Hinterlands is a new kind of game that mixes RPG with the Caesar type of simulation.
You begin by choosing the class you want to play as - Archer, Footman, Architect, Yeoman and etc...
Their stats include more than just Str, Dex and Int. When picking the class you want to play with, you also have to keep in mind their money-making skills and fame gain rate.
When you're done choosing, you start out as a level 1 character in your town (you're a noble, I guess). Visitors will arrive and you can build a home for them to hire them. Farmers, Trappers and Fletchers are only some of the basic types of people you will work with.
You can also go to the outlying wilderness to "patrol". When on patrol, what you're really doing is slaughter monsters a la Diablo style. So far I've seen Dark Elves, Goblins and Ogres fell by my weapons, but I'm sure there are many more kinds of monsters out there.
Your peasants can also help you hunt monsters, up to a max of 3 people. You can change their equipment just like you can change yours, except some items benefit them more than they help you. For example, some items not only have a higher chance of dealing Critical damage, but also increase the speed of your Craftsmen in making armours and weapons.
While you're busy turning your herders into armoured warriors, you also have to deal with your King's nonsense and marauders. For my first game, the King demand access for Souls in the first 5 mins of the game. Even now, I still don't know where to get that! My best guess is that Souls are produced by Crypts, which are in the farther regions of the wilderness. The penalty was high - 40 Fame; I only had 46 Fame at that point of time!
The other random event is raiders trying to destroy my little village. There would be a message that informs you of their imminent arrival, but they do not appear in your land immediately. I didn't know that until my second game, when I discovered that they are displayed in the Region map and I saw them come from a base quite some distance away.
About the resources, there are 3, Gold, Food and Fame. Gold is necessary for the usual stuff like upgrading a structure, researching new weapons and armours, and most importantly, building homes for your new slaves. Some occupations require more expensive homes than the others. A Craftsman needs more equipment and luxury than your run-of-the-mill Farmer.
Food is the basis of life here. Each person, including you, eats 1 Food per day. Herders, Farmers and Ranchers are the basic food producers in the game.
Fame is needed to attract better talents. Obviously Bill Gates is going to have an easier time finding the best people to work for him compared to... say, the guy living next door, unless you live next to Bill Gates. Each type of occupation has a minimum Fame requirement before you can hire these experts. A Farmer doesn't require more than 20 Fame for him to willingly work for you, but don't expect the same indiscriminate behaviour from a professionally trained Guard.
In this game, you can't just concentrate on playing SimCity though. In the uncharted territory out there are Wild Game, Springs, Iron Mines and many other resources that you will need to upgrade your peasants. For example, a Trapper can become a Hunter, but only if you have access to Wild Game. A Workshop can be turned into a Smithy only if you have a steady supply of Iron. To gain such access you will need to kill the monsters around them, hence your action RPG game.
I actually finished one game in 2 days. I played as a Seneschal on the 2nd (out of 4) difficulty. The Seneschal has the worst combat abilities but can make more money.
It started out quite badly. I couldn't fight well, so I didn't get much loot. No loot = no money. I couldn't sell my extra stuff because I didn't have a Merchant. I didn't have a Merchant because I couldn't afford the 100+ gold required to build his freakin palace. So the game went very slowly as I ran out, kill a monster or two and losing most of my HP in the process, run back to town to recuperate ( I don't have the ability to heal when outside of town), then rinse and repeat.
Things went much better once I enslaved a Merchant. I sold him all my extra junk and that really helped. My 2 Craftsmen also produced a lot of crap that I wouldn't touch, and that slightly increased my income regularly. The Merchant himself also produces gold. Once more money entered the treasury, I hired the other money-maker, the fortune teller.
The game isn't perfect. This is most true in the case of the Dragoneer. A Herder can be upgraded into a Dragoneer (ie dragon keeper) if you find a dragon egg among your loot. Apparently the Dragon and the Dragoneer become buddies once it hatches, and it gains level every few days. I found a dragon egg in the early game, and hired a Herder my level (lv2) to take care of it. I forgot about it until I noticed it again when I was lv10. The Dragon was already lv50!
But the Dragoneer was lv2!!!
I couldn't sack the Dragoneer because no visitors ever come as a Dragoneer; I have to build a Ranch and then upgrade it. Hence I couldn't replace him with a higher level guy with a better defense.
So I thought that it would be fun to have a lv50 Dragon around to kill the lv12 monsters out there. At first it was great. The Dragon was godlike and I thought I could just clear the whole land and finish the game in one trip. The Dragoneer, though, didn't agree. He died by the fifth monster. Worst of all is... you guessed it - the Dragon dies with the Dragoneer.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!
My other Dragon tended by another herder (lv9) was only at lv27, so I didn't feel like taking it out. It just wouldn't be as cool. They really need to give me the option to replace the Dragoneer because by the time the Dragon is of a suitable level the Dragoneer's would be too low.
The game also has a few bugs. One is that sometimes items disappear when I equip my peasants with new equipment. The old stuff would just vanish. Not that it's a big matter but it may turn into one.
Another bug is that the option to fire someone doesn't always appear.
Though this game has an expansion already released, I cannot find it online. So I shall stick with this and Broken Steel.
While downloading the client of Warrior Epic, I read about the Fourth Crusade on Wikipedia. The original goal of this crusade was to take Jerusalem from the Muslims, but few of the crusaders ever reached the Holy Land. Innocent III had made it his goal as Pope, but the plans were foiled by the situation in Europe at that time.
I expected epic battles and seiges in this story. Instead, the Fourth Crusade turned out to be a disgusting tale of greed and Byzantine politics.
Step 1: Go to Venice, take the ships built just for the occasion and leave straight for Cairo.
Step 2: From Cairo, move to Jerusalem, seige and take back the Holy Land.
This was the initial plan for the whole conquest, but it was never followed. It was screwed up right from the start. I'm not referring to the whole Step 1; "start" here means "go to Venice".
Only a third of the agreed 33500 troops met at Venice. Meanwhile the merchant state had sacrificed a large part of its population and economy (operating those ships take up to 20-30k of its 60k population, and building enough ships to carry 33500 men requires some serious bit of capital), and had been promised 85k silver marks. The Crusaders there could only produce 51k only if they scrape up everything bit of of money they have.
So a new agreement was made: conquer Zara for Venice, which had overthrown their economic dominance some time back, and the Crusaders get a discount.
Now Zara was a Christian city, and its rebellion mentioned above was aided by the Hungarian King, Emeric, who was involved with the Crusade. To top it off, there was the very serious order from the Pope not to attack Christian states.
So the Crusaders laid seige and conquered the city. Catholics in Zara hung banners with crosses on them to declare their religion in vain. In the process, many Crusaders who opposed to this attack deserted and returned home. The Pope was furious. Mr Emeric was fuming. The Venetians LOLed. The Crusaders avoided bankruptcy.
Even though the Pope threatened discommunication, his Legate decided it was necessary. In the end nothing was done.
He should have done what he said he would do, because of the next part of the story.
The son of a recently deposed Byzantine emperor (apparently deposed Roman emperors were common in those days), Alexius IV, promised the Crusaders 200k silver marks, 100k men, 500 knights and placing the Greek Orthodox Church under the Roman Catholic Church if he got his father's throne back.
So they seiged and destroyed two nearby cities, then attacked Constantinople itself. Alexius III, who was defending the city, escaped with a lot of gold and stuff. When Alexius IV was raised to the throne together with his dad, Isaac II, he saw that he wouldn't be able to keep his promise to the Crusaders.
His solution was to melt valuable Roman artifacts for the gold and silver. Even so, he was only able to raise half the promised amount. This action made the city hate him, and the resulting lack of cash pissed off the Crusaders. Eventually he was strangled by one of his courtiers who went on to become Emperor Alexius V (Why was the name so popular anyway? Imagine having 3 consecutive US presidents named Obama. Shit would be so cash!). The father soon died in the aftermath.
This made the Crusaders even angrier. Now that the guy who promised them all those things were dead, what the fuck were they supposed to do? They demanded that the new emperor keep the promises made by his predecessor, which was obviously refused.
The first seige wasn't a huge success, but they continued with its sequel, Seige 2, to recoup their losses.
On the 8th of April 1204, they attacked the Greek city again. It was kinda like the time when I was a little boy and made my brother really angry. Before he could hit me I ran into the bedroom and locked the door. He then proceeded to take out his badminton racket and smashed the door. To no avail, of course, proven by the absence of scars on my bones.
Anyway, that was roughly what happened. Details include the Greeks destroying the seige engines and the wind preventing their ships from attacking the city.
The clergymen had to convince the Crusaders that God wasn't punishing them, but He was only testing their determination (Fuck! How could anyone stand this cliche crap? Wait, maybe it wasn't cliche back then. But it's still crap!). The Pope told them to stop, but this was suppressed by the rest of the Church. For all his noble intent, he was the 13th century version of EFG (Epic Fail Guy, internet meme) in this story.
In their next wave of attack, they finally got some good winds and made it into the city. While conquering the city, they managed to burn a large part of it down. After that, they did some serious pillaging and then destroyed the city. The famous Library of Constantinople was hence gone. Despite all the threats the Pope made, even the churches and stuff were stolen or destroyed. By Crusaders, no less!
In this victory, it was said that they made over 900k silver marks. The Venetians received 150k, the Crusaders 50k, another 100k divided up by the same two groups and 500k secretly held by the Crusader knights.
The lands of the empire (since they've conquered the capital of the Byzantine Empire) were also divided up by the parties involved.
After that, they lived happily ever after.
Jerusalem? Still under Muslim control. LOL no one cares.
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