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I was a God once.

My followers were so numerous that I never bothered to count them, and the name of Svarog fell from my worshippers' lips as both a blessing and as a ward against evil.  That was before The Darkness.

Many of my brethren were slain when the Cosmic Tree was poisoned and turned to cinders.  Others were unmade in the decades after, as their followers perished and their own hold on this world waned.  As a God, I had often looked down upon my mortal followers in their elder years.  Their faculties would decline and their moments of lucidity would grow more and more scarce, such that their view of reality became little more than a flickering series of snapshots separated by huge gulfs of time.  Such has been my fate for an entire century now.

But I was a God once, and have clung to this world with all the determination that I could muster.  Once, my blinding light could sear entire fields or boil a river in seconds.  Now, I am little more than a flickering light acknowledged by those who worship me only when they can lift their heads up from the tasks required for their daily survival.  My followers now number but a small handful of desperate primitives, huddled around a central campfire and living in only a few huts.

The sun has risen today, pale and wan, but aloft in the sky and visible to my followers for the first time in a century.  I know not what it means, but I am resolved to inspire and empower my worshippers to find a way to redeem me and reclaim their world.

I was a God once.

Life within this village has been nasty and short.  I have but ten grown men and women in my village.  Four of them will stay behind to gather and to craft.  I have very little with which to craft, so I will begin with all of my villagers committed to gathering food and fuel.  I am currently limited to foraging for vegetables and for wood, but perhaps in a few days, I will have enough stored that I can set my craftsman to work building a few baskets. 

My people have a small supply of meat laid in from a recent hunting expedition, and the vegetables I gather now will make a nice addition to that.  With time, I may be able to burn some wood to mix together the vegetables and meat to make a soup or stew.  The more food types my people eat, the more they thrive, and cooked foods make for easier transport when I send an expedition into the wilderness.  But at the beginning, even such luxuries as cooked meat or the crafting of gathering baskets must wait on my efforts to bring in more food and fuel.

Such has life been on Thea for more than a century now.

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Humbled as I am, I am forced to see the world only through the eyes of my followers.  We begin in a very small village, and my people have scarcely explored beyond the edges of their own fields.  Now, for the first time ever, six of them have set out to explore the land around them. 

From this view, several things stand out.  I spy what looks like some fresh fruit to the NE, next to some ruins of some sort.  We will check those out immediately and hope not to pay a price.  I also spy what look like some wild mushrooms growing in the woods to the west, but I might be best off to send my Healer with any group to gather them--his Herbalism skill will help to make sure we get nothing of the poisonous sort! 

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(note:  There's a resource overlay which displays what resources may be gathered here, but I've excluded it for the sake of atmosphere)

In the NNW, my people have occasionally caught glimpses of some abandoned ruins.  We may investigate those at some point, but for now, we want to stay closer to home. 

Without further ado, we move to investigate the ruins.

The ruins are half-submerged in water.  Not having the knowledge or skills to explore them more delicately, I wade in through the front door, and immediately find myself confronted by an evil water nymph Utopiec and her three poisonous vipers!

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(Combat is handled in an unfamiliar way, but the card-based system works nicely once you get the hang of it.  Based on a random card draw, three of your party are immediately eligible for combat while three more are left in reserve.  The human player and the AI take turns deploying their cards, and the order in which cards are played generally determines initiative (from left to right).  Only after both sides have deployed all the card that they want to do you hit the "Resolve Combat now" button. 

Planning how a combat will play out is critical to victory, but there are a number of nuances to the combat system that keep it fresh and entertaining.

Characters played from "the combat hand" may attack that round, randomly targeting an enemy card on either side of them.  Cards played from "the reserve hand" may indirectly influence the combat (adding to the defense of cards already in combat, confusing enemy cards so that they lose their attack, or boosting the initiative of hard-hitting but slower characters are just three examples--all the options are determined by their skills).  Cards in reserve may also advance into combat, but in so doing they are unable to attack that round. 

In this case, the Evil Utopiec was in the reserve hand but advanced into the battle immediately (the question marks atop her card reveal that she won't attack this turn).  I was then able to play the next two cards from my "combat hand", so in this case, Pavel's big iron sword and Helena's spiked club will both get their attacks in (doing 18 damage each--more than enough to overcome the 24 hit points she has and destroy her).

Lutoslav deployed with a pitchfork, which does less damage (13 for him versus 18 for the other two), but has the added advantage of doing half its damage as a free "first strike" when it's deployed (thus the first Viper is already down to 2 HP out of 8 before the first round of combat even begins to resolve).  I was able to confuse the last Warp Snake with a reserve character, so Lutoslav only one of them will get an attack in in the first round.

In this case, Pavel and Helena slay the Utopiec and Lutoslav finishes off the already injured Warp Snake (who was inactive this turn anyways--he'd advanced from the back).  The second viper is not confused and has withstood my attacks, so he is able to land an attack on Lutoslav that inflicts 3 Physical damage and 5 Poison damage (less the 1 point of "Shield" that Ostrogniev was able to provide.)

The combat is a bit confusing, and I won't bother to detail exactly how all this plays out every time, but I wanted to include an introduction here.  The demo for this game is free and the combat is surprisingly satisfying, after an initial learning curve that only takes 15 or 20 minutes.

With the Utopiec and her vile pets slain, my followers seize their loot.  In this case, it's a wide variety of things.

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They get 2 baked fruit pies (the Vile Kelpie had a bent for Home Economics, apparently) and 5 sheafs of wheat (useful in baking bread eventually) for food.  They also get 5 Quartz that will likely be useful in building sturdier (if still crude) weapons, and 2 Granite that could be the beginnings of a useful structure for the village. 

My people also gain some experience and some experience and some research, although nothing that will yield tangible rewards yet. 

Editor's Note:  I'm now on Page 4, and I've come to some conclusions about this AAR that I wanted to put up front, so nobody gets to the very end and says "Whaaa?  I was cheated!  This is a crappy ending and I'm not paying for a sequel."

The game is rich with atmosphere and story.  I'm going to intentionally try going light on a lot of that, because it's MUCH more fun to explore those stories as we go.  There might be one or two spoilers from the early encounters in here, but I DON'T want to reveal too much.  So I've made the decision to wrap up this AAR after about 30 turns of game play.  The goal is not to walk characters through the whole story line, but simply to expose them to some of the mechanics and aspects of game play that make this game different.  If I succeed in anything, I hope I am able to call your attention to the hard trade-off decisions that confront the player at literally every turn.

This is one reason why I labeled the thread "An Introduction", but I didn't want anybody confused about what was in this AAR.  Thanks for reading!

(Occasionally, I'll try to take an aside to comment on a few things about the game outside my normal narrative voice.

One thing that I find particularly interesting about crafting in this game: You can make the same "recipe" using different materials.  If I learn how to make a hammer, I could probably make one using wood and quartz, but this hammer would not be as effective as if it used wood and iron.  By the same token, I can fashion a pasture for livestock using wood, vegies, and straw, or I can fashion the same pasture using granite, vegies, and straw.  The latter will yield different (and probably better) results, but wood is obviously far more abundant than granite.  The game is rich with tough trade-off decisions, and you often don't even know what some of them might be, which makes it even more nerve-wracking to spend scarce resources in a profligate manner.

I also enjoy the way they carve out benefits from battle into two categories.  XP is abstracted here more as "general skills and betterment of my people" as opposed to "technical development in one guy's ability to deliver a back-handed cut to his opponent's hamstring".  So XP accrued by anyone helps all the people in my village to level up, regardless of who earns the XP, but their "class" determines what that impact will be.  Soldiers (who comprise 4 out of the 6 folks in my expedition) will likely gain Attack, Defense, or Tactical abilities and HP, while my Medic will improve his Healing and Herbalism skills.  Back home, my Gatherers and my Craftsman might improve their Gathering and Crafting productivity respectively.

In addition to securing XP, overcoming most successful challenges also accrue Research.  Research drives societal improvements:  learning how to make new weapons or armor, discovering how to use more advanced resources, or acquiring the ability to build new structures in the village beyond the mere hovels that one starts out with.  Some challenges yield a lot of XP and little Research, while others might yield a medium amount of XP and a lot of Research. 

How you overcome a challenge even determines the XP and Research benefits.  If you run across a sick stranger, you can kill him and take his stuff.  However, if you have a Healer in your party who has sufficient Herbalism skill to treat him, he may teach you some valuable lessons as a reward.  You don't get any of his stuff, but you might get more XP and research points.  Again, more rich trade-off decisions...)

I thought I'd pause for the night and see if there was sufficient interest in this one to keep posting.  I'm having fun so far, but I'll be honest, it's taken longer than I'd hoped and that's time I can't spend playing this fabulous new game! 

I'm also struggling with whether there's a better place to store public images than Photobucket.  The functionality there is cool, but getting booted to ads every 10 minutes if I don't pay for a premium subscription is annoying beyond belief.

just bought this for 10 bucks at greenmangaming. was watching dastactic doing a playthrough on youtube and it looked intriguing. only on turn 27 but have lost 3-4 people in combat already. was thinking of starting new game but going to stick this one out and take it a little slower or just make better decisions! it really hurt losing those people as well. definitely has that one more turn thing going on. i should have been in bed about 3 hours ago!!

I'm reading - the game has always been on the limits of my interest but you make it sound very intriguing

It's always a bind doing a quality aar - it's good fun to do and you appreciate the comments but you lose time to playing the game you love enough to tell someone a story about

In the end don't spoil your game but it would be a shame not to share!

Following along with peaked interest in this game I never considered worth the effort. I mean any game that's got Warp Snakes has got to be good.

I just submitted to Utopiec!  :smitten: >:D

...and to this thread.

Utopiec? I though that was Mariah Carey?  :o

It seems that a creature by the name of Theodore has approached the villagers, claiming to be a familiar of mine who can help guide my worshippers on their path to a better place.  I do not recognize this creature nor any trace of myself in him.  But so much of me has been lost, his story is plausible.  I have fallen so far, I can no longer even imagine--much less remember--all that I once was.

His initial offer is an innocent one, though.  If my people provide him but 10 cooked food items (pies, bread, stew, soup), he promises to reward them handsomely.  I see little potential for disaster.

My worshipers agree, and the villagers focus more of their efforts on gathering wood.  My exploring party has 6 days of food and 5 days of fuel, but I am inclined to encourage them to head back to the village now and swap Lutoslav out for Sulirad, the sole warrior I left in my village to protect the others while they gathered.  Lutoslav can heal while he collects more fire wood, and the rest of the party can continue their explorations.

They return to the village and drop off their recovered loot.  This will help free them up to carry whatever else they find.  As before, four villagers remain behind.  Two gather wood, one gathers vegies, and the last (one of the two village craftsmen) goes to work cooking a simple vegetable stew, in hopes of satisfying Theodore within another day or two. 

Exploring just to the north of the mushroom patch on my western border, I find some more ruins and move to investigate.  I also spy a wandering Witch and some nasty pets on the other side of the ruins.  She is dangerously close to our village, and needs to be driven off or killed before she can menace the hapless civilians there.  Those villagers are laborers and craftsmen, and far less capable of facing such dangers than the hunters and warriors in my exploration party.

I move to search the ruins first, and find a supply store still intact:  15 vegies, 4 precious pieces of iron, and also some wicker that should prove very useful in crafting better gathering baskets soon.  Now it is time to take care of that witch...

I approach her camp, but this time, I am given many more options for how I might deal with her.

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These choices are usually driven by both the circumstances of an encounter, and the skills that my followers can bring to bear.  Combat is the most straight-forward, but other encounter types often incur far less risk (if I lose a "Social" encounter, my characters are only bored, not wounded).  Some struggles incur more risk than others, but in this case, one or two of my adventurers are stealthy hunters, so they opt to try sneaking up on her to see if they can kill her without a full battle.

And they do!  My hunters win the "Sneak" challenge, but they only manage to kill the witch--most of her Giant Rats get away--but they still find some decent loot from the encounter and (perhaps more importantly) they take no damage. 

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We find more herbs, as well as a little meat, some stew, and a small stretch of leather fabric from the one rat my people slay as it scurries off into the underbrush.  They would have probably received far more leather had they engaged the witch and her pets in a full-out battle, but the injuries would have been significant, and injuries heal slowly for my people.

This latest encounter has also spurred my followers on to new knowledge, enabling their first step back towards a society their great grandparents knew a century ago.  My people consider developing knowledge in the crafting of new weapons, or learning how to use the supple, strong cane that grows near their home. 

The weapon smithing knowledge is intriguing, but at this stage, my people lack the access to resources like iron or stell that make such weapons truly wortwhile.  The cane-working skill is a particularly appealing option, since my people have a stand of wild cane growing very close to their village.  Reluctantly, my people choose the cane-working technology.  They do not yet know many ways in which they might use this, and my own recollections of such things are maddeningly confused.  But such is life in the Time of Darkness.

As the day draws to a close, both my explorers and my villagers have chance encounters.  A dwarf visits our village, and my people extend their hospitality.  In exchange, he tells us of a Mithril Mine far to the north.  Mithril is a material more fantastic than anything my people have seen in a century--not a single such tool exists anywhere in our village.  It will be a long time before we are able to mount an expedition so far away from home, and my people suspect that they will need to be much more powerful before they seek to obtain such a precious resource.  But it gives us something to plan for.

A Goblin merchant caravan passes by our expedition camp as well.  There is much conversation with the Goblins, but at the end of the day, we have few things that the Goblin wants.  Their shaman offers to bless us in exchange for fuel, food, and herbs, but fuel and food are still too precious for us to waste on charms of uncertain effect.  My people part ways with the Goblins no better equipped, but wiser.

The next day, my villagers continue to gather wood and vegetables while my Craftsman works patiently to cook up more of the Bigos stew to please Theodore.  We seem to be accumulating the cooked food more slowly than I would have thought, but as I focus my attention upon the villagers, I realize that each day they are eating more than half the stew that the hard-working Felislava has been cooking!  After subsisting on half-cooked meat and raw vegetables for so long, I can't fault them for wanting heartier fare. 

But I exert my divine will and am able to instruct them to forego the treats until such time as we have enough to satisfy Theodore.  We do not know what he is bringing, but we are hopeful it will be something.

My expedition also stumbles across a Spider Nest nearby.  We move to clean it out, knowing that it will eventually send forth vile creatures that will menace our defenseless villagers.  We are again given some options besides just charging in and trying to squash them all.  Our Herbalist is able to brew a potent poison that we leave out as bait.  The Spiders quickly eat it and are slain! 

For a reward, my people find a small wooden ring and also gather a cord of Spider Silk from the dead spider's webs.  Given the abundance of Spiders near here (there is another web to the NE), I suspect my people will be harvesting more spider webs whether they want to or not.

One thing that keeps this game prticularly interesting is the way that different encounter types play out very differently, depending on which skills (and what level of those skills) you bring to the table.  It is often a good idea to send one or two characters whose main purpose is not combat out on expeditions with your hunters and warriors, for exactly this reason.  I have few doubts that my party could have taken the spider's nest in a straight-up combat challenge (the game gives you a sense for the relative toughness of a fight), but I also have few doubts that I would have collected one or two nasty poison bites in the encounter.

In this case, the Herbalism knowledge of my Healer allowed me to face a "Sickness" challenge to determine the outcome.  These encounters are resolved very similarly to combat challenges, except that different skills and abilities drive different mechanics (e.g., my Healer's Herbalism skill determined his "Attack" score while the complexity of the Poison challenge gave me the "Defense" score I had to overcome to win.  The main difference here, as I mentioned earlier, is that failing non-combat challenges seldom means you take physical damage--you simply lose the encounter and might find yourself counter-attacked physically in the Spiders' turn.

Not only did I gain the spider silk and the wooden ring, but I also picked up 2 XP, which was enough to boost my characters' level.

A new day dawns, and my people are learning!  They have amassed enough worldly experience to each grow in their own way, based on who they are and what they have done.

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Among my explorers, my Healer gains Herbalism (but not any sorely needed incremental Medic skills), and my Warrior Helena gains strength (allowing her to carry more loot and also heavier equipment--encumbrance is tracked carefully in this game, and yet another factor that has to be considered as you craft new weapons and armor, or as you decide whether to pack your adventurers with more bulky raw food or the more compact cooked and baked goods).  Ostrogniev gains health (due in part to the sneak attack he led against the Witch), while the others mostly learn to be more cunning in the battles ahead (Tactics helps with things like improving your own party's initiative or confusing your opponents).  For almost all of them, the skills that they gained were related to the actions they performed in my various challenges.

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My Villager's growth was a bit less helpful.  None got an increase in their Gathering or Crafting skills, but those can be accomplished eventually by Crafting (a work bench for the Crafting skill and weaving some baskets for the Gathering skill).  Still, they grow every day and it is wonderful to see my people become anything more than they were in this cursed world.

I'm also relieved to see that Lutoslav has now fully healed from his wounds.

A very interesting read Sooner. Looks like a surprisingly deep game. Can you rename any of your characters or towns? Soonerville would be a logical choice.  ;D

Afaik you can rename - rps did an aar and the guy chose his own names

Great read, waiting to hear about Theodore

I bought this game on Steam a few months ago. Tried playing a few times. CTD about a minute in, every single time. Oh well, at least it was on sale.

You done the whole check file integrity thing?

Uninstall reinstall?

I've had the game for several months, but haven't tried playing it yet.

Ubercat, I found the following on a quick Google:

QuoteThis should do the trick. It's from the FAQ.

Q: Help! My game crashed!
A: We would be very grateful if you could send us your output_log.txt from right after the crash. It is located in your game folder. Send it over to khash[at]muhagames.com with a brief explanation of the problem, it will greatly help us with resolving the issue. Some graphic cards (commonly GTX 570 & 580 series) also don't like our game, but there is a solution. Right-click on the game in steam library, and go to Properties - set launch options "-force-d3d9".

The original link is at https://steamcommunity.com/app/378720/discussions/0/487876474227747728/ (https://steamcommunity.com/app/378720/discussions/0/487876474227747728/) but it looks like they're quoting an FAQ (I'm not sure where that FAQ is, but this tidbit might prove sufficient).

Hope that works!

Well, once my villagers stopped glutting themselves on the Bigos, Theodore showed up quickly.  He provided my people a basic lesson on Nutrition in The Age of Darkness, a lump of shiny gold bricks they can use to build something (neither I nor they know what at this stage), and another mission:  to build a building. 

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The only building that my Craftsmen know how to build is a Pasture, but that requires far more wood or stone than my villagers currently have.  In addition to being my people's primary source of fuel and warmth, Wood seems to be used to craft almost everything in this now-primitive world:  cooked meals, axe handles, fences for a pasture, baskets, even a set of hammer and tongs to enhance my own crafting. 

To the people of my village, and in particular their Craftsmen leader, the lady Felislava, the next step seems obvious:  Build a Gathering basket and get us more wood.  I experiment with the ingredients required and come to an interesting realization.  Felislava does not have straw to fashion the wicker for my baskets, but she does have a small supply of Cane on hand which will do nicely and might work even better than the straw.  She then faces the option of whether to tie together this basket with String (of which my people have 10 lengths), or the stronger and longer Vines (of which my people have only 5). 

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Fashioning the baskets with Vine will allow for a larger basket (with a Gathering +3 bonus), as opposed to the smaller basket woven only with the shorter, coarse strings of plant fiber.  I have a source of neither around my Village at the moment, although I suspect my people will be able to harvest Spider silk at some point in time to serve this purpose quite nicely.  There might be a better use for the Vines at some point down the road, but my people need more of everything now, so we opt to use the Vines.  It should take Felislava only two days to fashion my first basket.

She is the prettiest woman in the village and has yet to take a husband.  Hopefully Lutislava will stop mooning over her sometime soon.  He is here as a body guard for the rest of my village, but idle hands of any sort are a waste, so he is necessarily put to work.  It probably doesn't help his preoccupation with Felislava that he's asked to spend all day clumsily stirring the cabbage in a stew pot.

Perhaps sending him a short distance outside the town with Falibor to gather some additional Cane will help there as well?  To make better use of their travel time, I'll keep them both here in town until such time as Felislava's new basket is ready.  Frankly, we'll need a second basket soon, so the Cane will come in useful there.

My hunting party has traveled south now, both to explore and to clear out the area of potential menaces before Lutislava and Falibor leave the relative safety of the village to gather some cane.  They run across a pack of Hungry Unliving--2 Skeletons and 1 Rotting Dead.  Since The Tree of Life burned to the ground 100 years ago, the dead have not been able to move on to The Afterlife.  In their torment, a disturbing number of them return to this world as Undead, hungry for the life that was once theirs.

Milosh, who is the smartest among my villagers and has a passing interest in Folklore, has told the others that those whose corpses reanimate are often the ones who had the most troubled feelings in their own lives.  Life in this world is hard, breaking the back and too often the heart.  Milosh's words about the Undead ring familiar chords in my own memory, but they are distant things, more like something I might have read out of a tome than something I ever experienced for myself. 

When my people confront creatures like this, an image sometimes appears in my mind of a whole battlefield full of vile undead, bathed in the glowing splendor of my Holy Burning Light and turning to ashes.  It is a snapshot, with detail so startling that I know it is not a painting I have seen. 

It must have been something I have done.  But it is not alive, there is no sense of memory or recall.  Only a picture.  Much has been lost since the Darkness fell.

"Well now, that wasn't so had, was it?" asks Pavel, withdrawing his clumsy but massive iron sword from the shattered pile that was the last of the 3 Skeletons they faced.  He has that irrepressible smile on his face that is always there after a heavy moment.  It is a source of amusement at the right times, but also a source of bitter consternation at the wrong times.  He and his colleagues are all uninjured, which makes this one of the right times.

Chebira reaches down to the ground a pulls away a medium-sized shield, made of the magically tainted Dark Wood that now grows best in this world where somehow trees have survived without light for a century.  Until one week ago, none of my people had ever seen the sun, but they all knew that in the Old Days, all plants had required sunlight to survive.  Milosh has been asked how trees of any sort could survive for decades without sunlight, but he has only offered a shrug in return.  Questions like this can chase each other around inside a person's head until one goes crazy.  Chebira's new shield is larger than the small Iron Buckler she was using before.

"What do we have here?" Helena asks, lifting a well-crafted iron short sword from the shattered skeletal hand of another opponent.  She currently wields a shortish, crude Iron Pike.  It's length usually gives her the first attack against an opponent, but it requires both hands and leaves her defenseless to counterattacks when she is not able to vanquish an enemy with the first strike or when she faces more than one foe.  The sword will not strike as hard, but when combined with the small iron buckler that Chebira just relinquished, it should provide her more confidence facing foes.

In a world where even small wounds always seem to fester without a thorough and immediate cleaning, a sturdy piece of iron between you and a sharpened axe or a grasping claw can be a source of great comfort. 

Milosh has hefted a large monster bone that he has found.  He speculates that it might be the femur of an Ogre, but when Ostrogniev pushes him on why he thinks that, he backtracks quietly.  Milosh is smarter than anybody else in the party, but Ostro is not a man without faculties himself.  Others in the hunting party suspect that Milosh often makes answers up, but none have ever been able to catch him in an outright lie.  It is a game of cat and mouse that the two men have been playing for years now.

Milosh places the large bone in his backpack.  He'll probably find some use for it eventually, even if it's just as the handle of a new axe.

Another day passes.  The hunting party explores further south, looking for the hut of a herbalist that we'd heard tales of in the past.  The explorers find her hut and engage her in conversation, but (aside from an offer of expensive healing that they do not need and probably could not afford in any event) little of interest comes out of the conversation.  There is a vague hint of a favor she would like done, but she seems to guard her secrets closely and since we offer no payment for services, she mentions no task.

I remember few things from the old world, but I was the God of Light and I remember the sun well.  What I see now in the sky is a faint reminder of the warm, sunny days that once blessed this land through all of Spring and Summer. 

But, to my people, it is a beacon.

In some hearts, I sense a stirring of hope.  In others, only dutiful determination and a dogged refusal to indulge in the luxury of hope.  In this wretched world of theirs, hope is most often just an intermediate step on the way to despair.

However they cope with this, there is a quickening of their hearts.  All of them seem invested in their work, learning and striving as best they can.  Perhaps this (along with the greater safety of travel afforded by the brightness of a day) accounts for the personal growth I sense in all of them.

I've already mentioned how different characters level up differently, but I thought this moment of my characters gaining another level might help me to tee up a broader-ranging conversation of different classes.

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I don't even know all the different classes available, but I do know that they fall into 3 main categories. 

The first is Gatherers.  Their main skill in the game is (unsurprisingly) Gathering, and they are orders of magnitude better at collecting resources than any other class, (especially without any tools to help).  The have basic combat abilities, and can do fine in a fight if given decent equipment (at the start of the game, their weapons are little more than fishing spears or axes with sharpened bones on the end.  As they level up, they might gain a HP, but their skills seem to lack any major application in the game.  Still, without them, there would be no raw materials to craft with, much less any food or fuel to keep the villagers alive.

The second main class is Warriors.  Their man skills have to do with Attack and Defense, but as they gain levels, they acquire proficiency in skills like Tactics (very useful if a character is in "the reserve hand" during combat) or Strength (allows you to wear more and heavier armor, but also to carry back more stuff on an expedition--it's quite common to get overloaded with treasure and need to return home to deposit one's materials).  Warriors start off with more HP and better armor than other classes, but they also seem much more likely to get HP.

The last main class is Specialists.  In many ways, these serve as the leaders of your group.  Right now, I have 3 of them.  Felislava in my village and Ostrogniev in my exploration party are both Craftsmen.  If you don't have at least one Craftsmen in your village, your progress grinds to a halt--no new weapons, no new structures, no new tools.  Both Craftsmen have strong Speech skills, which often can open up possibilities in encounters that I might not otherwise see (e.g., a chance to clear out a mine in exchange for some of the goods located therein).  Ostrog's "Animal Kinship" ability is one I haven't seen before.  The tooltip says it will help in Hunting Challenges, but I've yet to encounter any of those.

The other specialist in my party, Milosh, is a Medic.  He also has good Speech, but also excellent Intelligence.  This can help in puzzling out peculiar riddles, researching the best way to repel a demonic haunting of my village, or any sort of Intellect challenges. 

The whole game is broken up into many types of challenges besides Combat Challenges, so having a diverse skill base is important.  The world here is too deadly to bash your way through every encounter, as we saw when Milosh was able to poison the Spiders.

This is interesting, but you really start with nothing.  It will be interesting to see how fast the power build-up cycle is.

Quote from: airboy on January 07, 2017, 12:29:47 AM
This is interesting, but you really start with nothing.  It will be interesting to see how fast the power build-up cycle is.

Airboy, I've played the demo about 4x as far as I've gone in this narrative, but this is my first play-through with the full version so I don't know for sure.  Based on my last play, though, there are a number of balancing factors.

• You can add people (of all classes) to your village as you play, but only slowly.  There are currently 4 children in my village, and at some point in the game, they grow up, but it takes many turns.  New children are sometimes born as well, although certain structures (e.g., a Cabbage Patch) increase the frequency there.  I think I added a person or two to my village through completing quests, but those were very rare and very precious. 
• Gathering in this game is not easy.  You can only gather resources if you're in a hex with them.  Quests can be good for getting a small supply of more advanced resources, but if my iron mine is 2 days journey from my village (the closest source of iron I've found in my exploring so far) and I need iron, I need to send a Gatherer on a 2-day march, let him work on gathering for however long that takes, and then transport him back home on another 2-day march.  And the wilderness is dangerous, so if you go far from your village, he'll need a big escort.  Most recipes take 2 or 3 resources, so planning which resources you'll need when is key.
• At the higher difficulty levels, it becomes an intricate balancing act between Gatherers (to get the raw materials), Craftsmen (only one class of Specialist, so you can't always get another Craftsmen when you want one), and Warriors (to protect the village, complete external quests to advance the story, and escort Gatherers as appropriate).  You can pick the major class that a child is trained in (e.g., Warrior vs Gatherer vs Specialist) when the children come of age, but the sense of scarcity remains there.
  
• Craftsmen and Gatherers can only do one thing in a turn, so while a more skilled villager might be able to gather lots of veggies or make 2 axes in a turn, that's only useful if you want and need 2 axes or a ton of turnips.
• As your society advances, it takes much more crafting to build better things (e.g., Leather Clothing might only take 3 turns, whereas a suit of Chain Mail could take a week or more).  At least as far as I played in the demo, the difficulty of crafting and gathering scaled appropriately.

I'm not sure if that answers your question.  There might be a point where exponential growth takes over, but the game seems to have more balancing factors built into it than the simple 4x model first seen in Civilization.  Villagers are precious, and the need to escort your Gathers makes for some challenging trade-off decisions.  At least, that's been my experience early on.

The villagers have just acquired another advancement.  There was much debate in the camp about what might best serve their needs.   Only 3 of my 10 villagers have armor of any sort, so learning to fashion some kind of Light Armor would be a very logical choice.  But at this point, they have only very limited access to the materials (String, Leather, Bones) that might be used to fashion such.

Ostrogniev and Felislava argue persuasively for building a Smithy.  Ultimately, his persuasiveness and her honeyed tongue carry the day, although not without a lot of grumbling from the others.  Ostro and Felislava both argue that they will be able to fashion armor for their fellows much more quickly, and also more skillfully.  Many of the others remain skeptical, especially Milosh, who is older and weaker than many and could not likely withstand more than a single blow if he ever gets caught in combat.

Ultimately, though, the notion that a smithy's fire would also help to cook food wins the day.

Felislava finally finishes her basket of vine and woven cane.  She wastes no time in passing it along to Falibor.  Nowo, the other Gatherer, eyes it jealously, but both know that the gathering of wood is more important to so many different endeavors.  Felislava informs the others that, with only two more days of gathering wood, the village should have enough materials for Felislava to to start work on a small Pasture. 

Thinking back on Theodore's last words, they realize that it makes more sense to keep Falibor and Latislova in the village for another two days.  A second basket for Nowo is coming, but if Felislava can stay actively engaged on a big project while Lutislova and Falibor head out to gather more Cane, it will serve the whole village well.

Patrolling beyond the southern borders to the village, my hunting party stumbles across another trio of Living Undead.  It is 2 Skeletons and 1 Living Corpse.  We dispatch them in the same fashion as before, without taking any casualties.  Having Shields across almost the whole group helps us greatly.  In victory, they retrieve a small iron buckler, but Milosh lacks the strength to carry it and the rest of the party already carries shields.

They end the day with two wandering bands of monsters in sight.  Neither the 5 Deformed Bats nor the 4 Warped Snakes promise to be more difficult than the Undead, and they need to be cleared out before they move closer to the village.  As my hunting party makes camp, we wonder if the intruders will come into the camp.

Back at the village, Falibor continues to gather wood and Felislava returns to cooking more Bigos stew.

The next morning, the sun scarcely rises.  We see it in the sky, but is little more than a lighter patch of grey amid the blackness of night.  Even the drab daylight of yesterday seems like a wonderful luxury, as darkness surrounds all our villagers and shadows take on a more sinister cast.  We can only hope that the sun will return again.  As I have said before, my people are used to living in darkness.

The hunting party is down to six days food, which should give them time to patrol the final southern and eastern approaches to the village.  As they move east, they bump into the party of Warped Snakes that they saw on the other side of the valley at nightfall the day before.  Trusting in their strength, they begin their hunt of the creatures.  They quickly realize that they can avail themselves of the Poison Bait trick that Milosh practiced before, and they do so.

The 4 Snakes die leaving behind 3 Leathered skins that can be used in protetive armor, as well as a smaller, wooden shield.  This last shield might be useful back in the village, but it is inferior to what everybody in the hunting band already has, so they simply store it and move on.  They end the day's march once again spotting Shadow Bats fluttering in the distance, and wonder what the night might bring.  Better to be defeating these monsters here than waiting for them to assault the lesser-armed folks back home.

In the village, Felislava announces that she can use some of the precious Gold to fashion nails, so she may get started on the Pasture a day earlier.  It will use much of the vegetables and almost all the wood in the village, but it should serve as an immediate attraction to passers-buy and will also allow the daily collection of meat from the livestock we can raise there.  The notion of saving the Gold for some later, better use that they don't yet know about is not even brought up.  They may regret it, but life in this world has taught survivors to solve today's problems today.

She begins her work.  Falibor and Lutoslav gather wood for one more day, to make sure that the village has enough firewood while they are gone.  They will set out to gather more Cane tomorrow, and perhaps some Mushrooms as well if there is time.

The next morning, the sun still rises, but it remains little more than vague gray patch in one corner of the Darkness.  After some discussion, Falibor and Lutislav gather their possessions, pack some food and wood to get campfires started, and go.  It is only a half-day's march to the location of the Cane, and they immediately stake out their camp.  Falibor begins harvesting the Cane, while Lutislov goes to work gathering Mushrooms. 

Lutislov could help Falibor, as the Mushrooms are a bit of a luxury item at this stage.  But the cane-gathering is specialized work, far more suited to Falibor's hands.  So Lutislov resorts to gathering Mushrooms nearby, keeping an ear peeled for any call of help from Falibor.

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(One interesting dynamic in this game is that all Crafting, Gathering, and Construction activities rely on a "lead worker" (who contributes full production value) and "assistants" whose productivity is halved.  This makes sense to me, but it also puts more emphasis on sound planning--you want everybody maximally productive every day, even if it slows down how quickly you accomplish some of the intermediate tasks.  Yet another "sense of scarcity" dynamic that help sets the dark tone for this game.

The attached screen gives you a good sense of how one must plan.  Falibor does 80 "units" of Gathering work each day, and must spend 120 to collect Cane (in this case, he'll get 7 units).  If Falibor works for 3 days, he'll gather 2 x 7 = 14 Cane.  As long as they're camped out, he might spend one more day helping Lutislov to gather Mushrooms just to bring a batch home.  Food variety improves Villagers' stats, and adding a basic ingredient like Mushrooms might make it easier to come up with different types of cooked foods, so the Mushrooms may do a lot for the culinary fare of the village and the health of the villagers.  Besides, spending one more day gathering Cane would not get them any more--and (though you can't see it from this screen shot) I had enough fuel to keep them warm out in the field for 6 days, so I don't want to cut things too close.

Patrolling to the South, our hunting party runs across some more feral beasts--in this case, Crazed Bees grown to bizarre proportions by the dark magic that has plagued this land for so long.  Using the same poison trick that has served them so well in other wilderness encounters, they once again avoid any casualties.  After killing the beasts, they find a small deposit of Resin (a crystal useful in fashioning some weapons) and some Mushroom soup.  A welcome change from the Bigos!

The also spot a Spider Nest nearby, but won't have time to make it there before nightfall.

Felislava's work on the Pasture continues.

Another pack of Crazed Bees attacks them after they've made camp.  Since it is nightfall, the party does not have a chance to use their Poison Bait trick, but they are once again able to stave off these nuisance attacks without taking any casualties.

The hunting party storm the Spider's Nest, and this time they are more richly rewarded.  They find 3 x Spider Silk and some more food, rather than the paltry 1 x Spider Silk they had found before.  They realize that, using the poison bait trick, many of the creatures wander off into the woods to die.  Perhaps this makes it harder to find the Nests where they live, or perhaps that is just luck from this encounter?

Felislava's work continues on the Pasture, while Nowo continues to gather Wood.  He teases Feli about not having a basket to ease his aching back, but she simply shakes her head at him and gets back to pounding together more boards to the fence that is now one-quarter finished.

The next morning, the sky is black as pitch.  Somehow, I get a faint inkling of where the sun might be, but my villagers can see nothing in this darkness.  It is as it has been for the last century.  Some of them know despair in their hearts. 

I do not have the power of speaking to them in words, nor even of granting them visions.  Once every year or two, I find myself able to pass along a dream to one of them, but that is the extent of my powers in this new age.  To a being who once walked Thea as flesh and blood, radiating my power and inspiring all who saw me, this is a humbling thing. 

But I cling stubbornly to memories of who I once was.  Where I can, I reach out to each to inspire and reassure, even if they can only sense me as a vague sense of hope or reassurance.

But we have crossed an important threshold.  Falibor has harvested his first stand of cane, and is well on his way to harvesting another!  My people were often in the habit of ranging far and wide to scavenge for resources, but this is the first time they have done so successfully since the Sun first rose.  I inspire Lutislov and Falibor to remain out in this darkness, completing work that needs to be done. 

My hunting party is starting to run low on food.  While they anticipate being able to make it back to the village in this murk, they decide that discretion might be the best response and they cut their patrol short one day earlier than they had planned to.  Although they stumble repeatedly, and see nothing of the territory they pass through on either side of them, they are making their way back home after a successful, if cautious foray into this world.

In the night, Falibor and Lutislov are ambushed by 4 Giant Spiders!  The battle is a quick and fierce one, as the Spiders rush Falibor.  They are small and easily killed, but their poison is not trivial and they enjoy an advantage of numbers here.  Both villagers carry spears, which helps to fend off the first two attackers, but the latter two each deliver a nasty bite to Falibor before they are killed. 

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It is not a catastrohpic event.  Falibor survives, but another such attack might kill him.  They have the Cane that they came for, and abandon the Mushroom search to head home.  Mushroom Soup dinners will have to wait.

I guess it really does take a village.  ;D

Darkness reigns on Thea again today as my worshippers continue their journey. 

Despite the gloom, an upbeat spirit reigns throughout the camp.  First and foremost, the whole village is reunited for the first time since the morning where the sun rose!  Our hunting party has returned from their hasty expedition to explore the surrounding countryside in this new light on the second morning.  Where before we had rumors, stories, and vague recollections, we now have a map--we know what to find where, for a day's journey in every direction from our village.  We have also found dens of several of the more maleficent creatures that plague us, and we have come up with what feels like a variety of ways to clean them out--some safer, others perhaps more fruitful.

After two weeks of gathering and crafting and exploring, the people of the village have come back together with more resources than the village has perhaps ever known!  Several lengths of Spider Silk compliment the String they have kept stored since the Sun first rose.  They have abundant Cane, 3 or 4 varieties of food (including a generous store of the meaty cabbage stew that Felislava insists they all call Bigos), and most of the Gold that Theodore provided.

More importantly, Felislava has finished the pasture.  It is now enclosed by a split picket fence on four sides, with a working if crude gate in one corner.  Ostrogniev scowls at the wastrel use of precious Gold for nails and hinges, but he's always been a more cautious Craftsmen than Felislava.  Scarcely had Felislava driven the last nail into the gate when Theodore appeared as if from nowhere!

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For completing this latest task, he gifts the villagers with more Granite.  They still do not have enough to build anything yet.  But it is a sturdier material than any of them have had to use for a structure in an entire lifetime.  I can see they are all starting to dream of stone houses, although I suspect that the Granite will be used for another purpose.

He also gifts them with the most precious of crystals, Diamond.  Ever since the Darkness came, crystals have had some kind of dweomer laid upon them.  It is a chaotic and subtle magic, unpredictable in its nature, but well known to bless armor and weapons when inlaid in the right places. 

"I have taught you what I can", Theodore proclaims with a twinkle in his eye.  "I know not what your future holds, but May Svarog's blessings follow you wherever that might be!"  In a blink, he is gone, and the villagers all look at one another in awe.  This is a story that will be told in the village for generations.

"We use the Amber for now," Felislava proclaims proudly.  "The Diamond we will save for a time when we have a proper Smithy built, and the knowledge to use the diamond in a well-crafted sword or a fine mail coat.  That time is coming, but it is not here yet."

While Felislava was finishing up the pasture, Ostro had stepped back into his work for a day and night and quickly completed another basket, this one for Nowo.  It used more of the Cane gathered by Falibor, but only the shorter lengths of String and not the sturdier Vines.  This is still quite sturdy and will help him to bring home more food and fuel every night.

The sound of contented bleating from one of the village sheep comes from the nearby pasture.  Now that the village's livestock have their own pasture in which to roam and feed, they will surely grow fat more quickly.  Meat is familiar to the villagers, but for the first time now they will have a steady source of meat within the village that they can use to supplement their diet.  I have memories of villagers in stone houses and cooked meals of meat, bread, and a different kind of vegetable every day.  But to the people of this village, those are only fantastic stories handed down from generation to generation.

It is a festive night in the camp!

Quote from: Sir Slash on January 07, 2017, 11:14:44 PM
I guess it really does take a village.  ;D

;D

The next morning, the Darkness still reigns.  Although it makes for harsher travel, my people are inspired by the events of the last few days and they go about their work with a purpose.

Felislava goes to work building herself a workbench.  Ostro sees her toying with a few bricks of the Gold and the limited stockpile of magically imbued Darkwood, but scowls at her and she reluctantly pulls out the much more pedestrian wood and iron for this task.

Falibor returns to his task gathering wood, and Nowo heads back to planting and harvesting vegetables.  Both are working faster now that they have their new gear, but there is little question that Falibor is working more quickly.  Just as there is no question that the village needs Wood more desperately than they need Vegetables.

There are some heated discussions among the Warriors about who is best served with which weapons and which shield.  Ultimately, it is decided that whoever stays behind to guard the village should also carry a Shield.  Falibor and Luto's experience in the woods fending off Spiders without a Shield between them has made an impression.

The hunting party forms once again, this time with Luto stepping in for Sulirad.  After brief discussion over breakfast, it is agreed that this group needs to clean out the two Spider Nests near the town.  After that, they agree to check out the Mithril Mine to the North.  There may be nothing there, but there may be something.  They carefully divvy up the food supplies.  Sulirod grumbles that the hunting party gets the best food, but Ostro silences him with a glare. 

Everybody knows that the hunting party will march longer and face much greater danger.  Doing this on a full stomach only makes sense.  Finishing the last bite or two of breakfast, they pick up their weapons and trudge out of the village.

Over the next several days, the hunting remains good.  The hunting party cleans out a pair of Spiders Nest and explores another ruin (this one guarded by a familiar combo of a Skeleton and Rats), along with a chance encounter with a Witch and 5 of her pet Rats.  The accumulation of loot is steady.  Although none of the items are especially impressive, a number of them do come in handy.

Fighting creatures frequently now, the party seems to have found a system that works well.  3 Warriors armed with Swords (provide attack and shielding to prevent injuries) form the backbone of the fighting force, complemented by 1 Warrior armed with only a spear (helps for gaining initiative and dispatching one heavy-hitting opponent before that one gets an attack in) and Ostrogniev (my Craftsman who doubles as a fighter in a pinch) whose hammer is useful for smashing multiple small enemies at one time. 

Milosh now also carries a Sword, but it's primarily for defense and killing a single Warped Varmint or Tainted Bug that makes it past my fighters.  He is of minimal value in combat, but is handy for other things (Healing when players take a mortal wound, Poison Traps, random encounters that require Smart Thinking or Smart Talking, etc.).  It seems to be working for now.

Meanwhile, back at the village, I have a pleasant if insignificant little encounter that highlights the kind of things that often happen in this game:

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The end result isn't terribly significant to the game, but it does add to the fun and the sense of wonder.

The skies are finally lightening again.  Whatever brought the Sun back into the skies, its magic seems to be holding.  As the skies lighten, I feel my own sense of self stirring.  I notice no change in my powers, but for the first time in many decades, I almost feel...  alive.

Work in the village continues apace, although once again, Wood production seems to be my primary bottle neck.  Falibor and Sulirad hatch the scheme of marching a half day's journey away from the village to find a fresh stand of timber.  There is enough food stored now that the people of the village will not go hungry any time soon.  It makes sense to turn Nowo's hands to wood-gathering near the village, while the other two march abroad to find more wood.  Falibor suggests to Felislava that Sulirad, though a Warrior by training, would be able to gather many more materials with a basket of his own.  With nothing else to do, and plenty of Cane and String to use, she quickly fashions another basket and the two head off into the woods on a foraging expedition.  Hopefully, the daylight will give them more warning of an impending enemy.

The Gathering work is becoming routine.  I would love to be able to build a Smithy, although I'm not sure I have enough wood to craft anything more important.  The village would be well-served by another Gatherer, but only time will tell when that might happen.  The village remains headed in the right direction, but the progress is tedious to be sure. 

The two venture out together, headed for a nearby stand of forest where Falibor might harvest some wood while Salidor fills his basket with Mushrooms and Cane.  In fact, the daylight does give warning of a nearby enemy--it's a witch and 4 Rats, who would almost certainly kill the two of them alone.  Reluctantly, they head back to town.  Sulidor wonders if they should have kept one more member of their war party closer to home.

In the North, my hunting party approaches the Mithril Mine that our dwarf visitor told us of only a few days after the sun first rose.  My war band has been more than up to every challenge they've faced, and seem almost eager for what might be more excitement in the ruins of this abandoned mine.

Sadly, at the bottom of the Mine Shaft, my party runs into a large band of angry Dwarves!

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To date, all of my encounters have been "1 Skull/Danger" encounters, where the Skulls give you a sense of your peril.  While those have been getting downright tedious, I was really hoping this would be a "2 Skull" Party and not a straight jump to the Hat Trick of Danger!  Clearly, I need to find something more taxing than scooping up Dark Critters and bopping them on the head, but if I overestimate where I'm at here, my party dies and I'm left SOL.

Did I mention that this game is played Iron Man and there are no Saved Game restore points you can go back to?

**Sigh**

My war band goes roaming off into the countryside, looking for somebody else interesting to fight or converse with.

I have to admit I've started skimming these entries, not because they're uninteresting but because I don't want to be too spoiled about how the game might progress when I play it!  :D :dreamer: :smitten:

That party-wipe tho. How many people are in the village now? Seems like this should be a messed-up disaster.

I ducked out of the Mithril Mine before having a head-on conflict with the Dwarves, so there was no party-wipe.  If there ever is a party-wipe near the beginning of the game, you're totally screwed.  Given that there is no Save/Reload mechanic, it's pretty much time to resign.

It's now something like Turn 15, and I've yet to add a player to my Village.  When I played the demo, I think I got a new person every 15-20 turns, but that makes mortality rates a BIG deal!  Especially if you want to get to the point where you have two hunting parties roaming the land.

As for spoilers, I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg.  I think this write-up so far only reflects about 2-3 hours of game play (it's taken me 6 hours or so because I'm screenshotting and writing as I play).  There is A LOT of plot, and it's surprisingly well-written, tied to the main game quests.  I'm going to intentionally avoid that, because reading about it spoils the excitement.

I never wrote this AAR with the intention of finishing off a whole campaign (thus the "An Introduction" in the title).  I really just wanted to highlight the atmosphere, the hard trade-off decisions, and the detailed planning that has to go into developing your village.  It's a deliciously novel approach to a 4x game.

My sense at this point is that my write-up is more than half done. 

QuoteClearly, I need to find something more taxing than scooping up Dark Critters and bopping them on the head, but [if] I overestimate where I'm at here, my party dies and I'm left SOL.

I had wondered if there was a second warband I hadn't read about (due to skimming to avoid too many spoilers); but the missing "if" is what threw me off.

"You know, us Dwarves, we've got a good head for that enchantment shit, so I figure she ain't gonna bedazzle me or anything, and you know, I think we'll get along just fine."

--anonymous Dwarven smith, in the process of negotiating with our war party for services

(this is indicative of the kind of clever and enjoyable writing that one finds throughout the game.  It's an unusual mix of dark and whimsical, but it works nicely.  And it's enjoyable finding a lower-budget game that has top-notch writing!  Thought I'd share it here for amusement value...)

The war party has spent another 3 or 4 days roaming about, clearing out Spider infestations to the north and gathering Spider Silk.  We still don't have any String or Vine sources nearby, so I figure getting a good stash of Spider Silk is bound to help when it comes time to craft some nice Light Armor for one of the less beefy villagers.  They start making their way back to the village, partly because they are low on food but also because it's about time to share their loot with the other villagers. 

Along the way, we've picked up some more Cane and a little more Wood, plus Felislava has built her first Smithy.  I sorely wanted to craft it from Stone, as Smithy's apparently have a "Crafting Bonus" that not only makes your Craftsmen more productive, but also increases their chances of crafting a "superior item".  Sadly, while I know there is some Quartz in a mine to the north, I have no way of gathering it.  And the 19 blocks of Granite I have are 6 too few to incorporate into my Smithy design.  So I have a Smithy made of wood, to keep the rain off my workbench wrought with Gold nails.

In the next day, my hunting party returns to the village, just as Falibor and Luto wrap up their second Cane & Mushroom gathering expedition (the first one, you may recall, was aborted on the first effort when they encountered a Witch and 5 Giant Rats nearby).  They all return to the village and another joyous feast occurs around the campfire.  They gather, swapping stories and loot while the Hunting Party looks on in mute appreciation at the newly built Smithy and Pasture.

The most common joke seems to be the Mushroom Quest.  Each time, nearby intruders have aborted the mushroom gathering just before a patch has been found.  The Villagers look forward to the day when they may actually eat Mushroom soup.  In the meantime, it seems to be a source of good humor.

Several decisions are made.  First, it is decided that the hunting party will explore to the West.  It seems that Theodore showed up on the edge of town the day before last.  Felislava and Nowo were the only two present, but he insisted on speaking to both of them to make sure his words weren't garbled.  He told them of the Gods and The Cosmic Tree, and of a number of other things that concerned them.  He suggested a location to the West where they might find a clue to help them better understand their past and their present.  With that, he had picked up a piece of cabbage and turned, taking a large bite out of it as he walked away.

As always, he seemed to disappear five steps after first walking out of sight.  It is a damnable trick, if he can ever teach it to any my people.

So the hunting party heads West, both to look for this clue and to see if they can't help out one or two other parties whom they've met in recent days.

The second decision that is made to let both Lutoslav and Sulirad stay in town.  This will shrink the size of the hunting party from six to five, but they are better equipped now than they were on their first missions.  Three of the five now have shields and swords or hammers, while the fourth (Helena) still has her sharp Iron Pike.  All have better weapons.

With baskets of their own, Luto and Sulirad can genuinely help him to gather supplies now.  And the presence of two well-armed body guards in a foraging party means that they can range much further abroad and will not have to retreat at the first sign of intruders. 

That leads to two more related questions.  What knowledge do we unlock next?  And where do we send our foraging party  next? 

Ostrogniev pulls out a map he has made of our travels, and they begin to discuss the needs of the village...

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Gathering more food is tempting.  It would take only a short march west, and they could finally gather Luto's mushrooms while they also harvest yet more Cane.  However, Felislava has woven a number of baskets, and it's unclear what else they could use the Cane for at the moment.  It could be used in building a second pasture to raise more sheep and perhaps procure a second cow.  But wood could also be used there, and it's not clear that the Cane would make for a better Pasture.

It would also be easy to head East to gather some Fruit and Wood.  The village still has a fair amount of wood, but they use Wood at a prodigious rate.  Still, food and fuel are two things the village already has some supply of.  Additional Food types yield benefits, but they are a luxury and not a necessity at this point.

Felislava puts in a suggestion that they might be able to travel southwest and find some Coal and Fruit.  The Coal, like Wood, is a fuel, but Felislava points out that when she or Ostro use it in any smithing, it often increases the quality of the finished product and it significantly saves Wood.  She explains that the improved quality seems due to the higher temperature of a coal fire.  Ostro nods and the others look thoughtfully into the fire.

The conversation then turns to where they should direct their research appetites.  String is in short supply, and seems frequently used in the armor that Feli and Ostro are learning to craft.  Learning to harvest better substitutes for string--either Spider Silk or Vines--would go a long way towards improving the armor of the villagers. And Spider Silk supply sources lie much closer than String or Vine.  Such armor would particularly benefit the weaker villagers, who don't have the strength to wear armor made of Bones or Cured Darkwood.  Of course, the villagers seem to have a modest--if not abundant--supply of Silk from numerous rampaging bands of spiders a few days march to the north...

Better weapons would be nice, but they have no ready source of Iron that they have found yet, and all that is left are the remaining bricks of Gold that Theodore gave them.  So learning how to craft better weapons would be relatively useless without the materials to make them.  The same thing could be said of tougher leathers and armor.  Tougher hides have been identified in several places and efforts could be made to learn to use either Thick Furs or the Scaled Leather found on large Snakes.  But again, the question arises:  Is better armor the top priority? 

Ostro points out that the villagers do not know how to harvest any construction resources besides wood, and heads nod thoughtfully around the table.  There is an abandoned rock quarry to the NW one-and-a-half days march, and some very promising Clay pits were identified two-and-a-half days march to the North.  The decision is made to learn how to harvest Quartz to the NW.  Perhaps with that, they can start to build more permanent structures--and also eliminate the seemingly unending shortage of Wood!

The decision is made, then.  They will head Northwest, stop to pick Luto's Mushrooms for a day or two, and then continue North to see if they can Gather some quartz to make for a more permanent second pasture.

The first new villager has arrived!  Navoya came walking in to the village this afternoon.  She was another pretty woman, slimmer of build than Felislava but with arms corded with whiplike muscle.  A heavy hammer sat upon her back, but she carried no other weapons.

She looked appraisingly at the Pasture nearby, then turned to face Felislava and Nowo, who stood together in the center of the clearing.  "I heard a report of you all from a band of wandering Goblins I met on the road.  Heard that you each carry an emblem of the Sun around your neck, and I wondered if you had anything to do with what we've all been seeing up in the sky these last few weeks?"

Nowo and Felislava glanced at each other quickly, and Felislava responded.  "We haven't brought back the sun.  But we do worship Svarog, and we hope that our sun's return has something to do with him.  Would you be interested in sitting down to a fireside meal with us, and we will tell you of our god?"

The conversation proceeded from there.  While her Gathering skills are very limited, it will be nice to have one more body guard around when the war party is away.  She will make a welcome addition to our village.

The hunting party also reached a location that Theodore had recommended they search. [NO spoilers below!]

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(I thought I'd include this as another example of the good writing that one finds in the stories here.  The details above do a nice job of building tension, without jumping straight into the "Kill 4 Giant Rats in my basement" quest.)

So give. What's the scroll say? Is this Theodore's dead father or something? Or maybe it's Alvin or Symond?  ;D

Sir Slash, I was trying to avoid spoilers but you've connected too many dots.  Turns out Alvin killed The Cosmic Tree.  He sang it to death, doing a cover of the famous Arthur Brown single.

 :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :bd:

It has been 38 days since the Sun first rose in the sky above my village.  We have added another newcomer to our village, a Hunter by the name of Mihu.  He continues to mutter something under his breath about "Hunting down that thrice damned Chipmunk who killed the Cosmic Tree", but his bow is handy in a fight and the rest of the villagers humor him.

Felislava continues her work on a Scaled Coat, made from the skins of numerous Warp Snakes whom our hunting party has slain over the last few weeks.  Our foraging expedition has returned, bearing with them a generous supply of Quartz.  Felislava talks of using that stone to fashion a more permanent, fire-proof Smithy.  Ostro's skill as a smith and his persuasive tongue ultimately convince her that a second Pasture will be better for the village.  What is needed most at this point is more Gatherers, to feed the hungry mouths that come into the village and to begin harvesting more of the higher-quality resources that the villagers finally know how to use.

Besides, the new pasture will use the larger stone columns to pen in larger animals.  This will provide more meat for the village than the first pasture.  Ostro has surveyed the land around the village, and they all know that there is not room for more than ten buildings.  At some point, the first Pasture and the first Smithy might need to be torn down.  But that won't be for months, at the least.

The hunting party continue to range abroad, hunting creatures that might threaten the village and continuing to gather clues about whatever happened to the Cosmic Tree.  They have started to run across resources not seen in the village in 100 years.  Milosh can identify them all, but even he swears that he thought some of those items were just folk legends and not real things.

As the weeks have passed, I have felt a quickening in my being.  I am still a pale shadow of what I once was, but I can now appear to my people as an actual image, flickering in their dreams.  My own powers are growing, although I know not what form they will take.  The future remains uncertain, but it is good to be regaining even a tiny share of the powers that were mine.

I was a God once.

And that concludes my AAR!

I've had fun writing it and hope some of you have enjoyed it.  As I typed this up, I've realized a few things:

1)  The game does a better job than I'd remembered of confronting you with hard trade-offs at every turn.  Had I been playing this at a higher difficulty level, my hunting party would have faced many tougher encounters.  When your players start to take serious injuries, and sometimes even incur critical wounds, you begin to face even more trade-off decisions.

2)  In some sense, this is a 4x game.  However, the "exponential growth" problem associated with most 4x titles is nicely managed by the fact that it is villagers--rather than buildings--that gather resources (as well as produce things).  Even after building 2 pastures (1 using Quartz rather than the more primitive Wood), I'm only getting enough meat to feed 3 villagers each day.

3)  From a technology standpoint, I enjoy the fact that you have "fog of war" around your tech tree (e.g., if you can research something, you know what it will do for you, but you have little idea what new avenues for research it opens up).  There are a lot of little touches that really do make you feel a sense of scarcity in this game.

4)  I'm not really sure what happens if you are too cautious with your players.  I suppose my Village could be attacked by wandering monsters, but I didn't see it happen while I was playing.  It is awful easy to get some (or all) of your hunting party killed off, but as long as you avoid that, I'm not sure if it's possible to lose.  Guess I need to play some more to find out!

Overall, this is a really delightful title.  It's primarily a 4x game that's gotten away from a lot of the stale conventions that make so many 4x games feel a bit monotonous more than 25 years after Sid Meiers first released Civilization.  The injection of an RPG component in the 4x mechanics makes it all the more appealing!

The devs just did a lot of little things right.  The incremental advancements (e.g., building a Pasture out of Quartz rather than Wood) give this game a "One More Turn" feel that is really compelling.  The ability to play as multiple different Gods (most of whom you have to Unlock) and the fact that each village has its own random resource map make seem to offer some replay value as well.

On that note, I'm off to play Day 36!!

Thank you, FarAwaySooner.  I had played this for awhile upon it's release, but quickly hit a point where my poor understanding of how different stat's applied to different challenges kept me from continuing.  Your AAR has prompted me to retry the game; I not quite gotten to the point that stalled me before, but I am enjoying what I have experienced thus far.

Wha????

You're not finishing it?

I'd talked about this back on one of the earlier pages, and belatedly put a disclaimer in at the beginning.  What I really wanted to do was try to convey some of the unusual but interesting mechanics of the game as well as the fact that this really is a PRIMITIVE city builder!

The Challenge and Crafting mechanics are both very interesting, but neither one lends itself to dramatic telling without 4 or 5 screen shots apiece and that was just getting too tedious for what is a 45-second decision process in the game.  So much of this game is about atmosphere and story line, and I was quickly getting to the point where I could only say, "Continuing on the main quest, my characters had two more Fight challenges, one Sickness challenge, and one particularly tough Social challenge" without throwing in Spoilers Galore! 

Of course, you could always play the game yourself and see how it ends...    :bd:

So, I thought I'd come back to provide a few more high lights and a few findings about the game.  Everything I learned encouraged me to play more!

1) I got cocky.  The turn after I stopped writing, I got myself into a hairy battle where my two newest villagers, Mihu and Nahaya, along with wise old Milosh, got themselves into a battle that they could not win.  All three died.

2) I survived 141 turns/days before resigning.  The difficulty of wandering monsters, etc., definitely gets harder as you play more.

3) I got several more villagers and many more children.  Some, including a Changeling Witch, went on to become total bad-asses.  Sadly, I once again got cocky and took on a 4-Skull challenge with only my strongest 6 adventurers.  I was soundly defeated, and 3 of them (3 of my 4 most seasoned fighters) all died.

4) I also belatedly learned that your technology research is powered somewhat by external events, but much more by discovering and completing new crafting recipes.  That makes sense, actually:  You recover lost old arts by using them.  You can find an "optimal build path" (i.e., crafting recipes that get you the highest performance for the most easily obtained recipes), but the variety of non-cooking recipes that you discover has a bearing on your end-of-game Victory Points (which help to grant your God levels from game to game, meaning a good try puts you in a better position to win next time).

This game is MUCH deeper than I thought.  Far groggier, too!  It's the Sleeper of 2016, I honestly think.