Chill Stream Friday: Checking Out Empire of the Ants For The First Time! 📢🐜☕
Stream #1 of our Double Stream Friday is officially live! Taking a well-deserved break from the editing lab to hop live exclusively on Twitch for a relaxed afternoon session.
Tonight we will be sweating through the high-difficulty backyard, but right now we are winding down and playing Empire of the Ants for the very first time! It's a stunning strategy game where you control an entire colony, and I've been dying to check it out. 🌲👀🎮
I'll be hanging out live for a couple of hours before jumping right back into the editing and scheduling queue to stack up more videos for the week. Once the work is done, the countdown begins for tonight's solo Grounded WHOA Mode grind! Come hang out and get cozy in the afternoon chat! 👋✨
The galaxy has fractured into rival factions and rogue Moffs. In this Pax Historia Star Wars scenario, can a Remnant Commander hold the Outer Rim against the rising New Republic and traitorous allies?
Welcome to the world of strategy and adventure with Empire of the Ants! In this engaging game, players undertake missions that are not just
🌟🐜 Dive into the world of Empire of the Ants with our ultimate guide on the "Restoring the First Outpost" mission! Discover essential strategies, tips for resource management, and how to defend your colony. Get ready to build your ant empire! 🏰❤️
Using "The Art of War" to Perfect Your Strategy Game
Using “The Art of War” to Perfect Your Strategy Game
Do you or a loved one suffer from a failure to play strategy games like a boss? Do you want tips to optimize your performance that have been field tested and approved for over 2000 years? If the answer is yes, come check out this article that uses tips from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to perfect your strategy game! (more…)
Mechanics Rambles is a series of short(er) articles where Taihus picks one thing out of a game that he wants to talk about and then... wait a sec...
What the heck is Solium Infernum and why does it seem to be taking over this supposedly bi-weekly column?
Solium Infernum, by Cryptic Comet. Available for PC
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice / to reign is worth ambition though in Hell: / Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
-Satan, Paradise Lost, by John Milton
I'll preface this article by saying that the thematic material of the game we are about to discuss may disturb some people. Solium Infernum is a game which depicts the internal politics and influential figures of the Judeo-Christian Hell. And we aren't talking about some kind of Dungeon Keeper-esque cartoon underworld (great game, by the way, this isn't meant to be a bash against that Dungeon Keeper) or even the sort of travesty one can make against source material as depicted in the God of War clone Dante's Inferno (this, on the other hand, is a bash against Dante's Inferno). Granted, this game is a very abstract strategy game where most of the theme comes across in flavor text and artwork, this depiction of hell is still a pretty damn crappy place to exist, and whatever forces of Heaven which make an appearance in the game are almost literally forces of nature which the players are entirely impotent against. That all said, I understand if you do not wish to read any further, though if you don't you'll be missing out one of the best strategy games ever made (yes I'm going there).
Solium Infernum is a game about stabbing people in the back. It is a game about manipulating the rules. It is a game where doing the straightforward is convoluted, but doing something seemingly convoluted and arcane is merely a matter of course. It is a game about... look, I know I'm waxing lyrical and will end up hyping this game beyond all reason if given a chance, so I'll just say it: I really like Solium Infernum. Solium Infernum is a turn-based strategy where the players take on the role of various archfiends ruling over their own little corners of Hell. Yes, that Hell. The lakes of fire and brimstone one. The idea is that Satan, Lucifer, the big guy who rebelled against Heaven and was cast down, he's disappeared. This has left a power vacuum in the Hellish hierarchy, and the players all take the role of various archfiends and demons who have a high enough standing to be considered as successors to the infernal throne. This makes for some fantastic thematic material. Though there is very little in terms of animation, effects, or models, there is some great artwork and a surprisingly large number of lore snippets attached to units, artifacts, locations, and so on. Despite the lack of special effects, you do get a very vivid picture of this game's world through the art and the writing. This game paints a vision of the underworld as envisioned by Milton and Dante, perhaps with a few liberties taken and references inserted but never gratuitous in sex or violence as some are wont to do with supposedly "dark and gritty" settings. Often disturbing and tinged with insanity, yes, but Solium Infernum's setting does, I think, do its source material justice. Solium Infernum is also a strategy game which does a lot of things differently than most others, and I've already mentioned that I really like it. Breaking down what this game is and how all the bits work is going to take some doing, but I've wanted to do it for a while, so how this is going to work is that I'm going to spread my rambling about SI over a series of articles over the coming week or three. This series will act as a sort of tutorial for SI, because it doesn't in fact have a real tutorial, while at the same time I will be doing my best to do the whole Mechanics Ramble "I'm a complete amateur trying to analyze game design" thing. Without further ado, let us get down to the nitty-gritty.
If you play a lot of turn-based strategy games, especially ones where the map is divided into hexes, you might think you know how this one works. Build up your forces, march out and capture territory, make alliances of convenience right up to the point where breaking the alliance will provide you with the greatest benefits. While Solium Infernum does involve a certain amount of territorial control, each player makes use of armed forces they march around the map, and it is in the best interests of every player to stab the others in the back, the most powerful player in the game may not own any important territory, directly attacking other players is very nearly impossible to do without first loudly announcing your intentions and essentially getting the other person's permission to attack, and powerful armies may not be nearly as important as the ability to buy a powerful army in the first place.
Solium Infernum is, then, a game about politics, bureaucracy and the ancient art of creating a casus belli, otherwise known as an excuse to invade Poland. In most strategy games, your diplomatic relationship with other players is pretty straightforward. You're either able to attack other players or you aren't. In some, such as the eternal paranoia and stress generator Neptune's Pride, there is no proper 'alliance' or 'non-aggression pact' state, meaning that the players are all watching one-another constantly in case of suspiciously large fleet deployments. When most people discuss Solium Infernum, what they mention after the fact that it's a game where you're trying to rule over frikin' Hell is that the all the players are in a state of politically-enforced cold war. You see, this version of Hell is presided over by the Infernal Conclave, a sort of demonic senate or parliament. They oversee all political activity in Hell in Satan's absence, and will eventually select his successor. In the meantime, what this means for the players is that there are no options to simply "declare war" or "propose an alliance". The Infernal Conclave does not tolerate direct conflict between the various archfiends without reason, so it is impossible for one player's armies to enter the territory of another. Instead, players trade a series of formal insults, demands, and gifts. But if another player refuses to deliver demanded resources, if they insult you before the Conclave or reject a gift you've sent them, that permits you to declare a Vendetta. Vendettas open the way for your Legions to march into their territory and vice versa. Succeed in the goals you've declared for your Vendetta and you'll gain prestige in the eyes of the Conclave.
This is important because Solium Infernum is a game about prestige. Games aren't usually won through the elimination of other players, though you can in fact do that if you're badass enough, but rather through the accumulation of prestige points. End the game with enough points and you are crowned the next ruler of Hell. Prestige is generated over time by various Places of Power dotted around the map, with names like The Mouth of Abbadon, The City of Dis, or The Wood of Suicides. Players who control these Places of Power receive a steady drip-feed of prestige, representing their growing stature in the eyes of the Conclave. If you control more high-earning Places of Power than anyone else, you've already got a distinct advantage with a regular prestige point income. It also means that now everyone will be gunning after you. See, the thing about the prestige point system is that it really is meant to represent the Conclave's opinion of you. It's easy to avoid conflict with other players by simply giving in to their demands and taking their insults in stride. But every sign of submission, every unanswered insult, every sign of weakness is a loss of prestige while your opponents gain prestige in kind every time they successfully bully you. But you've got good armies, right? You've got a competent Praetor leading them and artifacts of power enhancing their prowess, but someone has recently acquired a Praetor skilled in single combat as well as a good number of training manuscripts , and you aren't even sure if all these items were purchased by the same person. The demon who's been sending demands for resources to you doesn't even share any borders, was it him? Surely he wouldn't risk your refusal unless he thought he could challenge you to a duel of champions. And now you must deal with all these flies buzzing about your feet insulting you every chance they get, draining your prestige, but you don't dare take them all on at the same time. You couldn't possibly cover all your borders with your forces, but every turn you give the others is more time for them to dig themselves in and nurture what power they have.
It is, after all, important to remember that Solium Infernum is a game about scarcity. This is a trend that started in Vic Davis's (Cryptic Comet's one and only developer) previous game, Armageddon Empires. In AE you never had enough resources, never had enough action points, never had exactly the right combination of cards that you needed, so you had to improvise, decide between delaying execution of your master stroke or taking a sub-optimal strategy. The harsh limits on what you could do on any given turn forced the player to make hard choices, interesting choices, and pushed home the post-apocalyptic theme. Solium Infernum continues the trend of placing heavy limits on what the player can do in any given turn. One of the many big things that SI does differently from other strategy games is that it makes armies unique. You aren't ever creating generic demonic Legions, you're purchasing unique units off of an open marketplace called the Bazaar. In fact, everything in the game from Legions to Relics to Praetors is unique and purchased from the Bazaar. It makes the ability to purchase powerful items and Legions as soon as they appear very important, and it also means that a dead Legion, any dead Legion, is a major blow since it will never appear in the game again. It may seem that hoarding resources is the way to go in that case, except that scarcity also comes in the form of order limits every turn. Most players start the game with two order slots, more order slots take time and resources to acquire, and every action in the game requires the use of an order slot. Move a Legion? Use an order slot. Make an insult? Use a slot. Buy something? Slot. Gather resources? You need to fill an order slot with the "Collect Tribute" order if you want more resources next turn. This both limits the amount of late-game fiddling around that the player does as well as forces the player to really consider what their priorities are. If you're working on hoarding resources, you're limiting the number of other things you can do in a turn. If you're trying to fight multiple opponents, which you don't want to be, you're pretty much stuck focussing on that in exclusion to literally anything else you might want to do simply because you won't have the order slots available to do anything else.
So now we can see that Solium Infernum is a complex game, though I'd argue that it isn't quite as complicated as it may seem on the surface. It might not be for everyone, but I'd argue that if you like board games, war games, maybe 4X games, and if you are at all interested in strategy game design you owe it to yourself to try out the demo, found on the developer's site. If you've already got the game but have no idea what to do and don't want to dive into the manual or wait for the rest of this series, I recommend this hilariously in-character tutorial written by an internet person. And of course, I don’t think it’s possible at this point to write an article about SI without bringing up the after-action report on Rock Paper Shotgun which is probably as effective a promotion as any for this game. Read it to find out why Kieron and Quinns probably shouldn’t be ever made archdemons. To everyone else, stay tuned, we're discussing victory and the role of the eminence gris next.
-Taihus the fiendishly clever raincoastgamer
Links, for your consideration
Solium Infernum's official site
A Solium Infernum tutorial by ananabtilps Fudge the demon
The infamous Rock Paper Shotgun after-action report of their multiplayer Solium Infernum game
