Obligatory failed attempt at juvenile humour done, let's continue with the LP.
After beating up the Doge's forces we get out first look at the map of the Vinci part of the campaign. As you can see, there's lot's to conquer. As you can also see, there's four buttons in the bottom right corner of the screen. The first three will be explained in further updates, for the time being let's focus on the fourth one.
The fourth button allows us to upgrade our heroes via points we earned during the missions - these are awarded for completing main objectives and some bonus ones as well. If there's a bonus objective which grants Character Points you really want to do it. Current screen shows Giacomo's special abilities; pretty much all of them are cool; the research bonus at the start of each mission is extra cool which means you want Giacomo's level to be as high as possible ASAP. Active abilities explained: the first one is Augmentation, which heals units in a certain radius and increases their movement and attack speed. The second one is Sonic Boom, which deals limited damage in a radius, but, what's more important, it stuns small and medium units. Very handy ability. The last one is a bit meh in the campaign, though it has its uses - it creates clockwork demolition men which explode near the target, dealing 150 damage each. It sounds better than it actually works.
This is Carlini's screen. He's a decent assault hero, though there are better choices later on. His first ability, Snipe, deals 300/350/400 dam to a single unit. Second one is Turret, and places (duh!) a Turret which doesn't deal much damage and goes down fairly quickly. The last one, Scope, upgrades his attack damage and range. I won't be spending much CP on Carlini, he's a BRO but in this game it's mostly hoes before bros.
We start the next mission. Our task: regain Giacomo's walker (basically a big mech which shoots grenades and which Giacomo will use till the end of the game) and destroy the Alin hero Marwan, who - for some reason which starts to make sense as the story unfolds - decided to stir up shit in the region.
In this shot you can see the research panel. There are four items to research, each with four levels which have an increasing research point cost. Basically each of them offers a significant boost and that's why Giacomo's passive research bonus is so awesome. Research costs in research points go as follows: 1/2/4/7. To get level 3 research you need a large city, great one for level 4. Going from top to bottom:
POLITICS expands your borders (set by cities, fortresses and neutral sites you acquired), creates an increasingly powerful attrition zone (meaning enemy troops entering your borders take constant damage unless they have a supply unit accompanying them), reduces the cost for purchasing neutral sites and helps you storm enemy cities and sites (storming means you can sacrifice your troops' health to gain control of a city/site before you drop its health to zero)
PROSPERITY gives you a +10/20/40/80 wealth income and makes your troops heal when inside your borders and stationary; the higher your level the faster they heal.
SCAVENGING gives you some wealth whenever you kill enemy units and gives you a refund when you lose your own units and buildings. This tech can be very useful or completely useless depending on the mission and your playstyle.
MINING gives you a 10/20/40/80 timonium (mineral) income and increases the damage and radius of the Vinci special power, industrial devastation.
Early game mining and prosperity are extremely important as your income is low and you desperately need resources. You also need to invest in politics relatively early to establish respectable borders and make assaults more costly and difficult. In the campaign I usually try to get 2POL/2PRO/2MIN as fast as possible and tailor the rest to the situation and my strategy.
Another thing to explain here is that in RoN games income works differently than in most RTS games. While in WC/SC/AoE games you have civs harvesting resources and bringing them to your base, in RoN games each harvesting unit grants a boost to your Resource Per Minute rate. For instance, a miner working on a Timonium patch without a mine gives you an income of 10 timonium per minute. With 6 miners your Timonium reserve is going to increase by 1 unit per second.
Here you can see your first city in the campaign. Building up your cities is extremely important. What are our options? There are four district types you can build, and you can only add districts close to other districts, meaning that sometimes you have to carefully position each one unless you get stuck and your city is nerfed. From left to right:
MILITARY districts increase your pop limit, provide you a free musketeer unit per city level and serve as stationary defense; the whole district is basically a huge mortar. Don't count on it single-handedly defending against the enemy army though. It's helpful but kinda weak.
INDUSTRIAL districts grant you prototype points (explained in the next update) and increase your building and training speed. When your city is small it speeds up each by 1%, when it's large it's 4% and 7% when great. Better not forget about these unless you want to be outproduced by your enemy.
TRADE districts increase your economy cap and allow for more caravans (units built at the capital which travel between cities and sites generating wealth) to be built. Arguably the most important district in the early game. Whenever you build anything that provides you resources you need to remember to have enough of a cap to accomodate for the increase, otherwise it's time and resources wasted there.
PALACE districts can be built once for every other three districts built. The first turns your city Large, the second makes it Great. You need a Large or Great city to construct more advanced buildings and units and to conduct advanced research, so this is very important.
Another thing to make note of here: in the RoN games there's a concept called the ramp-up cost. It means that every next unit or building you create is more expensive than the previous one. This applies to cities, so the first district you add will cost 50 TIM, the next one 75, the third one 100 etc, etc. Palace districts are exceptions since they cost 250 TIM to turn into a large city and 500 TIM for a great one. The consequence of this is you're prompted to build balanced armies and spread the development between your cities instead of just churning out one unit type or building one huge megalopolis. I really like that concept.
Here's what we can build inside your borders independent of the city at the moment:
MINE: you place it near a timonium patch and it increases the miner's output and allows you to train more miners. You can send miners to a patch without a mine near it, but it will be inefficient. Needless to say, important.
DEFENSE TOWER: Basic defensive structure, fairly cheap. Slow shooting, strong when clumped together. Useful against air units.
RESEARCH LAB: Each one built provides you 2 research points. You can then convert it to several special unique (as in, you can only build one per map) buildings which are all pretty useful and grant you more RP. I'll explain it more later.
BARRACKS: Trains musketeers and clockwork units. Nuff said.
STEAM FORTRESS: Strong defensive structure that expands borders and trains artillery and heavy mech units. It's drawback is that it's notoriously expensive: the first one costs 225 TIM; each next one costs 150 TIM more.
More structures unlock later in the campaign.
This is an Inn, a neutral site. The concept is that maps are littered with these, and controlling each grants you a unique benefits. Each race has different ways of controlling these sites; the Vinci can either send caravans to it and wait until they join (can take long but is free and gives you free units) or the price drops enough (each caravan visit lowers the price you need to pay to acquire it) and purcahse it. You can also assault it, but you will probably take losses and won't gain any free units this way. Assaulting also increases the purchase cost of every other neutral site on the map, meaning you'll need more caravan visits and more money to acquire them. Best not to assault unless you really need a site or there's a risk that the enemy will snatch it before you do.
Some Dark Alin units assaulting our base. Nothing Giacomo and his bro Carlini can't handle.
Here you can see what options do you get with a research lab. Converting a lab to a project is irreversible and comes at a resource cost. Like I said, only one of each can be built per game:
TELESCOPE: gives you 1 RP and provides you LOS in a straight, fairly thin line all through the map in the direction you'll point it.
BOREHOLE: gives 2 RP and you can configure it to either increase your timonium income or your wealth income. You can also upgrade it to give even more income. Good choice for early game.
CALCULATOR: 3 RP and allows you to trade TIM for wealth and vice versa, at a cost.
TIMONIUM SMELTER: 5 RP and constantly produces free Clockwork Men, free of charge. The more of these you have on the field, the longer it will take for the smelter to churn next one out. Still, it's a good idea to build one smelter pretty much in every map you have the option to.
NULLIFIER: 7 RP and allows you to block all special powers and spells on the map for a limited time. Not very useful in the campaign as Vinci aren't as special power-reliant as the Alin or the Cuotl. Expensive.
BUNKER FORT: 7 RP and provides the single best Vinci defensive structure in the game. Expands borders and is a bitch to take down. Think carefully where you'll place it.
A steam fortress placed at a chokepoint. It's strong unless the enemy brings artillery, and in this mission the enemy has no artillery, meaning that I could probably leave the game running for 20 minutes and this thing would still be standing after I got back.
Assaulting the place where Giacomo's walker rests encased in weird crystals. Notice the new unit, the steam cannon, shooting at the Alin defensive structure. These are expensive and slow but are extremely useful against buildings; also useful against larger units.
And here we regain control of the Walker. From now on Giacomo's a real badass, shootan' grenades with his mech and doesn't afraid of anything.
Final assault on Marwan. Notice the Flying unit there: when we regained the walker another hero joined us. It's Venza, and she isn't that good.
Venza's skills. LOOT brings us wealth for every point of damage dealt. ENHANCED FLYER increases Venza's speed and damage. GUN DRONES is a skill that makes Venza lauch several drones that shoot everything in range for a limited time until they fall to the ground. I don't like Venza much since we'll get another flying hero in the next mission which is plainly better.
