Wages of Sin Write-up
Mild Spoilers
I’m labeling this section with ‘mild’ spoilers because there aren’t any scenario specific surprise type ideas here; they really are all strategy type.
I replayed as Decius of the Malakim after losing badly to a Svartalfar attack my first game. After losing, I compared notes with my son as usual, who not surprisingly found the scenario rather easy. He used the ‘traditional’ Malakim strategy of going for great priests, building Altar parts, getting the desert shrine, apprenticeship, and churning out killer disciple units. Of course he got Chalid and just smashed everything.
I like this strategy for Varn, who is spiritual, and obviously it can work for Decius. But I wanted to play differently as Decius, using his Raiders ability more prominently. Clearly, my son’s strategy can work, but we agreed it isn’t the difference between victory and defeat (at least at our level).
Strategy and Scenario
One of the reason I like scenarios is that they provide challenges not seen in the ‘Epic’ game. I haven’t played a lot of advanced starts and I don’t usually play on large maps. But I think the most important difference is that large maps usually have many more players. In Wages of Sin, there is a lot of area, there is little water, and not many players. So strategy should accommodate. The first time I played I think I lost right at the start – when I saw the forces around (a few that I lost) in the first turns, I actually overbuilt some military and I didn’t use my allies. In addition, this scenario starts with the Infernals and the Mercurians on the board, which is a big change from the Epic game. With them on the board, not only are they strong, but they serves as the ultimate ‘Rubber band’ mechanic – kill baddies, and Hyborem gets stronger. Lose a lot of units and Basium gets stronger. Finally, the strategy is dominated by your position. You have very powerful allies, but they are on the opposite side of the board. You can be in trouble in the baddies gang up on you before your Allies can help. It is important to give directions to them, they usually listen to you to some degree.
Your first choices are decisions on using your supplies. I decided to get one of the two ‘builder’ options (library or Temple of Empyrean) and one military building (hunting lodge or training yard). I went for the Temple of Empyrean since I would want to spread the religion and I went for the hunting lodge since the board was big and I thought speed would be important.
My view is to attach Decius to a unit and try to stick with it, try to get to level 6 to build Form of the Titan as long as you have copper (which seems be rather prevalent). It ended up taking 13 turns to build and probably added a few hundred experience points in my second game.
So, with a large map, practically no water, and few players, what do you do? I tried to stick to a rule – only build settlers, workers, and troops early! With already built cities and expansion, I went for 2 workers/city and it still may not have been enough.
After a time using this strategy, I built ‘special’ buildings or wonders; I stopped to get Form of the Titan and then built the Ale house since I was in dire need of happiness.
In my second game, I got marble and stopped to build the Epics which were very useful, especially Heroic Epic. Later I got the three libraries and build the Great Library out in my city to the south (that starts on the board) which was a bit away from the action. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with TGL if I didn’t have marble.
Generally, I found following the river west gave me good cities, but going north or south gave resources. You do not start with a lot of good happiness resources so these can become a priority. Obviously get copper. Remember that the Malakim don’t need horses for the camel archers but these are abundant anyway.
Clearly you want to get religious law first and get Chalid, use the Empyrean strategy of having Chalid kill everything in his path. I went for priesthood, alteration, mathematics and engineering, got the Guild of Hammers. The guild of hammers is a great wonder when there are a lot of cities and the extra movement point on the roads is terrific.
Overall Strategy
Spoilers
Generally I had one city get a mage guild and build adepts. I had two mana sources in my territory. I build enchantment mana with the first since I really like enchanted blade and I badly needed the happiness. The second was body mana for the obvious reasons, I wasn’t planning on using catapults and haste can dramatically increase speed while regeneration is a very nice spell. I was correct that there would be little use worrying about level 3 spells, the game would be decided before they were available.
In both of the games, I found that the Svartalfar were the most powerful enemy in the north. The Calabim were weak and in the south. I rarely even interacted with the Sheam, who seemed to be in the opposite situation as I was surrounded by the good guys amd were a non-entity in both games. Finally, Hyborem was pretty much in the center.
In both games, the key was to fight the two front war successfully. I wanted to conquer Flauros and the Calabim to the south to grab a bunch of nice cities, but I have to worry about the Svartalfar expansion. The general technique is pretty easy, have Chalid blast the defenders down, have him kill anything that is hard, and mop up. With the raiders ability you can move very quickly through the enemy and plunder for money with camel raiders if necessary. I got lots of gold this way.
I had one city churn out adepts almost every time it wasn’t building infrastructure. I had mages to sanctify, haste, and cast enchanted blade. All adepts got scorch for free; this wasn’t particularly useful although I did use the scorch/sand lion trick a few times. Of course I wanted to get mages so I build adepts early. When I was defending against Hyborem, I had three mages with destroy undead. Another city had stables and churned out camel archers. A third city built archers/longbowmen. I stayed on god-king pretty much the whole game and my capital was a monster, building the ‘swing’ type of unit I needed – a Malakim capital with lots of flood plains is pretty awesome and with the ale house, bizarre of Memnon, a money changer, and a tax collector and the money from raiding, I was ahead on tech the whole game.
Chalid is so strong that taking cities is rather easy, but holding them is harder. It may actually be easier to win by burning the cities but I didn’t want the AC to rise so I held them, with the need to garrisoning them being my scarcest resource. This idea may have been a mistake since Basium took the AV holy city.
In both games, the critical step was campaigning in the South while holding the Svartalfar in the north. In my second game, my defending army in the north was far larger. In my first game, after capturing Flauros’ cities, I had Chalid in the south holding the Infernals at bay when I lost to a Svaltalfar army of 30 units conquering the north. With Nox Noctis they can strike hard and fast.
In my second game, the key strategy change was that I was going to take guard against the ‘main’ Svartalfar army before defeating Flauros and put most of my troops in the North. However, this didn’t work. The problem was Alakazan – he would come out, kill the top guy, and move out protected by Nox Noctis, I couldn’t do anything. Assassins would kill all weaker armies. I was losing a few guys a turn.
So Chalid went north, and there was a new strategy. I had to kill the main Svartalfar army and Alakazan before continuing with the conquest in the south. Ironically, it I probably easier to hold the south BEFORE defeating Flauros because Hyborem will find other people to fight and Flauros is weaker! Therefore, my view now is that the Svartalfar threat has to go.
Chalid and the Decisive Battle
The Svartalfar had nothing that could stand up to Cahlid. The critical battle was now Chalid against the main Svartalfar army. Chalid of course had Decius to get his XP’s up, the critical point getting to combat 5 and then up the drill line to get blitz. Any human would have defeated me – any human would throw his whole army away to defeat Chalid and I suspect they could have taken him down. But I marched Chalid out using my Raiders ability, if I took any losses I retreated back to my city. With Crown of Brilliance, pillar of flame, and his attacks, he took down the Svartalfar army a unit at a time. I finally got blitz and mobility for him and could take 3 guys down (sometimes retreating after losses.
I defended him with an escort of Rathas and had camel archers in reserve. The Rathas would go around him and cast blinding light to see if there was a stack ready to pounce on Chalid. If there was a message that 20 units were impacted by blinding light the Rathas would converge and I would send in the camel archers also.
This procedure/battle lasted probably about 30 turns. Eventually, the main army was whittled down. With about 7 units left, mostly adepts, Chalid killed Alakazan. Chalid now had over 200 XP’s and could just take down anything in his path. Later I traded to get Rage from Ethne the White – and I upgraded units to berserkers. A berserker with Alakazan’s mirror is quite tough; use it first on any city!
Aftermath
If this were a ‘normal’ game, I would be pretty sure I had won, and I pretty much had now. The difference of course was that killing so many Svartalfar made Hyborem a true monster. Fortunately, the Sheam had been long defeated and Basium, Arendal, and Ethne were fighting him. Even so Hyboren was beating up the Ljosalfar badly.
For me, I had defeated the Svartalfar so badly that I suspended the Calabim campaign and went on. I didn’t strategically like the way my border was getting larger and the lack of garrison troops was a bad problem. But I captured the Svaltalfar capital and with it Nox Noctis. This was another game changing event as now defending my own overextended kingdom was much easier – workers don’t’ have to be defended, they can’t come from nowhere, etc. After capturing the capital, I sent Chalid south and conquered the Calabim easily. Hyborem sent a medium sized army, but my mages casting destroy undead crushed them.
The Svartalfar sent one more army while Chalid was south, this was their last swan song. But now I was ready – they were a little stronger until Chalid showed up and mopped them up. With the destruction of their second army, defeating them further was simply a matter of logistics.
Of course, winning would now be routine. I had a much larger economy and production than anyone; I built Teutorix, gut arquebus’s. I probably could have defeated Hyborem but Basium was hitting him pretty hard and I figured the easiest way to win was to beat the Svartalfar. I got guilds to churn out engineers, got the Nexus. At this point then getting garrisons out to cities was easy. I mopped up the Svartalfar and won..
Conclusions – Spoilers
I had a lot of fun and did some new things. I do think this scenario has a lot of replay value – I can play other factions or even the Malakim again and try the ‘priest’ strategy. I clearly thought it was one of the best scenarios, probably because I did find it quite a challenge.
Regardless of how you build your army, I do think the key items are those laid out at the top. You are on a large map that is unsettled with Hyborem and Basium starting on the map. You have a powerful enemy in the north and want to conquer south. Handling these challenges is the key to victory.
Best wishes,
Breunor
killed my 3 core cities to size 1 stagnant, my research and production completely withered away. I would appreciate if Stephanos didn't enter the game that early aswell, but I suspect that is on purpose... 
