Where The Wild Things Are Year 1: Retrospective

A History of Ur: Year 1

Spike Jonze's Rise To Power

 

Next turn marks the beginning of Where The Wild Things Are: Year 2! It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started this blog but that's what the game says and, who I am to argue with 2000+ monsters and over 800 spells.

In a game of Dominions the end of Year 1 typically coincides, more or less, with the end of the expansion period. The last few independents are snapped up, borders are established, and early wars begin to break out.

Here is Spike Jonze's glorious empire, as of Turn 11. Apart from our capital we have 14 provinces, plus two more within our borders that should hopefully be ours next turn. On this map there are 7 players and 93 land provinces, so 13 provinces each would be a fair share, making our 14 ~ 16 a Solid verging on Good.

This is also the point where single- and multi-player games begin to differ more drastically. Against other humans, your expansion is often checked by diplomatic concerns. Who's talking to me? Who seems friendly, and who doesn't? Who am I scared of, and who might be scared of me? Often you will settle for messy borders to secure a (however temporarily) peaceful neighbour, or hold off from grabbing everything you can so that you don't scare too many people into wanting you dead at once.

Against the computer strategies differ. You can't ensure peace with anyone, and as Fomoria has handily demonstrated in this game the AI will often attack another nation from sheer belligerence rather than for sound strategic reasons (this is of course UNHEARD OF in multiplayer). As such, single player games often devolve into mad savage clusterfucks where everyone eats everyone. Which is fine!

Here is our northern border. Fomoria appears to have a total of 6 provinces outside of their capital (which partially indicates how bad the AI is at this game), and while they have some room to expand in the north-east they're already being crowded by Xibalba and HINNOM as well as us. Spike Jonze is gonna fly in there and kill some goatheads, but there's every possibility that as soon as we open up a border with one of those other guys they will declare war on us too.

In the south and east we have slightly more breathing room, with Mystery Nations I have not yet chosen to identify not far off but no expansion forces yet sighted - hopefully they're occupied further south, where my scouts have not yet penetrated.

We're big enough now that we're wrapping around to the east, coming close to a border with Hinnom and Hideous Flag again. With a buffer of at least one independent province all the way round our southern, eastern and western borders, I'm hoping we'll have time to fortify some chokepoints and crush some Fomorians before we have to fight anyone else.

You'll have noticed, I hope, that although we've only played 11 turns I've been making decisions based on my deeper knowledge (such as it is) of the game's mechanics; what's cost-effective and what's not, which indies pose a greater or lesser threat, how the AI nations tend to behave, and so on. This is not unusual for a strategy game. We've explored, expanded, and exterminated. As I mentioned in my introductory post, however, one thing that I think Dominions does particularly well is to blend strategy and narrative.

Everything that I've done so far in this game has been done for sound strategic reasons, but still serves to build a narrative. All 4X games have an expansion phase, but that of Dominions is unusually well-justified; the Ascension Wars serves as a solid backdrop for any and all conquest and slaughter, with the will of your Pretender providing motivation where needed. Compare this with something a bit more abstract, like Civilization V. Why does Queen Elizabeth care what Gandhi does? What are they competing over? Are you building Stonehenge in your capital for the glory of Arabia or wherever, or are you gonna take the +5 Faith and never think about it again?

I don't mean to suggest that Dominions players spend every game building mythico-poetic narratives for themselves; I've been thinking about this stuff a lot, and still when I'm playing I'm mostly wrangling game mechanics. What's special about Dominions is how easy (and how rewarding) it is to take a narrative approach to your games. In this game, for instance, I've been using my low-upkeep sacreds as the core of an efficient expansion force, alongside the tough and expendable Enkidu Warriors who are easily massable due to low resource costs and Ur's special aptitude for foreign recruitment. To put it another way, the holy warriors of Eridu have heard the call of the Awakening God and marched out in His name, rallying the pastoral Enkidu of the plains to battle and slaughtering all who stand before them.

This isn't just a gloss: one of the first things we read about Ur was that there are three tribes of Enkidus. Medium and heavy infantry are outfitted in Eridu, where metalworking is common, while the more nomadic Enkidus of the plains band together to form lighter raiding parties. We've been playing in character without even realising! (except obviously I did realise, and have been commenting on it at length)

Here's another example: Carol, who's leading our Eastern Expansion Force, is a basic commander. Every nation has something like him. If you look at his unit info now, though, you'll notice a nice little detail: "The commanders of Ur lead smaller armies, but in the event of a large scale war, the Ensi is supposed to lead the nation." The Ensi are our biggest baddest commanders, powerful mages, priests and war leaders all rolled up in one. We haven't got any yet, because they're expensive and Slow to Recruit (which means that they take up two turns of valuable commander recruitment at the capital; most powerful mages are Slow to Recruit). We'll definitely be using them, though, probably to lead our first real army out of the capital. Just... as... intended...

Of course there's nothing stopping you buying an Ensi straight away, and using it to lead 10 Chosen around, beating up indies, but it'd probably be a bad idea. They're expensive and great, and it's a waste of time and money to buy one before you can make good use of them. In general, you'll buy your first Ensi when you're well-established, wealthy, and ready to take on another nation. In general, the Ensi leads the nation of Ur to war as its mighty priest-king. This is the point I'm possibly belabouring by now: in Dominions 4 there's almost no tension between strategy and story.  You can translate almost anything you do in the game from technical, mechanistic language into more evocative terms, and back again, with very little loss of information. Far from it, these two aspects are impressively interwoven, to the extent that you can find yourself roleplaying your nation whether you meant to or not.

Story and strategy: like Enkidu and Gilgamesh, they don't have to fight! If they work together, they can become the best friends ever.

That'll do for now - thanks for reading. We'll hopefully be looking at more examples of this phenomenon in turns to come, as we continue Spike Jonze's flap to godhood! Next time! On Where The Wild Things Are!