Topping off RTK8

Last night I took control of the last few western cities holding out on me and united China, completing that particular run at RTK8. The border cities of both remaining forces were difficult to take because they were easily defended and difficult to attack, with the way they could easily receive reinforcements but each had only one route of attack from my cities, killing any possibility of my forces being reinforced. Both remaining rulers chose to use Barrage tactics against my invading forces, which involved switching most of their troops to use ranged attacks while keeping a few tough cavalry units to keep my infantry and cavalry occupied while the arrows punched them full of holes. After I was torn to bits in a manual battle this way, I switched to the Run tactic (movement * 2, increased morale) that allowed me to get in close right away and completely dominate the enemy’s relatively slow crossbow and arbalest units. In addition, one key battle in the southwest took place on a map with a river, so I used that opportunity to try out my force’s Ship technology. I directed attacks from the river and from the opposite bank against the enemy’s outposts and ground units and was able to take the upper hand pretty easily.

After taking Liu Biao’s territory and hiring Zhuge Liang, I placed him in charge of taking over the western kingdoms. He was very good at maintaining border security and preparing cities to launch invasions, but I tended to get impatient with him as he wouldn’t direct a city to attack unless there was absolutely no chance of the attack failing. Which…is a good thing, I’d imagine, and a sign that I probably second-guessed him too much. Still, I preferred building off his initiative and handling battles manually, rather than depending directly on city/troop statistics. In order to take one of Ma Teng’s key cities, I assigned all of my officers with WAR of 100 or more and several with 90+ to the city I attacked from in order to ensure the advantage, and the elephant and Nanman units I gained from my micromanaged southwestern campaign compounded the victory. So while the AI of officers with high INT is reliable and often effective, it’s not a solve-all.

I had been panicking a little near the end, because even after years of visiting my subjects’ harvest festival and donating to the poor I still hadn’t shaken my empress’s Infamy. Once, when I’d withdrawn a sizable amount of money from my capital city’s coffers to use for gifts for officers, I donated to the poor and noticed that the amount donated was quite a bit higher than normal, hinting that the amount donated is proportional to the amount of cash in your character’s pockets. From then on out, I kept around 9000 gold on me at all times and made some rather large donations (the maximum was around 850 gold). I realized my Infamy had finally gone below 1000 when a event was triggered that involved my empress meeting and marrying a pretty-boy roughly half her age (!), something that can’t occur if an officer is infamous. My decision to support the Han when Emperor Xian came under my territorial control and the emperor’s later amicable abdication in my favor left me with a good ending. It involved my empire, called Wu, expanding into western territories and making their cultures and technology part of China. Scarily enough, plague hit my capital right before I took the last two cities, and my empress contracted! But it didn’t affect my ending at all. It left her in a “wounded” state, but I don’t know how it would have affected her lifespan.

Almost immediately after switching off the console, I felt the urge to start a new game of RTK8. There are just so many possibilities to explore, so many officers and roles to try out, so much history to play with. Also, I’m still totally addicted to it. The combination of long-range and short-range planning, officer and territory acquisition, and stat- and relationship-building is something I enjoy just as much as designing and programming a complex application. It occupies my brain in a way that few genres do, and has exactly the sort of depth of play that I was hoping for (a strategy game with depth and variation similar to VF4) when I decided to take a chance on the series. And reading the RTK novel at the same time gives me insight into all of the officers and rulers I’m playing around with, how the game’s ‘history’ diverges from real history at which points and how the programmed-in officer motivations, abilities, actions, and successes compare to their real-world, slightly-fictionalized counterparts.

I need to occupy my brain with something just as meaty, so while I’ll have more time for VF4Evo again, I think I’ll resume my game of SMT3. I need to meet up with Daisoujou and figure out exactly where I’m headed next (it’s been several months since I last played it). I could use the month-plus break before RTKX is released here.

I find myself wishing that I was as interested in strategy-RPGs as I am in the all-encompassing RTK-style of experience. The dynamic game environment in that series provides more context and purpose for each battle than I’ve seen in any plain SRPG I’ve played so far – even compared to heavily story-based games like FFT and Tactics Ogre. I find that my motivations for doing well in RTK battles are much more personal, and I have much more interest in figuring out the right tactics to win as quickly and cleanly as possible than I do in canned, pre-planned SRPG setups. So while I want to like games like Twelve just for their art style and enthusiasm, I can’t help but wish that they were RTK or X-Com-style games…

(Question: are there any other non-Koei console series that are structured like RTK? I seem to remember Brigandine having some sort of kingdom-building structure, but I could be wrong.)