PART ONE

Hey, Alex the Producer here. Luke from the Podgecast and I have been wanting to blog about our ongoing Solium Infernum game for a while now and figured we’d give it a go. Don’t expect a post very often; if we get one done every week or so, I’ll be more than happy.

Okay, what is Solium Infernum? It’s a PBEM turn-based game made by Vic Davis of Cryptic Comet in which the players take on the roles of devils in Hell. The infernal throne is vacant due to mysterious circumstances, and it’s up to the remaining devils to war over the inferno to determine the next big man.

Detailing the tactics involved in this game takes a while to explain, but let’s start with the map. Click it to embiggen.

A careful eye will notice some weird things. Some of the landmarks and units near the border of the map seem to be replicated elsewhere. That’s intentional; in Solium Infernum, Hell wraps in on itself. There is no escape. There is no “corner of the map” where you just have to worry about foes coming from one direction. You are, by all accounts, surrounded by enemies.

This particular map was made randomly by the game, and is from the “Dante’s Peak” theme. It’s dominated by a large, uncrossable volcano that takes up four hexes. There are other mountain ranges that can be traversed by units with mountain walk. There are also big, ugly fissures that can only be jumped by flying units.

There are six players:

Alex – Baron Bel
Luke – The Haberdasher, Marquis
Andrew – Baron Lillith
Ron – Prince Meche
Eric – Baron Baphomet
Geoff – Duke Death

So in addition to our strongholds (which are our seats of power, and if we lose them, we’re out of the game) and our units, there are other landmarks littered around the inferno. They are the Places of Power, and the player who secures them will have an easier time gaining the infernal throne.

It’s a good time to talk about how we win the game. There are a few ways:

1) Have the most prestige by the end of the game. There is a time limit to the game, and though no one knows exactly how long it will be, there is a rudimentary clock in the game. If the clock runs out, the player with the most prestige wins first place, the player with the second most prestige wins second, and the rest are considered the dregs of the inferno.

You earn prestige through a variety of ways, mostly through the ownership of Places of Power. Each player also has a stated goal that earns him prestige if he can accomplish it by the end of the game. Geoff has chosen Gluttony, which means he has to eat 35 souls (part of the currency of hell). Luke chose Greed, which means he has to steal things from other players. Andrew chose Lust, which means he has to end the game in control of the Temple of Lust. Eric, Ron and I chose Wrath. That gives us bonus prestige for knocking at least one player out of the game through means of force.

2) Capture and hold Pandemonium for five turns. Pandemonium is the landmark halfway between the Stronghold of Bel and Dante’s Peak (which I have forgotten to label on the map, but I’ll fix that for the next post). It is extraordinarily strong, but not impossible to conquer. Once a player attacks Pandemonium, they are excommunicated; they’re shut out of the market and it’s open season on them for everyone else in the game.

3) Power Behind The Throne or Kingmaker: These are rare ways to win the game. When the game starts, players are able to spend creation points on certain perks. Maybe you want a bonus for melee, or you want swankier gifts from your servants. With the Power Behind the Throne perk, you win the game if your Blood Lord (a player with whom you have created a special diplomatic bond) wins the game via method #1. With the Kingmaker perk, you win the game if you predict at the very beginning of the game who will win the game via method #1.

What you see on the map is the status of the game at turn #5. We all started with our “home units” (Chosen of Bel, Slaves of Death, etc) near our strongholds. As we step our forces into empty hexes, or cantons, we take ownership of them. Once you have ownership of a hex, other players can’t merely enter your territory. Doing so requires diplomacy, but since we haven’t had that happen yet, I see no reason to explain that in this post. Don’t want to blow your minds too early.

So Luke and I have struck first in the process of capturing places of power. My home unit, the Chosen of Bel, made a beeline to the north to capture the Temple of Lust. Pretty standard stuff. What wasn’t standard is what Luke pulled off. In the game, there is a marketplace called the bazaar. That’s where we can bid for troops, artifacts (legion boosters), relics (avatar boosters), manuscripts (collectibles that can be very powerful if you’re successful in gaining all the pieces of them), and praetors (lieutenants that boost your units and duel for your honor). Luke noticed there was an extremely powerful flying unit called The Beast. The price for the Beast is in line with other units, but every turn you keep it, you have to pay it tribute.

Tribute is souls, ichor, hellfire or darkness that you obtain by spending an order requesting your followers to get them for you. It’s the currency of the inferno.

So it’s early in the game, and there’s no way Luke had the upkeep cost. However, he didn’t need to keep it around; he just needed it for a turn. It spawned next to his stronghold, and in his next turn, he flew the unit over the chasm to his west and into the Palace of Gluttony. The unit wins the battle for the palace, it becomes his, he fails to pay the upkeep, the Beast returns to the Bazaar, and now he’s earning two prestige points per round until someone takes it away from him.

Other items of note:

Meche had two units, but he apparently messed up the math on the battle with the Mines of Gehenna and his attacking unit was killed. Now he’s licking his wounds while the Mines regenerate HP.

Death has been completely and totally still for the whole game. If it wasn’t for the fact I regularly get turns from him, I’d think he wasn’t playing.

Luke has essentially called dibs on the Iron Staircase by surrounding it with his territory.

That’s all I can think of saying for the moment. Stay tuned for more game updates!

PART 2

Well, it’s taken a little longer than usual to decide when and where to post part one of Solium Saturdays, so that’s why there’s a jump of approximately ten turns between the first part and this part. Let’s start with the map. As usual, click to expand.

There’s a lot less in terms of available space, and battle lines are starting to be drawn. I’ll attempt to recap the last ten turns.

From my perspective, the star of the game between blog one and blog two has been Death. If you remember from my postscript from blog one, I mentioned that Death was staying absolutely still to the point where I wondered what the heck he was doing.

The answer to my question was apparently “gathering the resources I need to keep buy and keep the Beast going for a while.”

On turn 7, Death bought the Beast. On turn 8, he used it to take the City of Dis, a Place of Power that not only gives him a nice income of three prestige per turn, but also gives him a +2 to his tribute roll, which determines the quality of the resources he’s offered when he requests them from his loyal minions. In the following turns, Death marched the Beast steadily to the north, following the fissure that separates his realm from mine, and he eventually took the Altar of Abomination. He now has possession of it, earning him +2 prestige per turn and a +1 to his Wrath attribute. If I could take a lesson from this, it’d be to beware of sleeping dogs… they wake up. Eventually, Death either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the upkeep for the Beast, and it happily returned to the Bazaar for the next fellow with a lot of cash.

On turn 6, The Disciples of the Haberdasher attempted to take the Iron Staircase and failed. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I’m inclined to believe he didn’t do as complete a job performing the combat math as he’d like. The Haberdasher recruited the Hell Blades, fortified them with a praetor and eventually took the Staircase.

Baphomet has been cut off from every Place of Power he’s attempted to obtain. The City of Dis is a hard nut to crack. Meche swept around a fissure to take the Wood of Suicides through the combined might of his Blood and the Lords of the Pit. Lillith took the Gates of Hell before Baphomet’s Abyssal Striders had a chance to take them, and I (Bel) still hold the Temple of Lust.

So today’s lesson on Solium Infernum is going to be about one of the most important aspects of the game: Diplomacy.

There are rules in the Inferno. Once you take territory or a place of power, it can’t be taken from you without some political maneuvering. That’s where insults, demands and vendettas come into play.

Demands are a player saying to another player, “Give me X amount of resources or I’ll mess you up.”

Insults are a player saying to another player, “I bet you couldn’t mess me up if you tried right now.”

Unmet demands and insults can trigger vendettas, which is when territory can trade hands and blood can be spilled.

So let’s have an example. In the turn immediately preceding the one pictured in the map, The Haberdasher’s Disciples were still close to his stronghold. Death had his Grinning Legion and Slaves on The Haberdasher’s eastern border. If Death got into a fight with The Haberdasher and attacked the Hell Blades in a way that his two forces could combine their strength (something I’ll probably explain in more detail in a future blog), the Hell Blades were looking like they’d be defeated. So Death, sensing the advantage he had, made a demand of The Haberdasher. He spent an order (basically an action) to lodge a demand of four resource cards. The Haberdasher had to make a choice: either pay up, or give Death the green light to call for a vendetta on the following turn. Sensing the odds were against him, the Haberdasher paid up.

Here’s another example. As the Beast was clawing its way up to the Altar of Abomination, I had the feeling that he couldn’t maintain the Beast for very much longer. The Beast requires three souls of upkeep per turn, and though I couldn’t see exactly how many souls Death had (or could I?) I could guess that he was running out of gas. I thought it was an opportune time to call for an insult. By doing so, I was basically putting up some of my prestige points in a bet that Death couldn’t succeed in a vendetta against me. The Beast was the only unit in a position to do anything against me, and I knew that Death would be hard pressed to make good on one.

Basically, when you get in a vendetta, you have another bet to make. You can bet that you can destroy a certain number of legions, take a certain number of enemy hexes, conquer at least one enemy Place of Power or engage in a Praetor duel.

Death had no praetor at the time, while I had at least one, so a duel wasn’t an option. He couldn’t take my territory since he had to connect any hex of mine with a hex of his (the fissure prevented that), and taking my Wall of Envy was going to take more upkeep than I thought he had. If he chose to attempt to kill my Chosen, he’d have to successfully guess where I was going to be at the end of a certain turn, so it was likely going to be an upkeep sink as well. Death chose to accept the insult, which means he lost the same amount of prestige I bet, while I got that prestige as well as my original bet back.

That leads the discussion into Rank. Looking at the map, you may notice that the strongholds mention the players’ ranks. Lillith, Bel and Baphomet are Barons. The Haberdasher is a Marquis, Death is a Duke and at the very top is Meche, who is a Prince. When avatars (devils) are created, we spend a certain amount of creation points on our rank. Lillith, Bel and Baphomet chose to put their creation points in other places than rank, so they only bought enough rank to ensure they weren’t lowly Lords. Meche sacrificed in other areas to make sure he was at the top of the heap when it came to rank.

Where rank matters is in diplomatic actions. When a player makes a diplomatic move against another player, the effectiveness of their action is dependent on their rank. If the acting player outranks the targeted player, they can ask for the moon. If the acting player is outranked, their demand or insult will be underpowered and trifling. If their ranks are the same, the diplomatic actions are fairly balanced.

Stay tuned for a game update and a look at how combat works on the next Solium Saturday!

This entry was posted by The Producer, on Saturday, May 29th, 2010 at 3:00 pm and is filed under The Way of the Game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.