Solium Infernum: make a pact with the devil

[baelthazar]

TGB over at Octopus Overlords posted some impression with the basic premise that it:

c)Rules extremely hard.

The words "best TBS since Civ IV" were said.

Here is the LINK for the lazy.

[aganazer]

Originally Posted by Therlun

My dear enemy, I was the peasant I spoke of before; as I proclaimed this thread to be the official infernal one without the consent of the archfiend that carries the name of an elven mount.
You are merely a rival pretender for the throne. One not very trained in the prophecy discipline and its associated attribute it seems. Which makes it all the easier for me as a charisma and deceit based individual to win this conflict.

Whoa, is this Solium Infernum smack talk?

[JakeSolomon]

Dammit. Every time this thread gets bumped I think it's a release announcement. I'm starting to realize, with some surprise, that this is my most anticipated game of the fall/winter season.

PS - For what it's worth, I love the name. And the bands you like? I liked them two years ago.

[Therlun]

Wee, finally I'm famous and get the attention I deserve!

Compared to AE SI is very different. AE leans more towards the normal 4X game, although of course decorated with lots of boardgame feel and personal charm.
SI is much more unique in that it is based on an entirely different set of game concepts rarely seen in computer games.

One very important gameplay feature is the limited number of order slots. You start with two, which is enough to move your personal guard (very important in the initial land rush) and demand tribute. If you want to do anything else in the first ten turns (for instance actually spend some of your resources) you have to sacrifice something.
There is almost no actual "empire management" you know from other games though. Practically all orders you give are "active" => you decide to change something on the board instead of doing no-brainer choices like building marketplaces, farms and so on.

Combat is handled very differently to AE too. While you have a single dice roll which randomly distributes small combat bonuses most of the combat is very deterministic. If you have complete knowledge about all factors (involved legions, artifacts, leaders etc.) you can predict the outcome of legion combat at least 95% of the time.
Here lies one of the special strengths of SI as your possible strategies not only influence the deterministic combat. The majority of actions you can take are actually used to influence how predictable stuff is in the board for you and your enemies (both ways, decreasing the enemies ability to predict something and increasing yours).
==> One or two clever combat cards (single battle enhancements) can easily turn a flawless victory into a grand defeat.
The actual effects of enemy combat cards are hidden until relatively late in the skill tree though. Many fiend-builds probably wont be able/willing to go that far in early and midgame. So just seeing a combat card on an enemy legion makes the still very deterministic combat much less predictable.

Diplomacy and war follow very strict rules. In a normal length game it is extremely hard to get to the point of blood feud (three successful vendettas required, allows you to kick a player out of the game by conquering his stronghold). The only way I could imagine a blood feud is if both players actively pursue it for a good part of the game. If one side of a potential blood feud is unwilling he can delay the actual execution considerably.

Changing from one strategy to another is possible i.e. not quite as punishing as switching from rush to boom in an RTS. At the same time the game greatly rewards dedication, min-maxing and powergaming though (to a too great extend in my humble opinion).
Giving a legion a random artifact makes it stronger. Giving it a fitting artifact, a fitting leader and a specialized combat card introduces something like a power multiplier.
There are a few versatile, cheap and efficient strategies to handle such stacking of advantages (i.e. using an early ritual to prevent movement of a legion of doom), but those are not entirely reliable and have their own counters.
For the most part you can only handle super-stacking by using a similarly super-synergistic combination yourself, although not necessarily one of the same type (a high end ritual instead of your own super legion for instance).
There ARE a few specific things (i.e. leaders with certain special abilities) that completely fuck over a special super-synergy, but the availability of those is pretty random.

I would like to present this comparison:

- Do you know the board game Diplomacy? Its a strategy game with relatively easy rules too, which are not bendable at all.
A game of diplomacy is decided by the player interaction (alliances, back stabs, surprising moves).

- One Magic the Gathering guy at some point said something along the lines of: "Magic is a game with a limited set of relatively easy rules and a deck of cards to bend and break those rules."

SI combines the unchangeable rules and interaction-determined gameplay of a Diplomacy session with the strategic versatility and individualistic character of magic cards.

[Therlun]

As for personal preference I really like SI. Its a good game in singeplayer.

The art is again great and the UI is better than AEs (still has a few annoying issues Vic refused to handle though ;) ). It offers a very large amount of different strategies.

In SP the game suffers from playing against the AI. Not so much because the AI is weak as an opponent, but because its simply not able to utilize even a fraction of the meta-gaming potential.
The AI makes competent decisions and is able to utilize most if the game features efficiently (something few AIs are capable of), but it is pretty faceless and has no motivation besides providing competent decisions.

Where SI will really shine IMO is MP.
The structure of the game rewards and even relies on player interaction (both "friendly" and hostile relations).
The more you interact in any way, the more fun it becomes.

I think there are some issues with balance (i.e. charisma 3 as a starting attribute is by far the most important choice IMO, charisma 2 is the minimum if you want to stay competitive) but nothing gamebraking if Vic provides balance support with the feedback from a large amount of people playing MP.

Some features are not as "fitting" as others as well. (Of course its easy to complain about something as a player and hard to actually design it...)
There is single combat of praetors for instance. Its a gamble in a game which otherwise has extremely little randomness.
Another example is the blood vassalage. I love the idea of becoming another players lieutenant if he is much stronger as a way to stay in the game and still have fun. I fear that the presence of a perk that automatically makes you the winner as a minor partner in a blood feud combined with the fact that determining if an enemy has that perk is an ability only a few players will acquire will make players very reluctant to accept a vassalage offer and use this great feature.

I also tried to convince Vic that implementing an easy and efficient way for human players to communicate and interact ingame (general and private messages) would be very advantageous.

Other than such relatively minor (and fixable!) issues I see few obstacles for SI to become a very fun, very interesting MP game with long term appeal.
Sessions are not too long (50-60 turns), individual turns have extremely clear structure and support a very versatile set of strategies at the same time (most of which are actually usable, take that Dom3), the game has very little micromanagement and benefits from player interaction.

[Ben Sones]

I'd actually like to see an option to speed up the game via changing the base number of orders that you get per turn, even just as an option at game setup. I sort of feel like giving everyone three base orders at the start of the game would make for snappier pacing--50-60 turns is pretty long for a multiplayer game, after all (it's not as big an issue in SP, where you can breeze by slower sections where you aren't doing anything other than collecting resources). But it's a relatively minor issue, and it does get a lot of mileage out of the philosophy of giving you a whole bunch of things that you really want to do, and then forcing you to choose just a few of them.

It's an incredibly unique game that plays very differently from most PC strategy games I've played (including AE). It's more about diplomacy and manipulation and devious scheming than it is about battles, though it does have battles as well. If I had to describe it in a nutshell, I'd say that it's Go meets Diplomacy. With demons.

[jellyfish]

The last three posts are very difficult to understand.

[aganazer]

Originally Posted by jellyfish

The last three posts are very difficult to understand.

Agreed, but what's important is if that bothers you or not. :P

[JM]

They make sense once you've read the OO link. Thanks for the info guys, it sounds pretty damn awesome and I'm really looking forward to our first hapless attempts to play MP.

[Xemu]

I'm in for some PBEM on this if we get it going. When is the game out, anyways?

[Ben Sones]

Maybe it would have been clearer to say that it's sort of like Advanced Squad Leader meets Hungry Hungry Hippos, with a dash of Cosmic Encounter. The Eon version, specifically, along with whatever expansion it was that introduced the Tune Moon ("Sing a little song about your alien power or lose it forever").

[TomChick]

Whoa, Therlan, OOC, dude. OOC! You had such a great RP server thing going there.

I've just started going over the rules with a preview build and a draft of the manual. I haven't come anywhere near grokking it yet, but I am giddy with excitement based on what I've seen so far! MW2 multiplayer? Assassin's Creed 2? Sims 3 World Adventure? Whatever.

BTW, I can already tell I'm going to have my usual "NOT ENUFF TEH HOTKEYZ!!!1!" complaint. :)

-Tom

[Juntei]

Any updates on the release of this?

[Therlun]

Vic said probably before 26th of November.