Solium Infernum - from the creator of Armageddon Empires

I am having an interesting time of it, so far. I have to jog to the nearest PoP to grab it. I made a new style of Archfiend that goes against how I typically play (well, typically in the week I've been playing this, that is) so it will be interesting to try things outside of my comfort zone. I play a new game of this every train ride home, and have been having lots of fun with it!

The first thing I realized facing off against real human opponents versus the watered down AI, is that suddenly prophecy is actually useful. Mostly the increasing information divulged by Dark Augry (the Prophecy Level 1 ritual), not so much the other rituals, which don't seem as valuable compared with the price.

Man, it's going to be torturous waiting between turns!

Turn in, sorry for the delay.

Got the turn sent out to you guys. This will indeed be interesting with the smallish number of PoPs.

Speaking of character builds, I loaded up my game and was quite surprised to not the see one I had been expecting! Seems that I mixed things up and used one by accident that I'd already used for another game. No worries though, I happen to quite like it

Also, patch 1.03 is out. According to Vic 1.02 and 1.03 are fine working together for multiplayer, so we shouldn't have any issues there. However it looks to be a pretty good idea to pick up mainly because of the new tribute card sorting feature! Behold the official Tom Chick method:
IMAGE(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1034/tomchickmethod.jpg)

Updated to 1.0.3. "The Tom Chick Method"... Isn't that in Knuth? Volume 2, maybe?

I really don't understand how the game made it through beta without a card sorting feature. It just seems so obvious. I guess other things were more important.

Well, to be fair it only takes a moment to sort by hand...

Robear wrote:

Well, to be fair it only takes a moment to sort by hand...

Not if you have 40 or 50 cards... granted, I should have been sorting all along, but...

if you've got 50 cards you can afford to hire your own card-sorting demon. I'm sure the option is in there, somewhere...

My usual tactic against the computer is to raise cunning, or whatever it is that allows you to draw and keep more cards. Get my order count up and keep stockpiling. I also have the extra tactics that make the yield greater on the tribute cards collected.

While taking my turn in our game I came across something I couldn't figure out. Is there a way to know the order that the regency is passed? Otherwise I should have been keeping track of who has been the regent already and who hasn't!

Looks like its random from reading the manual (section 3.3). Funny, before I'd always just been assuming it went around clockwise.

Gunner wrote:

Looks like its random from reading the manual (section 3.3). Funny, before I'd always just been assuming it went around clockwise.

No, it is passed around clockwise. It's who gets to start as regent that's random.

Tom Chick linked to a PDF guide on Fidgit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23753452/S...

After a brief read through seems more like a quick start guide than a proper big picture tutorial. I'm working on putting together a reference guide/cheat sheet that'll illuminate the big picture stuff, I'll be sure to post it here when I'm done! My thinking is it will be useful after one readthrough of the manual, codifying all those processes, formulas, and stat progressions that can be tiresome to constantly refer to in the manual.

7inchsplit wrote:

Tom Chick linked to a PDF guide on Fidgit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23753452/S...

After a brief read through seems more like a quick start guide than a proper big picture tutorial. I'm working on putting together a reference guide/cheat sheet that'll illuminate the big picture stuff, I'll be sure to post it here when I'm done! My thinking is it will be useful after one readthrough of the manual, codifying all those processes, formulas, and stat progressions that can be tiresome to constantly refer to in the manual.

That was a fun guide to read even with already having a handle on the game. Really well written and in theme for the game. Highly recommended.

Oh and do please share all of your secrets. No no, it won't be at all helpful for the PBEM game.

Gunner wrote:

Oh and do please share all of your secrets. No no, it won't be at all helpful for the PBEM game. ;)

No secrets! Just good ol' fashioned rules breakdowns.

Since this runs just fine in Virtual Box, and since $30 magically made its way into my hands, I picked up a copy of this. I'm going to play a bit of single-player to get the hang of things, but I'm definitely interested in a PBEM game soon.

I'd always be willing to 2 play different pbem games if you wanted Adam. Also, I can't figure out the 1.03 card sorting feature, how do you get it to work?

Petriefied wrote:

I'd always be willing to 2 play different pbem games if you wanted Adam.

I, too, would be willing to get into a second game. Given the turn/day pace, I want more action!

Petriefied wrote:

I'd always be willing to 2 play different pbem games if you wanted Adam. Also, I can't figure out the 1.03 card sorting feature, how do you get it to work?

Right click anywhere in the tribute sorting box. It took me a while, too.

I'm only commenting to add some artwork:

IMAGE(http://fidgit.com/assets_c/2009/12/Solium_victory_screen-thumb-550x378-29666.jpg)

Incredible.

haha yea its a great picture! Has anyone found a legion that is the three headed dinosaur? If not he should be added!

It's probably a Hydra.

Bill Harris is planning to do a Solium Infernum tutorial next week. Also, he linked to Dave Perkins' Tutorial on Scribd. [Edit: Dave Perkins' tutorial is a bit basic. It's really just a rundown for how to navigate the interface and only glances over some of the more complex aspects of the game. You won't learn anything from it that you didn't learn from reading the manual. You did read the manual, right?]

And in a bit of post whoring, Solium Infernum is my Horizons Broadening Project pick for this month.

It's a good choice, because it doesn't really fit with an existing genre. Kind of like Armageddon Empires. The more I play, the more I enjoy it.

So I've run into another odd occurrence I can't figure out. My initial legion won a fight against a PoP and lost 2 of its 7 HP. 5 turns later, with no unit movement the legion is still at 5/7, I thought all legions healed 1 HP per turn of non-movement, is there some effect I can't identify that could be causing this?

Petriefied wrote:

So I've run into another odd occurrence I can't figure out. My initial legion won a fight against a PoP and lost 2 of its 7 HP. 5 turns later, with no unit movement the legion is still at 5/7, I thought all legions healed 1 HP per turn of non-movement, is there some effect I can't identify that could be causing this?

You have to be next to a PoP. There may be other ways, I can't recall, but you can't be in a random Canton.

I'm working on the diplomacy section of my reference sheet and found something slightly unclear with regards to send emissaries. So, when sending a gift, you wager some prestige and choose some tribute cards. The recipient may then:

a) Accept, gaining the gift,
b) Refuse, which returns the tribute and the wagered prestige disappears, or
c) Humiliate, winning the wagered prestige and obligating vendetta the following turn.

So, two questions:

a) What happens to the prestige when a gift is accepted? I assume it returns to the sender?
c) What happens to the tribute when an emissary is humiliated? I'm guessing the recipient still keeps it?

Small and nitpicky questions, but I'm trying to get a clear picture of what happens in each case.

Is the server down? I did not receive a turn this morning as usual.

Robear wrote:

Is the server down? I did not receive a turn this morning as usual.

The turns come from Gunner, so I don't think that it has anything to do with a server, but I don't entirely know. I got my turn.