Spartan - by Slitherine

[child of Thor]

sounds a good idea if the ebayer is a good one?

I'll talk abit about the combat model thing now, as this was one of Hex's main gripes in the earlier(but similar) Chariots of War game.

Below is a screenshot of the pre-battle screen and i'll describe whats going on.

When its time to go to battle you first get the battle setup screen. In it you position your troops in preperation for the actual battle.
On the left of the screen are your troops, each has particular strengths and weaknesess and perform diferenetly in certain terrain types.

On the right is the enemies army. Or atleast the part of it you have discovered depending on your armies scouting ability. If you have included some decent scouts, you will see much more of the enemies army here. This is turn helps you decide where to place your own troops in relation to the types they most likely will face in the battle screen.

One thing that i find odd, and you can see it in the screenshot, is that often 'skirmishing/ranged' units get put in the front ranks!! I've never used that in the game, but have seen the enemy do it.

It might be a particular type of strategy, but often these light troops will run away after a few seconds of battle - cannon fodder maybe?

you can chose various formation setups on this screen(and you can learn more by researching them) and give an overall battle Order - like flanking or trying to envelope your enemy.

Its kind of simple, but effective enough. I think the theory is that inthis period a battles plan was very much decided before the battle - communications were very difficult, so changing the strategy was aften difficult once the battle started. I think they have tried to model this?

Anyway its not as controlable as in the Total War games, once the battle start you just sit back and watch the short battle(they dont last as long as the Total war ones can either!). You win or you lose.....or run away, but beware - you take casualties if you do run away, i've had armies destroyed by trying to run away. Maybe i left it too late - and after i felt i might as well have seen the battle to its bitter end and defeat of my troops. At least i would have taken more of the enemy with me.

[child of Thor]

Macedonian Grand Campaign cont…. Year 362bc

The latest top 4 nations in my patented ‘anti-table’ form

Nation Victories/Defeats Kills/Casualties Cities

Persians 90/23 14243/17464 60
Romans 49/10 7655/7470 37
Bithynians 50/17 6343/8655 27
Macedonians 52/13 8121/8027 24

Only the Romans and myself have caused more deaths than we have taken :b
And with my total cities at 24 I have completed one part of the end game scenario for the Macedonians – it’s a shame that out of those 24 cities, I most own a particular 4 cities that are across the sea in Persian and modern day turkish territory.

In other news:

It’s a sad day for Apolyton, the town of Apollonia, on the north western coast of ancient Greece fell to the Romans in the year 364bc. The roman commander was called Publius Aelius Ligur – and I made a note to exact revenge on behalf of us all.

Athens fell to the Persians in 368bc – and now have just one city left on the coast to the south east of their ex-capital. Only one small army as well, so I think their time is up. Either the Persians will get them or I will eventually, their last city is called ‘Thorikos’. So it should belong to me as we share part of the same name

April 363 bc – the Great War starts!

After having the romans on my border(and helping me out to claim back one of my cities taken by the hated Dassarettes), I was interested to see them suddenly head south – on mass. A year later and the first meeting between the might of Rome and the Invincible Persians came to pass.

The two great armies faced of just north of Thebes(just north of Athens) – a few small greek tribes and a small expanse of ocean was all that separated them. A few turns(months) past with various manouvers taking place, but it wasn’t until a Persian ship slipped down a narrow inlet and deposited a medium sized army, that any battle took place.

As soon as that Persian expeditionary force touched Roman(formally Greek) soil, it was persued by two Huge Roman armies. The Persians fled south towards the mountains between Thornian(Roman controlled) and Trachis(Greek controlled),and at the foot of the mountains they were caught in a pincer movement as another Large roman army that had been camped outside a greek town to the south, moved north to intercept. The Romans easily destroyed the smaller Persian army.

Rome 1 – Persia 0

And so the great war has begun. To the south of the Persians northern border that now touches on roman territory I can see about 6 Huge class armies massing. The Romans have 2 Huge armies in the field, but its difficult to tell how well garrisoned their southern towns are.

I received a report that the Romans were sending additional troops – and their ships had been spotted of the west coast of Greece. Still a few months have passed and no ships have arrived – I’m thinking they must have been shipwrecked(and from the little details that are dotted around this game, it could be true!). Still I’m glad the Romans are now concentrated on their southern border, I was worried our good relations might not hold up if they proved determined to move north.

I’ve been able to free up some troops to continue the assimilation of the northern tribes into the greater Macedonian empire, and my troops are of reasonable quality - i might have a go at that last Dassarette city(which was mine to begin with) before the Romans come to help me out again - i think they are going to be very busy elsewhere

This game seriously rocks! I can't find fault in it (although i can see a bit of room for some improvement) - i'm not running away with resources, things happen that mean i have to change the strategy i'm using.

Like at the begining of this year i had a terrible harvest - so much so that i had to rush all my field armies into towns(they use up less food when garisoned) to reduce the grain deficit.

Still it wasn't enough and i didn't quite have enough trade slots to buy my way out. Its difficult to explain just how detailed and well balanced the resources are handled in this game, and the effect this has on your plans - its very cool. That mass grain shortage put back my expansion by six months!

Come to think of it - its a feature of your diplomats to 'introduce rats into the nations grain storage', and i do have a few high powered Diplomats staying in my nation........hmmm the thing is i'm on good relations with all the nations represented by these Diplomats - i only let friendly nations stay.

But maybe one of them used that technique on me? I've used it before(on the Persians without them knowing ), and maybe my northen expansion has worried one of these guys in that area?

lots of fun little things like this can happen - i think i'll haveto politely ask all the foreign diplomats to leave my capitol for the time being.

If you like historic tbs games and haven't played this game, then get it(even at the asking £14.99 for download, its a good buy).

I'll eat something(thinks carefully about Yins experience......) ........edible if you are not happy with this game

[child of Thor]

This will be my last post on this game – something has come up and I don’t think I’ll get to finish this thread, and what has turned into a DAR report(that’s ‘During Action Report’ ; ) ).

Macedonian campaign final entry year 357BC (and what a good few years its been getting here!)

Ok so I’ve been inspired to play this as much as possible – from my last post I’ve put in about 9hrs on this game, it was a tight fit around RL.

The Rome vs Persia war has escalated nicely – Romes re-supply ship never did make it while the Persians sent another 8 ships all with Huge armies on them. Still it seems Romes troops are of better quality as they have managed to hold on to their border towns on the frontline, despite being outnumbered(the Celts know of this roman trait all too well ). It settled into a stalemate on the front, and the Persian reinforcements didn’t go where I was expecting them to go.

They split into two groups(4 each) and when they had gone past Crete and turned north, one group went to the east side of the Greek mainland while the other split again. 2 ships landed on the south of Greece(had been Spartan Territory along time ago) while the remaining 2 went around the west coast of Greece and quickly took two cities from one of the remaining greek tribes.

That first group that went the eastern coastal route was last heading in my direction, but seems to have stopped at some Islands and for the last 12months has been just hanging around – sometimes depositing its armies on the beach, then taking them back to sea. This all prompted me to massively reinforce my coastal towns in that area, and send my two best armies to garrison the likely towns near to an invasion.

And it also prompted me to try using my Diplomats for some subterfuge. A few months later and I got lucky – the 500 silver + my diplomats skills had managed to help Persian slaves to freedom (this has the effect of making the host nations people unhappy – as they no longer have slaves to do their work!). I was impressed to see it had quite a huge affect. 90% of the Persian field armies had to re-garrison themselves to deal with the unrest.
500 silvers well spent – and as it was a successful mission my highly skilled Diplomat didn’t get returned to me minus his head, and more importantly my developing relationship with Persia is unharmed.

The northern border

I was rushed into carrying on my northern expansion of the tribes that are left there. The Romans, while fighting the Persians in the south, had decided to expand along the west coast of north Greece – and I wasn’t comfortable with that idea.
I was happy with the Romans between the Persians and myself, and they have proven good allies. But I don’t trust them to be on many borders at once.

It seems to have worked, as I’ve mopped up the tribes and pushed hard to the eastern coast, the Romans have relaxed their drive north and even moved some of their troops south. They seem to be dealing with the few tribes that their early expansion had encircled.

And that’s about where I’m at. Still 4th place overall, but with a much developed fighting machine that in the right terrains I hope will give me the edge when either the Romans or Persians set their sights on Macedonian soil.

Its still quality all round :b

The screenshot is of the battle screen you get once you’ve set your armies up. This is the 3D version of the engine, but you can switch it to the older 2D version, and apparently this is better. I’m undecided, but having fought a few battles in the 2D mode I’m starting to see its qualities(more detail basically to the sprites).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by child of Thor
nation: battles Won/Lost: Kills/Casualties: Cities(geo location to me)

Persians 74/14 10941/13543 53(to the south+east)
Bithynians 45/10 5635/7601 25(to the east)
Romans 29/9 5075/5238 22(south-share a border!)
Macedonians 46/13 7091/7738 21

It appears that there is a much better ratio of AI vs AI combat (compared to AI vs player combat) than what was in CoW

Originally posted by child of Thor
Overall I’ve seen none of the issues Hexagon mentioned from the Chariots of War game(the earlier game this is part based on), or if fairly similar, they have not seemed to be game breaking issue’s. Ok the combat model is more basic than the Total War games. But I don’t find it a problem – its like a much more detailed version of the combat model you get in Civ or the Call to Power games...

If diplomacy is improved to cut down on the AI pile-on vs the player, it's a huge step up.

As for the battles, I think I like the extremes offered (control in TW vs very simplistic abstraction offered in CTP) as compared to the middle-of-the-road in Slytherine games.

TW's model allows for a great deal of control, which may not be totally accurate from a historic standpoint, but makes for fun gameplay. It is the main reason why I like and play the TW series. (I agree that the economic model in Slytherine games are better)

On the other end of the spectrum, CTP's combat model was very basic, which allowed for quick and streamlined gameplay - allowing me to take a more grand strategic overview as my focus. There are times I like the simplistic approach too.

For me, I felt that I spent a lot of actual gameplay time setting up a formation in Slytherine games for not a great deal of (gameplay) payoff. After a while, there was little variation in what I did for setup from battle to battle, and since I had no control once the battle began, all the battles ended up feeling the same.

That's not to say that it was a terrible battle system either - it just didn't hold me once I got my hands on TW...

[duke o' york]

Well I've just bought this for just under £8 from eBay.

Damn you coT! I'll just have to put off buying Civ IV until the price goes down (admittedly, this was always my plan, but school doesn't start again until the beginning of next month, and I need some TBS fun before I start accountimificating again. ).
I can't wait for it to arrive!

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by hexagonian

edit.....

For me, I felt that I spent a lot of actual gameplay time setting up a formation in Slytherine games for not a great deal of (gameplay) payoff. After a while, there was little variation in what I did for setup from battle to battle, and since I had no control once the battle began, all the battles ended up feeling the same.

That's not to say that it was a terrible battle system either - it just didn't hold me once I got my hands on TW...

yeah i know what you mean, but on the one hand one thing i found with TW was that on the grander scale of the game(like trying a 'world conquest' - which i did in 'Viking Invaison' as the welsh!) - you could have too much of a good thing. And being keen to take control of the battles over the auto-resolve option, those many 20min+ battles could get taxing!

just looking at the ammount of battles i've had to fight in Spartan so far makes me quite happy for a simpler model, although i would like to see a little more input in my battles.
As it is, a complete battle in Spartan including the pre-battle screen takes about 5mins max for each one. Now i'm happy with how to choose which unit works best on what terrain against a certain enemy its a quick process, a shade too quick/uninvolved i'm thinking. But i'm sure thats a hard design choice to balance in a game like this.

To put in in context i dont think i'm 10% of the way through to winning this particular game - i got a lot of battles ahead of me!

But on the other stuff you mentioned from CoW:

1. Diplomacy

Seems pretty good actualy. At first i thought it was a bit shallow and probably just a 'stick-on' feature that wouldn't really have an effect. But as you research the relavent things and you get more options, and as your diplomats get better skills it turns into a fun part of the game.

Its much simpler than in Civ3(or maybe even CTP2?) in that you cant trade techs or stuff like that, and you dont set a tone and all that stuff.

Now i'm thinking it could be the best diplomacy model i've seen - in that the things i've tried to do with it do make sense in both a game world and real world sense. I suspect it can be exploited in an offensive sense - That 'help free slaves' move was very powerfull! Yet at the same time it doesnt have the scope to do really silly things(like agree to swap knowledge of tanks for 20gold etc).

Still that was because it succeded, i've either lost a diplomat(head on a platter!) or had one kicked out on most attempts at such tricks(and getting the Persians pi**ed with you early in the game is a bad idea!).

I haven't found the AI ganging up on me at all - in fact those not local to me mostly ignored me and got on with beating each other up in their respective areas of the map. Some have beaten each other in a weak stale mate - the only real action seems to now be coming from the Persians+Romans, with my little efforts a poor third place.

I fosterd good relations with as many tribes around me from the start and of those still remaining the relationship has held up.

In fact its been a bit galling to watch previous allies in the south get the Roman treatment - but revenge will be mine.

In many ways the murky nature of the Diplomatic model is a good thing. eg I cant tell what really governs your defense against diplomatic attack and there is a certain mystery surrounding it each time i want to use it(as opposed to just having you diplomat sit in another nations court slowly building up your reputation).

Having a diplomat sitting in your home turf doesn't appear to make you discover plots against you more often, but then again maybe it does.(i haven't read the manual on this bit! too busy playing) You just cant tell from the feedback the game provides.

Thats what made me think initialy it was a gimick diplomatic screen.

But as you've read in the game reports - my alliances do matter, its not just a one way thing which was often a problem in CTP(where that one weak nation just wouldn't get it and keep breaking an alliance that was clearly in their favour).

So that aspect of diplomacy seems to really work in Spartan.
Rome(a much more powerfull nation than mine) has 'honoured' our alliance on many occasions by reacting to my troops movements and withdrawing theirs where it would otherwise lead to heightend tention.

I dont think i've seen another game make this kind of move before? where you diplomatic efforts have a real effect on what happens on the ground?

Of course i could be a fluke - but its been fluking it for about 150 game turns

2. Resources(+exploits):

I have quite a bit of cash i think(24000 silver!), but its not a 'save-all' fall back like it could be. I cant do much with it other than pay my troops and the diplomatic options cost varrying ammounts to undertake.

Silver is a resource in the game(you build mines to get it) and only certain territories will have it, but i dont think you can trade it on the trade screen. Its just the coinage used in trade. You get a certain ammount from your subjects, depending on how much you feel you can tax them. And then the odd silver mine is a bonus.

The main point of silver seems to be troop related. All troops have a silver cost of maintanence per month.
It can be small in the case of the earliest troops(1 silver) to a ridiculous ammount for something like a General(100 silver!). These costs seem to fluctuate depending on where they are. In a Garrison the cost per month(game turn) is very low, but once in the field you can bankrupt yourself if your not carefull!

Trade in the resources brings in extra silver, and your trade is limited. You can only trade X ammount of resources based on your trade level(increased by building markets in your towns).

I often go from seeming to have pleanty of resources to some kind of crisses where i have to move my workers around to favour military production over economic, or like in the case where i lost some towns, i have to re-adjust to cover the shortfall in a particular resources output.

Right now - with the huge coastal defense i've put in(5 towns each with 16 unit armies) - the best i can balance the books is with running a -55 silvers per turn defict and i've pushed my tax bracket as far as i can without making people rebel.

Still they are all working extra hard for the war effort. My trade allowance is maxed out and i'm also running a Food deficit of -5 Grain per turn, but have some farm improvements in a couple of towns that are soon to come into action.
I'm hoping once i've taken a few of the tribal towns in the north, this will provide me with the extra income to finally balance the books in relation to the size+qualtiy of army i'm trying to maintain.

As you can probably tell - i'm very impressed with this game, especially as TBS has been deserted by the mainstream - this game has been a great surprise so far

Originally posted by duke o' york
Well I've just bought this for just under £8 from eBay.

Damn you coT! I'll just have to put off buying Civ IV until the price goes down (admittedly, this was always my plan, but school doesn't start again until the beginning of next month, and I need some TBS fun before I start accountimificating again. ).
I can't wait for it to arrive!

Good move

And if you dont like it i'll eat something edible as a forfit(Greek olives would be appropriate!)

.....next month, yeah i suppose you might have been able to get enough Spartaning in by then - but it will be a close call.

One thing to note the 'scenarios' are more like training missions to get you used to the game. I played one(the unify Crete' one), finished it in 30mins and jumped into the Grand Campaign - i've been going like a mad old gamer ever since


Edit: You know it will be so funny if you just hate this game now - and i'll feel honestly bad if that is the case!

[Barinthus]

I've enjoyed reading your 'reports'

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Barinthus
I've enjoyed reading your 'reports'

thank you and i got just a small additional one to post on Spartan - i've seen some new cool stuff this morning i must write about

Macedonian grand campaign really, really 'Fin' this time! year 356bc(thats 72 turns after the last post-think about it).

The current stats:

nation: Victories/Defeats: Kills/Casualties: Cities:

Persians 116/54 19789/30187 55
Romans 96/32 20542/14096 47
Bithynians 56/18 7173/10177 31
Macedonians 61/13 9796/8769 29

From those new numbers i think we are seeing the Romans getting the upper hand over the Persians in that battle to the south - its all going as i planned


Persian situation

Since i last posted i've seen what i think must be the results of that Diplomatic "help free slaves" moves i pulled on the Persians.
At first, after a few turns of doing it, I mentioned that i saw many of the field armies of the Persians garrison themselves(except a few huge armies on the border with the romans).

well 3 game years later i saw one Persian controlled town had become white on the map(they are usualy orange) - so i checked it out and on the diplo screen when i moused over that city it said 'peasent rebellion' - cool!

Over the next couple of years these spread to about 5-6 towns, some the Persian managed to re-gain control of, but not all of them. So i can see that my helping slaves to fredom has had a direct result on the happiness in the Persian empire which is awesome.

Still they have some more re-inforcements coming in a few months so i expect those rebellions to get crushed before long.

Roman situation

I was expecting the Romans to struggle in the face of those Huge Persian armies they were up against, and with the loss of their last re-supply ship i was really concerned the Persian would beat them back and start to gain much of a large advantage over myself.

But they have been killing many more Persians than i thought they would, and with the domstic chaos i was able to supply with my diplomat; they have managed to grab 2 cities of the Persians on their shared border.

Also they have moved across that small stech of water that seperates mainland greece from the greek 'almost' Island to the south(the bit Sparta is on). Here they have taken 3 towns from some of the remaining greek tribes in that area.

Annoyingly they also did a sneak move up the north west coast of greece near me, which i wasnt so happy about, but since they took this one town it all seems quiet on that front from their actions.

Macedonian(me!) situation

I've continued to take towns in the north and strengthen my garrisons in the south - but at a cost. My defict is currently running at +0 grain and -119 silver. I've increased my trade power by building two new markets in tow of the newly taken towns, and this has enabled me to buy more grain to support my curent military activities.

Sadly i've had to increase my citizens taxes, and many towns are now on a slide from 'content' to 'un-content'.
I'm taking a gamble i can secure the last 3 towns in the north west(securing that border with the Romans) before rebellion starts in my cities? a small risk i'm forced to make to keep the romans down south where they belong

I was sadned to see one of the last remaining greek tribes on my southern border, and a long time good ally; take its one Huge army and a Small army, and try to take one of my border towns. They lost all their troops in the attack

And now with only 3 cities left to them, i suspect they wont have any defences left for the eventual Roman attack. I've decided, with a heavy heart to launch an attack on their Capitol. Its the closest town to my border - and will suceed in strengthening that border against Rome. Also as a longtime ally, i feel better having their Capitol under greek rule - rather than roman, i owe something for their long alliance with my people; even if they were forced to betray it under pressure from the Roman invaison?

This game is still rocking and a rolling nicely

Downsides:

Well having seen the effect one of the more powerfull diplomatic options can have(it could have given the Romans the war-or at least a step on the way?) - i'm left thinking that Diplomats should have a cost to keeping them, like most other things in the game?

You start with one and ok you can loose one when trying a dodgy tactic if they get found out+ you suffer a relations loss with that particular nation(which can be very dangerous of itself!); but if that happens you get a replacement Diplomat(at starting rank of 1star) free of charge. So some extra kind of cost to getting/keeping diplomats might be nice - to make those decisions extra hard.

Thats the only possibly bad stuff i have found in this game, everything else seems solid - more so than any other game i have played of this type

[child of Thor]

My last post in this section

a poem that i forget where its from(maybe the Illiad?), that they have at the beginingof the game:

"Stranger passing by, prey go tell the Spartans that obidient to their laws we lie" - i think as in they were dead corpses expressing how tough(and invincible!) the Spartans were for a good long while

enjoy the game those that this thread may have promted to go have a look at it - i'm very impressed with it

[duke o' york]

I'm currently playing through the tutorial sections (to save me reading the manual ), as well as keeping an eye on Ogame.
It seems pretty cool so far!

[Illuminatus]

Question: I am in opportunity to buy Spartan: Gates of Troy and I must say I am intrigued by the game.

However, in what relation are Spartan: Gates of Troy and Spartan? I understand that the first is the expansion for the game, but do I need to purchase the original game as well to run it?

What are the settings of the grand campaign? Does it cover the fifth (or even sixt ) century BCE? From information presented in this thread it seems that grand campaign starts only in 400 BCE.

[duke o' york]

Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea yet.
I'm still conquering Crete.

I can imagine that you get a lot more than 100 years for the grand campaign - some of the research takes ages!
I'm sure you can find the answer to your other question at Slitherine's site (linked to above).

[duke o' york]

This is a cool game!

More updates on Thursday.

[Grumbold]

I enjoyed the game for about a month before the gameplay became a bit too predictable. Its unquestionably the best Slitherine game so far.

[duke o' york]

I have just won the first basic scenario with the East Lesbians, and it's a right pain to attack walled cities, because you need tonnes of cash to keep a decent-sized army in the field long enough to siege the city and bring the walls down.