Game of Thrones - Genesis

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:51 pm

Apparently it's available on Steam now, according to some on the official board, despite the official release still being tomorrow. I'm still a little nervous about the lack of hype or demo, but first impressions seem to be pretty good.

Urge to download rising...........................

[edit]While the idea that the game is more focused on politics and diplomacy than warfare, I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger on $40. I guess I'll wait for impressions or a sale.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:47 pm

The first Let's Play is up. I haven't watched it yet, but it seems to be some guy playing the tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Dukely1#p/u/1/gg8NsgL2lVA" target="_blank

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 11:56 pm

I picked it up, weak will and all.

Will post impressions soon.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:12 am

baelthazar wrote:I picked it up, weak will and all.

Will post impressions soon.

Please, because I am really on the fence, and you and I agree more often than not.

Jaddison · Post by **Jaddison** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:34 am

I at least go through the first tutorial which has an interesting mechanic about diplomacy that seems true to the world of the books. You have to send envoys to sway towns and castles to your cause except you can also have secret pacts. Spys can ascertain whether a vassal is in a secret pact......you can cement your relationship with a town or castle by marrying off one your women to the town/castle lord. Was too tired to get to the next tutorial...but it is interesting that the first tutorial is about diplomacy

Baroquen · Post by **Baroquen** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:39 am

Thought this was typical RTS, and also expected that reviews wouldn't be great. Seems more interesting with a diplomacy/political slant. And impressions haven't been dreadful. Won't buy this full price, but if trend of reviews continues, might look to pick it up on a sale.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 11:20 am

Here's hoping for a Thanksgiving sale.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:20 pm

Still only got through the tutorials, but something about this game screams "Seven Kingdoms!" It is far less of a wargame than I thought, and has some similarities with Knights of Honor.

For instance, you send Envoys to "convert" neutral cities around the map to your alliance. You can also send a Noble Lady (which, in the tutorial you buy, but surely are not spammable) to seal a more secure Blood Alliance. But, the kicker is that a spy can turn your Envoy's alliance into a secret deal, which SEEMS like you are still allied with neutral city, but is in fact allied with another House. You can also infiltrate spies into other Houses' main castle and tell them to "come out as a X" (i.e. Assassin, Envoy, etc). The next time the player creates a new one of these, it will be - in reality - your spy and will "fake" actions order (i.e. Assassins will only pretend to kill a target of yours, making said target look like he dies, but go invisible for 30 seconds).

This game could be fairly good, IF, the AI is able to handle all of this. It may be that the game will require MP to fully be fleshed out.

Somewhere flying around is the manual, if people want more info.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:01 pm

baelthazar wrote:Still only got through the tutorials, but something about this game screams "Seven Kingdoms!" It is far less of a wargame than I thought, and has some similarities with Knights of Honor.

For instance, you send Envoys to "convert" neutral cities around the map to your alliance. You can also send a Noble Lady (which, in the tutorial you buy, but surely are not spammable) to seal a more secure Blood Alliance. But, the kicker is that a spy can turn your Envoy's alliance into a secret deal, which SEEMS like you are still allied with neutral city, but is in fact allied with another House. You can also infiltrate spies into other Houses' main castle and tell them to "come out as a X" (i.e. Assassin, Envoy, etc). The next time the player creates a new one of these, it will be - in reality - your spy and will "fake" actions order (i.e. Assassins will only pretend to kill a target of yours, making said target look like he dies, but go invisible for 30 seconds).

This game could be fairly good, IF, the AI is able to handle all of this. It may be that the game will require MP to fully be fleshed out.

Somewhere flying around is the manual, if people want more info.

I picked up on the Knights of Honor/Seven Kingdoms vibe myself, which is why I pulled the trigger. I only played around with it for a little while, but can't find a way to save or restore a game - just reload checkpoints.

Please tell me I'm missing something here.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:02 am

I have done a 180 on this game, and the more time I spend on it the more I like it.

One thing I discovered about the inability to save - it doesn't matter. Most matches play more like a real-time board game, and are over in less than an hour. The only map that will probably go longer is the full map of Westeros, with all 8 houses competing.

Rather than write lengthy impressions, there is a very good impressions post on Quarter to Three, most of which I agree with.

A couple of points he doesn't touch on:

1) In addition to the tutorial and the manual - read the Encyclopedia (in-game). There are achievements for reading it for a reason, and in addition to strategic tips, there is a lot of useful stuff in there such as

2) Each town or castle is goverened by a Lord, and every Lord has a trait that determines the difficulty of securing an alliance or how quickly it degrades. For example, if you use an envoy to secure an alliance with a Pacifist, and start using your Assassins a lot, the alliance will degrade that much quicker.

3) First House with 100 Prestige wins. Prestige is awarded having the greatest number of Alliances, earning the most Gold, carrying out the greatest number of Assasinations, or allying with the most Septs. There are icons at the top of the screen to show who is in the lead in each category, but it doesn't give the name of the House, just an icon. So unless you have them memorized, you have to scour the map....

4)......Which isn't easy, because, again, tooltips on the map over a Feudal Home (HQ for each faction) only says that it's a Feudal Home, not who it belongs to. Gee, thanks.

5)And finally this has the best end-game summary I've ever seen. There is a screen that shows you what every faction did, minute by minute, so you can study how the A.I. plays the game. For example, select House Stark, and you may see something like:

00:05 Built spy

00:15 Secret alliance with [town name]

00:35 Great Lord marries

01:35 Heir is born

etc.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:05 am

That is good to hear TGB, because I play a bit of the campaign and started a 2-player House v. House game and I was coming here to post that I really didn't think the game had legs. I'll put more time into it before posting base impressions.

My one major gripe is that it seems to be a waste of the source material. AGOT really needed something with more depth, like Sengoku or Crusader Kings, to capture the feel of books. Rather than send "Generic Envoy" to convert a town, I should be sending Littlefinger. Rather than have an Assassin hit a "Generic Noble Lady," I should be sending him to off Arya Stark. And each unit could, like Sengoku, could have had different loyalty levels and traits.

In essence, AGOT is not that type of game. It is certainly an RTS, albeit a different type of one where killing things is less important and with a small unit count. I'm a bit disheartened by the speed of the game - it is really hard to react to envoys and spies when they can convert town very quickly. You almost have to have an initial Envoy Zergling rush to grab all the places you want, then deal with how to steal your enemies influence later. I was wrong about the AI, it seems to be good at what it does because it can micromanage much more efficiently than a human player.

I'm less enchanted at this point, but I'm going to hope I turn around as you did.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:50 pm

I've watched videos of the tutorials now and, while the mechanics look interesting, by biggest worry is something Bael alluded to: micromanagement.

While it's a pretty cool idea to have all those interactions between different units it seems like it's another thing entirely to be able to stay on top of everything and be able to get the right units in place at the right time to counter what's coming your way.

For instance, it's a really cool idea that if you've secured the loyalty of an enemy assassin, anyone of yours that he kills looks like they died to your enemy, but instead turns invisible for 30 seconds, but that in turn means everytime something like that happens I need to go to that spot and move my unit somewhere safe or else my opponent is going to figure out pretty quick his assassin has been bought.

Does the game have an alert system to advise you of all these little things going on and let you immediately jump to them? Even then I can't imagine trying to do this on the whole of Westeros is going to be manageable, but at least it would show some thought had been put into the interface.

Nice that they have a detailed game breakdown, but that's been a fairly standard feature of a lot of RTS games for a while now.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:52 pm

The one saving grace is that the game is that you can pause.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 7:51 pm

Sepiche wrote:
Nice that they have a detailed game breakdown, but that's been a fairly standard feature of a lot of RTS games for a while now.

Shows what I know. I think the last traditional RTS I played was Starcraft. The first one.

EzeKieL · Post by **EzeKieL** » Sat Oct 01, 2011 9:44 am

Does teh game contain spoilers of the series?

Because I've only watched season 1 of the tv series but haven't read the books.

I'm liking what most of you are saying because I like knights of honor, but if the game contains spoilers I'm going to pass.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Oct 01, 2011 10:14 am

No spoilers to the series, because the connection is more in the names of the factions and tone of the game than specifics. The campaign is supposed to be a prequel to the books, of sorts.

After spending some more time in the campaign (I really just started playing, as opposed to "playing around" this morning), I've come to the conclusion this game is closest to Star Wars:Rebellion, and destined to be just as polarizing.

What it really needs is the ability to queue orders.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Sat Oct 01, 2011 10:33 am

For anyone on the fence, Amazon Download is currently selling the game for 20% off ($31.99) and the key the provide will activate the copy on STEAM.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:39 pm

tgb wrote:No spoilers to the series, because the connection is more in the names of the factions and tone of the game than specifics. The campaign is supposed to be a prequel to the books, of sorts.

After spending some more time in the campaign (I really just started playing, as opposed to "playing around" this morning), I've come to the conclusion this game is closest to Star Wars:Rebellion, and destined to be just as polarizing.

What it really needs is the ability to queue orders.

Yes... I was trying to place my finger on it. It IS like Star Wars: Rebellion, without the "go down to the planet and suck" part of the game.

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