Table of contents
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Games
Age of Fable
- http://www.ageoffable.net/
- I like the pictures that accompany the text.
- At first I found it boring, but I gradually got more and more involved in the universe that it was discussing; it was kind of like being hypnotized into forgetting about my life and instead being sucked into a dream.
- It seems like in order to get sucked into the dream you need to have it be different enough that you won't be reminded of things that you're encountering in your real life, but similar enough that people can understand the images you're trying to convey.
AI War
General thoughts
- First impression from reading the developer's prose in the tutorials is that this guy sounds competent.
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Full Campaign
Sengoku Jidai
- Shimazu
- Won (Expert) – Don't fight anyone! I just teched up my 2-3 provinces that are the furthest from enemy territory (including the one that can produce better no-dachi), Imagawa got eliminated and his territories and armies went to me because we were allies, and I just kept teching up. IIRC Imagawa had invaded Oda's territory and then Imagawa was killed in battle, and the result of this was that there were Ronin / Rebels that had Warrior Monks units, and they ended up causing a lot of trouble for the Mori, which kept the Mori from attacking me. I captured the first province on the island to your right when you start, and the remaining province on the bottom of the island kept the Mori busy as well, as it kept producing No-Dachi (and even got 2 Kensai), and the Mori would keep throwing units at it. After I teched up I started swapping out units: I would disband Ashigaru, Yari Samurai, and Archers with lower stats and replace them with Warrior Monks or Archers with higher stats. I did this to keep my expenses low, so that I could tech faster. Once I was totally teched up winning the game was pretty easy. One thing I made sure to do was to use a bunch of Shinobi to keep provinces loyal as my army advanced. Another thing I did was to use Ninjas to assassinate enemy generals as I attacked. I did end up creating a Geisha that destroyed two rival factions (Oda and Hojo IIRC), and it seemed so overpowered that I think I'm going to refrain from using Geisha in my future games. IIRC I went the entire game without fighting a single battle (or if I did fight battles, I don't remember them). I basically won via the campaign map, auto-resolving all battles since they were strategically uninteresting (i.e. I had already won with my macro, and the particular K:D ratio I got in the battle wasn't that important).
- Uesugi
- Lost (Expert) – I abandoned the two southernmost provinces (the ones totally surrounded by other factions) because I figured they'd cost me more to defend than they'd bring in revenue (they were highlands). I immediately started building all of the mines and farm upgrades. I created alliances with the Hojo, Tamagawa, Shimazu, etc. The Hojo then backstabbed me and attacked one of my provinces (the north-eastern one), and basically all of my allies abandoned me and sided with the Hojo. I was able to re-attack the next turn and recapture the province, and at that point I stopped building and started creating Yari Samurai to discourage people from attacking me. Once I'd created a bunch of units I kept building the farm improvements and then started teching up. I noticed the island I controlled in the west could build an armory so I figured I'd probably have that as one of my main places for building units, but I ended up teching up all three of the provinces I controlled out of necessity, even though two of them bordered other factions and were liable to get invaded and have my buildings destroyed. At one point I noticed that the Hojo had already teched to Warrior Monks and had like 4-5 units of them, so I immediately stopped building everything else I was building and instead got Buddhist monasteries and started replacing my Yari Samurai with Warrior Monks (disbanding the Yari Samurai units as the Warrior Monks units were created). Once I'd done that I just kept teching up, making sure to keep as many or more Warrior Monks units on my border as I saw the Hojo had. Then I got my lucky break: the Hojo had already destroyed the Takeda in their area, and then allied with the Oda against the Tamagawa. IIRC they at some point asked me if I wanted an alliance and I accepted (and I had actually been seeking out their Daimyo to offer an alliance myself). They then moved basically all of their Warrior Monks to the south to attack the Tamagawa provinces, and they captured a lot of territory. I knew that if I didn't attack now, they'd quickly get extremely powerful. So I attacked the two originally-Hojo provinces to my south that were big moneymakers (a lot of farm / mine revenue), destroyed all their tech buildings, and when I didn't see much resistance coming after me, I kept pushing south-east into the heart of Hojo territory, destroying all of the Hojo's tech buildings and even reaching their Buddhist temple and destroying it. After that it was pretty easy to clear out the rest of the Hojo territory (it was just a matter of time and producing the units to replace my losses). Once I'd taken over all of the territory the Hojo had captured I finished off the Tamagawa, then pushed into Oda territory and eventually finished them off. At one point the Shimazu reappeared (their Daimyo had been killed and their provinces had become rebel territory), and they got 14 provinces when they came back, and so they became the main threat, and forced me to move quickly to finish off the Oda. Once the Oda were finished off the Shimazu had a lot of somewhat-upgraded No-Dachi and they were getting ridiculous victories against me even with regular units, so I started commanding personally rather than autoresolving battles. They were slowly gaining ground (but at a heavy price), and in one battle they managed to get my Daimyo to route and hole up in a castle, and immediately basically all of my provinces rebelled, so I think it was because my Daimyo got holed up in a castle. At that point the game was clearly lost, because the Shimazu had too much of a lead by that point, and I lost all of the territories I used to produce units so I had no way to fend them off.
- Imagawa
- Lost (Expert) – Your provinces in central Japan don't actually produce that much income, but they're right in the middle of a bunch of warring factions, so I literally abandoned them and had all my troops move to my provinces in the south (next to the Shimazu), so that the Shimazu couldn't take those provinces from me (those provinces generate MUCH more farm income). I then maxed out the farming, then added ports, then teched straight to Warrior Monks, trained some monks to replace my yari samurai, then maxed out everything. I tried to keep just enough troops to discourage the Shimazu from attacking me, but not so much that I wouldn't have any money left to keep teching. I was literally just hitting "End turn" over and over, waiting for the buildings to finish. Just as I'd finished teching up, Mori died, and his provinces joined my faction. I decided to use them to help me attack the Shimazu. Once I captured the entire southernmost island it was a pretty straightforward process to keep taking over more territory. I ended up losing when I was basically in a winning position because the Hojo sent a geisha after my daimyo and heir, even though they were getting destroyed by the Uesugi and it would've made a lot more sense for them to send the geisha after the Uesugi daimyo. I had a geisha myself but the enemy geisha had much higher honor from having killed generals and so my geisha couldn't get a successful attack. I also think I noticed that the AI factions seemed to be set up so that a rival faction would emerge (in terms of number of provinces controlled) at the same rate that you expanded. So for example I basically "camped" for many years while I teched up, and I didn't see really any change to the strategic map in that entire time, but as soon as I started expanding I noticed other factions getting larger as well. Another thing I learned: naginata cavalry seem to be great for leading an attack across a bridge against enemy arquebusiers. They charged across and kept the enemy busy long enough that my warrior monks could get across without getting fired on.
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