Civ 5: Conquering Caesar (Part 2)

The ongoing plan now is to continue my conquering ways, growing my empire as much as possible while trying to manage my happiness which, of course, goes down with every conquered city. The plan is to only keep cities that have resources or happiness infrastructure and back-fill the gaps as happiness allows.

So as soon as my mounted army arrives on the English border, I declare war on Elizabeth in 675 BC.

Three Horsemen are enough to immediately capture Hastings. Then as my army moves on to Nottingham, Catherine also declares war on Elizabeth. She's also attacking Nottingham, and helps me out by eventually bringing it down into the red allowing me to capture it the following turn.

In the process I see Catherine's forces are fairly insignificant and the Russian cities must be close by, so if I can win this war with Elizabeth quickly, I'll be targeting Catherine next.

There's no resistance as my forces take York except for Elizabeth begging for peace. As the Horsemen advance on London, I finally hook up my iron in Neapolis and start on building Roman Legions.

I capture Elizabeth's final city, London, in 425 BC (10 turns of war); and as I prepare for the attack against Catherine, I begin researching towards Chivalry so that I can eventually upgrade my elite Horsemen.

I've also spent gold to form an alliance with Copenhagen for its fur luxury and iron resource; and have started constructing a lot of buildings in my cities, particularly the happiness buildings, Circuses and Colosseums.

I've found the Russian civilization is to the south-east of the old English civilization. With my happiness finally back to positive levels, in 300 BC I declare war on Catherine and my Horsemen ride in to immediately capture the Russian city of Rostov.

My horsemen then try to advance on to Novgorod just east of Rostov but across a mountain range. Only a single difficult pass traverses the range, and some careful manoeuvering is required to limit casualties to a single Horsemen. But the hit and run capabilities of the Horsemen eventually whittle away all of Catherine's Spearmen, and so Novgorod falls.

Both the Genoa and Copenhagen alliances run out at the same time and I only have the gold to renew the alliance with Copenhagen. Fortunately though, the size of my empire (which is all connected by roads into my trade network) means I'm bringing in a sizable sum each turn and it's not long before I can rebuy my alliance with Genoa.

I've obtained just 1 social policy in the Honor tree, and as the costs for social policies escalate with each city captured, I look at an alternative and so start Rome building the Oracle for its free social policy.

Meanwhile the Horsemen capture the northernmost Russian city of Yekaterinburg. I lose a Horseman while scouting out the rest of the Russian civilization, but the rest of the Horsemen take Moscow, the Russian capital, with no more resistance.

The 2 Legions I've built with my initial iron finally reach the front, giving my army a boost it didn't really need. The army consists of 3 Horsemen, 2 Legions and a Chariot Archer, and they advance on St Petersburg, clearing out a solitary defending Spearman.

It's not all good as even as I capture and raze St Petersburg, the Oracle is built in a faraway land, beating me to it by 3 turns. I'm also down to -12 happiness and desperately looking around for extra sources of happiness, hooking up and trading for luxuries as soon as I'm able.

Yaroslavl' is finally captured in 175 AD, eliminating Catherine after a 19 turn war.

Peace again, and since I don't even know where Harun al-Rashid or the recently met Washington of America and Genghis Khan of the Mongols are located, I use up one of the Great Generals that was produced during the war to trigger an 8 turn Golden Age. It's primary benefit is to push along the production of those happiness buildings and develop my new under-developed conquests.

With all the infrastructure already completed in Rome, I start building the Chichen Itza there (+50% Golden Age length), though I'm uncertain how many Golden Ages I can reasonably expect considering my happiness problems. Still, it's the best of the wonders still available.

Just as my Golden Age ends, I get the next social policy in the Honor tree, Military Caste, which reduces unhappiness in garrisoned cities. To help the happiness situation, my army disperses amongst the conquered cities.

And then an exploring Horseman finds the Arabian city of Damascus. Spotting that it has a low city strength, and with Chivalry having just been researched, I feel confident that I can quickly conquer Arabia. However I need to reassemble and rebuild my army, upgrade Horsemen to Knights and move them past the isthmus occupied by Monaco who is already unhappy with me.

But another vulnerable civilization; how can I resist? A Roman isn't cut out for the life of a farmer - there will be war again soon.

Continued in Part 3

Civ 5: Conquering Caesar (Part 1)

My first attempt on Emperor level had ended pretty quickly - a half-hearted attack with Swordsmen against Musketmen provoked the ire of my neighbours who did me in pretty quick. A few more games at King level has restored my confidence, and hopefully refined my strategy. My experience has continued to show that the AI is weak in times of warfare which is all well and good while you're not technologically behind. So the plan is to push for early war, possibly in the classical era with Horsemen or Swordsmen or an early unique unit if my civ has one.

I draw Rome as my random civilization which dovetails well with my plan. Their Legion unit is a small upgrade over the early Swordsman. After moving to settle Rome a bit away from the unproductive mountains, I have quite a few nearby resources. In particular I want to get the early techs to improve the sheep and deer, Animal Husbandry and Trapping. As a bonus, I can check out if there are any horses nearby before heading down the tech tree to Iron Working.

I get lucky with my scouting Warrior exploring ruins the turn after settling giving me an early boost to my population. That scouting Warrior also finds my neighbour, Askia of Songhai is worryingly close. Fortunately there are horses between Rome and Goa, and my plan is to rush him with Horsemen quickly.

As I start researching towards Horseback Riding, I implement the Liberty social policy for quicker Settlers. I want to get 2 or 3 quick cities to produce a few Horsemen quickly when the tech comes in. By 2280 BC, I've settled two more cities, Antium and Cumae, by sources of horses.

Askia settles Tombouctu right between us - a prime target when I've built my army. He's been threatening me the whole time, laughing at my pitiful army and otherwise being annoying. By 1120 BC, I have an alliance with the city state of Genoa, started on the Honor social policy tree and have trained 4 Horsemen, 1 Chariot Archer and a few Warriors - enough for me to feel confident of my chances, and so I declare war on Askia.

Meanwhile I've discovered a few sources of iron, with the safest on the coast to the east, so I start up a Settler for there while the war begins.

A quick strike by my Horsemen capture Tombouctu. Unfortunately, Askia has more units in the area and the city is recaptured in his turn, costing me a Horseman. But the rest of my units close in and the city trades hands again. The city is to be razed; all the enemy units have been killed; the army rides on to Gao.

In 925 BC, just 6 turns after starting the war, I capture Gao, eliminating Askia. That war went extremely well; though it was helped by the fact that Askia spent a lot of production on the Great Library, now a fine addition to the Roman empire.

My happiness has dropped to critcially low levels: -10 which means I can't even settle my iron city. I research Calendar so I can improve the luxury resource tiles. When that's done, I settle Neapolis on the coast by the iron.

I've met Elizabeth, Catherine and Genghis Khan, and I know English lands are to the south, so my horsemen head down there to see if I can continue my conquering ways.

Continued in Part 2

Aion - Beyond the Trial

So I caved and bought a cheap CD key online for Aion. I created a new character, Armitage the Priest and joined a friend and his guild-mates who were leveling alts.

Armitage

First impressions are that the trial really sells the game short. Seriously, no items drop off monsters in the trial?! The trial ends just before the first harder sub-zone where monsters will attack you before you attack them, and before you can complete the main introductory campaign questline. And most significantly, it ends before level 9 and the Ascension questline as you recover your memories of your lost Daeva-hood.

Ascension ceremony

At this point you have to choose which specialized class to go with and I chose Cleric, the game's specialist healer class as I intend to do as much grouping as possible (although I haven't encountered any content yet that actually requires groups).

Opening up for you then is the beautiful base city of Sanctum; plenty of quests there (many leading to the game's next questing zone) and the game's crafting system.

Also unlocked is flying, though only in certain areas, so no flying in Sanctum for example which means my experience with it is somewhat limited for now. I'll have to see how that plays out.

Sanctum

So my evaluation of Aion has only improved. So far it plays like a polished, shiny version of World of Warcraft. While I can't imagine it doing much to interest WoW-haters, if you do like WoW (and maybe have time to kill before the Cataclysm expansion is released), Aion starts off strongly enough to make the free month included with the game worthwhile. We'll have to see if I ever pay any subs for it, but I don't see myself having both an ongoing WoW and Aion subscription.

Trial Wars: Aion vs Guild Wars

Signing up for the free trials on both these online RPGs, I created the mage Devin Skala in both games. In Aion he was an Elyos Mage; in Guild Wars an Elementalist with Monk as a secondary class. In terms of customization of your charatcer's looks, Guild Wars offers quite a lot, but Aion's customization is probably the most powerful I've seen in any kind of computer game.

Aion (left) vs Guild Wars (right)

Both games start with a cinematic intro with appropriate hinting of momentous events afoot. In Guild Wars (the Prophecies campaign to be specific), you learn that this is the last day before some cataclysm, whilst in Aion the cataclysm has already occurred, but your character has lost his memory.

As you spawn into the world you'll notice that the Aion graphics are top notch for an RPG, whilst Guild Wars graphics are decent but nothing special. And then we're into the introductory quests.

Guild Wars has you running around a lot first as you learn how the questing zones are instanced, before the quests take you into some easy combats. There's not much in the way of in-game help besides some unhelpful messages that pop up ocassionally, but the controls are fairly standard and you only have 1 attack skill and 1 healing skill to worry about.

Aion starts with greater pace, with a combat quest straight away, and then a basic variety of quests as you continue along the road to the nearest town. There's a lot of help messages that trigger during this section, but once again they're only really useful to complete beginners in the genre - for anyone else they're not needed as the controls are standard and the 2 skills you start with are easy enough to manage, just an attack and a root to keep the enemy in place.

My noob mistakes that followed in both games were eerily similar.

In Guild Wars, you don't automatically learn skills as you level up - you have to do quests to unlock them. I learned my secondary profession as required by the main questline, and then just by picking up the quests in the area (a monastery), I acquired 4 Monk skills but was still sitting on only my initial 2 Elementalist skills. I was really struggling to kill a group of 3 enemies of my level and in the end just killed them 1 at a time, corpse-running between each kill. Next visit to the Monk trainer, I asked where I could find an Elementalist trainer and was directed to a completely new area I hadn't heard of before. There I did some quests and learned some new skills including those with area damage and I was really off and running.

In Aion, you need to buy skill books from a class trainer which are then usable as you gain levels. You even get a quest that directs you to visit your class trainer but the quest automatically completes before you actually acquire the skill books, so I didn't even notice it. However Aion's early levels seem very forgiving. Hardly anything will attack you unless you attack it first, and just spamming my basic attack power was enough to kill any monster of my level or below. Eventually I was killed when I ran out of mana, and then discovered the class trainers near the respawn point. I learned a few new skills and after that was never again in danger of dying.

The Guild Wars newbie area ends with the Searing as monsters overrun the city and its lush environs. The story continues two years later with a kind of post-apocalyptic vibe as the remnants of the kingdom try to fight back against the monsters in a wasteland version of the areas you'd just been questing in. These post-Searing areas really require a group, especially since a single character can't seem to out-damage enemies who can heal themselves. With a trial account you can't talk to anyone else (to limit gold sellers and scammers, I'm sure) and so your only option is to fill up a party with computer-controlled henchmen. Two drawbacks to this:

1. Henchman are weak, not leveling up with you.
2. Henchman are stupid and you have almost no control over their actions.

Combat after that was decidedly unfun, and I decided to stop with the trial after 6 hours played.

The Aion newbie area ends with ... well, I don't know exactly, since the Aion trial is so bloody short you don't even reach the end of the newbie area. It took me 2½ hours but once you reach level 7 (of 55), that's it - you're booted out. It looks like the cool stuff happens around level 10 when you gain your wings and your class specialization. The implication is that the game radically changes at this point, making the trial seem like a bit of a false front to the game.

Overall, the Aion trial was much more fun. It's not really a fair comparison as Guild Wars is 4 years older (and free to play after the initial purchase) and Aion has really benefited from the lessons learned in those 4 years. The excellent UI, gentle introduction for newbies and, of course, the graphics, are all examples of this.

Guild Wars is not without its redeeming features. You get a lot of skills quite quickly which is great for those with a lot of RPG experience, and the fact that you're limited to just 8 skills creates an interesting strategic element. I could see this being a fun co-op game with a group of friends exploring the strategic possibiities together as they advance through the campaign.

So Aion wins the Trial Wars, but loses the battle for my wallet due to the trial's brevity. I've heard mixed feedback from friends about later levels, so I think I'll wait and see how many are still playing after the other cataclysm hits.

My Trials Begin

So last week was mostly spent finishing off classic adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky (free on gog.com). Overall I had to dip into the hints from UHS about half a dozen times - there are some very frustrating bits. A general hint for those who want to give it a try: if the way to proceed isn't obvious, examine everything and talk to everyone again as the game's state can change pretty subtly after solving unrelated puzzles. Oh, and show everything you can to Joey, your little robot friend. Even if it doesn't help you, he's got the best dialogue in the game.

Overall it wasn't as amazing a game as I expected, with my thoughts on what they could do in the setting outreaching the tech capabilities and genre conventions of the time ... but did I mention it was free?

Friday had me progressing in Guitar Hero's Quest mode and trying out the character's special powers in the Quickplay+. The highlight was getting the 22nd highest score for Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls :)

Fat Bottomed Girls - 22nd

Now with my disappointment in Titan Quest behind me, a friend of mine who knows I enjoyed World of Warcraft, suggested I give Aion and Guild Wars a go. Both have free demos (though Aion's is invite only for some reason) and so I signed up for both so I could do...

Report back due when the trials have expired for both games.

Weekend Gaming

With no rugby to distract me (except for a minor skirmish between South Africa and Ireland), this weekend was full of gaming...

One Weekend's Gaming

First up was Civ 5. During the week I'd been hopelessly trounced playing on Emperor level, so I set out to get some revenge against King level. My random leader was Alexander who excels at early warfare and city state alliances. I never got the early warfare going and I've been keen to win a peaceful game at this level, so I targeted a cultural victory with only 3 cities. Getting the culture required (5 completed social policy trees = 30 social policies) is actually easier with fewer cities - it's just surviving with the resulting financial, scientific and military deficit that's the problem.

Fortunately one of my neighbours was Gandhi who was just as peace-loving as me, but Elizabeth's growing aggressiveness became a problem as she gobbled up all the other civs and city states on the continent. Despite all the deals I could make to appease her, eventually she came for me. I desperately held her off with my inferior military while I picked up the last social policy I needed and started building the Utopia Project. A few well-trained mech infantry and artillery couldn't hold off Elizabeth's swarm of tanks, cavalry and infantry forever and I eventually lost my western-most city, Sparta. With the enemy beating at my gates, I finally finished the Utopia Project in Athens to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Civ 5 - A Desperate Defence

Next I finished the first act of Titan Quest with my battlemage, defeating the Greek Telkine. Despite friends trying to convince me otherwise, I just don't find the gameplay interesting enough to continue on to Act 2. Maybe if those friends were to join me for multiplayer, I'd play on - I can forgive a game for a lot of faults if it provides a fun multiplayer experience.

The action RPG nature of Titan Quest made me realize that what I really wanted was to play a proper tactical, story-based RPG like Dragon Age: Origins. Having finished it twice now, I decided to get the expansion, Awakening, and continue playing with my somewhat evil dwarven rogue. I haven't got very far, having just acquired the first two party members, but I'm already appreciating the less actiony combat compared to Titan Quest.

Before playing any further, I discovered a couple of free games on GOG.com (Good Old Games) including classic adventure game, Beneath a Steel Sky. I've never played it before, but heard good things about it and the blurb on GOG makes it sound similar to the excellent RPG setting of Paranoia.

Of course it's a point-and-click adventure game which are enjoyable while you're successfully solving the puzzles, discovering new locations and characters, but get frustrating as hell when you're stuck. When I've got three other games clamouring for my attention, I'm not going to sit and stare at the screen blankly while trying to guess the author's bizarre way in which putty is to be used. Fortunately while looking for a walkthrough, I discovered a website, Universal Hint System, which provides carefully formulated and staged hints on how to progress for all sorts of games (including Beneath a Steel Sky). I've used the hints 3 times now and it's made playing the game really enjoyable. The story's a bit strange and the humour is hit or miss, but overall it's good enough that I'll finish it.

Beneath a Steel Sky - State of the Art in '94

All this PC gaming was interrupted by a visit from a friend who's been exiled to Cape Town (hopefully temporarily). With her she brought the acclaimed Battlestar Galactica boardgame which occupied much of our Saturday. Despite still learning the rules and it taking an age to finish, we all really enjoyed it. The game is somewhat co-operative in that the players are humans trying to work together to jump the Galactica to Cobol - but the key element that makes the game work is that one (or more depending on numbers) of the players is secretly a human-looking Cylon, a skinjob, working to sabotage their efforts.

I played as Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies who was usurped in a military coup by Saul Tigh. Holding both the Admiral and President titles, I was convinced he was the Cylon, only for Lee "Apollo" Adama to surprise us by revealing his true Cylon nature. The timing of the reveal was bad as we were critically low on all resources and we were lucky to survive the super crisis that followed. We made it to Cobol with all our resources down to just 1 or 2 units left.

I'm looking forward to playing a few more games so that I can give Battlestar Galactica a proper review. In particular, I want to experience playing as a Cylon as I'm sure the game plays very differently. Overall Battlestar Galactica was a great peak in an enjoyable weekend of gaming.

Review: Guitar Hero - Warriors of Rock (Xbox 360)

So my weekend was taken up with an unsuccessful attempt to beat Civ 5's emperor difficulty level; nearly finishing the first act of Titan Quest; and the highlight of the weekend - attending the final of South Africa's inter-provincial rugby tournament where my team, the Natal Sharks, kicked some serious butt.

Sharks 30 - 10 WP

Amid all that I started playing the latest incarnation of the Guitar Hero franchise, Warriors of Rock. I haven't finished it yet, but I think I've seen enough to give my thoughts on the game.

I already said in an earlier post that I'm a Guitar Hero fan, and for a fan the new stuff in Warriors of Rock almost certainly make it a worthwhile buy...

The main new feature is the Quest mode in which you play songs to power up the game's heroes to eventually save the god of rock. The hero abilities are just ways of making the song easier or higher scoring, so ultimately it's just a thin veneer over a somewhat non-linear progression through the game's songs, but the effort is appreciated compared to the poor efforts at story in previous titles.

The mode in which I spend most of my time is Quickplay mode, which has been upgraded to Quickplay+ with the addition of special challenges for all songs. Unfortunately not all songs start unlocked in Quickplay+ which is a bit of a step backwards compared to the freedom enjoyed in World Tour and GH5. The challenges themselves are the same kind as in Guitar Hero 5's career mode - get a high enough score, a long enough streak, a certain amount of alt strumming, etc. Completing songs and challenges in Quickplay+ unlocks various bits of eye candy such as new instruments or concept art.

All downloadable content and most songs from World Tour, Smash Hits/Greatest Hits and Guitar Hero 5 can be imported into Warriors of Rock. Unfortunately there's a small relicensing fee for the songs from previous games and some of the biggest songs from these games aren't relicensed and so aren't included. Some songs that I miss are Plug In Baby, Hotel California and legendary Guitar Hero song, Through the Fire and Flames.

As for the setlist included in Warriors of Rock, now that the Guitar Hero series has a pop counterpart in Band Hero, the songs are all from various rock genres. That makes me happy as that means a greater proportion of songs that I'll play to enjoy the music.

And finally, the new guitar controller looks a lot cooler than the one I have from Guitar Hero World Tour. The whammy bar's a little closer to the strum bar which may not be to everyone's liking, but makes it easier for me to whammy during shorter sustains.

New Guitar Hero controller

So it looks like mostly positive steps taken by the franchise. So why can't I wholeheartedly recommend it? Well, despite all the fluff, the basic gameplay is completely unchanged. If you don't like the rock band genre, Warriors of Rock will do nothing to change your mind; and if you only ever play casually with friends, you're basically just buying a lot more song options, so you'd better like the songs. For reference, see wikipedia for the full list of songs.

Final Score: 8 / 10 - I'll be playing it a lot because it's the latest Guitar Hero game; nothing revolutionary but solid gameplay and good songs.

Notes on my personal rating scale: They are entirely based on my personal feelings about the game - I don't rate a game on its own merits but rather how much I've enjoyed and how much time it's sucking out of my life. Strategy games will do well and shooters poorly because those are my gaming preferences.

0-4 = Poor game that I won't be bothering to play any more
5-7 = Decent game - fun enough that I'll try play it some more if I have the time
8-10 = Good game that I'll be playing a lot more or have already finished and greatly enjoyed