Let's play Fantasy General!

[Monocause]

Welcome to this SSI's 1996 gem. Hopefully not everyone here have played it already. I'm pretty sure I won't manage to complete this LP as the game is long, but I hope to show the finer points of the gameplay and persuade some people to try this one out.

All the story you need to know: there's a fantasy land with some evil shit going on. You are the commander of an army that is about to put an end to this evil shit, et cetera. While this game lacks Panzer General's fantastic "ze german" lector, it makes up for it with a very fun research&army development mechanic that greatly increases replayability and forces some meaningful choices on the player between missions. Also, you get to choose between four starting characters, and this choice affects your strategy quite a bit. Which leads me to this: who should I pick?

This is Calis. His main perk is the mass heal spell, ie. once per mission you can cast it and restore all the wounded units to full strength (wounded, mind you, if a part of a unit has been killed off than the spell does nothing). Also, as you can see from the unit roster, he's a p. cool guy when it comes to recruiting cavalry.

Mordra here. Her main perk is the ability to recruit beast units, aside from the standard roster (there are four unit rosters - standard, beast, magic and mech). The summon monsters spell is kinda meh though - it just summons a couple of auxilliary units (meaning, units that you don't get to keep after finishing a mission). While they're useful in the early stages as cannon fodder, relying too much on auxiliaries will deprive your core units of the much needed experience.

This is Krell. He's a p. cool Gandalf-liek guy. Two awesome perks - one is the ability to recruit units from the magic roster, two is the ability to cast damage dealing spells once per turn. While these spells aren't especially lethal, they're extremely useful to soften up an enemy before attacking of finishing off some routed bastards etc. I've always played either him or Calis.

This is Marcas. He doesn't have any spells or access to special rosters. I played him only once and I remember he had a couple of special hero units at his disposal though, and IIRC the troops he got were more experienced from the start. Maybe other FG players can fill me in on why this guy is a decent choice.


Which is better and why? Discuss! A thing worth mentioning - while the missions look the same, every character gets access to different hero units at different points. So while Calis gets to find Malric the sky hunter early in the game, other characters don't.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I remember playing it a lot when I found it on some abandonware site years ago.

I also remember I had a p. good winning streak with Mordra, because of additional no-strings-attached cannon fodder and good regular units, while Calis sucked cock and his 'heal' ability was downright useless, so my vote goes for her (and besides, BOOBIES!). Krell's monster roster was also fairly interesting iirc, maybe even better than Mordra, but I don't remember for sure now.


EDIT: Scratch that, I just recalled that the p. good winning streak was with Krell, because of the absolutely uberawesome magic/mystical units, so my vote goes for him.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Calis. I like having support abilities in my strategy games.

 

[Monocause]

while Calis sucked cock and his 'heal' ability was downright useless

I remember many occasions on which the spell saved my butt. It could be the difference between pressing foward the assault or wasting turns to retreat units from the front to recuperate, you just have to plan your attacks with taking the spell availability into account and taking advantage of it when proper time comes.

So, one vote for Krell, one for Calis. As I'm quite eager to get this one started, the first character to get three votes wins!

 

[BethesdaLove]

Mordra 1
Mordra 2
Mordra 3
Go!

 

[Satori (original)]

Mordra will make for a more interesting LP I think.

 

[Shannow]

Marcas, because you plainly don't want to use him.

 

[Trash]

Krell and Marcas both rule. Krell because of the troop roster and that damage spell. He's very easy to play with, because your troops rule. Marcas has experienced troops, something that can count a lot in the later battles. Fun game!

 

[Claw]

Ah FG, yet another game I never finished thanks to unreliable harddisks and my failure to make backups.

Anyway, Krell rules!
I love them magics.

 

[Monocause]

So we've got two votes for Mordra and two for Krell. Trash, declare if you place your vote on Marcas or on Krell. Your vote could end the contest in Krell's favor *hint hint durr hurr*

EDIT: for those voting on Mordra - I remind you that no boobies are shown during the course of the game, nor does that red cloth conveniently covering her private parts get torn, ripped or taken away anyhow.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Archmage Krell. Why? Cause it sounds like he's got some nice support abilities.

 

[Monocause]

And Krell it is! I'll post an update within an hour, probably.

 

[Claw]

Archmage Krell. Why? Cause it sounds like he's got some nice support abilities.

And Sand people, or whatever they're called. In any case it's an awesome unit, one of my favourites besides the Barbarian with the two-handed morning star iirc.

 

[Monocause]

And here's the first part of our never-ending saga:

Some story. Notice the hand-drawing, the graphics in this game are really timeless. They are simple, yet nice and very functional.

We start off at the map of the first continent. It's a sort of a tutorial, as these missions are extremely simple. You can see that I can choose from two missions. The one I won't pick will be gone forever and that's important since many of these hold different rewards and are on different terrain, adding to replayability.

Here's the purchase screen. 'side the starting troops we have 50 gold to spend. I go for a wyvern (sky hunter) and a hawk rider to get some air support + a unit of archers. Why have I picked mortal air units instead of the more powerful magical ones? While the magic units are tough, they are vulnerable to mechanical units, and that's what we'll be facing on the second continent - so I want at least two mortal units to develop.

This is the research screen. Every time you complete a mission, you get some gold as a reward. Sometimes you find gold in ruins etc. Here you can decide where do you want your R&D team to go.
I've dumped the light infantry since I don't have any from the start and I'll be sticking to light cav, skirmishers and air units for scouting or quick action. I'll probably dump some more unit types to specialise further. You've got to strike a balance in this game between specialisation and variety in your forces - if you specialise too much, the computer will take advantage of it. If you try to be a jack of all trades, you'll find that your research is laggy and that your opponent has more advanced units than you do, and that's bad.
I've left only 20% of the gold I'll get to fill my coffers and that'll make me short on money. I don't remember the game that well so I'll have to adjust my finance strategy on the fly.

It starts.

This is how I've placed my troops. When you start a mission you have a specified area where you can place your units. The slower and tougher units go on the front, while the faster and support ones in the back. Let's make our first move and get to know enemy positions.

This is how it worked out. The main force has an archer protected by other units. That way, if someone attacks me he'll get bombarded by support fire and take heavier losses. You can also see that I've made a mistake with my light cav on the left flank. I've sent it to scout ahead and it found orc and goblin units. Orcs have a movement value of only 2 so they aren't a threat, but the goblins have 4 and can reach me - and my light cav would get hurt. Fortunately, one of Krell's spells is Fear. I've cast it on the goblins and that made them broken - see the red dot by their health number. When a unit is broken it has serious morale issues and sucks balls when fighting. The goblins will have to rest the next turn to get rid of the broken status, making my cav safe.

Next turn, and I attack. Before you make an attack you can see an approximate value of how the odds look like. This is the actual battle resolution info - five of the orcs are wounded and one got killed. Cool.

Here I've bombarded the goblins guarding the city with my air bombard unit, the hawk riders. Archers, bombardiers, skirmishers and light cav attack without retaliation, but they don't deal much damage and are weak on the defense. I love them anyway.

The orcs attacked my cavalry which had been hurt earlier and hurt it further, reducing it to 4 HP. Fortunately, these are all wounds, not deaths, so I just click on the rest button and the cavalry is restored to full 15 HP without any experience loss.
Notice the ruins on this screen. When you enter such a place with your units, you get a bonus of some sort. The only thing I got this time was a measly band of auxilliary peasants; however you often get much better troops, heroes or artifacts in these places.

Let's fast forward a bit, as nothing interesting happened.

*faps and dances wildly*

The "local troops" are in fact just another group of auxilliary peasants. 100 gold is cool though, my research went forward a bit.

I've spent the hard earned money to buy a catapult unit. It will come in handy in the last mission on this continent when you get to dislodge one of the lords of evil shit Dragga from a castle.

Further updates will be less screenshot intensive, I've made so much now to explain the game to those who've never seen it. Stay tuned.

 

[oldschool]

Way cool man. Looks like a good game.

 

[Luzur]

EDIT: for those voting on Mordra - I remind you that no boobies are shown during the course of the game, nor does that red cloth conveniently covering her private parts get torn, ripped or taken away anyhow.

there is always photoshop, ya know.

but alas, onwards we go then.

 

[Trash]

Found the cd and reinstalled it. It's a gem and plays very well on dosbox. Unfortunately I can't get the music to run. Even when its clearly on the cd. The sound setup only lets me pich the sound card and the IO address. Sound effects and the speech at the start of every mission works flawlessly. Got any idea how to get the music to run?

I remember it being pretty good.

 

[SerratedBiz]

This looks like a pretty good game! It certainly brings back memories of teh uberest, Panzer General. Moar, please.

 

[Jasede]

I love this game, it really does kick ass.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Excellent, just excellent. Keep it up.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I cannot seem to find it in any of the Abandonware sites. Anyone know where it is located?

 

[Satori (original)]

I cannot seem to find it in any of the Abandonware sites. Anyone know where it is located?

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/abandonwa ... p?gid=Mjk2

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I cannot seem to find it in any of the Abandonware sites. Anyone know where it is located?

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/abandonwa ... p?gid=Mjk2

Thank you for that. Never new the place existed.

 

[Azira]

Too little, too late

I also remember playing the heck out of this game. A true gem.

I almost always chose Calis though. His heal spell could turn a battle, when used at the correct time, and as far as I remember, you can upgrade normal units, but neither beast nor magical units. Seeing as your units accrue experience in this game, you'll want to try and keep your units alive, and make them more efficient as the game progresses. This is much easier if you can upgrade your low-tier units to more effective ones.

My memory might be flawed though. If it isn't, then I'd go with Calis or Marcas.

[Edit]
Found my manual.
Yes, there are 4 'races' of units. Mortal, magic, beast and mechanical.
Only mortal units can be upgraded. That makes Krell and Mordra slightly less appealing to me, but I'm not the one doing this LP. :wink:

 

[Monocause]

Yes, you're right - magic units aren't upgradeable. However, they are much stronger than their mortal counterparts. It ain't worth it to invest in them early game, but later on they kick ass.

Anyway, update. I had these ready yesterday, just couldn't bear myself to upload them etc. Here we go:

And we start.

The enemy had fortified himself near a bridge. With the three unit stack you can see there he also had an archer squad which I killed with some losses. After the archers were down, taking care of the rest was a piece of cake.
Stupid unicorns, got hit for 1W and broke. Had to rest them and wasted an attack opportunity.

I've split my forces to take control of every city on the map. While in this mission there are no city objectives (meaning, the only thing I have to do is to destroy all the enemy forces), every city taken gives me 5gp. And that's important now because of my tight budget.

Nothing interesting happened in this mission, so imagine how I kick ass and get that "The Majestic Monocause is the victor!" screen.

Sweet. Some new units are available because of the cash fix.

As you can see, I can upgrade my light cavalry to elf knights. The slinger skirmisher units got an upgrade to staff slingers. I had two units to purchase - I bought another staff slingers and a heavy cav unit - squires, to add more mobility to my army and expand the softening capabilities of my troops.

This is the tactical map of the final mission on this continent. As you can see, there are two starting areas, meaning that I have to divide my forces, which means I'll go for a two-pronged approach to assault King Dragga's castle (the black dot with a silver flag on the tactical map). Red shields are my units, the skulls are the visible enemy units.

These fuckers know their trade well. Trying to storm the river would undoubtedly result in heavy losses on my side, especially since the ogres (yellow guys with axes) are stronger than any infantry or cav I've got. Fortunately, I've got a catapult, a bombardier, fast light cav that can cross the river further away and strike on their back and Krell's fireball and weakness spells. This results in the goblins being down to 8 and broken and the ogres down to 10 HP without any losses on my side yet.

You can see a part of Draggario castle defenses here. I've sent my wyverns to scout ahead and they've been scratched by archers and the catapult badly, fortunately only one dead.

While the Northern Army fared well and crossed the river effortlessly, the Southern Army faced some difficulties. The squires have been hit real hard, but - hey, the goblin's guarding a ruin. After killing the goblin our brave warriors explore the ruin, and...

Kingcomrade himself appears and decides to join our army! What luck. This guy is tough as hell and kicks ass.

The siege of Draggario was kinda brief. The cavalry and spells took care of the archers and the siege engine. The orcs that remained were doomed. The enemy isn't stupid and offered to surrender. ProTip: don't accept that unless the clock is ticking. You'll miss out on unit experience and gold from capturing places.

*fap fap*

Uh, yeah, that's me.

And so we venture to the next continent.

This is our first opponent that will be a threat. Aelcar the Shadow Wizard... Remorseless, cunning, brilliant. He has the same spell repertoire as Krell, but he has an advantage - when he casts a spell, you can actually hear some words uttered in a very sinister manner, like "ka-ta-poonto!" or "braugh-danain". I suppose it's just something like "brush your teeth" played in reverse like in Diablo 1, but it sounds cool anyway.

He also has access to mecha units, which are powerful against our magic units. But we'll do something about it.

We've upgraded some of our units - catapult to ballista, archer to longbowmen. Also, I've bought two warbands - mortal heavy infantry to counter the mech units, a unit of squires and another longbowmen squad. Here's what our army consists of now:

H. infantry:

2 Mortal Warbands
2 Magic Air Warriors
1 Magic Treemen
1 Kingcomrade

Skirmishers:

2 Mortal Staff Slingers (named Andhaira)

Archers:

2 Mortal Longbowmen

Heavy Cavalry:

2 Mortal Squires
1 Magic Unicorns

Light Cavalry:

1 Elf Knights

Air:

1 Mortal Wyvern - sky hunter
1 Mortal Hawk Riders - bombardier

Support:

1 Mortal Conjurers
1 Mortal Ballista

I have to develop our air forces and get some more light cavalry. We're all set on the melee front for now. I'd also like a second ballista. Investing into spell casters isn't worth it until we get healers and druids.

Research is going nicely. We'll get swordsmen heavy infantry soon, and they're a p. good upgrade from the warbands.