Solium Infernum! An all-time classic game of treachery, backstabbing and deceit, where up to six archfiends battle for control of the empty throne of Hell. The original 2009 version was designed and coded by a solo dev called Vic Davis and burned brightly in certain corners of the internet before fading away shortly afterwards; however, it clearly made an impression on somebody because this year has seen the release of one of the most inexplicable remakes in videogame history: an all-new version of Solium Infernum, with 3D visuals, overhauled game mechanics and a dedicated server for handling asynchronous multiplayer games.

(I say it’s inexplicable because a remake of a 14 year-old indie game which had a pretty niche playerbase even in 2009 doesn’t really have much of a chance of making its money back. I would love to have sat in on the greenlight meeting for that one.)

I wasn’t originally intending to buy the remake. I played Scrofula in the RPS game, so I have extensive prior experience of just how much brainspace Solium Infernum can take up as you plan and scheme and collude with and against the other players while trying to clamber to the top of a pile of skulls. I didn’t think I had that kind of time any more. But then my friends all decided to hurl themselves headfirst into the abyss, and I was curious about the remake, and so five of us ended up spending a three week period in March tearing strips out of one another. And the more I played it, the more I got into it, until I eventually decided to record the latter half of the game for posterity in another diary.

This diary will unfortunately suffer from the remake being limited in some crucial ways compared to the original: I didn’t start keeping detailed notes (or screenshots) until turn 25 (out of 50), and unlike the original game there’s no way of replaying a game — or even an individual turn — once it’s done, so I can’t go back and make them retrospectively. This means that the first half of the game recorded in Part 1 of the diary is a bit light on detail, which can’t be helped; however, it also means that everything past that point is a contemporaneous record of my thought process as I played through each turn, which becomes increasingly paranoid and unhinged as the game progresses.

I’ve split the diary into five parts, mostly because the full thing is over 17,000 words and it’s a bit much to expect people to read all of it in one go.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
  

Oh, and about the diary name: the remake gives each multiplayer game a quick identification code made up of three random words picked from an appropriately ominous-sounding dictionary. Ours was called “Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous”, which ended up feeling extremely apt.

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous: A Solium Infernum Diary appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.

This is Part 5 of a 5-part diary of a Solium Infernum multiplayer game. For Part 4, go here. For full context, see the contents post here.

Turn 45

Hey, guess what?

I’ve miscalculated.

It’s another almost perfect turn for me. Pandaemonium is taken, I am excommunicated, and the 5-turn victory timer starts. Pilfer Artifact on the Orb of Oblivion succeeds. Daemonic Interference on Zael succeeds. I’m even benefited by Skippy’s legion “resisting” his Infernal Juggernaut ritual again, although I feel less good about this because that was Skippy’s trump card and it looks a hell of a lot to me like he’s not getting to play it because of a bug.

But I failed to read the small print around excommunication. Being excommunicated takes you out of the normal ebb and flow of the game. Everyone can attack you with no restrictions, you can’t engage in diplomacy any more, and you can’t use the Bazaar. This I knew. What I didn’t know — or had forgotten — is that being excommunicated also stops you from being Regent, so I get skipped for start player and it goes straight to Zael.

(And the really funny part is, I made exactly the same miscalculation 14 years ago in the RPS Solium Infernum game. Nice to know that I haven’t changed much since then.)

This is all actually pretty sensible as it makes sneaky decapitation strikes much more difficult, which I think is a good thing, but it also means all of that planning around suicide bombing Skippy’s stronghold was a waste of time. Now the Hounds of Hell are extremely exposed, and Skippy can kill them quite easily with his starting legion if he chooses to move them first. I’ll try and get them out of there to a safe spot with my first action, but I’m not hopeful.

I also potentially have a problem with Peter. Zael is locked down with Daemonic Interference for at least another turn and can’t steal my stuff, but Peter’s taken the Wood of the Suicides which gives him +2 Deceit Strength. I don’t think this is the same as +2 Deceit Power, it just means that any Deceit rituals he tries on me are more likely to succeed. But he’s now at least as strong as Zael in terms of Deceit, and possibly even stronger. And I think Deceit rituals are my number one threat. Skippy can cause a lot of problems with Infernal Juggernaut if he can eventually get it to stick, but he can’t take my Stronghold unless somebody manages to steal the Black Monolith from me with Pilfer Artifact.

I can take the Wood away from him, right now. The Sons are in range. But that would mean moving them away from Pandaemonium and hoping that there’s nothing else around powerful enough to take it back in the next couple of turns

Skippy’s crap legion is lurking around there still and he could put Infernal Juggernaut + a Ranged-boosting stratagem on it and potentially win a combat in the Ranged phase – Pandaemonium currently only has 3HP after my assault and will regenerate it very slowly, so it’ll only take a few points of advantage for it to fall. But he can only use Infernal Juggernaut on one legion at a time, and he doesn’t know I’m going to move the Sons away, and if they stay where they are he can’t take it because Pandaemonium gets combat support from any adjacent legions.

(Probably, anyway. That legion has a Ranged stat of 0, which he could boost to 12 with Infernal Juggernaut and then give +8 with a Stratagem. Pandaemonium has 11 Ranged, and will get +7 as Combat Support from the Sons. That’s 20 vs 18, for 2 damage, and then his legion dies in the Melee phase.)

This is all leaving aside the potential complications of Destruction rituals. Skippy has 5 Destruction and could start throwing fireballs and stat maladies around that could upset these calculations. But I have 11 Destruction resist thanks to Evil Ward, so I think I’ll have to take the chance.

So. Move the Hounds to try and save them. Move the Sons to try and take the Wood before Peter can get any Deceit rituals off. And then Collect Tribute twice (I badly need money) and attach Praetors to Pandemonium and the Adamantine Guard.

(Another thing that feels like it’s not intended: when I stole the Adamantine Guard from Skippy, I also got the artifact he’d attached to them that means they provide their full stats as combat support to adjacent legions and strongholds. So any stat boost I give to them also goes to the other defenders. Skippy and Peter can still unpick this defence in a couple of turns if they work together, which is why I’m putting most of my faith in the Black Monolith. But I’m not going to neglect it either.)

One last piece of odd diplomatic activity: Zael has offered to vassal himself to Tom, of all people. Unsure what the play here is, and I’m starting to get the horrible feeling I might really have been tricked – I’m fairly sure that vassalisation makes all forms of victory except Power Behind The Throne impossible (this is a different relic that Zael doesn’t have), so Zael is giving up his Kingmaker victory. But he made the vassalisation offer before I took Pandaemonium. If I hadn’t attacked it at all he’d be screwed, so perhaps I wasn’t his Puppet after all.

Turn 46

Okay, the Hounds did die, but it was Peter moving a legion into their move path that did for them. Which is deeply annoying because if I’d picked a different route they’d still be alive.

Tom rejects the offer of vassalage from Zael, which is a bit mystifying. Somebody plays a Traditional Bribe event on me, which requires me to give up 25% of my tribute or… lose some prestige. Since I no longer have use for prestige, it does nothing.

A Pilfer Artifact on the Black Monolith is attempted by Peter, and fails. I’ve taken the Wood of the Suicides so the threat there is a bit lessened; if it works the same way as old Solium Infernum it’s something like a 1% chance of success even with maxed Deceit.

And it transpires that Daemonic Interference doesn’t work the way I thought it did; I thought that it’d  make an opposed check against Zael’s Prophecy resistance every turn in order to stay in play, but the reality is I only needed to pass that check once, which I did last turn. Now it stays up for as long as I’m willing to pay for it with no further obstacles, which means Zael can no longer cast any rituals and has effectively been removed from the game as far as I’m concerned since we don’t share a border. That is, frankly, ridiculous, just one of several baffling design decisions in this remake. I feel bad about it because I didn’t know it’d be this overpowered – but also I can’t exactly walk it back because it’s a key part of my plan.

I do have a problem with Skippy’s Infernal Juggernaut legion, though. He’s finally got the ritual to work, and it’s now even more powerful than the Sons. He can’t take my Stronghold (yet), and he can’t kill the Army of the Fallen in one round because they’re receiving full support from the Adamantine Guard. But he can kill the Adamantine Guard by moving around my Stronghold; it’s four hexes away but that legion has four movement thanks to Infernal Juggernaut.

So, I’m going to try and repurpose the Orb of Oblivion along with abusing the turn order a little bit. Skippy is Regent this turn, which means next turn he’ll go after me (I might not be able to be start player any more, but I still have a place in the turn order). My own starting legion is lurking around nearby. If I strap the Orb to it and move it into position next to the Adamantine Guard with my last move of the turn, then if Skippy does go for them I’ll be able to nuke them with my first move next turn.

He can just cast Infernal Juggernaut on another legion after this, of course, but I’m hoping this at least buys me some time.

Not sure what to do with the Sons. I could try and kill Peter’s legion next to the Wood of the Suicides, but if I were him I’d run away with his first move of the turn. A funnier, higher-risk option would be to move it up towards Peter’s stronghold, which it can take in 3 turns. But that would leave Pandaemonium unguarded, and if Tom goes for it, or Skippy decides to switch Infernal Juggernaut to his Hellspawn legion, it could still fall.

No, the plan has taken me this far and I won’t abandon it now. As long as I control the Wood of the Suicides it’s incredibly unlikely Peter can succeed in stealing the Black Monolith. That means the only way the other players can stop me is to retake Pandaemonium – all of the manoeuvring around my Stronghold is a distraction, albeit a valuable one as Skippy can’t reach Pandaemonium with his good legions except by walking past my Stronghold. So I’ll keep the Sons down there, and trust in my Deceit + Destruction resistance to stop anything particularly bad from happening.

Turn 47

My god, it’s like I can see the future.

Skippy moves his Infernal Juggernaut legion around and kills the Adamantine Guard, just as I predicted. My suicide bomb legion is in position next to them, and they’ll go boom next turn.

Both Skippy and Peter try Pilfer Artifact on the Black Monolith. Both of them fail. I expect they’ll be doing this every turn until they succeed, or I win. I really hope my calculation of the odds is correct and that rituals work the way I think they do (each player rolls 2d6 and adds their modifiers, highest score wins, defender wins draws), as even with 6 Deceit they’d only have a 15 in 1236 chance of stealing it.

One reason I’ve locked down Zael with Daemonic Interference is because his stronghold gives him +1 Deceit strength, making it a 35 in 1236 chance. Which sounds silly, now that I think about it. If Peter had 6 Deceit and the +2 bonus from the Wood of the Suicides, he’d have a 70 in 1236 chance. This was really all very unlikely – but if one of them levels Prophecy to 6 and hits me with a successful Daemonic Interference, I lose the +4 resist bonus from Expose Treason and Zael is suddenly freed to try it at a mere -2 disadvantage, giving him a… 330 in 1236 chance. That’s over 25%! Better hope they aren’t rushing Prophecy.

Peter attacks my other legion next to the stronghold, the Army of the Fallen. They don’t die immediately but they won’t survive a second attack, and I won’t be able to reinforce them in time.  My defences have collapsed faster than I anticipated and it’s clear to me that without the Black Monolith I’d already be dead; I don’t see how anyone really pulls off a successful Pandaemonium play without it.

He also attacks the Wood of the Suicides, which is currently receiving combat support from the Sons of Typhon. His attacking legion dies, messily. That frees the Sons to move back to support Pandaemonium.

The Bazaar is open again now, so they’re all potentially free to buy new things that’ll mess my plans up. But as long as I have the Black Monolith the stronghold is invincible, and I don’t think they can get anything strong to Pandaemonium in time to take it.

Just three more turns.

Turn 48

Oh fuck.

My blood runs cold when I see somebody has played this Aetheric Clot event. All Rituals cancelled! No more can be performed for 3 turns! That means my Deceit + Destruction resist rituals are cancelled, and Zael is free from my Daemonic Interference. Disaster!

But then I reassert myself. No rituals for 3 turns? From anyone? That means they can’t Pilfer Artifact any more. How do they plan to win?

It must be something from the reopened Bazaar. Sure enough, Peter has bought this artifact, the Broken Oath Sword. It has the Dismissal ability, which returns opposing attachments to their owner’s vault if any Melee damage is inflicted. This means that all he has to do is attach this thing to one of his legions with a higher melee stat than my stronghold and run it in, which will detach the Black Monolith in the melee phase, and then the stronghold will die in the infernal phase. The Aetheric Clot was so that I can’t use rituals to fuck with his legions while he does this.

I’m dead.

Well, unless he’s stupid enough to run his good legion in first, in which case a little prep work I did last turn will mess him up: this stratagem card gives my stronghold a big ranged boost, and his legion is weak to ranged. If he does run it in first, it’ll die.

But unfortunately he also has a second nearby legion, the amusingly-named 10,000 Screaming Bastards, which is a joke unit with equally funny stats. We laughed about this at the time, and I expressed doubt that it was useful in any way unless the 3 movement stat could be leveraged somehow. Well, they’re exactly 3 hexes away from my stronghold. If he suicides them into it he’ll burn the stratagem card in that combat, and then his good legion will be free to kill it.

There is literally nothing I can do about this. I don’t have access to rituals. I don’t have access to the Bazaar. I can’t attach anything else to the stronghold. The Army of the Fallen was killed last turn, and I suicided my starting legion into Skippy’s. My only remaining legion is the Sons of Typhon, and they’re down by Pandaemonium.

Hindsight is a fine thing. I shouldn’t have just sat on my ass and assumed the stronghold was invincible short of a successful Pilfer Artifact. I should have kept them distracted. I should have moved the Sons up towards Peter’s stronghold two turns ago. If I’d done that I’d be able to kill him this turn before he killed me.

I can’t believe I’m about to be killed by irony.

Turn 49

But not for another turn. I can only assume Peter is just as paranoid as I am, because he’s spent a turn reshuffling his forces instead of attacking. Maybe he’s worried about what happens after I’m dead.

He’s 26 points ahead of Skippy, and I don’t know how elections work in this version of the game – the encyclopedia says it takes between 5 and 13 turns, so the game will go until turn 55 at least, giving Skippy time to catch him. But if it ever looks like Peter is going to win, Skippy can just do what I did and take Pandaemonium with an Infernal Juggernaut legion. Or excommunicate himself and blow up Peter’s stronghold. All of Peter’s legions are in range of my stronghold now, but they’re also coincidentally blocking any advance from Skippy (not that they’d be much more than a speedbump). I can’t think of another reason to delay this by another turn.

I’ve stuck a bunch of strategem cards to Pandaemonium to poison it a bit in the hope that they’ll persist after I’m dead (as other PoP attachments have done after structures have reverted to neutral). And as one last kick in the shin, I’m also going to try to move the Sons to get Skippy’s legion near Pandaemonium. With no other legions or rituals available that’s all the agency I have left in this game. There’s nothing else to do.

Turn 50

Uh. Okay.

I am speechless when I see the turn notification pop up in Steam during a game of Mechabellum. Usually it says “New turn”, but this time it says “Game finished”. There is only one way that the game could have finished on turn 50: I have won.

But I have no idea how.

After reviewing the turn, and going over it in depth with the other players, I still have no idea how.

Skippy’s legion attacked my stronghold first to burn its stratagem card. They won the combat, reducing the stronghold’s HP to zero. Because it still has the Black Monolith attached to it, Skippy did not capture the stronghold, and its HP was reset to 1.

Peter then attacked with his Broken Oath Sword legion. He’s been boosting it with manuscripts so it has a frankly disgusting statline of 4-26-12 (it would have given the Sons a run for their money), against the stronghold’s 5-6-2.

What should happen here is that the stronghold wins the Ranged round, inflicting 1 damage to the legion; the legion then wins the Melee round, inflicting twenty melee damage to the stronghold and detaching the Black Monolith. Peter wins the combat, captures the stronghold, and I die.

What actually happens, though, is that the stronghold wins the Ranged round, inflicts 1 damage to Peter’s legion… and then the combat ends. There is no Melee round, the Broken Oath Sword doesn’t get a chance to detach the Black Monolith, and the stronghold remains in my hands.

And because turn 49 was the fifth of the five turns I needed to hold Pandaemonium for, I survive the turn and win the game at the start of turn 50.

I probably shouldn’t be complaining too much here, but this is a very unsatisfying way to win. There has been a lot of inadvertent discovery of counterintuitive mechanics and obscure edge cases during this multiplayer game, mostly by Skippy. For all of them, though, we eventually managed to find something buried in the encyclopaedia that explained it, or the actual interaction between two artifacts became somewhat apparent in hindsight.

Here, though, there’s nothing in the rules or the tooltips or anything that even gives a hint as to why the climactic battle finished without proceeding to the Melee round. Everything in the game up until this point, and everything in the encyclopaedia, says that Peter should have won and I should be dead. That I am not looks an awful lot like a bug rather than an intended game mechanic. (I even submitted a bug report about it in the hope that the developers can at least tell me what on earth happened.)

Now, there is another part of me that thinks that if Peter hadn’t delayed for the extra turn and had instead sent the 10,000 Screaming Bastards into my stronghold on turn 48, he would have at least had one last turn as a buffer in case anything did go wrong with this crucial play. Skippy and Peter left zero room for getting screwed by the game like this, and paid the price.

But then they shouldn’t have had to. The fun of a game like Solium Infernum is trying to predict what the other players will do, not trying to predict how basic game mechanics will work. The remake has gone to great lengths to remove a lot of the RNG from the game – most mechanics in the original relied on dice rolls to some degree, which have been almost completely excised from the game outside of rituals — and so it’s absurd that I can be in the position of winning a game without having a clue how I did it.

Ah, well. Everyone else might have spent the entire game stepping on landmines, but I had a wonderful time planning, plotting and scheming. I’m also vindicated by the discovery that my move on Pandaemonium was the correct play: Zael did pick me as his Kingmaker puppet, although he told the other players that he’d picked Tom. The final turn was a bit of an anticlimax and it doesn’t feel like a real victory, but I used literally everything I had to get where I was and while there were a few key misplays I don’t think I could have executed on my overall gameplan much better than I did. So if you delete the last turn from the record, I’m actually pretty happy with it.

I’ll type up some final thoughts about the remake as a whole as a quasi-review later; for now, this is where I’ll leave it: with Mammon somewhat undeservedly being crowned the Lord of Hell.

Back to contents

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous – Part 5 appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.

This is Part 4 of a 5-part diary of a Solium Infernum multiplayer game. For Part 3, go here. For full context, see the contents post here.

Turn 40

The Angel has taken out Skippy’s guys that were next to my Stronghold… and then went after the Sons of Typhon, who smacked it in the face and killed it.

I don’t have time to take this turn before work, and Peter contacts me during the day wondering if Zael is the Kingmaker. This is a relic you can take at the start of the game. It takes all 3 of your relic slots. The way it works is, you select a player as a “puppet” during the first 10 turns of the game. If that player eventually “wins” the game via Prestige, you win instead.

It’s a tremendously high-risk play as you’re trading all of your relic slots on a 1 in 4 chance of guessing right who is going to win, but Zael has been doing very little to attack me despite being part of the anti-me coalition with Peter and Skippy, and this has made Peter suspicious enough that he’s talking to his arch-rival to see if I can find anything out about it. I think Zael’s behaviour is a bit weird, but it’s so unlikely that somebody would take this relic in their very first game that it’s a very outside chance. Still, by coincidence I did Dark Augury Zael last turn and my max level Prophecy stat means Dark Augury now reveals his relics as well as his stats and rituals, so later that night I boot up the game and have a look.

Shit. He is the Kingmaker.

Notably I can’t see who he’s decided to Kingmake; during the first ten turns of the game I wasn’t exactly doing a great deal and wouldn’t have been a fantastic bet. But the fact that he’s gone a bit passive now that I’ve taken the lead does indicate that things are going his way, and it’s probably me.

This completely changes things. For starters, it means my chances of actually winning the game just disappeared straight down the toilet. The only way I can win by Prestige is if Zael is dead. Given the rules around wars, you’re only allowed to eliminate a player if you’ve won 3 Vendettas against them, or if they’ve excommunicated themselves by attacking Pandaemonium. Zael is probably not going to excommunicate himself, which means someone needs to win 3 Vendettas against him. I currently have 0. The only way to force a Vendetta against him is to make a Demand for an artifact (he currently has zero artifacts). This will take one turn to send the demand, one turn for him to respond, a third turn to set the terms of the Vendetta, and then at least one additional turn to actually win it. That’s probably 5-6 turns per Vendetta, plus some number of additional turns to declare a Blood Feud and kill him And there’s only 15 turns left in the game.

So I need to completely reorient my strategy. No more Prestige. Instead I need to take and hold Pandemonium for 5 turns in order to win this. And that’s going to be extremely difficult, since it’s going to be incredibly obvious to everyone that that’s what I’m doing the moment I start to move the Sons of Typhon south – there’s nothing down there except Pandaemonium. As soon as I attack it I’ll be excommunicated, and I’ll have to hold my Stronghold and Pandaemonium at the same time, against everyone else. And while I’m confident of being able to take any one player in a war, I can’t take all of them at once.

Still, what else am I going to do? Let Zael win?

I let Peter, Skippy and Tom know the score. I don’t know if this is helpful at all, but Peter and Skippy already suspect and can probably put the pieces together themselves. Meanwhile I need to do a massive buildup of legions, praetors and artifacts. I need to get my Wrath to 4 to increase my maximum legion cap so that I can buy an additional legion. And then, hopefully around turn 48-49-ish, I need to make a play for Pandaemonium. It’s an incredibly slim chance, but it’s all I’ve got left.

Turn 41

This is going to be absolute chaos. There’s no way I can hide what I’m doing. I’m moving the Sons south, now. Less time everyone else has to prepare for this, the better. I can only hope that Skippy and Peter get distracted about what happens after I’m dead, as Peter will be the leader by then.

I’ve been outbid on a cool Infernal boosting artifact in the Bazaar by Peter, so that’s not a brilliant start. I do have the Devourer, which I’ve been keeping in my back pocket all game; I will pull it out just before everything kicks off. But Skippy’s legions are scary once they’re boosted with Stratagems. I’ll need some additional juice to hold him off. The remaining artifact selection isn’t great, but I have enough Praetors already – you can only attach one per legion. I bid on a cheap artifact that negates other legion’s abilities in the hope that something better appears next turn.

I have just realised, though: if I go for Pandaemonium I need to hold both it and my Stronghold for 5 turns to win the game. Holding the Stronghold is going to be the hard part because it’s very close to Skippy and if I lose it I’m dead. But Peter does have that “make a PoP uncapturable” artifact — the Black Monolith — and I assume that includes my Stronghold. If I can nick it, and I have enough +Deceit resist to stop somebody from stealing it back, my chances suddenly become a lot better.

It’ll piss Peter off, and just when we were starting to be friends again. But it’s all hollow words; they’ll have figured out by now that this is the only thing that I can do.

Turn 42

The problem with Solium Infernum is that your paranoia really does start to get the better of you after 40 turns of plotting. I am starting to wonder if this is all an elaborate scheme between Skippy, Peter and Zael to get me to excommunicate myself and give up the Prestige victory. It was awfully convenient that Peter came to me with the idea that Zael was the Kingmaker – but if that’s the case, at least one of them would be screwing themselves over. Either Zael has genuinely picked me as his puppet and is giving that up, or he’s picked one of Skippy or Peter and they’re gambling on a coin flip that it’s the other one and that they can still win. The comedy option is that Zael picked Tom, in which case his Kingmaker crown is genuinely useless and it’d make sense that he’d leverage it the only way he could – but then he still loses when Peter or Skippy win.

There might be some angle to this that I’m missing. Maybe I’m discounting the desire for revenge a little too much. I think the odds are that this is all exactly as it appears to be, especially because nobody knew I’d only just gotten max level Dark Augury and could see Zael’s relics. I’m going to look bloody stupid if I’m wrong, giving up an assured Prestige victory for a one in ten shot at Pandaemonium – but I simply cannot take that chance. If this is a trick, it’s an unnecessary one, because I was locked into this course of action as soon as I saw the Kingmaker crown.

Boot up the turn, and immediately something goes wrong.

Somebody targets me with this Paladin event, which takes out one of my artifacts. Unfortunately for me, it’s the one that lets me summon The Devourer, which was my big surprise for the coming war against Skippy and Peter. That’s just halved my chances of pulling this off.

And my Pilfer Artifact ritual against Peter failed as well. This is all suddenly going extremely badly. I’ll just have to try again. The Black Monolith is potentially game-winning, and too important to be left alone.

However, this artifact, the Orb of Oblivion, has just turned up in the Bazaar. Its Oblivion ability is mutually assured destruction; anything that kills the legion it’s attached to will also die. If I buy a cheap legion with 3 movement (and there’s a couple of those available at the moment) and strap this to it, I might be able to suicide bomb somebody’s Stronghold as my opening move.

I’ve also got a Capricious Wrath event card that will randomly kill an opposing legion. Don’t know which legion it will kill, but every little helps.

I notice Skippy is also moving up a legion towards Pandaemonium. It’s complete shit, but its Teleport ability will let it bypass Tom’s territory, which is otherwise blocking the approach to Pandaemonium for Skippy and Zael. He’s doing this for one of two reasons:

1. He’s trying to body block me. If my calculations are right, this won’t work; he goes first this turn, but then I’m before him in the turn order meaning that if I attack Pandaemonium next turn with my first order there’s nothing he can do about it.
2. He wants to strap the Orb of Oblivion to it and suicide bomb the Sons of Typhon after I’ve attacked Pandaemonium. Which would be annoying.

I toss some more Souls and Hellfire into my bid for the Orb, just in case. Skippy can make even weak legions pretty powerful with Wrath rituals, which I’m reasonably sure he’s maxed out by now, but I’ll just have to worry about that as and when he does it.

I can’t get distracted though. Peter has a legion within striking distance of my Stronghold, and it’s powerful enough to one-shot it. I need at least two adjacent legions to body-block him, which means moving the Army of the Fallen back up and then also buying another legion from the Bazaar and moving that into place. That’s 3 actions.

I need another two actions for the Sons of Typhon to reach and attack Pandaemonium, which is another turn at least. I might wait another turn after that so that I’m Regent on the turn after I get excommunicated, which would let me go first and potentially blow up Skippy’s base before he can react.

That leaves me with 7 actions before the Big Play. Two to move the Hounds of Hell to threaten Skippy. Another 1 to strap the nuke to them (assuming I have the winning bid). Leaving just four moves to do other things. The margins are getting pretty damn thin.

Turn 43

More paranoia. Peter is Regent the turn before I am. What if he excommunicates himself by hitting Pandaemonium with a Destruction Ritual, and then one-shots my base before I can react?

Madness. I’m still in the Prestige lead, but Peter is only 15 points behind me and 40-odd points ahead of Skippy. All he has to do is sit back and watch me explode while holding off Skippy, and he’ll win. It’s Skippy who might make a desperation play, but aside from the one legion he’s moving towards Pandaemonium there’s nothing obviously sus going on there.

Ah shit. The Bazaar is shut. That’s going to really mess everything up, as I was banking on buying at least one more legion to hold off Peter. Once I’m excommunicated I lose access to the Bazaar regardless, so I effectively can’t buy anything else for the rest of the game. I’ll have to make do with stealing things. Or trying to, anyway.

On the bright side, my second attempt to steal the Black Monolith from Peter went through. That should buy me some time.

On the not so bright side, despite me bidding over twice as much as the Orb of Oblivion was worth Skippy still won the auction for it. (That or the game didn’t accept my overbid somehow because it required me to click “Place bid” again after adding the extra tokens, or something stupid like that.)  This is getting very sticky. I think I’m going to have to try to steal it from him. That or try to blow up his suicide bomb legion somehow.

A realisation. That artifact I bought a couple of turns ago that negates opposing legion’s named abilities? Oblivion is a named ability, albeit on an artifact rather than a legion. Have I mentioned that the in-game encyclopaedia has maybe three sentences per item/mechanic and doesn’t go into anywhere near enough detail for Solium Infernum, a game with so many edge cases it doesn’t actually have any solid sides to speak of? So I have no idea if it will actually work or not. It’ll be a last resort only.

Usually I spend two actions per turn collecting tribute, but since the Bazaar is shut there’s not much point amassing more than I already have, so my actions this turn are expended on moves and rituals. The Sons of Typhon could take Pandaemonium this turn, but I’m swerving aside and ending my turn next to it instead. Army of the Fallen is moving up to a position where it can support my Stronghold; adjacent legions provide 50% of their combat stats as support, so the more legions I have next to the Stronghold the harder it is to take. And I’m moving my starter legion back towards the Stronghold as well. It’s crap, but I’ll need everything to survive this.

Meanwhile, I do a Dark Augury on Skippy so that I can see inside his vault to potentially steal the Orb of Oblivion next turn. I also speculatively target his strongest legion with a Convert Legion ritual – I doubt it will work, but the Bazaar being shut makes it extremely awkward for him if it does. And my last action is spent on the kill-a-random-legion event.

In-game diplomatic activity has completely ceased. Nobody is amassing prestige any more. Everyone can see what’s coming. Zael is absolutely passive; I wonder if it’s worth hitting him with Daemonic Interference now? This will shut down his ability to cast rituals and he might be planning to hit me with Deceit rituals next turn; on the other hand I have a whopping 13 Deceit resistance to his 7 Deceit power.

Or, both Peter and Zael have their Prophecy high enough to cast Malediction of the Seer, which would prevent me from being Regent. They probably wouldn’t do that this turn though.

Another possibility is that Skippy has levelled Destruction to 6; he was on 5 the last time I checked 8 turns ago and he did have a lot of Hellfire, which is required for levelling Destruction, and level 6 gets you the very nasty Planar Lock ritual which reduces the target’s actions by 3. I have 11 Destruction resistance so have a decent chance of shrugging it off – but the problem here is that they only have to be lucky once to completely wreck my plans. There’s a good possibility I start getting seriously hit with stuff this turn, too, if they think I’m going directly for Pandaemonium and don’t wait for the excommunication.

Sod it, I’ll stick to the plan. Daemonic Interference is another little surprise I’ve been keeping in my back pocket and I don’t want to reveal it too early. Just one more turn…

Turn 44

The kill-a-legion event killed one of Zael’s. Which was a disappointing outcome, as I did have a better-than-even chance of taking out one of Skippy’s or Peter’s, which would have helped me a lot more.

Apart from that the last turn went almost perfectly.

The Sons move into position next to Pandaemonium, and afterwards are targeted with two Deceit rituals from Zael (or somebody pretending to be Zael), Forged Orders and Strategic Confusion, which would have otherwise stopped them moving. Both bounce, and award me 16 Prestige into the bargain thanks to Expose Treason. Shame that doesn’t matter any more, really, although it is nice to know that Zael is actually worried about my upcoming Pandaemonium play.

There’s some manoeuvring from the other players. Peter moves a legion down to try and take the Wood of the Suicides (the +2 Deceit strength PoP) but doesn’t manage it this turn. Skippy moves a legion away from his stronghold, and then something very weird happens: it’s targeted with an Infernal Juggernaut ritual, which would otherwise boost its stats by a ridiculous amount, but the legion… resists the ritual. It was definitely Skippy’s ritual, he’s the only person with Wrath 6 and thus the only person who can cast Infernal Juggernaut. If the ritual had succeeded that legion might have been in a good position to one-shot my Stronghold, and it feels like a bug that it failed.

(Postgame note: as far as we can tell, the reason Infernal Juggernaut failed is because Skippy’s legion was in a Ruins hex. Ruins block ritual effects, and – ludicrously – this appears to include friendly rituals.)

Crucially, Skippy does not move his suicide bomb legion. He doesn’t attach the Orb of Oblivion to it either. My Dark Augury against him succeeds, and reveals nothing I don’t already suspect: his relic is a crown that gives him +1 action, and his stats are Wrath 6, Destruction 5, Deceit 4. That last is surprising given that my speculative Convert Legion against his Adamantine Guard went through and I now have a very beefy set of guys lurking next to my Stronghold.

Still, Skippy can probably bulldoze them if he puts Infernal Juggernaut on his starting legion, the Blood of Astaroth. In addition to boosting all stats by 8-12, it’ll also increase its move by 2, to a total of 4. And that puts it in range of my Stronghold from its current position.

My plan to counter that is the Black Monolith. I can just stick that on my Stronghold, and it becomes uncapturable until somebody manages to steal the artifact from me.

Other moves, then. The Adamantine Guard go to the south of my stronghold; this will prevent Skippy’s boosted legion from taking them out as a driveby. I queue up a Pilfer Artifact on the Orb of Oblivion, and the Hounds go towards Skippy’s stronghold in preparation for the suicide bomb attempt (assuming that’s successful). And I target Zael with Daemonic Interference; it’s not that likely to succeed since Zael’s been levelling his Prophecy stat, but he’s the player most likely to disrupt my plans with rituals and if I can land it it’ll be a big help. I can see a problem coming next turn where I’m going to need to Collect Tribute a couple more times in order to keep powering my rituals, but I should have enough to pay all required upkeep for next turn at least..

However, the first move of my turn has to be the attempt on Pandaemonium; this means that only Peter will have a chance to stop me with a ritual, and only if it’s his very first action. I’m really hoping my combat strength calculations are correct. Pandemonium has 11-13-17 and 23hp, and the Sons have 15-24-0 and 25hp. Since damage done is just the difference between each stat, I’d do 4 damage in the Ranged phase, 11 damage in the Melee phase and take 17 damage in the Infernal phase – however the Sons also have a “Melee Twice” attribute, which means I’ll actually deal 22 damage in the Melee round. This is a total of 26 damage, which means I should kill Pandaemonium before it ever gets to the Infernal phase.

Hopefully, anyway.

Click here for Part 5

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous – Part 4 appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.

This is Part 3 of a 5-part diary of a Solium Infernum multiplayer game. For Part 2, go here. For full context, see the contents post here.

Turn 35

Okay, well, somebody summoned the Angel again. And this time it’s actually a problem for me. It’s possible the Sons could kill it if I attached some melee boosters. Or I could just chuck a sacrificial legion into its path.

That’s a problem for next turn, though, or maybe the turn after. The current development is that Skippy has used his archfiend’s special ability, the Draconic Razzia, to trigger a fun little one-turn war with me, which will kick off next turn. Unsure what the plan is there – the only thing I can think of is that he wants to cut across my territory to take the nearby PoP I never bothered to claim. I’m half-tempted to just let him have it, as I don’t think there’s any Prestige at stake here.

A little unsure what to do next. I can’t move against Skippy as the Draconic Razzia blocks me from sending any diplomatic demands of my own until it’s resolved. Moving against Peter again would be the logical choice as he is technically in the lead and can’t do a damn thing to protect himself from me.

But I also need to make sure Zael can’t get too powerful. His second legion died to the fireball, but Tom’s legion didn’t move – did Zael lock it down with a Deceit ritual?

The good news is: this is now definitely 3 vs 1. This means I don’t need to feel guilty about taking the gloves off.

I’ll Corrupt Tribute on Zael again. I can bully Skippy and Peter with diplomacy, but in order to Vendetta Zael I’d have to march troops halfway across the map, and I’m less confident about Praetor Duels because his increasing Deceit means I can’t easily steal his Praetors. He might be running the +Destruction resist ritual after I blew up two of his legions, but I’ll just have to take that chance.

I’ll also send a Humiliate diplomatic action to Peter. This greatly accelerates the process of getting to Vendetta (which would otherwise require several turns of back and forth as demands are made and responded to) and turns him into a big Prestige pinata.

It could all go horribly wrong for me depending on what the Angel and the Leviathan do. Reasonably sure the Leviathan is going to head north, through Skippy’s territory, up to the Garden of Infernal Delights. But the last turn has shown that it is anything but predictable…

Turn 36

The Leviathan moved north and took out Tom’s legion that was prosecuting the war against Zael. Which is annoying, I don’t think he’ll be able to win that vendetta now.

But. In a thrilling re-enactment of King Kong vs Godzilla, the Angel then moved up to try and kill the Leviathan. That I did not expect. Does the Leviathan count as a faction with military power? They fought each other to a draw, but the Angel came off way worse; it’ll win if it attacks the Leviathan again next turn thanks to having higher Ranged and Melee stats (and also thanks to the Leviathan being on half health after bulldozing Skippy’s legions) but it’s only got 3 HP left. I can definitely take it out with the Sons now if it comes my way.

My Corrupt Tribute action on Zael bounced. I don’t think he had the resist ritual up, I think he’s just levelled Destruction for the passive resist – it’s about time one of my rituals failed anyway.

More importantly, though, Skippy has indeed manoeuvred his troops so that they can take the Unholy Fountain. Which is kind of whatever, but I don’t see why I should just let him have it – and while he goes before me in the turn order, he’ll need to spend an action attaching something to his legion in order to take it in the one turn of hostilities the Draconic Razzia allows. So I can use my first action to cast Strategic Confusion, which prevents the target legion from moving if it hasn’t moved already.

The more worrying thing is that a Dark Augury has told me that Skippy has Destruction 5 and a whole bunch of Hellfire stored up. Probably even odds of his rituals bouncing off of me, but that’s not good enough – I’ll invoke the +Destruction Resist ritual, Evil Ward, as my second action, just in case.

I also have a whole bunch of tribute saved up. I should probably spend it. I can afford level 6 Prophecy, which gives me a fifth and final Ritual slot, and which would also allow me to break Zael’s ritual table and stop him from casting anything. A nice thing to have in my back pocket, just in case.

I should probably also stop running Elocution. If it’s 3 vs 1 now it’s going to be a lot less valuable as all of my opponent’s demands will be directed at me instead of each other.

Zael’s done the same thing I have and dumped all of his Prestige into a Prince upgrade. Which means he can vassalise himself to Skippy next turn if he so wishes. Such is life.

Turn 37

Strategic Confusion bounced, and Skippy’s legion took the Unholy Fountain. It’s possible I overestimated the effectiveness of Deceit. It doesn’t help that the game obfuscates everything and won’t tell you how things are calculated, but I’m starting to think that my sustained thievery of Praetors and Legions a few turns earlier was just good rolls.

Still, overall that’s a good thing: the game’s not as unbalanced it first appeared. If Deceit rituals were the only tools at my disposal I’d be in trouble. Fortunately they are not; I have what looks like the best duelling Praetor in the game currently (thanks Peter), so I’ve fired off a Humiliate to Skippy with a Praetor Duel lined up if he refuses.

Peter for his part accepted the Humiliate I sent to him last turn – a wise move, as I can’t send another one for 3 turns giving him a bit of time to prepare.

I’ve placed a bid for another good duelling Praetor in the Bazaar, just to deny it to everyone else. The problem with Gusion is that he’s very one-dimensional and his moves are all Skulls-type, so if there’s a Praetor who counters Skulls he could be in trouble. And I suspect Praetor Duels are going to be my tool of choice for bullying both Skippy and Zael, when I eventually get around to him.

I’m maintaining Expose Treason and Evil Ward (the Destruction and Deceit resistance boosting rituals), and probably will do so for the rest of the game. I’m cancelling Elocution, and also finally sorting out my Schemes – I can have 3 of them at once, but two of those slots are taken up by Schemes to complete Manuals and Schematics, which require either many purchases from the Bazaar or continual attempts at the RNG by using the Collect Manuscripts action. This is too many actions for my taste, so I’m going to use a Prophecy ritual to cancel one of those this turn and also Plot a new Scheme for next turn. Hopefully I can pull something nice and easy that I’m already doing, which is free Prestige.

There’s a conclave vote coming up to dump a bunch of Abyss Striders into somebody’s territory. If I were them I’d put them all in Skippy’s, so that he can fight them and level up his legions. It’s certainly useless to put them in mine, as I don’t have any PoPs for the Abyss Striders to disrupt and my Legions would one-shot them.

Oh, and the Angel killed the Leviathan, but not before the Leviathan took out Tom’s PoP. Tom also declared a Vendetta against Peter to take a PoP, but didn’t spot that Peter’s only PoP has an attached artifact – the Black Monolith – that gives it the Shadow Shield attribute, which makes it uncapturable. I’ll have to talk to him again soon to see if there’s anything I can do to help him, as he’s proving a distraction for the other players at the very least.

Not sure where the Angel will go next. Looking at the map it’s not impossible it goes after my starting Legion, which is lurking on the other side of Peter’s territory. I might just have to let them die if it does.

Turn 38

 Ah, the Humiliation was delivered to Skippy just in time – he’s now played the Diplomatic Immunity event, which prevents him from being targeted by hostile diplomatic actions for 5(!) turns.

That could still throw a bit of a spanner in the works as I still lose out on a Humiliate I could otherwise have sent in 3 turns time. But the more worrying thing is Peter, who managed to get 15-20 Prestige last turn and is still in the lead despite me bullying him. He’s high in Charisma, does he have the ritual that gives him prestige per turn? Perhaps I should Dark Augury him again.

Incoming scheme selection isn’t tremendous despite me getting 4 picks. I think the most likely one is “Cast 5 Prophecy rituals”, which I will definitely do before the end of the game, it’ll just take around 10 turns to pay out.

(Although I’ve just realised that Evil Ward and Expose Treason are also both Prophecy rituals. Will they count if I’m maintaining them instead of actively casting them?)

I’m going to send a Humiliation to Zael, but I’ve hit a tiny snag: he bought a Praetor last round that I’m fairly sure was pretty beefy. I can send Gusion in and I think this gives me the best chance of success – but Gusion is already fighting Skippy, if Skippy refuses his Humiliation. And if Gusion loses that duel somehow, he’ll be dead and unable to fight in the duel against Zael.

I could send the Praetor I bought from the Bazaar last round, Naphula. She’s a little less powerful, so I think I’m only assured of victory with her if bribe the referee. And I still don’t know how that works because after 3 attempts nobody has yet actually answered the challenge and sent a Praetor to duel against me.

I’ll send Naphula. This could go horribly wrong and I could lose them both, plus a big chunk of Prestige. But it’s the best option I’ve got to squeeze some Prestige out of Skippy and Zael.

The Angel took out one of Tom’s legions – he really cannot catch a break. I have absolutely no idea who it’s going to go for next. Worst case is that it decides to go for my starting legion and bulldozes Tom’s remaining legions to do it. Best case is that it goes for Skippy.

Turn 39

Oh my god, this Angel. It’s just taken out another one of Tom’s legions, seemingly for no reason.

Skippy rejected the Humiliation. Perhaps now I will find out how Praetor Duels actually work.

Another garbage selection of Schemes. The best one available is “Make a Demand with the Infernal Negotiations ritual active”, which is two actions only, but Demands are less effective than Humiliate.

Skippy’s moved his troops worryingly close to my Stronghold. A potential play here is that he gets himself excommunicated by hitting Pandaemonium with a Destruction ritual and kills me in one turn, so I’m moving the Sons back to try and head that possibility off. The Angel might come this way, also, so on turn 39 I’m finally going to get something out of the vault and use it: Haagenti, a Praetor who will boost the Sons’ Melee attribute by 5.

Maintaining Expose Treason/Evil Ward does not count as successful Prophecy rituals for the purposes of the scheme I picked up last turn, so I’m going to have to do it by Dark Augurying people.

Peter’s picked up another 10 Prestige since last turn. He gets +5 from his PoPs, so I have no idea where the other 5 came from – he’s only running Elocution… wait, shit, if I’m sending a Humiliate to Skippy, Peter and Zael on a rota every turn then they all get a steady Prestige income from Elocution.

I’ll send another Humiliate to Peter next turn. He’s levelled 3 powers to level 4 now, which together with a powerful artifact he’s picked up that grants +1 orders means he has 6 orders. He’s still very weak militarily so can be bullied with Vendettas, but if I lose the Praetor Duels against Skippy and Zael I’m in big trouble.

Click here for Part 4

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous – Part 3 appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.

This is Part 2 of a 5-part diary of a Solium Infernum multiplayer game. For Part 1, go here. For full context, see the contents post here.

Turn 29

We’re coming up on the inflection point, I have 6 points in Deceit (which gives me access to the Convert Legion ritual, allowing me to steal enemy legions) and 4 in all other stats except for Wrath, giving me the maximum 6 actions per turn; this means I no longer need to pretend to be weak and feeble and can actually start attacking people. Thanks to a timing miscalculation I didn’t manage to get the Infernal Negotiations ritual back up in time for the Diplomatic Immunity event to expire, so I think either Skippy and Peter will finally Demand on me now. If they don’t, I’m going to do it to them next turn.

I have plans to handle Peter and Skippy (mostly involving stealing legions and/or pulling The Devourer out of my ass), I need not to let Tom and Zael out of my sight though. Zael in particular has been too quiet for too long and is getting a bit too into the backroom machinations, although a Dark Augury on turn 21 didn’t reveal anything particularly worrying. Maybe Dark Augury again at some point to make sure he’s not catching me up in the Ritual stakes.

Skippy’s sheer number of legions is intimidating and I probably can’t kill them all with Rituals (I have referred to this in PMs as a “Zapp Brannigan-ass strategy”), but I’ve checked and Convert Legion is “very likely” to work on his super-legion, the Sons of Typhon, because he’s not upgraded his Deceit stat at all to give himself any Deceit resistance. This seems hugely OP if true, although also somewhat self-inflicted – Zael is the only other person who has gone in on Deceit at all.

A thought occurs: Skippy is floating a ridiculous number of resources and might rush Deceit upgrades, which would give him a better chance of resisting my Deceit rituals. If I’m going to steal the Sons of Typhon I’d better do it soon while it’s a relatively sure thing. But this will immediately reveal that I have 6 Deceit. Although that might not be too much of an issue, because…

Annoyingly, after I sabotaged myself by very briefly posting a screenshot in the main channel revealing I had five order slots that I’m pretty sure Skippy saw before I deleted it, the game itself has also decided to sabotage me by giving me an achievement for raising Deceit to max level which is clearly visible in the Steam activity feed. Because that’s a sensible thing to have in a game that’s all about hidden information. Thanks, Solium Infernum developers, I really wanted everyone else to know that.

Anyway, if they don’t Demand on me next turn they’re absolutely nuts – playing the Diplomatic Immunity event did tip my hand a bit in that it let them know I was worried about being attacked, which means they should attack me as soon as it finishes. But I have achieved my Final Form now and I’m reasonably sure I can 1v2 them.

Oh, and I’ve been moving my one legion down to Pandaemonium, mostly because the revelation that Skippy was trying for it so early was a bit of a shock and I’d like a fallback option just in case my Rituals turn out to be less effective than I hope. I’ll need a much better legion than those failures to actually do anything, but having the cantons secured is probably a good thing.

Turn 30

Neither Peter or Skippy have sent Demands. They’re continuing to bully Tom.

Actually having to look at Demands now, I’m not sure how useful this actually will be? I need to actually fight a war to get anything out of it once the Demand is refused, which is, you know, fine. But also Zael is sitting there and I think he’s only a bit behind me because he just achieved two(!) “Have 3 rituals simultaneously” schemes, which means he’s levelled up his Prophecy from 1 to 4 in 9 turns in order to have enough ritual slots to do that. If I get distracted, he might pounce.

The Humiliate diplomatic action becomes available when you increase your Infernal Rank to Prince, which is like an Insult but you choose the terms of the resulting vendetta – the problem with Insults is that your opponent gets to choose between resolving it in a regular war or via a Praetor duel and they’ll pick whichever one you’re weakest in, so you’d better be damn sure you can win both if you’re Insulting somebody. The nice thing about Humiliate is that if you just want to mug somebody for Prestige it’s actually better than a Demand, since it has a shorter turnaround time before you can declare a vendetta and allows you to bully them more frequently. But that Prince upgrade is 90 Prestige, though! There are other benefits to getting it, like increased tribute quality and ritual resistance, but 90 Prestige is a game-winning amount.

Skippy has been blowing his resources on stuff from the Bazaar. Which means he’s very unlikely to have levelled his stats, and my Rituals should still work just fine.

I’m going to make a slight modification to the plan. Try to steal the Sons and also Demand on Skippy for an artifact. Who knows, he might actually cough one up since he’s been buying so many! If not, it’s Devourer time.

I’ve had a chat with Tom, trying to coordinate our efforts. I’ve given him a bunch of intelligence on Skippy and told him not to target the Sons with anything since it’ll just be wasted if I manage to Convert them. He’s apparently only just got his third order, so I think at this stage of the game he’s the safest bet for an ally. Zael is playing the game the same way I am, which means he’s a fundamentally untrustworthy snake who is biding his time and if I take my eyes off him for a second I’m going to lose on turn 50.

Finally, I’ve picked up the Leviathan event, which spawns a monster that goes around taking PoPs. I have no PoPs, so this will be an excellent bit of chaos to throw into the mix.

Turn 31

Damn. Damn damn damn damn damn.

The Sons are now on my team, and the Leviathan is here and has spawned in a great place to threaten both Peter and Skippy. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I’ve just noticed that the unclaimed PoP Peter has been moving his legion towards, the Wood of the Suicides, gives a +2 Deceit bonus. The stronger your Deceit is the more chance you have of resisting a hostile Deceit ritual, so I am sure he is frantically levelling his Deceit normally as well, as Zael has also been targeting him – he’s complained about being hit with Deceit rituals the last four turns, but I’ve only hit him once.

The worse news is that Peter goes before me in the turn order. If he takes that PoP with his first order of the turn there’s nothing that I can do to stop it. This will be much less fun if he can actually resist my rituals.

Even without the Sons, Skippy managed to one-shot Tom’s strongest legion with a stratagem – these are renamed combat cards from the original game, which you can stick to a legion for a one-off stat boost. They’re consumed after a single combat but they’re potentially much more powerful than artifact or praetor bonuses and they can’t be stolen with rituals in the way that regular legion attachments can. Skippy’s stratagem give his legion +8 Ranged, which is a bit disgusting. There’s nothing that can be done to stop him from winning that vendetta now.

And I’ve just realised that Zael’s high Prophecy now means Dark Augury has a decent chance of bouncing. I’m going to try it anyway, but I’m not hopeful. He’s got a scheme to raise his Deceit to 6, and it shows as 4/6, so I guess I know what he’ll be doing for the next couple of turns at least.

This feels like it’s spiralling out of control a bit. I made my big move a couple of turns earlier than I was comfortable with, but it still might have been too late – everyone else is catching up.

Ah, sod it. There was an alternate path to victory that involved me levelling Charisma to max and using the ritual there that gives 10 prestige per turn. But that would have been incredibly boring. I’d rather do this and lose than continue to pretend I’m a tired old man who doesn’t understand the game.

(I mean, I am, but still.)

Demand to Peter, and try to steal his Legion anyway – it’s the best one currently on the field that isn’t the Sons. Let’s see how this plays out.

Turn 32

Okay, fears somewhat unfounded. Peter did not move his guys with the first order and I managed to steal them before he took the PoP. This means that if he rejects my Demand I can go with a legion-based vendetta.

Meanwhile Skippy rejected my Demand, which one of us is going to end up regretting quite badly. You see, this has let me peek at the Praetor Duels interface and I think that if I nick his one Praetor he can’t actually put anyone up in time to fight.

(Assuming he doesn’t have anyone in the vault. I don’t think he has anyone in the vault. There was that creepy baby-looking thing that got bought by somebody recently, and I really wish I could remember if it was Skippy. Maybe I should start keeping notes.)

Even if I don’t steal his one Praetor I don’t think that Praetor can win against Gusion, the duelling powerhouse Praetor I stole from Peter a few turns back. So maybe I don’t even do anything, and just roll the dice with the duel straight up.

The real choice is how much prestige to wager on the duel. I can blow up to 14 on this, which seems risky for a mechanic that I don’t really understand still. I’ll go with 10, I can probably afford to lose that much.

The Zael situation is getting worrying though. The Dark Augury on him went through and his stat situation is not as bad as I thought, he’s got Deceit and Prophecy at 4, which I already suspected, but everything else is pretty low. The problem is his Schemes – he keeps rolling duplicates. Previously he had two of the “Have 3 Rituals active at once” scheme, which paid out 40 prestige. Now he has two of the “Raise Deceit to 6” scheme, which is going to pay out another 40 prestige, and then he’ll also have Deceit at 6.

Deceit rituals are turning out to be utterly busted. Last turn I got paranoid about Peter levelling up his Deceit to give himself resistance – but based on what I can see this turn, that probably didn’t matter. Zael has a Deceit resistance of 6 that I can see – 4 from his Deceit, and 2 from his infernal rank. This against my Deceit of 6, so you’d think it’d be even odds.

Wrong.

The scrying bowl — which I’m assuming is reasonably accurate given that I just did a Dark Augury on him — is telling me that my chance to steal one of his Praetors is “very likely”. How on earth do you defend against this? There’s a ritual from the Prophecy line that gives +4 Deceit resistance that I might have to turn on pretty soon and run indefinitely, but I suspect that even that wouldn’t tip the odds enough for me to feel safe.

(Postgame note: I figured out how rituals work towards the end of the game and it’s not anywhere near this bad. The scrying bowl was lying to me and I was just very, very lucky with my rolls.)

I’m going to try not to abuse Deceit too much myself as I think it would ruin the game, but I also think Zael is fair game for it for a bit. Especially because he just targeted me with a Vile Calumny against Tom. I’m going to resolve via Praetor Duel, but I’m going to keep the prestige wager small as Tom’s spent the entire game being bullied and I don’t want him to feel like I’m adding to that. Hopefully he’ll understand.

So, Bribe Praetor on Zael’s Praetor that adds a 3 Darkness token to tribute offerings (required for Deceit rituals and Deceit upgrades, should hopefully slow him down a bit if that’s not guaranteed), and steal some of his tribute too. Move my generously-donated legions onto Peter’s border in preparation for a Vendetta. And also Collect Tribute twice.

It’s increasingly looking like the main threats are actually Skippy and Zael, not Skippy and Peter, so I have commiserated with Peter a bit despite having an active Demand against him and stealing one of his legions, and told him what I think Zael is up to. He’ll probably still come after me but he’ll have to get creative doing it.

Turn 33

Aha, turns out it is possible to resist Deceit rituals, as Zael tried to Loot the Vaults against me (while posing as Skippy, or at least I assume so – if it was actually Skippy then that was very stupid) but it bounced. So Deceit 4 vs Deceit resist 8 is what’s needed, which means the Deceit resist +4 ritual might be enough.

Blech, but it costs 1 Darkness per turn. One of the very few restrictions on Deceit is that it’s actually pretty difficult to scrape together the Darkness required to fire the rituals off every turn. I’m taking every Darkness tribute token I can find and barely breaking even.

My own Loot the Vaults against Zael went through but brought back some garbage. Is this the tribute quality other players have to live with? No wonder they’re all behind.

Anyway, Tom is picking a fight with Zael – reasonable, reasonable. Peter says that “he’s not acting rationally” and is happy to play for second. Probably accurate, he doesn’t have enough actions to really compete at this stage.

This does afford me an opportunity though. They probably all think I rushed Deceit as my primary goal, but it’s so much worse than that – because I was levelling up all of my powers for the extra actions I also levelled Destruction. Typically you can’t use Destruction rituals against somebody if they’re not in Vendetta with you – unless you have Ritual Masking from Deceit, which lets you either hide your identity or (at higher Deceit levels) pretend to be somebody else. So I can toss some fireballs Zael’s way and pose as Tom while doing it, and hopefully nobody will be any the wiser.

And the really nice thing about this is that Destruction rituals cost Hellfire, not Darkness. I have a lot of Hellfire saved up, so can do this for a while.

Also Zael sent me a message saying that he was going to “come at me hard” if I stole from him again. Nuking his legions and rotting his tribute tokens isn’t stealing from him, so I assume he’ll be fine with it.

The Leviathan has been disappointing so far. Hasn’t killed a single legion, and Skippy has just retaken the PoP it smashed after it wandered over to Zael. I’m hoping it moves through one of Zael’s legions on the way to the Garden of Infernal Delights at least. Or at least forces Zael to waste actions moving them out of the way.

I’m in two minds about Peter. I don’t doubt that Zael and myself have severely screwed him over with Deceit. (Although now that I think about it he does still have both his public artifacts and praetors, so what exactly did Zael steal? He didn’t do a Dark Augury so wouldn’t have been able to see Peter’s vault. Maybe it was tribute, Peter’s not bought anything from the Bazaar in a while.) Peter is naturally a bit depressed about this. However he also happens to have 86 prestige – he is still a contender, and if he’s left alone he’ll come back into it. He’s also said he was trying to pull together an anti-me alliance (which means that Zael might actually have been telling the truth earlier), and I doubt he’s going to give up on that. Like, what else is he going to do, go after Skippy? Or Zael? I really doubt there’s anything I can do at this point to change his mind on trying to kill me.

So the Vendetta goes ahead, I think. I’d try to kill his legion but he can just run away and his position in the turn order makes that awkward. I do not want his PoP. So it’s taking cantons, which will take 3 orders and 2 turns, or 4 orders and 1 turn. Probably the second option.

The Deceit resistance ritual is going up, and I’m firing off two Destruction rituals against Zael (while pretending to be Tom, let’s see if he falls for it). The problem with taking a more active role is that I want some rituals to resolve first in the turn order so that the targets can’t respond, which means Collect Tribute gets knocked down the turn order, which means I get worse tribute. But I need to stockpile for next turn, when 1) I’ll need to move my legions to take Peter’s cantons and 2) I’ll probably also need to throw a bribe into the arena.

Turn 34

Before I’ve even loaded the game turn there’s some spicy stuff going on: Zael and Tom having a bit of a spat in the channel. Zael is accusing Tom of “ensuring the person who is in 1st” (i.e me) “wins the game”, so I assume he’s a bit upset about the war.

We’re not playing Munchkin, though, and from my perspective Tom is doing exactly the right thing, and not just because it’s helpful to me, either – Tom can’t win a fight against me and he can’t win a fight against Skippy, he could win a fight against Peter but Peter’s sole PoP has an artifact stuck to it that prevents capture. So the best way for him to get back into the game is to beat up the remaining “weakest” target: Zael.

It could all be a ruse, of course: manufactured anger does have its place in this game. Zael’s threatening privately to vassalise to Skippy if I don’t knock it off with the rituals. Usually I’d laugh that out of the room as there are prestige restrictions around vassalisation (the vassal can’t have more than half of the Prestige of the current leader) and there’s not that much space between myself, Skippy, Peter and Zael. But it is a useful look at a possibility I hadn’t considered yet: I don’t just need to have the most Prestige, assuming that one of Peter or Zael vassal to Skippy I need double Skippy’s Prestige.

Also, something extremely bad has apparently happened to Skippy.  Let’s boot the game and find out…

…what the fuck

Leviathan, I take back everything bad I said about you. Instead of heading up to the Garden of Infernal Delights, it’s decided to go for Peter’s PoP which is protected by the Black Monolith (which is supposed to make it un-capturable), which feels illegal but maybe the Leviathan doesn’t give a shit about the rules. More importantly, though, it’s taken a direct route there through three of Skippy’s legions. Who are all dead now. Skippy only has one left.

That’s a huge swing. It’s so huge, in fact, that it might actually be bad for me. Skippy being obviously big and scary was pretty helpful as it split people’s attention. Now that he has nothing left, everyone is going to be focused on me fully.

Not that they weren’t doing that anyway. I got the Deceit resist ritual, Expose Treason, up just in time as two more Loot the Vault rituals are attempted against me, and bounce. One has come from Zael, and the other from Skippy (I don’t think Zael has the ability to pretend to be other people yet).

Let them come – one additional effect of Expose Treason that I get Prestige every time a Deceit ritual is successfully resisted. So that’s 16 Prestige this turn. Please, try again!

My fireball melted one of Zael’s legions, the ritual that destroys tribute tokens only got 3 of them though.

Neither Zael nor Tom sent anyone to the arena to fight the Praetor Duels, meaning they forfeit. That’s another 37 Prestige.

I now have 146 Prestige. Skippy is next highest with 96, and then Peter with 90, and Zael with 81. Tom languishes on 22.

This is a problem, as the threshold for vassalisation is now 73 Prestige. Maybe I should dump 90 Prestige on that Prince upgrade after all. I’d have it for 20-odd turns – would it pay for itself? Could I make it worth it with Humiliate?

Some coordination with Tom. I have no idea who will win in a fight between his legion and Zael’s, there’s too many permutations and Zael goes before Tom in the turn order. Annoyingly the scrying bowl now claims my Deceit rituals against Zael’s legions are “a coin flip” – they definitely weren’t two turns ago, maybe there’s some interaction there with Dark Augury.

Still, Destruction works perfectly fine. So I’m going to fireball Zael’s legion, which I am sure he will be even more upset about, but I’m also going to buy the Prince upgrade, which knocks me down to 56 Prestige. Assuming I win the Vendetta against Peter that should bring me back up to 75-odd, and then I can make a few more Demands on people. Or even Humiliate!

Click here for Part 3

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous – Part 2 appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.

This is Part 1 of a 5-part diary of a Solium Infernum multiplayer game. For full context, see the contents post here.

To start us off, let’s get a look at the competition.

The players

Unlike the original Solium Infernum you don’t get to build your own custom archfiend, which is a bit of a disappointment. Instead you pick from one of 8 specific premade archfiends. Each has a slightly different starting statline that leans into what their strength is supposed to be, and there’s some limited customisation available via picking Relics before game start, which grant permanent bonuses throughout the game. (Some of which are pretty massive if you’re willing to devote all three Relic slots to one bonus.) The real differentiating factor, though, are each archfiend’s special abilities and Stronghold bonuses.

Skippy is playing Astaroth, a classical horned demon with a big sword whose thing is military conquest. Usually you need to go through a few turns of setup to declare war on somebody as you need to set up a casus belli and make a Prestige wager while doing so, but Astaroth’s special ability is that he can just declare limited wars on people with much less setup time. His Stronghold also provides combat support bonuses to adjacent legions, making it an extremely tough nut to crack for anyone looking to outright eliminate him in a war.

Tom is playing Erzebet, another conquest-focused archfiend. Her ability is a one-way Open Borders agreement with other archfiends; usually it’s impossible to enter a hex controlled by someone else without declaring war on them, which makes it difficult to leverage military power against faraway targets.  If somebody accepts her diplomatic proposal, though, Erzebet’s legions can freely pass through their territory. So no-one is really safe from her legions. Her Stronghold has a “Healing rate +1” ability, although it’s unclear whether this is a local bonus that applies only to the stronghold or a global bonus that applies to all her legions.

Zael is playing Belial, a schemer and deceiver. His special power is that he can goad two players into fighting one another by gossiping that one has insulted the other. If the player who was supposedly insulted lets it go, they lose Prestige. The catch is that Belial has to wager some prestige of his own to do this, and if the insulted player decides to trigger a vendetta they keep that Prestige, so it’s not completely free. His stronghold gives him +1 to Deceit ritual strength, making it easier for him to steal things from other players while they’re not looking. Or even if they are looking.

Peter is playing Andromalius, who looks like Remiel from Lucifer. (The comic, not the TV show.) His thing is Praetor duels; all of his Praetor moves do +2 damage, which is actually quite a lot – certainly enough to swing the duel in his favour and give him a significant advantage. His Stronghold gives him +1 voting power in Conclave votes – these occur every 10 turns and do things like reshuffling the turn order or redistributing everyone’s tribute. Not tremendously useful, but the duelling bonus more than makes up for it.

And I am playing Mammon, the money guy. Mammon’s diplomatic power is that they can offer other players a boost: +1 tribute token drawn and picked when taking the Collect Tribute action. The catch is that any unpicked tokens, which would usually be discarded, instead go to Mammon. Mammon’s Stronghold provides an additional tribute token in the tribute package everyone gets when they become Regent (Solium Infernum’s term for the start player), and I also took Relics that increased tribute quality and gave a further additional tribute token pick – doing anything in this game requires money, so having an effective +1 to my Infernal Rank for tribute purposes for the entire game will hopefully give me a lot of flexibility.

Turns 1-25

Are something that I didn’t diarise at the time. From my point of view it was rather dull, for reasons that I’ll go into later. But there were some highlights.

(Crude hex map is necessary because there’s no way of revisiting a game once it’s finished and even if you could it’s not possible to zoom out enough to get this kind of view. Also, the terrain wraps around so that if you went off the eastern edge of this map you’d reappear at the western edge, making directionality a bit of a nonsense – so I’ve opted for a Mammon-centric projection of Hell, mostly because that’s how I was thinking about the game anyway.)

I spawned with Skippy to my north-west, Tom to my north-east, and Peter uncomfortably close  to my south-west, with just 3 hexes separating our strongholds. Zael was further to the north-west past Skippy and Tom – far enough away that it would be very difficult for us to fight each other in a vendetta. To my south, along a single hex-width strip of land between cliffs and a chasm, was a route to Pandaemonium, Hell’s capital city.

Pandaemonium’s location is important because Solium Infernum has a few ways to win; the common one that everyone is working towards for most of the game is the Prestige Victory, where the person with the most Prestige at the end of the game wins. There’s a whole bunch of ways to get Prestige but the most useful tools are diplomatic actions such as Insults and Demands, as these will either lead to a war which you can win for a huge amount of prestige, or your opponent caves to the insult/demand and forfeits Prestige of their own – either way you’re gaining Prestige while your opponents lose it.

If it looks like you’re falling behind in Prestige and don’t think you can catch up, though, there’s an alternative: take and hold Pandaemonium for 5 turns without dying. This is harder than it sounds because all it takes to eliminate somebody from the game is to capture their starting Stronghold. Usually there are very strict rules governing how archfiends can declare war on one another which make it very difficult, if not impossible, to do this during the normal course of play. If you attack Pandaemonium, though, you get excommunicated and you are no longer protected by those rules, and anyone can murder you. This means that in order to pull off a Pandaemonium victory you need to be very strong militarily, as every other player will be trying to stop you by taking your Stronghold — and not only that, but they’ll be actively cooperating in order to do it.

The game started with a scramble for Places of Power, locations on the map that have garrisons that need to be defeated in order to capture them, but which provide a steady Prestige income and other passive bonuses, some of which are actually pretty damn good.  Everyone else grabbed theirs in the first 10 turns, while I marched my starting legion in a circle around the nearest one to me to claim the territory, but didn’t take it because my starting legion was so crap that it would have taken 4-5 actions to do it. Since you only start the game with 2 actions per turn, this was nowhere near worth it for a PoP that granted a measly +1 prestige per turn with no other bonuses.

Tom targeted me with the first Demand of the game. A Demand is the lowest form of diplomatic action — you demand some money from somebody, and if they don’t give it to you you can declare Vendetta on them. A Vendetta is a war with a limited goal: taking a certain number of hexes, killing some of their legions, or capturing their Places of Power. I refused the demand because I needed the tribute for other things, and Tom duly declared war on me. It probably would have gone well for him, except…

A turn later, somebody played an event card that summoned an Angel from Heaven to break some heads. The Angel flies around killing one legion from each player, and once it’s had its fill of blood it buggers off back to Heaven. It targets players in order of military strength, and it seems it does take unit level into account, which meant it hit Tom before it hit me and killed his only legion. For most players this was only a temporary annoyance since the starting legion eventually respawns (all other legions are out of the game permanently once they are killed), but this delay meant Tom was unable to finish the war before the time limit on his Vendetta ran out.

Zael had some serious problems with Abyss Striders, wandering monsters that will randomly attack legions and Places of Power. They’re relatively weak, but his starting legion’s statline was even weaker. This meant he blew a bunch of actions retaking PoPs that the Striders had taken and fell behind.

Still, at least he wasn’t Tom, whose bad luck continued when one of his two PoPs reverted to neutral thanks to another event card. Tom then also wasted a bunch of actions retaking it over several turns. And to make matters worse, Peter targeted him with a Praetor Duel – this is the other way of resolving a refused Demand that sidesteps pure military power, where each player sends a single champion called a Praetor into the arena to duke it out, with the winner hauling away a bunch of Prestige and the loser dying. Since Peter’s specialty is Praetor Duels he won handily.

The first twenty-odd turns proceeded with Skippy firmly in the lead in terms of Prestige, and Peter a bit behind him. Skippy bought an immensely powerful legion from the Bazaar called the Sons of Typhon and spent 5 turns marching it up to an unclaimed Place of Power in Peter’s territory. He was also setting up a war with Peter while this was going on, and it looked like they might actually attack each other for a moment – but it was all a ruse. Skippy’s real plan was to walk straight past the PoP and attack Pandaemonium.

Unfortunately for Skippy Solium Infernum is a game with a ton of byzantine rules and edge cases and the tutorial for the remake is awful and doesn’t explain any of them, which meant he fell foul of the rules around hex ownership and made an illegal move. And when you make an illegal move that takes your legion somewhere it shouldn’t be, it turns out that legion doesn’t just get teleported back to its starting position that turn, oh no; it gets teleported all the way back to your stronghold. Which for Skippy was on the other side of the map. It was kind of a shame, it was a beautiful fake-out and I don’t think anybody realised what he was really doing.

And me? After those desultory opening moves I lapsed into torpor. Didn’t move my single legion, didn’t take any PoPs, didn’t equip anything from the Bazaar, I didn’t even react to the war with Tom except for a single half-hearted attempt to block his legion movement. And for their part everyone else seemed content to ignore me and focus on more immediate threats – although they must have noticed that my Prestige was mysteriously increasing every turn, seemingly of its own accord, without me obviously doing anything. I was finally forced into action when I accidentally took the Prestige lead, something which would have been impossible for the other players to ignore. Fortunately this happened at around the same time as my long-term plan came to fruition…

Some contemporaneous random thoughts, mostly between turns 25-28

I have been left alone for far too long. Tom is the only person who has made any aggressive moves towards me, and that was 20 turns ago. The fact that I’ve spent 20 turns apparently doing nothing should be seriously worrying to everyone else, but they keep going after the visible targets.

I have had the Infernal Negotiations ritual going for the past 10 turns or so, which makes it much more expensive to make Demands of me, so that might be one reason why they haven’t done it. If I were in their position I would have done it anyway, though, because they have no way of decreasing my Prestige without making Demands and it keeps ticking up every turn despite me having no legions, PoPs or Praetors, and making no Demands of anyone else – if nothing else they’d get me to reveal some of my cards, which so far I’ve been keeping completely hidden.

What I’ve actually been doing is investing all of my tribute to level up my Powers. An archfiend has five Power stats, rated from one to six. Most archfiends start the game with two points in one Power and a single point in a couple of others. Increasing a Power gives you access to additional active and passive abilities appropriate to that power – so Prophecy gives you access to information that’s usually hidden, Destruction lets you hurl fireballs at people etc. etc. However, every Power will give you an additional action slot once you level it up to rank four. Given that you start with just two of them, this is a massive relative increase in power – and the faster you get an additional action, the faster you can get tribute to upgrade the other powers so that they grant actions too. I had a third action by turn 10-12, a fourth by turn 16, and a fifth by turn 20.

Levelling Prophecy second was an opportunistic choice as I already had a point in it and I wanted to get to the extra action ASAP, but it ended up being extremely helpful. It looks pretty crap on paper as you can’t use it to blow anyone up until you get to level 6, but being able to see who is getting what from the Bazaar, what Vendetta conditions are, and the Dark Augury ritual are pretty huge. Hell, the additional ritual slots on their own are potentially game-winning – these are powerful spells that require an empty slot and some resources to cast, so the more slots I have via Prophecy the more scope I have to mess with other people’s plans.

Speaking of rituals, Elocution – a Charisma ritual that grants Prestige whenever somebody else makes a diplomatic action — is the unsung MVP of my game so far. One resource per turn upkeep, and it’s brought in something like 45-50 Prestige so far because everyone else won’t stop threatening one another. Weirdly I get Prestige when somebody makes a demand, and then again when the target refuses that demand, which makes Elocution another thing that’s much better than it looks on paper as it’s getting me 8-9 Prestige per Demand made.

Everyone else is sleeping on the Dark Augury ritual, which reveals other archfiend’s statlines and the contents of their vault — their resources and unassigned artifacts and praetors — which would otherwise be hidden. It’s much easier to plan when you know what people have.

Schemes are also pretty powerful. These are quests you can do for a lump sum of prestige, functioning a bit like the tickets from Ticket To Ride; one action spent Plotting gives you 2-4 Schemes to choose from, depending on your Prophecy level. And some of them are hilariously easy, like  “Have 3 active rituals” – oh, you mean that thing I’m doing every turn anyway? There’s a bunch of garbage ones mixed in there mind, the manuscript ones are far too difficult to complete and you only have a limited number of Scheme slots so you can’t just continually pick new Schemes until you find one you like, but it’s still a big source of Prestige and the main reason I was able to keep up with Skippy.

Skippy’s attempted move on Pandaemonium was bold and he masked it well as a move for an untaken PoP, he was very unfortunate to fall foul of rules minutiae. I don’t think it would have worked though. If his move had gone through it would finally have been obvious what he was trying to do and I would have still had one turn to mess the Sons of Typhon up with Deceit rituals, which is all I need.

My thesis is that Skippy is otherwise playing the game all wrong. Military power is public. This means that if you’ve got a strong military you can make threats and bully and people need to give in – but he hasn’t been doing that much. Certainly not the “Demand every single turn” strat required to leverage it properly. And the flipside of military power being public is that people can plan around it. I’ve had a solution in place for his big boys since about two turns after he bought them. And now that we’re in the midgame, military power on its own is the worst way to get things done. He might have some more surprises up his sleeve, of course, and it’s also possible that I have hugely miscalculated and/or get horrible RNG rolls, but based on current intelligence any Vendetta between us is going to be 1) extremely short and 2) extremely funny.

Why has Peter only tried one Praetor Duel? That’s his thing! Too nervous about the single-round nature of it maybe? The Praetor Duel rework does seem to suck a lot – it used to be resolved over multiple rounds, but now it’s just one round of what amounts to rock-paper-scissors. I stole his good Praetor just in case. Still, he can always buy a new one; of all my competition he is the one that worries me the most, because none of my Rituals give me a 100% foolproof way to subvert a Praetor Duel.

Fairly sure Zael has been trying to run a game on me by trying to convince me in PMs that Skippy and Peter were out to get me, but the cost to me is that I fired off my Diplomatic Immunity event card a bit earlier than I otherwise would have to try and head off a potential attack before I was ready for it. I otherwise haven’t expended any additional resources and actions in response to his insidious rumour-spreading, because it doesn’t actually matter if Peter and Skippy are plotting against me or not. They are my biggest obvious threats, and I’m going to need to take them out one way or the other.

I’m trying a novel strategy of never lying in PMs to other players. Because what would be the point? Tom’s the only one with direct experience of what I’m like in games like this but I feel like my reputation precedes me at this point; I’ve lied so much in TWG, Diplomacy, Civilization 4, Alpha Centauri – and yes, Solium Infernum – that people just automatically assume I am lying whenever I say anything, and that goes double for a game where I’m supposed to be a literal backstabbing devil. So I’ll try not doing that for a bit, and see if I can wrongfoot somebody by actually telling the truth for a change. Albeit a truth worded as creatively as possible.

Click here for Part 2

The post Apocalypse Begrudge Tempestuous – Part 1 appeared first on The Scientific Gamer.