Ashes of Empire presents a more complex version of what Midwinter 2 was trying to do, gain control of a territory before an opposing force decides to attack you. In contrast to the slightly goofier post-apocalyptic setting of Midwinter, this time it's in a vast country called the Confederation of Syndicalist Republics, which is somewhere between the Soviet Union, in size and having a massive nuclear arsenal, and the Yugoslavia in having 5 distinct ethnicities that all hate each others guts and would like to see those guts spilled on the streets. (Well, that's what the CSR has, anyway)
I note that I'm reconstructing the information about the game as best I can from what resources I have. See, this game has a truly massive amount of background materials. It's a bit difficult to find the manual, but even so, this manual is incomplete, it doesn't have anything from chapters 4-7, which are possibly not essentially to winning the game, but do provide important background information. Knowing the Midwinter 2, "Regional Profiles" sounds absolutely vital to actually winning the game. And the rest of it sounds like useful background information. I do understand why nobody bothered to upload what is 100+ pages of something that's of little interest to even most DOS gamers, even if it hurts. On the plus side, there is a VHS tape that a few people were kind enough to upload to the internet.
It's not difficult to see why. What the manual has paints it as more valuable than the game itself in terms of actually playing it. I'll explain some of it later, but even in this cut down form it contains vital information for success. The player is the commander of the United Community (Obvious take off the UN) forces. What these are is vague, but you're leading a force to bring peace and harmony to the CSR by pacifying each sub-Republic. This is accomplished by performing four tasks. Building, Demolition, Pacification and Ethnic Harmony. As the UN's major failures in Yugoslavia were yet to happen, I believe this was not intended to be satirical, but rather completely serious.
Selecting where you start off.
Getting away from the Yugoslavia comparisons, we ARE talking about a power which has nukes, and has elements in what remains of the government who aren't afraid to use them. Time is a factor in the game, you need to go through things as quickly as you can. There are hard limits and soft limits. The game has a time limit of 150 days, owing to how the state of nuclear alert goes up every 50 days. You're likely to get less than that, since that's the high limit. Soft limits are things like time in a province or republic, dictated by how many "morale" buildings you get under your control or by capturing provinces.
Further soft limits include the people in power deciding to nuke the region you're in or partisans deciding to set fire to forests. You get fire-fighting teams for the latter, but there's nothing you can do about the nukes. From what I understand, having never had either happen, they destroy resources you get for freeing a province rather than killing you.
So...it's almost a famine?
Despite being a game with goofy gameplay, I don't believe I've ever played a game that's captured quite a feeling of despair in warfare before. You're not fighting against some evil empire, you're just fighting against desperate people doing desperate things. Yes, the top brass are willing to nuke themselves, but the country is literally collapsing around them. We're not dealing with people who are all there.
Civilian cars, because even in fictional communist republics, some people are more equal than others.
To win the game, one needs to get all the Republics pacified, which requires pacifying two provinces and the capital province, or a considerable number of other provinces. I never got far enough to deal with a capital province, so maybe it's considerably more difficult. The specifics of each pacification programme in each province is different, the buildings you need to build/capture, the buildings you destroy, the enemies you need to eliminate and the votes you get all depend on various factors.
Negotiating, and being told when some local Professionals will return.
The way you accomplish this doesn't change much though. You start off in a plane, flying from village to village, negotiating with the owners of various buildings. You're not getting buildings for the sake of getting buildings, because resources play a role in the game. You get a number of trade goods, combat items and then campaign goodies. You can trade these to get the buildings, along with other goods. You can also negotiate for the building, trying one of eight persuasion options in order to get it to change hands. This instead costs time. What can you afford to lose more of? Or you could just know that buildings of a certain type in a certain area all work via the same persuasion method.
The heads rotate around on the neck, because that isn't off-putting at all.
Then there are Professionals, individuals which travel across the map and offer various things in exchange for more. Sometimes it's just more simple goods, other times it's something like various teams, which function as people goods, get enough Professionals on your side and you can make new ones. For the most part, Professionals don't offer anything you can't get elsewhere, they just make it considerably easier. That said, they also offer votes, which you cannot get in any other method. There's seemingly more available votes than Professionals than you need, but I didn't get very far by necessity.
A map which has been filled out with a lot of towns, but not much in the ways of enemies.
Most of the gameplay for me consisted of traveling between villages, capturing Radar Stations, which allow you to see more of the map, capturing vital buildings, and capturing the building pairs which allow you infinite vital resources within a certain region. Ammo, fuel and food are the primary ones, which are incredibly useful to have. There are buildings which allow you unlimited vehicles of certain types, as well. Then recording the locations of various Professionals, and possibly giving them the goods they ask for if it's a good deal.
Engaging in a little air-to-air combat.
You'll note that most of this does not describe shooting things. For the most part, you can just fly past enemies. Combat is odd. There are two weapons, missiles and bullets, most vehicles have them. (There's also a stun weapon for when you're on foot, but I was never in that situation) I feel like by the end of the game, I didn't have any issue whatsoever with the mouse aiming, even if at the start I had to turn my mouse sensitivity down. Because enemies can be removed by Professionals, you only want to do this when necessary.
About to shoot at a tank in a fighter, something which just won't work in this game.
But what you can shoot and be shot at is decided with a somewhat complex system. Everyone is in a vehicle, except possibly you, and that vehicle can attack certain other types of vehicles, and a few are the only ones which can take out buildings. So if you're flying a fighter, you can only shoot other aircraft, and can only be hit by enemies which shoot at aircraft. In practice, because flying is faster than driving, and there's always a building which offers unlimited aircraft, it's picking out one kind of plane for that moment.
Driving in a tank. Note the HUD, which is nearly flawless outside of the compass being apart from the radar.
It's fine, nothing fancy, no flight sim developers are soiling themselves in terror. Guns are actually easier to aim than missiles, because they are given quite a generous hitbox. I'm talking as long as you hit the tile something is in, you've killed them. Missiles have this problem where the enemies shoot missiles at you and both explode. You can avoid this if you're really high above them, but this can be impractical. Side note, bombers shoot bullets, presumably this was to make things easier on the development side.
If you get shot down, you either use up medical treatments you've traded for or get to wait longer. Because everything is a question of time, not health. You get another vehicle by pressing a button and selecting a new vehicle. It costs you resources, fuel, the vehicle in question and an airlift, so not getting shot down is good. If you run out of ammo, you get more by pressing a button to restock your ammo, which costs you fuel, ammo and an airlift. If you're out of fuel or airlifts, good luck.
And that is the entire game, repeated probably 30 times. The idea is very clever, but at the same time, Singleton has this design philosophy which makes these things feel like an insurmountable problem that can't be managed without knowing everything ahead of time. If you don't know how to do everything perfectly, then you won't have much chance at winning at all. Which means that through every province you go through, you've have to do it at least twice. Once to figure out where most of the important stuff is, again in order to handle it quickly. You don't quite have to plan out your route that much, but there's just no playing around.
There's basically no reason not to want this particular deal.
Which is not helped by the game setting itself up so that any actual fighting seems like it's counterproductive to your objective. Yes, you are supposed to take out enemy troops, but there are professionals which allow you to turn a lot of them to your side. That combined with the whole peace vibe the game is going for, makes the act of fighting itself feel wrong. In odd irony, this is the most a game has ever actually done to make the war is hell theme work as opposed to window dressing or something hamfisted. Fighting is always possible, but these are not bad people, and just as easily they could be fighting alongside you. They're not even fighting against you for any reason other than survival.
The problem is no amount of clever ideas can make a game that just doesn't feel fun to play work. Yes, it feels counterproductive to shoot enemies, but it also just isn't that fun flying around in a small area slowly whittling down a group of 14 enemies, who spawn 1 at a time, among many other groups of enemies, none of which you can fight at the same time, in a wide open area which looks like nothing much at all. It succeeds at being anti-war by making fighting feel like a complete waste of time. This isn't to insult real world peace efforts, but it's just too much like the real thing to be fun at all.
There are probably hundreds of these across the country, and you might just have to enter every one.
And it also doesn't help that the game doesn't really feel like either genre it is, just a weird trading sim. Yes, it's a FPS. They might be vehicles but the difference feels like a moot point. Yes, it's a strategy game, but it doesn't feel like I'm really thinking long term that much outside of time. It plays like a really messed up game of Elite where the most valuable resource you have is time.
The game is also very slow. If you don't know what a particular building is, you have to climb down in your plane. Actually VTOL, because there are small mercies. Check your GUI to see if it's the one you want, exit with a button press, enter the building with another. Wait for the building to load, because every transition, be it a building or a menu, takes a few seconds, do what you need to do. Switch to the village, go through the rest, exit, return to the plane, then fly back up. Yes, the exiting of the plane is necessary, because if you don't, it disappears and that's a vital resource.
Then of course, to get to the next village, you open up the map, go in the general direction, and just stare at the screen, which has a short viewing distance, occasionally returning to your map to check you're headed in the right direction, or opening the expanded radar screen to see if the village you're looking for is within range. Assuming it's in the current cell, because if it isn't, it'll suddenly load in when you change cells.
Between these factors and the general seriousness of the game's subject matter, I keep wondering. Is this game intended to be fun or a learning experience? The former shows up in a considerable amount of the game's gaminess. There are underwater cities in places with lakes, which took me out of the game for a moment. In the latter, well, while yes, this is a terrible situation, it is not down to one man to literally fix a country himself. No one does anything without your okay. This was fine in games like Lords of Midnight and Midwinter when you were an abstract entity controling various characters. In a game where nobody seems to do anything that isn't at the behest of a man going around bombing every building and killing every enemy himself, during a situation where delay means certain death, it's weird. Then again, we are talking about a game where you can bomb a bombproof factory. Weapons: Gun or missile. There's some strategy to them, and they actually felt kind of satisfying once I got used to them. 2/10
Enemies: The vehicle system aside, enemy AI is very questionable, almost never providing a real threat, just the odd bit of good luck. 1/10
Non-Enemies: You can actually order in friendly troops, and they'll take out enemies at a 1-to-1 ratio, but it's incredibly wasteful. 1/10
Levels: Behold, endless tiles and endless villages full of endless people. 1/10
Player Agency: It takes a lot of time to figure out the various keys you need to enter buildings and check your objectives, and even when you do each transition is slow, but it's very functional. 6/10
Interactivity: You can destroy buildings, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. 1/10
Atmosphere: I have never played a game that managed to so successfully impart the awfulness of war and famine. Alas, this is not conductive to it being fun. 5/10
Graphics: The 3D is kind of hard to distinguish. The 2D is...fine. I don't object to it, but it does remain that it's not very interesting. 2/10
Story: The game hammers home as much as possible the whole fall of an empire aspect as much as possible, but you're focused completely on the big picture rather than details, so there's not much of an actual story. 2/10
Sound/Music: I don't know how much music there is, but it's incredibly repetitive for a game that's going to last hundreds of hours. The sound effects are nice, but it doesn't matter when you want to turn your speakers off just to get away from that constant pounding. 1/10
That's 22.
As a game, I can't recommend it. As an experience, it's certainly given me something to think about. I'm not really sure what Singleton was going for here, but I must admit, that could be said of Midwinter 2 as well. Was this fun with added realism? Or something intended as serious look at the collapse of a Soviet Union-like state? Complicating matters more is I can easily see this as a Midwinter 3 - How the Bombs Fell. Those underwater cities are more Midwinter than reality, after all.
Next time, a bit of an off-topic track in Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, which will hopefully provide a bit of contrast to a game which dances around the edge of ethnic genocide and nuclear war.
I finished the last entry, asking myself a question. Restart or continue onward in what might just be a doomed state? The answer came when I looked over the map again. Can I even *win* in this province? No. I can't, there simply aren't enough forts to do so. Since that was a bust, it made my decision easy. Restart in a new place. Also, turn off the sound via the install menu, because that was getting annoying. You really can't be bothered to have an in-game music toggle?
This time, I go for one in Ossia. Or rather the one the game seems to let me pick, Temir, where instead of a famine, the economy is the problem. Only smugglers and gangsters are moving stuff, there's nothing in the shops and rebels have taken the gold. In practical terms, I have to get Vaults, Mines, Well Heads and Refineries. I have to take out Forts, Barracks and Communication Centres. This is an interesting realization, I didn't know that what buildings you had to build/destroy were conditional. I also realize that this means I can't get unlimited ammo in this province. There are a lot more troops I'll have to deal with, but I'm confident that I'll be able to deal with that one way or another. The votes are considerably easier, just Ossian and Moldenes, with a tiny Ruzakh minority.
Fighters spawn close enough to my starting position that I end up fighting some the second I switch away from my map screen. Two towns also pop up right within walking distance. This is not what I'm concerned with right away. I'm concerned with filling out the map so I can know where I need to go, and that means going around without getting into combat, just exploring towns and recording Professionals' requirements. And also this time checking that I can actually, you know, win this province.
The province is very small, but full of a lot of enemies. Not in the sense of there being big concentrations, but of them being spread out all across the map. This makes things tricky to properly eliminate. Does this mean I need to get half a dozen pacifying professionals to get through this with a minimal amount of fuss? I decide that ultimately combat is something I should be avoiding.
My campaign here starts at Kilodar near the starting position. I trade goods for a Depot and Pump Head. Now I just need to find a Processing Plant and I have unlimited food. There's an Engineer Builder here, who just wants goods for goods and votes, not really something I need just yet. A Professor is expected, so I negotiate at a mine until he comes. This turns out to be the wise choice, as the Professor knows where everyone in the province is, and is willing to give me 30 airlifts, plus medication and votes besides. All he wants is 10 fuel, 10 goods and 10 gold.
I head east, going through, but ignoring Trotchenko, nothing I need. My real objective here is Brivrilsk. I negotiate for a Control Tower and a Fort. I might have to blow up the latter later, but until I need to do so, it's going to provide vital resources. Then there are two professionals, a Doctor and a Strike Marshal. The former just gives me medical treatment and some votes, not yet necessary. The Strike Marshal, meanwhile, is incredibly powerful, so I decide that it's actually a better option to allow him to reach a different town, he recruits all CSR forces with 50 km, which is a waste near the border.
That isn't actually where I wanted to go, but as I've mentioned, it's hard to have an exact idea of where you're going in this game. So, I head southwest to Vistev, which is a small town with a Vault and a Radar Station. Which opens up my knowledge of the area without having to rely on the guy who told me where everyone is.
I continue southeast to Drigoran, which has a Mosque, a Well Head and a Hospital. I grab the Mosque and Well Head, since I need the latter. There's a Surgeon and Superintendant Administrator here, both of which just want various goods rather than anything harder to replace. Against my better judgement, I give both the necessary resources, and get medical treatment, papers and enough Moldene votes to finish that. Which now leaves a good question of where to go next, as most of the towns that have anything I want seem to be pinned down by some battalion I'd need ground attack capability to deal with, and I'm trying to stick to a fighter unless absolutely necessary.
This turns out to have been an unwise decision, as I head southeast, to Jilgevo, which only has a Well Head and a Bombproof Warehouse. It's guarded by tanks and I just decide to ignore them. They shoot the Well Head. I'm glad that enemies can destroy buildings as well as friendlies. This game wasn't hard enough as-is. The manual also states that bombproof buildings are destructible too, but that doesn't matter.
Out of an interest in capturing a Refinery, I head southwest to Batchyl, which is practically a one-stop shop for most of the important bits. A Well Head and a Refinery. Unfortunately, there's a tank battalion there too, which means that this fighter is going to be more trouble than its worth for a moment. Still, just because they spawn there sometimes doesn't mean I should change just yet. Enemies have to be right on top of the town, not just wandering around it. There are two nurses here, who just offer a paltry amount of medical treatment and votes that I don't yet need. I negotiate for a Vault, and the two important buildings.
Southeast of that is Dedlagan, which has a Control Tower and a Farmhouse, not important right now. What is interesting is that another Strike Marshal is here. The end result is the same, he wants diamonds and 2 medical teams, demolishes the forts (Apparently there are more than the required number to destroy in this province, or he can destroy ones I have) and recruits nearby CSR forces. This doesn't seem that much better, but I know there's some more south that I haven't encountered yet.
My next target is west, Elgalsk. There's a Refinery and a Factory here, the later produces ground vehicles. The big news is that there's a Captain of Works here willing to build Mines and Well Heads for me. I think there are enough Well Heads, but I'm not sure on Mines. He pushes the number of Well Heads into the target reached, and now I only need to find a few Mines to succeed there. Votes are also becoming quite easy to finish.
I head east-southeast to Taskagan, which has a Vault, an already built Well Head and two Engineer Builders travelling to there. One's a Ruzakh and both have little to offer me, so I just give the Ruzakh what he wants so that part of the votes are over. I decide now to head to the little outcroping in the southern part of the region, going west to Cregomsk. Owing to a mountain southwest of Taskagan, I end up making an accidental detour back to Elgalsk, which I've already cleaned out. Going the right way around, turns out that mountain wasn't supposed to be blocking me, I actually reach my destination. The buildings there are unimportant, there are more Professionals here. A Lieutenant Administrator offers me just air lifts and votes. It's not really something I feel is too worth the cost, but at the same time, it wins me the voting programme, so I take it. The other is a Medical Coordinator who offers me nothing I need at this point.
I engage in a little combat at this point, no reason not to. More or less just shooting whatever little I can before moving onward, I'm not doing serious cleanup just yet. I then head west to Rupirsk, which has a Radar Station and a Mine, winning both via negotiation. No Professionals here, so I continue south to Zutol, where there is a Professional, a Nurse, who offers me nothing I actually need at this point. Otherwise, there's a Vault, Well Head and Radar Station, with exception to the Radar Station (I just give the required wine), I negotiate for.
Continuing further south, I go to those three towns in a sort of triangle shape. Grelyl has a Mine and a Radar Station. Second, Digrevsk, which is actually one I didn't know of before, has a Refinery, and Processing Plant, as well as two Professionals. The first is a Highway Master, who will build most of the rest of what I need, but needs a Medical team I don't have. The second is a Lieutenant Administrator who can offer me nothing I need. I lose my Groundhawk here, but that doesn't work entirely against me, as I needed a bomber for Frogorno, which has a Barracks I need to take out. There's a Well Head, Fuel Dump and Windmill here that I negotiate for while waiting for an Engineering Coordinator. For three gold, he'll give me all the ammo and fuel I'll need in this area. Then it's just east to Memeanka, which has a Factory, Warehouse and Refinery, but more importantly, a Professional. It's just the Highway Master again, and I need to get another medical team somehow before grabbing him.
Since there's a Communications Center in Saprorsk, I head there next. There's also no required buildings there, so, indiscriminate fire is not a problem here. Then it's back south for a series of towns with Well Heads, Vaults, Refineries and one Radar Station. I'm going around the edge, just grabbing what I can. Including medical Professionals so I can maybe build a team out of them.
Once I'm out of the hole, so to speak, I head west to the mountains. It's fairly clear skies, but of course the areas that do have enemies are the towns. Still, there are plenty of Well Heads (I no longer need them if I did before), the final Mine I need and a few Vaults, so I'm slowly but surely finishing things up. At least, until I find a Radar Station revealing most of the north, and quite a few enemies. At least once I've returned to the starting section my issues are now down to enemies, Vaults and one building I need to take out. The number of Vaults I manage to get gives me hope that I can do this. Because I now have only 2 left to get.
The last building I need to destroy is in the northeast, and now I have to hope that there are two Vaults on the easternmost part of the area. And then to my shock, the hope rang true. All that was left was the big fight against the hordes of the CSR. The big one. Sixty four units to take out. Because that's what you have to do....and then I reload an earlier save after a stupid combat incident, only to discover that every time I enter the game world the screen goes black.
This is about as far as I'm going to go for this game. I wanted to save a province at least, but it seems even that option has been taken from me. I'm not that sad about it. I don't feel like I'm really doing anything. As a combat game, I'm extremely discouraged from shooting most people by virtue of the game's attempts at promoting peace. As a strategy game, it's a very simple trading game where at any point you can sacrifice time to gain resources, be it just negotiating or traveling to another province. By the time one starts to feel consequences of anything, the causes are so far gone that they're forgotten.
Such a strange design, pipe going off horizontally, then just stopping for a small pipe down.
Last time I was heading towards a Pump Head to get unlimited food for the province of Moldenia I was in. This turns out to be quite simple, because all the guy in charge of it wants is food. Giving food to get unlimited food seems like cheating the system, even if it's only in this province. Every problem's going to have to repeat itself over time.
Next up, there's an administrative block here, which I need to blow up. Because of the way attacks work, I need to leave my previous vehicle, order up a bomber, blow it up, exit the bomber, then return to my previous vehicle. There's no special attack there, it's just point and shoot. Like a gun, not even a missile. I suppose not having to aim that much is good news.
Mezzanine floor feels like a bit too purple for this game.
I continue south, and find myself at Yevrograd, which has a refinery, which with an oil well I get unlimited fuel in this province. I haven't seen an oil well just yet, but that should mean I have no problems replacing vehicles. Should, being the operative word, since there might be a component beyond vehicle + fuel for airdropping them. I can't see one from where I'm at, so that'll have to wait.
No wonder we're trying to save this place if they've built habitable underwater cities!
But I do spot a town in the middle of the lake, which has several useful facilities and no enemies nearby. Which is fairly important considering that once I get near to the eye of evil, I'm going to be fighting wall-to-wall enemies. So I go south, and forget to consider that the game didn't just set the town in the middle of a lake, it's underwater. Damn it, Singleton, why did you add underwater towns to your realistic Yugoslavic conflict game? You were doing so well. This really is a reskinned Midwinter 2.
Down the coast is an Admin Block, and I still have a bomber, so that's a good choice. Just a nice, gentle, flight, identify the building, easy enough because the other options are a Loading Dock and a Mosque, blow up the block, and check the others for what they can offer. Loading Dock wants a barrel of wine for a ton of goods, Loading Dock gets a barrel of wine. Now what? Therein lies the trouble, because while I have an unlimited amount of air vehicles, I don't have unlimited air drops and there's no other way to get your unlimited vehicles. So I really need to find that oil well or I'm going to have to use the batteries I've picked up a supply of to get something to fight my way through the horde of enemies.
It's a bit odd seeing backgrounds which seemingly have no relation to what's going on around things.
I go north two towns, one only had a farmhouse, to Crokrara. Where there's a Well Head, which is the aforementioned oil well. Did I misread Well Head as oil well or did the game mess with me? I'll probably figure it out eventually. I of course, negotiate for it, simply because I also have to wait for the Captain of Works. I manage to negotiate myself both the Well Head and the Pump Head while waiting. Unfortunately, the Captain of Works wants a military team, and I'm out of those.
There's no fatigue, like Midwinter, so I can run across the entire country if I wanted. Like an European version of Africa Trail.
My next course of action is to head northwest, to Prernalsk, a town with a Depot. At this point, two bad things happen. Despite having unlimited fuel and aircraft, I can't have another airdrop, guess I need to track down another factory or something. The second is my bomber blows up. This may be related to how I don't seem to get what I needed in a moment. As I have to destroy the Depot, this presents a big problem. I can get there in a reasonable amount of time, but I can't do much other than just negotiate for places I've already won. There's no way to get more vehicles if I'm out of airdrops, short of running up to a tank and using a ECM battery, which when I have to run there, sounds unfun. I really hate to resort to this so soon, but I foresee if I try to restart the game this is just going to turn into a series of restarts until I get sick. In other words, time to cheat, this time, hex editing, since I can't negotiate airdrops any other way.
From top left, emergency medical treatment, firefighting teams, batteries, time before partisans attack, military teams, air drops.
Giving myself 255 airdrops is trivializing an important aspect of the gameplay...but if I lose this game I kind of want it to be because I did something wrong and not because I fumbled my resources without realizing this was a survival horror political sim. Actually, that might be on me. Now that I can actually move, I start taking out buildings I need to take out, dodging most of the enemy patrols on the north side of the circle, since most enemies can't hit planes, they just sort of follow me.
Despite being Eastern European, there sure are a lot of Italian, French and English names around here.
Heading north, towards where I started, I discover a couple of Well Heads, which I thankfully don't crash into this time. I basically just grab any Processing Plants or Pumping Stations I missed, and take out any Depots or Barracks I didn't before. After a while, the distance between towns starts becoming more and more pronounced as I start exploring the northwest side of the province. Enemies are there, but scarce enough and not in fighters or AA vehicles, so my bomber is safe enough. I meet an Ossian nurse, who gives me the needed votes to solve that side of the voting equation.
Come to think of it, there's probably more guys over there, but why tempt fate?
Deciding I need to better figure out this part of the area, I head to a radar station on the lake. That seems to reveal the rest of the towns and enough of the enemy forces that I don't need to worry about getting another. There's nothing I need on the western side anyway, and when I eventually move on, I'm headed south anyway. Some of the purple dots over water are enemies. Which means they're basically irrelevant to my objectives, underwater towns don't have build objectives and I don't need to kill them to advance. That means...it's time to go east. Well, first a bit of bombing, then the big fight.
Radar is actually the most important way of detecting enemies, light red are flying enemies, bright red are ground enemies.
It's not quite like Midwinter 2. There's more consideration than just circling around pressing the fire button until everything near you is dead. You can crash into other vehicles, which renders this tactic dangerous. Aiming, on the other hand, is easier and enemy numbers are usually modest...which actually results in encounters being longer, since you have to gun them all down over a longer period.
You get two weapons, missiles and gun. Missiles are fire and forget if you've aimed them well enough. Enemy missiles hit them, but you are limited by firing rate, not number of projectiles on-screen. In a confrontation, you win...assuming you have superior ammo. Even knowing where they are ahead of time thanks to the radar, they'll still be a threat if you shoot just one missile, you need to drop a couple. The gun's surprisingly easy to aim, even against flying enemies. You just have to make sure you aren't in a circling pattern. Which despite the great speed at which you can go, is hard to avoid doing if you mess up the initial salvo.
Then there are friendly assault groups, which do take out some enemies, but you can't really rely on them, you have to be using them as a supplement. So you can't use them to take out ground units while you're in a fighter, you have to be taking out ground units with them. Considering that this game runs off of limited resources, they're not much good. Less cost effective than just burning through the ammo yourself, or heck, just taking a shot and having to spend a couple hours in the hospital.
The battle lasts for in-game days. I'm reluctant to switch to the map, so sometimes I get away from the enemy group I'm trying to take down. They never retreat until they're down to the last man. It's grueling, but by day 3, I decide I should clear out around a town. Seriously, you spend so much time chasing down enemies that you end up having to run back to the primary group and it's just a lot. It's not even grinding down the enemy numbers I need to pacify that much, when it starts really thinning out I still have work to do.
Still, I take a break to go to Stotroran, which has some mostly unnecessary buildings. At this point I view food and a barrel of wine as nothing worth holding back. Pretty sure I don't have unlimited wine, but it sure feels like it. The most important of what I grabbed is a Communications Centre, which allows me to see all the professionals in the area. Which I'll need to fill out the votes, nearly there, but I think I need it for the building programme. Seems like there aren't 9 forts around on the map. One of the guys I spotted was an Engineer Builder, so I go there.
And he doesn't have anything I want. There's a certain irony in him offering me the kind of building I do not need at all, since there are more than double the number of Control Towers I need. The votes are a little important, but for what else he's offering, I'm not buying it. The other guy...also offers a Control Tower. Is nobody going to offer to build a Fort? Well, at least the area is starting to be clear enough for me to fly around with a little freedom. There's still a big chunk under enemy patrol, but I'm cutting through.
Reagan was wrong, these are the nine most terrifying words in the English language.
I finally reach into one of the more central towns and meet this fine Doctor. The votes and the treatment don't matter. The only thing that matters is that this guy is the answer to everything I've been avoiding for the past two entries. The big battle. And it isn't even the answer, because I should have just run past the hordes and headed for a town. Because that way I wouldn't have to grind them all down. Equal parts genius and cruel. If I had just headed this way to begin with, so many problems that I had would have been solved. Not the lack of forts thing, that much I can't avoid, but this. I'm impressed.
Next time, I don't know if I'm going to restart or just keep on. In favor of restarting, I'm just now on day 10, and I'm not that close to solving the province. Most of the building programme is unfinished, but the other three need a little push to finish. As I said in the introduction, since I have a time limit of 150 days, that means that spending more than 10 days in a small province like this one is setting myself up for the doom spiral. If I do it again, I'll know where to go to deal with the big ticket things, but am I really going to be doing this for all 15 or so provinces I'll have to go through to win the game? It doesn't help that most of the places that have obvious designs are not that important. Churches and Mosques give you extra time before partisans attack, only one Well Head is needed for fuel, the rest are blocks of varying designs. I keep having to stop to check my targets, which means getting out of my plane, getting within entering range, then returning.
Bear in mind, restarting feels like the only thing I can do, since you only get one save slot short of copying the save elsewhere. I get the feeling this was either intended to force games to be played without restoring outside of extraordinary circumstances or for the player to go through long periods of the game without saving. Technically you can save scum, but some situations make it less useful than others. To have multiple saves, I need to physically copy the save folder to somewhere else.
This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes Total Time: 4 hours 20 minutes
Mark another one on the "I should really check games from prominent authors before dismissing them out of hand" board, because Mike Singleton is back with another early-FPS/strategy game. I hope it hasn't come off like I've been ragging on him too hard in the past, since outside of Midwinter 2 being a spy game where you gun down an entire army, he's been very interesting. Outside of the credit we give him for Lords of Midnight, he hasn't gotten enough.
I'll set out the long version of the story in the summary, because it's truly complex, but the short version is that you're the not UN, United Coalition forces commander of a vague nature, going into the recently destabilized Confederation of Syndicalist Republics, which is like if the Soviet Union had Yugoslavia's ethnic tensions. Your job is to stabilize the country before radical elements of the CSR's rapidly failing government decide to deploy nukes within their own borders. To do this, in each of the five republics, you need to perform four tasks, called Building, Demolition, Pacification and Ethnic Harmony. This is, I should point out, before things in Yugoslavia got truly dicey and the UN's peacekeeping attempts were seen as a joke. This game was released in either 1992 or 1993, so this was some timely game design.
There is a wealth of introductory materials. A manual which has over 140 pages, not sure the exact number since nobody actually digitalized the whole thing, a reference card for commands and a VHS tape serving as a tutorial. Like you'd get in games proper just a few years down the line. There's a lot to break down here, but to make the story short. You need to complete all the aforementioned tasks in a province to pacify a republic. The manual straight up says you have to complete all the tasks, no doing part of it. To pacify a republic, the capital and two other provinces need to be pacified. All five republics need to be pacified to win, within a time limit of 150 days. Because the CSR isn't above nuking itself and the nuclear tension rises every 50 days.
These are not entirely related to their name. Building could involve you having built some of the buildings you're supposed to build, or just capturing existing ones. Demolition, meanwhile, doesn't count as finished if you capture the building. Even though there is no reason for you to destroy a building you control. Pacification is just ground combat, force enemy military units to surrender by shooting them. Ethnic Harmony is all about collecting votes, which is done by convincing professionals, wandering NPCs, to join with you by giving them stuff. Professionals are doctors, generals, engineers and administrators. They can also be used to make up the special teams. As these seem to be a highly limited commodity and most professionals provide incredibly useful things, like votes and destroying buildings, this is kind of hard to work for.
Then there are commodities, which you can use to trade with people for their services. Gold, diamonds, food, wine, goods, tools, medication and clothing. Along with vehicles, because you don't get unlimited anything unless you find it in a province. Everything is airdropped to you, but you can't do this if you don't have fuel. There's also papers, movement, which means enemies won't shoot you if you don't shoot them, interdiction papers, which allow you to enter enemy controlled buildings. There's also fire fighting teams, who fight fires saboteurs set, emergency medical treatment, which saves you time, and power cells, a ground attack which allows you to capture enemy vehicles.
The game is very dense when you start it up. You get a long, text introduction about the events that have resulted in you being called in. It repeatedly makes a point about these events not being very good. They're all incredibly grim, real-world things that games today try not to touch. The Adlib music, honestly, feels incredibly...off to such dark things. The game automatically loads your last save or starts up a new game.
This looks more like the bit of Russia that borders the Baltics, specifically Estonia.
The proper in-game stuff is more fitting. More frantic. It works when you first start it up, but it plays throughout the game. There are a few other tracks, but I hope you can get used to aggressive Adlib music. As you can read, I need to pick out a border providence to start my operation in. I choose Moldenia, because it looks small enough to start with.
This game could do with a bit of "We do not reward failure", right about now.
The situation is grim. Very grim. I'm really not sure how much time 11 days is. It seems like a low amount of time to stop a famine, but at least I know how to stop it, supplies. I need to build certain amount of buildings, of which I am not yet clear on what I need to do that, but I see I have to destroy certain buildings and destroy certain people. That much I can do. I'm sure that convincing people to vote for...me (?) will follow once I make the trains run on time or whatever it is we're doing.
"You may have saved us from dying...but that's really only worth 20 bars of gold."
And here's what I get if I can save the province. Seeing as I have a rough time limit in each republic of 30 days, currently 21 to pacify the republic, that's not that helpful. Gold and diamonds are goofy to see, though one must admit, having money to pay people is oh, so, important.
Soon to be filled.
So the map, this screen is incredibly obtuse. You automatically start here and have to go get other information through the function keys, I got the situation that way. There's seemingly nothing you can actually do here, just find out what your surroundings are. Right now I'm just focusing on the reference card and none of the buttons are for doing anything on this screen. Clicking somewhere gets options of viewing this screen differently. Which is...not helpful. There's an auto-move I have yet to figure out, but doesn't really seem like I need it just yet.
Into the golden void...
Most of the game is played via the main screen. And memories of Midwinter come flooding back. Memories of flying around in chaos and not hitting things. Because the aiming sensitivity is way too high. This time I solve that by just lowering my system's mouse sensitivity. Now it's just a question of flying and hoping you reach someplace. Because all you get to find something is the map unless something is really close, and it's slow switching back and forth. Later, I did discover you can open an expanded version of the radar map, which usually makes things easier.
Not pictured, civilian vehicles in the distance.
Eventually I find a town and some vehicles. Blue vehicles are friendly, dark red dots are buildings. So I approach the town, slowly set myself down, get out and enter the radar station.
"I'm not going to help you if you don't give me stuff, but I am going to help you anyway."
Much like Midwinter 2, people want favors in exchange for doing stuff for you. The game advertises 665 professionals who move from town to town, but the true number is much higher. Domenico here is a regular civilian who is just working the town radar station. I just need to get him to join the side that isn't about to start the events of Midwinter, and to do so I need to give him a barrel of wine. Which I have and can easily give him. This is done with the barter icon, simple enough. Or you can try to persuade them using the icons below.
"We grant you the title of doctor, but you can't introduce yourself as Doctor Marceline."
Using the lion-shaped door knocker, I can switch over to the other building, a hospital. Marceline, meanwhile, is a bit greedier. (well, a hospital needs that stuff more than a radar operator needs wine, but this is quibbling) I see no reason not to give it to her, and then have to ponder if I should wait for the surgeons or try to track them down. I mean...It already took me 2 hours to reach this place, by the time I figure these places out they're likely going to be back here again.
Quality aside, Midwinter 2's faces were better, simply because they didn't look goofy and move around like crazy. That's a caricature, not a face that belongs in a serious war game.
So I wait for Fokine, a name which makes me glad I'm not a video reviewer. Fokine offers a significant amount of stuff in exchange for bringing him 20 cases of medication, 20 sets of interdiction papers and 20 sets of movement papers. I apparently don't have this, which isn't surprising since that's a lot of stuff. On the other hand, he is willing to give me so much in exchange. I then wait for Nahhas, who is known to be a Ruzakh. He asks for something I can easily give, a military team and some of what I need for Fakine. The manual says something about either getting resources or getting their services as a professional. Not sure how that's going to work out, but whatever. I decide that I'll do it, I still have one, having 2 of each type of team I can have and I can check out how effective they are as allies when I actually see some combat. Since they cost resources to use I can't afford to use them willy nilly.
I guess it's a caliber issue, but it feels just so abstracted away in a strange way.
With the radar station obtained, the map shows a lot more stuff, including a town with some nearby soldiers southwest of my location. I go there, occasionally checking my map, and find the two offending vehicles. I start attacking them, with bullets and bombs. They don't attack back. I burn through my entire supply of bullets and most of my missiles and nothing happens. I quit in disgust at this and check the manual. No, those were hostile vehicles and yes I'm supposed to shoot at them. Copy protection poorly removed? Or is this going to be one of those annoying games where you can only shoot something when you have the proper style of vehicle? I'm in a VTOL/plane and they're in armored cars, so that could be it. Combat is given lip service in the manual. Hey, you wrote a manual that's over 140 pages, do you think we could find out how to shoot something as opposed to how soon the people will be dying of hunger in the streets? I like story more than the next guy, but you need at least playable gameplay to go along with it!
Time to fight fire with fire!
So, I check the instructional VHS tape, and I'm really not sure what I'm missing here. The tutorial just has it as point and shooting, but noticeably, he never shoots a ground vehicle despite being in a plane. Curious. The next day I start up the game again, losing some progress, but technically making it up by just rushing to the town. This time I get to the Ruzakh before he leaves and secure his services. I also discover that your vehicle disappears if you enter a building with it, but you can also airlift a vehicle to you. Basically any vehicle. And it turns out that it's probably just mismatched attack types. VTOLs can't shoot armored cars, but armored cars can shoot armored cars just fine. In my case, I eliminate the armored cars with a few shots. Heck, yeah!
Every town looks like this, the difference is in the icons down below, a Professional is in the middle building.
First order of business, meet with random house owner in Frelgorsk. He wants quite a bit for a few extra days and some wine, if I wanted I could negotiate with him, but more impportantly, there's a nurse here. In exchange for 5 sets of interdiction and movement papers, along with 5 cases of medication, he'll give me 5 courses emergency medical treatment and 4500 Ossian votes. Emergency medical treatment being a way of recovering from injury faster. You can't truly die unless you run out of time. I unfortunately, don't have the resources right now. Fortunately, I can perform parlor tricks to convince the housekeeper to join me, anyway. Since you can only save by pressing F9 and reload by F10, one could engage in a bit of savescumming. It's the only chance you'll get since there's only one save. I'm not desperate enough yet.
The rest of the town has a fort and a depot, which I believe are vital to my war efforts. The fort comes with unlimited amount of ammo, assuming I can find a mine. The depot meanwhile, adds vehicles to my overall pool. I use resources for the former, food and wine is an easy way to a man's heart, but try the persuasion system on the later. It's intentionally Russian Roulette with 8 chambers. Get the right option and you win; Get the wrong option and you lose time. The Fort is something I'm supposed to capture, yet the depot I'm supposed to destroy. Not much point in destroying something I own, but the objective isn't to capture them. Hopefully I don't need to completely solve the objectives before winning, because I would be oh, so, annoyed at having to do that.
I wonder how you discover towns without radar?
With that done, I decide to go southeast, to Spitchagan, which has some Professionals, but more importantly, a mine, which I think will prove quite useful. Driving around in an armored car is quite bouncy. You get every single bump and crease as you drive along, which is a lot, so high speed travel is quite...disorienting, not just to the player but to the actual direction you're going in. There's also a radar station, some resources and a little negotiating later and I have unlimited ammo, but not unlimited fuel and air vehicles. Anyway, let's see what I can now see...
Judging by the rate at which enemy vehicles seem to drain the Pacification Programme, I'd have long accomplished my goal by the time I finish with that area.
Yikes, that's a lot of guys. Almost all ground vehicles, guarding effectively a hospital. I decide that it's best to go north first, since there's a control tower there, a vital building to take, and more importantly, not thousands of vehicles. Though I must admit, that the game is willing to go this hard this early on is a sign that this is going to be very difficult. I'll also start exploring around the place.
My guy must be really ugly if she isn't looking at me. Then again, I'm not looking at her, either?
Celestine doesn't want much for her services, but now I'm suddenly not concerned about her. Rather, I'm more interested in this Medical Coordinator. There's a system in this game where if you recruit someone's superior all his subordinates join up. I don't know if it's conditional, or if it automatically happens, but either way I think I need this guy. Possibly gal. Either way, I give resources to the kind air traffic controller and then look around at the rest of the town. There's a bombproof factory here, which gives unlimited aircraft in this province. Well worth what the director is asking for, one article of basically everything I can give. Muahahaha! Now, to the place he is said to be.
"I, an important member of the community, am going to travel all the way to the very important random farm in the middle of nowhere."
He's gone a significant distance over many towns. That's quite the trip, not sure how he's doing it in under 6 hours, but that's game logic for you. So I head there, making sure to stop on every town along the way that I can. First stop, Vidalsk, complete with another control tower and...a Commandant regularly walks around here. So I try to charm this person, eventually succeeding, and walk over to the barracks, another target I have to take out, where the Commandant is.
In retrospect, I'm not quite sure if I'd do this, since that is a steep price.
That's a pretty high price, since I haven't gotten anything to replenish them, but I can't deny that these services are of vital importance. More assault forces means friendlies for my eventual assault south, and that's one set of buildings I just don't have to worry about. Not quite, but I'm not sure how to destroy them just yet. The administrator is in the opposite direction entirely, back west, the opposite of where I'm headed at the moment. So more east.
My next destination is Krenomsk, which has a vault. With gold. I really don't think I need the gold. I would just pass over this place, but he mentions an Administrative Coordinator, so I should stick around. So I look around the rest of the place, there's a windmill, which has a power cell but is otherwise unimportant, a mosque, nothing special, and the final control tower I need to have one third of the construction requirements met. The Administrator proves useful, because he offers plenty of Moldene votes, and more importantly, where to find an engineering coordinator. He just wants diamonds, gold and wine. Nothing too valuable.
I end up in combat with another group of enemies a bit further east. I find out some interesting things now that I'm on the ground. Firstly, enemies are not obstructed by your limitations. Planes can shoot ground vehicles just fine and ground vehicles can usually shoot planes just fine. Seems like there are limitations to what vehicles can do buried in the manual, and I just overlooked it since, hey, it's Midwinter set in the Soviet Union, why do I need to know that? I reload and instead come here in a tank. It seems like the better option even if practically everything in this game is torn apart like tissue paper. This seems to give me a little more protection, though it's mostly just using missile to take out enemies before they're within range.
Bagrolsk, one of the last places before I reach the place I want to be, has a power station, which is completely irrelevant outside of giving me power. I don't actually know if I need power yet. I'm sure I'll find out when it's needed most. In the meantime combat is proving interesting, fights aren't luck, but it feels like you have no proper way of countering everything, you will always be under threat from some enemy force. The only real anti-plane vehicle is the fighter, but that leaves you vulnerable to ground fire. It's an intentionally screwy game of rock-paper-scissors, with the consequences being two hours of your time.
Finally, I make it to Dokenko, where the Medical Coordinator isn't actually at. Well, better make the most of this. There's nothing of value here, except a cache of building materials, of which I need someone special to make use of. I just have to wait for the guy. He knows where a surgeon is, gives more medical treatment and some Moldene votes, but the real prize is that he'll win over all CSR troops with 50 kilometers. As an American, I am legally obligated to not know what those are, but I'm pretty sure that's a suspiciously high number. That seems like more than the entire distance I've gone. The speed and distance I've gone is clearly not that amount.
Looking back through my screenshots, I'm not even sure that missing dot west is one that got removed by it, I just took them out.
Lo and behold, the game is not quite to scale. 50 kilometers is akin to at most, 15 seconds of flying at top speed. Which in reality is quite impressive for how fast I'm going, but in the game world means I've been cheated. At least I get a few groups in case I need support. Military teams and in-combat teams are two different things. My next plane, get some of these more important people around. Two of the more important guys are in Smetajan, right in the center of those remaining teams.
Like an eagle in the sky.
The only group I end up encountering are groundhawks, which are planes, which I didn't quite get until I spotted one. I went there with a bomber, so I wasn't able to take them out...and also somehow crashed it. Which is quite impressive. Unfortunately, I crashed it, seemingly into air. Guess I hit the hitbox of an object which isn't boxy shaped. The town has some interesting stuff. A processing plant, which, when I get a pump head, will give me unlimited fuel. The manager wants some stuff, but since I have some time before the two big boys come back, I just haggle with her. Eventually while trying to negotiate for a fuel dump, more fuel, the engineering coordinator will tell me where to find a constructor general, and some goods and tools, all for 10 diamonds and gold. Sweet deal. Unfortunately, when I eventually meet with the surgeon, he wants a ton of stuff, which would be a stiff sell if I had 50 interdiction and movement papers, but I don't. Also, Surgeons are titles, but sometimes generic civilians are also surgeons.
Either way, I look around, and spot a Pump Head south, located away from anything I know to be important. I end up stopping at that town west, which has some vehicles guarding it, natch. And lucky me, I find out that the Captain of Works hangs out around here sometimes. And the factory here will give me unlimited underwater craft. I don't see much water here, but it couldn't hurt me. When I eventually meet with the Captain of Works, whose name is Giulio Agricola, which sounds suspiciously Italian to me, he offers me a lot, all for a military team. The important thing is that he gives four processing plants, one of the buildings I have to build.
I'll leave things here, as I'm starting to get something of a beachhead. The basic gist seems to be, it's one of those games where you have to spot your enemies on the radar first, shoot first and ask questions later. Everything comes down to time. Your vehicles can be airdropped in, but you have a usually limited number, and airdrops cost fuel. Everything can be gotten by either wasting time negotiating or giving other resources. The latter will eventually run dry if the player doesn't negotiate. I'm not sure that I'm doing too well, but I'm not yet sure what I could be doing better. This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes
