Traitor? Never discovered one and things seemed pretty fine. (Except for some rebels dying, maybe)
To get food early you’d need to plunder the town, but that would affect your relations negatively. (You’ll need these merchants n’ nobles one day) You can take part in minor raids too, but those bore me to death.
WHAT?! HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO GET BREDEN KILLED?!How dare you kill my wife!Or husband, or lover… It’s difficult to talk about genderswappable characters.
To win this one in my main MC, i focused on intelligence, using the scroll to discover how to use theurgy and saved my blood phials to beat them.
Yes, i’ve killed them all with the power of Wisardry! Take that, government! Take that, church!
Also beat this one with my charismatic character, you just need to tell them to attack the beasts and they’ll die for you. Wait, that’s pretty sad, i ordered my rebels to die…
Just need to finish my flying brick gameplay, but that one should be easier. Or maybe not, seeing how intelligence and charisma tend to be needed on important decisions
I just always steal from the priests and get Breden to convince everyone that its alright. And if I have to then I steal from the nobles but I try to avoid that as the merchants don’t particularly like that.
So, today I had a class on literary analysis and we began to drift into talking about Aristotle and then we began to talk about telos and then my prof argued that the telos of man is to create.
So for those curious as to what I’ve been up to for the past three months… I’ve just updated a new Quicktest-passing version of XoR on Dashingdon: [link removed June 2017]
Along with a batch of CoG editorial feedback, I took more than 100 suggestions on this thread into account, most of which I agreed with. If you find your suggestion hasn’t been taken into account, feel free to ask me about it – it’s possible that I missed it somewhere around post 3,000 or so. If I decided not to follow it, I’m happy to explain the thought process.
I’ve played through a number of times, but not enough to be comfortable yet with the balance of Ch 2 and Ch 4 – I believe they’ll still need changes to get the difficulty level right, both when it comes to surviving the winter and surviving the battle. There shouldn’t be a single optimal strategy for either; the closer there comes to being one, the more I’ll have to tweak at beta.
As a result, I haven’t yet put proper numbers in for the Ch 2 “storymode.” Breden and Zvad will eventually be less effective in saving everyone’s lives and morale than they currently are – with results better calibrated to how an effective MC would do if you were number-wrangling yourself.
I also need to play through Ch 4 myself a few more times and work on the pacing. I know it doesn’t read smoothly at the moment, or have the rhythm I want it to. Suggestions on this front are very welcome.
One of the major things I’ve tried to do is include an explicitly asexual path starting when you meet Breden, which can open up into demisexual and ace-romantic options. Please have a run through and comment on this, especially if you yourself are anywhere under the ace umbrella – I’m sure I’ve got some things wrong, (and perhaps missed a few places where I assume sexual attraction on the MC’s part) and I’d love to hear suggestions for how I could make it better.
A log of other significant changes is behind the detail cut below.
This will I think be my last alpha-testing update – so enjoy it while it’s up, and please post your feedback here. After that we’ll take it down and move to a closed beta. And then we’ll publish. You can imagine my family’s joy at an end to the coffee-fuelled late night coding sessions that have eaten much of the past year…
Overall:
I hope I’ve finally purged the ghosts (“didn’t she die a chapter ago?”) and people’s erratic memory/psychic powers when it comes to keeping your Theurgy a secret.
I’ve gone through and tried to remove binary choices, with the exception of helot-aristo and male-female (the “realize I’m actually non-binary” option will come early in Game 2). This will have added new content in a number of places, especially in the early game. Nothing earth-shaking, but long-term testers may enjoy going through and choosing some of the expanded options.
Prologue
The Author’s Note should now disappear once you’ve achieved “intoxaos” (i.e. played through the whole game once).
I haven’t made any updates to the playtesting shortcuts to start the game at Ch 2 or 3. These may now accordingly have gaps, notably around choice of aceness. I’ll see if I have time to go back and revise them.
An aristo MC who sends the Theurge after the helot now has some less compassionate/guilty choices
Chirex
As mentioned above, there’s now an explicit choice for the MC to be asexual, which eventually includes some demisexual options. Choosing this assigns Breden a random gender. I’m aware that as it stands, this probably works poorly for gray-ace readers; I’m still trying to figure out how to make a gray-ace path work with other game goals.
There are options for ace romance. These should also be available for non-ace characters who want to try more romance and less smooching/sex.
Bandits
Lots of minor fixes in response to bug reports – let me know if “yours” pops up again in testing
Various tweaks to stat screen and in-game text intended to make the number-juggling path easier
Fedrel can be tried by moot.
Hunting bear will now always get you something; even if you don’t get bear, you’ll get some petty game (though fewer than if you send people out to hunt rabbits).
When hunting rabbit, you can get warned about protein poisoning (hat tip to Laguz, from before they stopped contributing)
@idonotlikeusernames, break out the ketchup: you can now bring back tasty horses from the de Merre estate.
Breden now has to stand down as deputy if you send them scouting the merchant town. When they return, they resume – unless you decide you don’t trust them because of the outcome of the raid.
There should be an epilogue to the Architelone raid telling you who took the fall (Xedia, Bleys, someone else)
You can now push yourself to do the Architelone raid even if you’re sick from hunger, so you don’t miss the big event because of a bad die roll on tax week.
If you miss or skip the tax raid after kidnapping Bleys’ family, there’s now a postscript about Ciels, Huette and the kid(s), which I’d forgotten to write before, leaving them all a bit in midair…
When you’re an aristo talking to your father about sending him to beg, you now have a wider range of options.
You should now be able to back out of a raid if you don’t like the available leader options (except in storymode, where it should be less relevant)
If you cash in all your mules at the end of the chapter, there are now some consequences to being muleless in later chapters.
You have the option to go inspect a Harrower as part of the sabotage mission.
New recruits now bring their first week of food with them.
I’ve tried to implement @mrreed’s suggestion about linking morale to the band’s rations more directly. I’m still trying to decide what I think of it!
It should now be a bit easier to get the outcomes where you have Breden killed for suspicion of being a traitor in this chapter, post merchant or noble raid.
Bandits2
It’s now possible to get extra natl/cosmo points by changing your name just after Kala/Suzane arrive.
Radmar and Elery can now be involved in the traitor hunt planning, not just Breden
You can now refuse to dance with Breden for reasons other than jealousy
A small one: if you told Elery not to hook up with Zvad for reasons of immorality, she now makes a snarky comment if you hook up with Breden. (Zvad, presumably, just fumes in dutiful silence offscreen)
Strangers
A high-CHA character can now combine being acclaimed by Linos with starting their own sacrament
There’s more language making clear that the Karagonds believe the soul is made of air and fire, not some mythical, invisible spirit substance.
You can ask the moot what to do with Horion and Linos.
You can ask Linos to deliver a sacrament, even if you don’t take him up on the Eclect thing.
You can also ask him about the signs of a true Eclect, and refuse unless he brings more priests to acclaim you.
Strangers2
Calea now comments on your escape from the Keriatou dungeon, if indeed you escaped.
I’ve tried to heighten the option to have an emotional response to the death of your childhood best friend.
You can now choose to resort to Theurgy in the Brecks ambush
If you want to kill Simon/Suzane for gainsaying you in the Brecks, you now have the option to do so, a bit later.
Kissing Kalt in the Brecks no longer leads automatically to you spending the night together.
It’s now explicit that the Diakons who join you believe that everyone can hear angels, if that’s the religious option you went for.
There’s a more devastated option in response to your father’s ritually disowning you
Hounds
If Radmar killed Breden, you now may have a choice to deal with him appropriately post-battle.
Breden is (perhaps?) slightly less loony and flailing now when accused of poisoning the band.
I’ve written your and Breden’s wedding scene (with various options). All five of you Breden romance fans out there, I hope you like it.
There are also now extra pre-fight scenes with Simon and Kalt, which may or may not be romantic depending on your choice.
You can deliver propaganda to the incoming Phalangite army, reducing their morale
The Westriding nationalist Bethune (if she’s joined you) can now speak at the moot and advise you on propaganda
You can now choose the order in which you attack Theurges and food convoy (if indeed you choose both), rather than having to do the convoy first
The nonviolent path through the game now includes the refusal to kill the Theurges who accompany the Plektoi. (Extending compassion to animals, to the extent that you’d refuse to kill the Plektos, is an option for future games) There’s an achievement at the end for making it through nonviolently.
First tiny bug report, when I chose to back out of a food raid on a tithe barn, because I had no suitable leader the people that would have been sent on the raid were still deducted from my available manpower pool for the week, with disastrous results, I’m sad to report.
Edit and a second one.
When choosing to keep Simon hostage but release Horion the scene where Horion asks us to free Simon no longer comes up, nor does the “execution” scene and the choice leading to it (kill our noble hostage) where Simon is the sole hostage and you want to kill him in retaliation for the venuer attacks (in my case only to relent and have him join the band after he shows us how brave he is. )
Another minor bug: when doing detailed adjustments of the band’s rations, it can be impossible to exit that menu (even with all rations at minimum).
*selectable_if (foodstorelt >= needfoodlt) #I won’t make any changes to these rations.
This doesn’t take into account the food scheduled to arrive from the grain run. Also, sometimes the last mission I send followers on gets food, but there’s no opportunity to adjust rations if there are no free followers left. This isn’t a problem if I can give detailed ration orders that rely on food that will come later, but if you want players to only be able to use the food they have (and will get from the grain run), then you might want to let players adjust standing orders before the end of the week automatically happens.
Whoops. @Estel_Edain, that last choice should only be ghosted if you’re having to cut rations because of too little food at the end of a week. I believe I’ve fixed that now, as well as the problem with losing your free followers due to backing out because of no suitable leader. (Sorry for the catastrophe, idnlun)
Now on to look at the hostage situation… @idonotlikeusernames, had you let their fate be decided by moot? The game was treating that as a kidnapping, and if you’ve kidnapped them, Horion didn’t dare to ask for Simon’s release. I’ve popped in a scrap of code that makes it depend on how scared he is of you, instead. If you’ve been hostile, he won’t ask about Simon. If he likes you a bit, he will.
I’m not sure why you aren’t getting the execution scene in retaliation for the veneur attacks. Were you playing as an aristo who tried to reach an accommodation with Calea? That shuts you out of murdering the noble hostages.
Thanks so much for the feedback!
Edit: and @Karl341, Bethune joins you if you end Ch 3 with a high enough “Homelander” score. 75 or more.
Nope, just my regular old helot, you know me by now. Only I didn’t have hostages plural at that point, just Simon.
Oh thanks for the tasty horses by the way, and it actually helps quite a bit with the food for my mid-sized band.
Now what consequences (because if I know you there will always be reaction and consequences somewhere down the line) will my mc’s love for tasty horses have later on, particularly since I’ve left the nobles alive so they actually see us taking them?
Also love how you can now set out your vision of formal justice to Memnon deMerre and your raiders, even if due to my mc’s middling charisma they think him half-mad for it.
On the plus side his particular way of loving horses apparently does give my mc something in common with the Hallasurqs.
I just want to say that I was enjoying some of the new content, even if it was just a little added (like the small scene with de Firiac at camp).
Just a minor suggestion. I think you need a space between these lines:
By the time you all retire to bed, you think at least a few more of them believe you’ll survive the summer. Six days later, you’re crouched between boulders on Egyn’s Pike, scanning the cloudless sky for Theurges.
Since “Six days…” was bolded I think you meant for it to be a new paragraph.
YES we very much appreciate it, haa! This comment about there being just five of us made me laugh out loud. Dozens… dozens! Ohh, well, I’ll appreciate it extra much for those who don’t.
How dare you kill my wife! Or husband, or lover… It’s difficult to talk about genderswappable characters.
If I decided not to follow it, I’m happy to explain the thought process.
)
