human cities, and forfying them, and migrating some one-hex Goblin and Orc cities over to them, which raised my relations to the point where I could bribe them to join me.

Thanks to the tunnel system, I had gotten over to the east side of the river system, and started finding a vacuum where the Orcs should be. I eventually met the Halflings in that area and made peace, and eventually allied with them.

I had been nervous about the Goblin heroes I’d seen, but eventually chased him down a cavern in his area and besieged the main hero a two-hex city I found down there. In the end, I took the cheap shot and attacked a stack right outside the city to get the hero without dealing with the walls and finish the game. The final battle itself was lopsided, but fairly interesting, as he had local superiority on one end of the line.

It’s a fairly good scenario, and not quite as large as the the map size would normally mean, as a fair amount of the map is blocked off with mountains. I actually kept with the basic swordman/archer combo for the bulk of the scenario, and pumped out a lot of those. About midway through, I got one city each doing cavalry and priests, and then very late started producing balistae, and that was it.

The Humans are amazingly well settled though for only three years having passed. I’m probably going to turn off the ‘on map leader’ option next time to keep these random faction deaths from happening, even if it is a good way to keep from having to chase down every last city and unit.

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Blood Isles

by on November 2, 2014 at 11:50 am
Posted In: Computer games

After finishing my latest game of MoM, I took another look at my options. I’ve been wanting to stick with earlier fantasy conquest games, and I’m mostly ending up playing on Azuna. This leaves Heroes I/II out (which I did fiddle with some recently) since I’m still on copies that require the disk. Besides, while I can run it in DOSBox, I have to turn the CD music off, or it comes to a halt with every sound effect.

But while my copy of Age of Wonders installs from disk, it doesn’t require it for play, so I managed to copy it over from Horo to Azuna, and with some fiddling, get it to run. So, I decided to try the scenarios, and for the moment, go through them in ‘historical order’, since they all chronicle the conflicts that lead up to the campaign game. The earliest one is “Blood Isles”:

In 962 LIR (Lord Inioch’s Reign), three years before the first Humans set foot in the Valley of Wonders, Human ships arrived in the Blood Isles. Quickly, they overwhelmed the other races, and snatched up precious land. Historically, the islands were named for the sanguine battles which ensued as various factions fought to possess them. Now the Dwarves, Goblins, Azrachs and newly arrived Humans fought for supremacy, never fully aware that the name of the islands foreshadowed what was to come, and that the beaten races served to lead the migrant Humans directly to the Valley of Wonders.

It’s a medium map with 15 cities, and four factions: Humans, Dwarves, Azrachs, Goblins; though most if not all of the races are present in the various cities. I stuck with the default options, with on-map leaders (good hero, but you’re out if he dies), with CPU Squire players (hey, it’s the first time I’ve played this in years…!), though I played as the Humans instead of what seems to be the default Goblins.

The map is a series of islands, with the four factions starting in the middle of one side of the map; the Humans are on an island themselves, but the other three start areas connect to the sides of the map. Each home area begins with the main city, a second small city of a different race, a mine, some other income-producing building, and a shipyard. (You also start with one dragon ship/longboat.)

It didn’t take long for me to meet the Dwarves, who immediately declared war.

What? Is gold currency an insult to you or something?

Shortly after that, I met up with the Goblins and offered them peace. They said that was fine, as their conflict was with the Dwarves anyway. And that’s why you shouldn’t go around instantly declaring war on neutral races.

And then the Azrachs died. That would be the entire ‘leader death’ thing. Whoops.

The Goblins were slowly expanding to the east, while the Dwarves… didn’t seem to do much. I raced into the center, and started claiming everything I could. I tried to keep decent relations with all the races… except the Dwarves. I migrated the one Dwarven city I took to another race. The Azrachs had been in the south, and I got there well before anyone else, and took the area over. I then turned west and took out the Dwarves with no real problems, since I had a lot more resources to draw on.

As soon as the Dwarves were dead, the Goblins declared war, which certainly saved me time. They had just been really getting into the swing of things, so we skirmished a while near the center before I threw them back onto their start area, and then took out their leader just outside of the capital.

It’s a pretty fun and fast little scenario that forces you to pay attention to naval matters, but has a pretty decent city density. It’s obvious that each position is roughly equal, and with the AI turned up would be worth playing again.

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Arcane Conquest

by on November 1, 2014 at 4:29 pm
Posted In: Computer games

For my next game of Master of Magic, I went for the default all Arcane mage, Jafar, and turned the land size down to ‘medium’, so there were lots of separate landmasses to deal with. My initial continent just had one neutral city past my own (I eventually set up three more, but it was a tight fit for all of that). And I could just glimpse one other land mass. The ultimate irony is that my capital wound up building an alchemist’s guild despite having the alchemy skill, because of an adamantium deposit next door.

I managed to nail down most of the stuff on my continent (there were two nature nodes within the area of my home city, and I was worried that I’d get wiped out by wandering monsters…). Took out a tower of sorcery, and found a three square island on the other side; not a lot of help. I also started setting up the High Men city I took as a naval yard before remembering that it’s only actual outlet was on an interior lake. Well, time to warm up the Flight spell….

The land I could glimpse turned out to be a two square island with another tower. But past that was a larger, mostly desert landmass with Oberic on it with three cities. I took out a sorcery node there, and melded with it, but didn’t garrison it, so Oberic melded his own summoned spirit with it. So, I took it back and garrisoned it, but then he wasn’t happy that I had troops near a city of his….

So war was inevitable, as neither of us was happy…. I slowly trimmed away at him, ferrying over new loads of mixed troops and my heroes in the process. I met Merlin just as the war started, and then Horus and Sharee both showed up as it ended. I had already cast Aura of Majesty, so there were no immediate concerns, but I know that patch 1.4n will drive the AI to attack as you gain more power. At that point, the other two were at war with Horus.

While all that was happening to the west, I found more (empty) land to the east. I colonized one and took an existing Barbarian city on the same landmass. The next decision was to explore more of the world, or find a better way into Myrror. Since the two square island with the second tower was in between most of my army and the area I wanted to explore, I ended up opening the second tower with my main hero/flying galley stack, and started exploring. Shortly afterward, Horus cast Planar Seal, leaving them stranded on an alien world….

That should have been a hint, but I didn’t take it. Though it was an interesting strategy for the AI.

I conquered a few scattered cities on Myrror after that. My main possessions continued to develop, and I cleaned up a fair amount of corruption in the newly conquered area (Oberic’s capital had been hit by a meteor), and my second city developed enough to start building warships, which were then granted Flight to serve as the exploration corps.

The ocean to the west (where I’d seen everyone come from) was large and empty, but directly to the east was a large continent with Horus. Sharee was interlocked with him to the east, and there was still no sign of Merlin.

The natives were unhappy as I poked around, and then I found a new hamlet of Horus’… on Myrror. He had gotten there and colonized, and then sealed the planes so no one else could follow! I eliminated the hamlet… which meant war.

Shortly after that, I ran into a pair of well-defended neutral cities on Myrror that tied up my forces for a long while, as I didn’t want to leave them behind, but I didn’t want to lose heroes taking them. So the war was fought on Arcanus, and went fairly smoothly.

After a little while I took his capital… and Horus started casting Spell of Return. I mopped up the rest of his forces, and started sorting out all the new towns I had, and started cleaning up a fair amount of corruption scattered about, presumably as a result of fighting with Sharee.

Horus returned about the time I finally broke the two neutral towns on Myrror, and I decided it was time to be able to bring more force to bear. I Disenchanted the Seal, and started ferrying troops over.

Horus had a lot more on Myrror than I had given him credit for, but he just couldn’t match the high-level heroes or powerful units I had. As I was finishing that off, Merlin told me that I’d gone too far and declared war; which left the question of finding Merlin. He turned out to have a continent to the southeast of Horus and Sharee, which was swarming with lots of units. I got a foothold (mostly thanks to a sky drake), and then spent a lot of time barely beating off counterattacks.

But then his forces were exhausted, and many of my better units were just arriving, and his remaining four cities didn’t take long to fall. Sharee then declared war, and taking her two cities didn’t take long.

Jafar-World2
Arcanus, right before finishing off Horus on Myrror, and the collapse of Merlin.

Final score: 1382 (17%) actually my lowest winning score.

I was much stronger on the magic side of things than is typical for me this time. A large part of that was realizing that you have to work through the research buildings in order to get to banks. I was actually in the middle of researching Spell of Mastery at the end of the game, and at one point was wondering if I was going to end up using it.

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The Wars of the Roses

by on October 29, 2014 at 7:58 pm
Posted In: Books

The Wars of the Roses is the second book by Alison Weir I’ve read, and it definitely tells me there’s no need to stop here. The writing is good, and gives a great overview of what is a legendarily confusing period of English history. This actually a successor/prequel book to her early book, The Princes in the Tower, which is about the final act of the Wars of the Roses; the contest between Richard III and Henry VII (née Tudor), and the fate of the children of Edward IV.

Therefore, this book is actually about the rest. Starting with the deposition of Richard II, Weir spends quite some time of the shaky political footing of the Lancastrian Henry IV, and the successful Henry V, before moving on to the reign of Henry VI, and the large number of political problems that led to the Lancastrian-Yorkish struggle that forms the bulk of the Wars of the Roses, and ends with Tewksbury and the death Henry VI. The book is about evenly split by length between the lead up, and then the multiple armed crises.

There are a lot of names that fly by, and several people change names (titles) during the course of events, and despite efforts, Weir does not entirely clear up the confusion that results. I think this is a subject that really needs a dramatis personae to refer to. Geneological charts are provided, but were stuck in the very back of the Kindle edition I read, with a link to a web page with a larger reproduction, so I didn’t know of it until I was finished.

Another problem is that while she establishes the state of 15th-century England well at the beginning, and talks about how little disruption of life actually resulted from the wars at the end, this isn’t really mentioned during the bulk of the book, forcing one to perhaps have to correct some opinions after the fact.

Still, in all I did enjoy it and found it informative and recommend it. The main niggling worry I have is that since The Princes in the Tower was her first book, it may not be as good a companion to this as might be wished.

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Merchants in Space

by on October 26, 2014 at 10:29 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Got the gang together again (finally) for some gaming yesterday. There was four of us (me, Dave, Mark and Jason), so we went with another round of Space Empires 4X. I managed to talk everyone into adding in the merchant pipeline (trade route) rules this time, and we kept all the options from last time (fleet markers, heavy terrain, and gates).

Initially, I (blue) got off to a very slow start, as the only world adjacent to mine was the one barren world in the home exploration zone, and it took me a while to find most of my colonizable planets. However, I was starting to find minerals, and the closest world was only two hexes away, so I built a second miner and three merchant pipelines to link the colony with the home system. As it turned out, most of the planets were in a chain from that one leading along the edge of my zone. This made extending the pipeline fairly easy, and sped up the colonization process, as everything just went down the pipeline at double-speed to the frontier. I ended up rolling money forward many times because my shipyard capacity was tied up on cheap MS Pipeline builds.

Meanwhile, Mark (green) and Dave (red) made contact in the deep space area between them, and Mark attacked, chasing Dave’s scouts off. However, Dave managed to bring in an alien wreck, which gave him a size class bonus, and he chased Mark back out with new DDs. There was buildup after that but nothing much other than that. Mark then got into a fight with Jason (yellow), and managed, with quite a bit of effort to eliminate two of his colonies (helped by some poor die rolling from Jason in the first big fight).

I ended up interfering, and taking on Mark, with help of a gate that led pretty neatly from my area to his. The problem was that the next place to go from there was an asteroid field, which caused long-dragged out fights as I was hitting on ‘2’s, and Mark on ‘1’s—when we remembered. Just remembering all the modifiers normally is enough of a challenge. To a certain extent, it probably would have been better to help dismantle Jason, and try to get more out of it than Mark. But that was impossible. Jason’s systems were all concentrated in the area away from me.

Also, Dave did a better job getting at mid-board systems than I had realized. I was too worried about the Markian menace to want to tangle with anything else.

Sadly, it had to be a short day. We had to call it for time just shy of the 12th economic phase. The early game had gone remarkably fast, but the later stages slowed down, in part due to extended combats. Dave ended the day with the biggest economy at 102 for the upcoming economic phase, and was paying 26 in maintenance fees. All he had was ship size (up to BCs) and Terraforming. I was up to 84 (with one colony still growing) with 15 in maintenance. I had been isolated for a while, and didn’t start building a navy til late. I had just gotten up to BCs in the previous econ phase, and had +2/+2 tech, and Tactics 1 (from an alien wreck), and Ship Yards 3 (double capacity), and of course, Terraforming. I was probably going to build BCs for a while, but was contemplating throwing more DDs at my problems as well. Mark was earning 63 and Jason 55. I’m not so sure of their techs, but Jason was up to BCs, while I think Mark was still on CAs. Mark had +1/+1 tech, and hadn’t upgraded that since very early on, preferring to mass-produce CAs. Jason had been at +2/+0 for most of the game, but had eventually gotten +1 defense, and had taken Exploration before the war with Mark started.

One of the side effects of the merchant pipelines was to discourage spending on movement technology, since everything was going fast within the borders, and it wasn’t far to anything past that. Here’s the board at the end of the day, with what I know of the pipelines marked:

4-player 1 end

No, I don’t think Jason ever built any.

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