A Game of Thrones: Genesis

[frogbeastegg]

I played for a couple of hours last night. I like it thus far. It's very different; the only comparisons I can draw are Knights of Honour's espionage and 'knight' system, and Shogun II if you spam agents everywhere. Neither is a good comparison, more like a loose parallel of certain aspects. I think this is going to be the sort of game which I play intensively for a few weeks, then leave on my hard drive so I can play a game or two each month.

Disclaimer: unless specifically stated otherwise this all concerns House V House mode. Campaign mode is very different, and I've only done a single mission in the first campaign.

I can definitely see why so many people bounce right off it. This entire game's budget was probably smaller than the art budget for a game like Shogun II. Visually, it's dated yet clear and understandable. The voice work is passable at best and faintly irritating at worst. It's narrowly focused so that the resources were spent on the core concepts, meaning that there isn't much fluff and certain peripheral sections of gameplay are not that polished. Most of all, war is an afterthought. It's what happens in the end phase, assuming that a House doesn't manage a peaceful victory. It's a side of the game you are encouraged to avoid, and engaging in it by willing choice carries stiff penalties. The music is pleasant, yet would benefit from a wider selection of tracks.

The developers have put in some nice little touches like guards patrolling the walls of each House's stronghold. Each House has children and ladies with the correct hair colour, and if there's a notable skin colour like the Dornish's duskiness or the Targ's paleness then that is reflected too. A recent patch has added settlement names for each location on the House V House maps, addressing one of the main complaints made by players who like the game.

Games are quite short. This is not a civ or TW alike where a map will take weeks to finish. Games are designed to be completed in a single sitting ... and I think that's a requirement as I can't find a save function! I find it refreshing so far; there's a punchiness to the gameplay when each struggle is over within an hour. The way things work, anything longer would risk feeling repetitive and a chore. There's decent longevity though. There are quite a few different maps (15IIRC) and each can be played from different starting positions. Each House has its own bonuses and unique unit so there's a bit of difference in gameplay between them. It's also possible to use different agents and strategies to change the experience. Replaying maps won't necessarily be a case of going through the same motions.

The AI seems quite good so far. Obviously it's very early days and I don't want to offer any kind of authoritative verdict. I got smashed by the easiest AI in under 10 minutes on my first proper game! It was smart enough to take advantage of a stupid mistake I made, and took long enough to do so that I'm satisfied it didn't locate my lord by cheating. Although, in the sake of fairness I should admit I was using that game to figure out the UI and had very little idea of what I was meant to be doing. It's equally a loss from ignorance as well as AI reaction. I am also satisfied that it does not cheat to locate by agents when they are in the field. On some occasions it has taken a long time to locate my units, on others I have witnessed it sending in the correct agent to uncover my fellow before targeting them. The medium and expert level AIs are even faster and more brutal than the easy level one. Expert's rate of expansion is humbling. The game has a replay function and each game is automatically saved. I watched the replay of my game against the expert AI and found watching its moves to be very educational. It doesn't look like it's cheating to spawn agents ... although it might have some kind of economic help. It did not get higher tier units until it had satisfied the conditions to recruit them, so no instantly using units which require a payment to unlock, or ones which need resources like food, or ones which are dependant on game conditions like the lord being married.

While active and smart, the AI is not immune to mistakes. I gained a single victory by repeating the tactic the easy level AI used to defeat me. While wandering around with a spy I chanced upon his lord walking between two settlements. No bodyguards. I had an assassin nearby. Stab, game over because he didn't have an heir. That's the sort of thing which makes the game feel like it has teeth. Sometimes it can all end in the blink of an eye with a single dagger, partly due to poor decisions and partly due to events falling out the way that they did. In a longer game this element of unpredictable chance would be very annoying. Here it doesn't matter: hardly any time is lost, it takes a mere minute to set up a new game, and the unpredictability makes the subterfuge feel less sterile.

Micromanagement. At the moment I rather want to say that there isn't much. At least, not in the usual sense. At the same time there sort of is. Hmm, it's tricky. I feel less rushed than in most RTS games, and less micro-attentive than I do in most turn based games. You can pause at any time and issue orders. All events happen in real time. After the opening minutes you have multiple agents and map locations on the go, and also need to keep track of aspects like your income to make sure the AI has not succeeded in a subterfuge action against you. This results in a lot of things going on - and a lot of those things involve waiting. So it's kind of a case of "hurry up and wait!". The interface is set up decently enough that issuing most orders is a 2 second job: select agent, click on target on mini map or main map.

The other half of the gaming micro-equation is likewise tricky. You have a decent number of agents. Each agent eventually gets multiple skills. There are actions, counter-actions, subversions, and all sorts. An alliance can be true or false, an agent can be loyal or subverted, a new recruit can be normal or an enemy agent, actions taken on the map can be real or misleading - there's a lot! I haven't figured half of it out yet, I only have a grasp on the basics. So far I feel like there's a lot to be doing with the agents and that some of it does involve semi-micro tasks like repeatedly checking your people with a spy to ensure that they are truly loyal. At the same time, it's not like there's anything else to do. In most games you would be juggling this stuff alongside the normal tasks like controlling an army or building an economy. Here it's 95% of the game. So while there's a lot of it, it's not exactly overwhelming. In most cases I've encountered so far issuing the order is enough, you don't need to pay close attention unless the game sends you a report like "We've been betrayed!". The pause function is there if you feel overwhelmed.

Victory is a little like the glorious achievements mode of MTW. Victory comes from prestige, originally 100 points and now open to player choice thanks to the last patch (the devs seem to have been very good at incorporating player requests where possible). There are 4 set titles, each awarded for being the House with the highest score at a particular aspect, for example the number of kills or highest income. Each title gives prestige to the holder. Winning the allegiance of septs (think cathedrals) on the map also gives prestige. There are missions as well, and there's always one in effect. Meet the stated conditions and you gain a prestige boost. There may be other ways to gain prestige, I'm still exploring. Prestige is lost by declaring war. For each point left in the 'peace' gauge you lose 1 point of prestige. This means declaring war can be ruinously expensive. Your lord needs to be married; if he is not he will randomly spawn bastards. Bastard children appear on the map. If an enemy agent locates one his existence is revealed and the father loses 10 points of prestige. There are probably other ways to lose prestige as well.

I mentioned the 'peace' gauge. This is a blue bar at the top of the screen. Actions like assassinating rival agents, killing peasants, and winning the loyalty of map locations which were previously loyal to another house will erode the peace level. It's quite sensible in that actions which would be provocative are provocative, and ones which would not be are not. When the bar is filled with red war breaks out. It takes an awful lot of provocation for war to begin. It's possible to gain peace by sending envoys to carry out a peace mission at a rival House's stronghold, and possibly by other means. Under peace, no one can attack a settlement. Doing so will immediately declare war and the person responsible will take a large prestige hit.

Phew. That's enough for now. I want to play around more with the agents and loyalty aspects before I talk about them. So far the possibilities for trickery are rather excellent ...

A pity I can't stand the books, or I'd probably pick this up.

I'd say that the theme is quite loose. It's mainly the shape of the map and names of the Houses. Aside from that it could be any generic low-magic medieval fantasy land. It's all set long before the books, and only a few maps have any links to the events from the series. I'm quite glad; I'm not actually a big fan of the books. The first 3 were good but had problems, the fourth had lots of problems, and the most recent one was pretty awful. 'Dance with Dragons' was so bad it caused a crisis in my own fiction writing. I had this horrible realisation that if I don't change a few things in my style that's how I will end up: page after page after chapter after book of pointless waffle with maybe 1/10 of the total content being relevant to advancing matters. I've spent the last few months trying to sharpen up. I have not seen the TV series yet either, although it does look decent.

All the same, this game is only going to appeal to a small subset of strategy gamers. You have to really like the agent and subterfuge concepts.




EDIT: The steam stats for this game are a little scary. Just 25% of players have completed the first campaign, and that one acts like an expanded tutorial. Only 17.4% of players have won a game against any level of AI. Only 12.4% have played for more than 5 hours. No one has won 10 or more multiplayer games. Only 1.8% of players have spent more than 2 hours in MP. Most of the achievements for having high-level agents have been earned by 0.2% or under! Hardly anyone has bothered to read the in-game documentation, despite it being easy to find and the game pointing you at it each time something new is encountered. So the majority of people literally have no idea how to play it, are not using their agents well, and have barely played it at all in any mode.

It's definitely not a game for everybody but good grief! I'd expected more people to at least try.