Rindis.com

After finishing my latest game of MoM, I took another look at my options. I’ve been wanting to stick with earlier fantasy conquest games, and I’m mostly ending up playing on Azuna. This leaves Heroes I/II out (which I did fiddle with some recently) since I’m still on copies that require the disk. Besides, while I can run it in DOSBox, I have to turn the CD music off, or it comes to a halt with every sound effect.

But while my copy of Age of Wonders installs from disk, it doesn’t require it for play, so I managed to copy it over from Horo to Azuna, and with some fiddling, get it to run. So, I decided to try the scenarios, and for the moment, go through them in ‘historical order’, since they all chronicle the conflicts that lead up to the campaign game. The earliest one is “Blood Isles”:

In 962 LIR (Lord Inioch’s Reign), three years before the first Humans set foot in the Valley of Wonders, Human ships arrived in the Blood Isles. Quickly, they overwhelmed the other races, and snatched up precious land. Historically, the islands were named for the sanguine battles which ensued as various factions fought to possess them. Now the Dwarves, Goblins, Azrachs and newly arrived Humans fought for supremacy, never fully aware that the name of the islands foreshadowed what was to come, and that the beaten races served to lead the migrant Humans directly to the Valley of Wonders.

It’s a medium map with 15 cities, and four factions: Humans, Dwarves, Azrachs, Goblins; though most if not all of the races are present in the various cities. I stuck with the default options, with on-map leaders (good hero, but you’re out if he dies), with CPU Squire players (hey, it’s the first time I’ve played this in years…!), though I played as the Humans instead of what seems to be the default Goblins.

The map is a series of islands, with the four factions starting in the middle of one side of the map; the Humans are on an island themselves, but the other three start areas connect to the sides of the map. Each home area begins with the main city, a second small city of a different race, a mine, some other income-producing building, and a shipyard. (You also start with one dragon ship/longboat.)

It didn’t take long for me to meet the Dwarves, who immediately declared war.

What? Is gold currency an insult to you or something?

Shortly after that, I met up with the Goblins and offered them peace. They said that was fine, as their conflict was with the Dwarves anyway. And that’s why you shouldn’t go around instantly declaring war on neutral races.

And then the Azrachs died. That would be the entire ‘leader death’ thing. Whoops.

The Goblins were slowly expanding to the east, while the Dwarves… didn’t seem to do much. I raced into the center, and started claiming everything I could. I tried to keep decent relations with all the races… except the Dwarves. I migrated the one Dwarven city I took to another race. The Azrachs had been in the south, and I got there well before anyone else, and took the area over. I then turned west and took out the Dwarves with no real problems, since I had a lot more resources to draw on.

As soon as the Dwarves were dead, the Goblins declared war, which certainly saved me time. They had just been really getting into the swing of things, so we skirmished a while near the center before I threw them back onto their start area, and then took out their leader just outside of the capital.

It’s a pretty fun and fast little scenario that forces you to pay attention to naval matters, but has a pretty decent city density. It’s obvious that each position is roughly equal, and with the AI turned up would be worth playing again.