On 27 Jun 2014, at 04:58, Peter wrote:
> 1. I usually choose Trolls as ancestral enemies. They attack me frequently, because of this. Usually I pick the strategic option "kill as many as possible". Aren't I supposed to get some reward for bravely genociding my ancestral enemies? Sometimes it seems as if I get a little Magic, because I have 0 magic when they attack, and then after I have 2 or 3. But other times I seem to get nothing. And the game never explicitly tells me that I get anything.
IIRC, not for such routine events.
> 1b. Cragspider started to dislike me in the most recent game. … What can I do?
Don't offend a force of nature who is thousands of years old?
> 2b. How can I increase my chance of capturing horses from raiders? Especially the Horse Dudes they're are all mounted, so battling them ought to give lots of horses, but usually I get none. Once I got 49 or so, which was far too many, because I had to do numerous Trade journeys to sell them all.
You'd have to assume that people who fight on horseback are fairly good about not losing their horses.
> 2c. I suppose if I have a wild excess of horsies, I can sacrifice them instead. But I'm used to sacrificing only goods, because goods don't mate and reproduce the way cows do. Or horses do. So I really have no clue as to which gods like blood sacrifices. But having a list of which gods prefer goods and which prefer cows/horses or thralls, would be very nice (I don't keep thralls, though. I don't see much advantage in it, and it's nice to occasionally get a boost to Magic when I get the chance to liberate other peoples' thralls).
IIRC the manual states that the cases where gods care are pretty obvious.
> 4c. How does allocating Magic to War work? If I allocate 1 Magic to War during the Sacred Time, does that give return-on-investment in all combat that I'm involved in in that year?
I think so.
> I'd have assumed that that is influenced by the amount I sacrifice, so that if I give a larger sacrifice the effect might last for longer, such as 6 or 7 or 8 or even many more seasons. And/or that the effect is stronger, so that e.g. that while a Shrine-based Truesword always gives a x2 swordpower bonus to Weaponthanes, so that e.g. 4 Weaponthanes count as 8, a sacrifice effect can give a smaller or larger multiplier, so that a miserly sacrifice might give only x1.7 or even x1.4, while a larger sacrifice might give x2.1, x2.2 or even x2.3 or more.
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> But is that so? Is there any evidence or indicators that suggest it to be so?
Nothing in the manual says that is so, right?
> 5. Sometimes I'm stuck with a boring set of nobility, e.g. I almost always pick Orlanth as my primary god, yet in recent games I've had clans that only has 1-2 nobles of Orlanth none of which had impressive skills.
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> What do I do about that?
People are called to the gods.
> 5b. Men and women elevated to the Ring are presumed to improve their skills, but I've barely seen that happen. Sometimes I see somone rated at Renowned and I'm like "hey, I kinda think this guy started out at merely Excellent, but I'm not 100% sure". Only time I'm fairly sure I've seen Heroic is with the Kallyr woman (a Vingan IIRC?) raised on a shield, who might be Heroic in Combat.
Nobles should increase even if not on the ring.
Last few games I played, characters were definitely ending up with Heroic skills.
> 6. I like it during battle when one of my nobles, usually a Vingan or Humakti, gets the chance to do insane feats of heroism. I always let them do that, and usually they kick a lot of butt. Sometimes they die, but it seems to me that there's a much-better-than-even chance of them prevailing.
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> But is there something similar for other kinds of feats? Especially Magic? I'd like a chance or two to get my magicians to engage in similarly insane heroics. Firballing a minotaur or something.
Fireball is not really Orlanthi magic. And there should be heroic opportunities for healers and magicians.
> 7b. To what extent does the game help me choose the right guy for a job? The 7 direct skills are obvious, but the combo skills such as Diplomacy, Hunting and Propechy are not. Does the game properly emphasize the right man or woman for the job, by going by the summed combo skills, or does it tend to go for one high skill at the expensive of the other skill in the combo being lower? And if the later, is that good or bad? It's my assumpion that combo skills are simply the sum of the two combined skills, e.g. Combat 35 and Leadership 30 gives Strategy 65, same way as Combat 46 and Leadership 19 gives Strategy 65 and so bot are equal, rather than as one could ALSO assume the higher Combat more than compensates for the lower Leadership to yield an overall better strategic performance?
In dialogs, the game will pick someone good, but there is no real presumption that they are best. In scenes, it's even harder to say.
Compound skills (used in interactive scene tests) are the average of two skills.
David Dunham http://a-sharp.com Twitter: _at_KingDragonPass
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