A Game of Thrones Genesis Complete Expert Single Player Walkthrough

This guide and FAQ is designed for people who are attempting to finish the game on Expert.  All tactics described here will work on any other difficulty as well.

Year -700: Part 1 – Beginnings of Diplomacy

In this first mission you will need to learn the basics of the game.

Your first unit is the envoy.  The envoy makes agreements with towns.  Towns with agreements will provide a source of income, gold.  Gold is the only resource in the game so the more towns you control the more gold you will have and the more units you can create.

So you will have to make more envoys and send them out to capture towns faster.  On the bottom right panel there are six buttons.  The top left one will open non-offensive units which will include envoys.

Note that as you purchase more envoys the cost of them goes up.  There is no unit limit in the game but they control the amount of one unit you can have (for balance purposes) by increasing the price of that one unit as you buy more.

But the enemy has envoys too!

The enemy convoys can take over your towns as well.  To stop this send your envoy to the town they are going for and this will send their convoys back to the base.  As their envoys are moving back slower you can be put into a position to take over more of their bases.

Eventually it will dawn upon you how absolutely impossible the goal of the mission is.  You will now unlock… the spy.  This is available under non-offensive units, bottom right panel top left button.

The spy can create secret agreements. Secret agreements are made with enemy towns and will turn purple once granted.  These will give you and your enemy income equally.  Spies when used on town can also rout out secret agreements.

Spies are also invisible detectors.  Since they are invisible themselves you can use spies to find enemy spies.. and later assassins.

Once you are getting close to being complete the enemy will start killing convoys with mercenaries.  These are attacking units.  You will need to build your own.

On the bottom right panel the middle top button is for mercenaries.  Open it up and go to town.  Build as many as you can.  Cavalry seem like the obvious choice but in reality archers are the strongest unit.  You will need to mix in some cavalry just to deal with some enemy units.

Once you have a decent sized army move forward and smash through the enemy’s units.  These mercenaries can also kill enemy spies and convoys.

Try to be cost effective.  Use your army to wipe out enemy convoys.

After you have made so many secret agreements and so many envoy agreements you will gain an objective to kill an enemy spy.  Place an enemy spy near the front to detect the spy.  Once it is detected have your army kill the spy.  This will also end the mission.

Year -700: Part 2 – Call to Arms

The first part of the mission will insist that you need to capture seven zones to win.  So make a few envoys and set them out.  Use your envoys to dispel enemy envoys and get as many bases as you can.

But you will quickly notice that the enemy is staging spies to make secret agreements.  Soon you will get a mission to route out one of the enemy’s secret agreements.

Next you will be introduced to the rogue.  The rogue can convert enemy assassins, spies, and envoys in exchange for money.

The main function of the rogue however is to create an uprising.  Uprisings make it so that an enemy town will not produce any income until the riot leader is assassinated.

Try and pick a town that is in the middle.

After you stage this uprising you will have to continue taking over seven towns.  So make sure to increase your number of envoys and spies over time.

Eventually an enemy assassin will kill your rogue.  You will now have the option of hiring on an assassin.

Assassins are invisible units that become revealed on the map after making an attack.  All non-aggressive units die instantly.  All of the armies will require multiple hits from an assassin to kill… so they are recommending for wiping out enemy envoys, assassins, rogues, and spies.

Build an assassin to take out their assassin.  You will need to use a spy to find the assassin.  Remember the spy can out run the assassin so if the assassin tries to kill your spy simply move it away.

Once your assassin is out, assassinate the assassin.  The assassin can be used after this to wipe out enemy envoys and spies to make winning this mission easier.

The enemy will place a rogue in one of your towns.  You will need to wipe it out with an assassin.

After this simply focus on using your spies to make secret agreements, your assassins to pick off enemy units and your envoys to push enemy envoys out of your territory.  Gaining control of the map will become very easy.

Year -700: Part 3 – Choice of an Ally

You will be given one mercenary to start.  The mercenary can be used to wipe out enemy convoys…. however note that there are two enemy bases…. so maybe not such a good idea.

instead focus on getting the most towns possible by simply using envoys.  After you have the majority you will be given a mission to rout out the secret agreements.  After so long you will realize… there are no secret agreements.

Instead they have made false alliances.  This is done after a spy is bought out by a rogue.  In order to figure out which envoy is a turn coat you need to use your spy on each one.  Upon figuring out which envoy is a fake you will lose all of those alliances… but will find out which one is working with the enemy.

Next up you will need to hire a rogue and fill up his money bag.  A rogue will need to stand next to the base to fill up the money bag.  Once it is full you can send the rogue out.  However if the rogue dies… the money is lost forever.

You will need to use your rogue on an envoy to get them creating false alliances for you.  Once you have done this you will get your next objective.

your next objective is to hire peasants.  Peasants are farmers.  They will work the fields around towns that you own and they will give you a new resource, food.  Food is needed for building an army.

Remember that the rest of the game continues.  You still need to use envoys to make agreements, use spies to create secret agreements, use assassins to wipe out enemy envoys, and and rogues to create riots.

Peasants can be assassinated so you will need to make more peasants until you can get to that minimum 300 food threshold.

Now you will be able to raise an army…. armies are expensive.  Pick a unit any unit.  Once you have selected an army unit (this is the button on the right hand top side of the bottom right menu).

You will now have the option to choose between marrying Lord Jordayne and Mors Marten.  It doesn’t matter which side you choose, the end works out exactly the same.

You will however have to build up a large army.  So get your peasants working and get as much food as you can to raise a large enough army.  Once you have a few units move them to the rally point set by whomever you choose.

If you choose Lord Jordayne he will turn on you.  If you choose Mors Marten he will join you against Lord Jordayne.  Regardless Lord Jordayne dies and you marry Mors Marten.

Year -700: Part 4 – After the Wedding

The first step in this mission is to form a blood alliance.  For this you will need an envoy and a noble lady.  First send the envoy to a town and take it over.  Once your envoy has one town send it to many others to try and take over others.

All the while produce a noble lady.  They are insanely cheap ranging from 20-50.

After you complete this assignment you will need a second noble lady to create a second blood alliance.  As well you will need to send an envoy to the enemy to try and negotiate peace.

While your envoy is on route it will be seduced by the enemy’s noble ladies.  Noble ladies can seduce envoys, spies, and rogues.

The game suggests you buy a guardsman… and you should.  Guardsman can arrest noble ladies, assassins, and spies.

So from here you can use noble ladies to create blood pacts, of which the enemy will not be able to destroy.  After so much toe to toeing you will be told you need to start food production.

So get out as many peasants as you can and place them at farms.  Continue to use envoys to try and take over zones and produce those cheap noble ladies to secure enemy envoys and create blood pacts when you can.  You can use spies to create secret agreements as well.

Once you have enough food war will be declared.

When war is declared envoys and spies become useless, they will no longer be able to make diplomatic agreements until the war ends.  You will need to siege with an army.

Hire a commander to give you an aura.  You can also bring your lord forward to change the place where your army will spawn at.  But if your lord dies you will most likely lose… so don’t lose the commander or the lord.

Move to a town and siege it.  The gold mine will be destroyed.  Bring envoys to help rebuild it so you gain another point and extra income.  You can bring in a noble lady afterwards to secure it from the enemy taking it.

Continue to move towards the enemy’s keep, capturing towns and conquering them.  You can use a rogue to neutralize the point to the northeast so you won’t have to worry about the enemy getting income from it.

Push south with your army.  After you have taken all of the points on the map the mission will end.

Year -700: Part 5 – Consolidation of Power

In this mission you will have to visit all of the towns.  There are mercenaries along the road and at night time assassins are deployed.  You have to get to each town before night time or else you will die to an assassin.

There is a timer in the top right corner indicating how much time you have.  Make sure you have some mercenaries moving with your lord.  If your lord dies you lose, so make sure to baby sit him.  You will run into your first mercenary pack south of your base at a Y intersection.

Once you get to the town to the southeast you will get more free mercenaries and extra time added to your clock.  Next up let’s head to the far east town.

Directly northeast there is a band of units.  Instead of trying to counter against counter focus down each enemy as you can.  This is after all, a time trial.

After you have cleaned up most of this army you will be ambushed from the north and then from the west, so make sure to move your lord away from them accordingly.  Your lord is the main priority here.

After defeating this ambush head to the town to the east, there should be no more ambushes.

This will once again replenish your clock… and give you a massive army.

Heading north there will be multiple assaults, so keep tight.  Move the lord appropriately to avoid damage.  You will need to pace effectively.  Once inside the town you will be given a new mission.

You will need to head to the town to the south to wipe out the enemy there.  Your army is massive, their’s is small.  Head south with the ball of units, keep the cavalry units on a separate control group so that don’t get isolated.

Once this town is destroyed, you win…. and this ends the -700 year as well.

Year 1: Part 1 – The Red Keep

Brand new campaign and brand new cast and characters.

Your first mission is to create an alliance with the closest town and those in the south.  That means sending envoys off to do their job.  You can use noble ladies to solidify those agreements and get a guardsman to deal with assassins and spies.

After you capture your first turn start producing mercenaries.  You should also get out a spy to detect assassins with.  The more noble ladies you can use to solidify towns the easier later in the game will become.

Use your mercenaries to protect your envoys specifically.  The enemy will send scatteres mercenaries at you.  If you can increase your numbers slowly you can can this done in good time.

After you have all of the southern points you will have to conquer Crackmaw Point.  Be slow but be precise.  Use an army to protect your envoys as you capture each point.  Make sure to put noble ladies anywhere you can.

Eventually you will get a new objective to take the two towns closest to the enemy… this isn’t easy.  Use noble ladies so solidify as many places as you can.  Move your army of mercenaries into a position to support.

Once you have control of these two towns the enemy will suddenly have a giant army, and you will have none.

Luckily Aegon II has the power of a dragon.  Use the dragon to destroy the enemy’s armies (if they spawn) and then destroy the enemy’s castle.

Year 1: Part 2 – The Storm Lands

You have to defend three towns, they are pretty far apart from each other.  You start with a spy and an envoy.

You will need an army of mercenaries.  Stage them as the default position in the middle.  As enemy’s begin to attack each location move your army there to defend it.  You will want to get a decent number of guardsman, archers, and a large cavalry force.

You can use the envoy to protect a point from enemy envoys, the most eastern one is your best bet.

After five minutes the army will arrive.

You can use the dragon to help destroy the enemy’s army.  You will need your army in order to capture towns.  Make sure to produce peasants and have them till fields.  This will give you food to raise a larger army.

After your first major victory use the dragon to take over towns by himself and use your army to hold off the enemy’s army and try to push forward.  It will take a few minutes to do this.

Once you have captured all of these points you will have completed the mission.

Year 1: Part 3 – Counter Attack

This is a very short mission.  You will start with an army and a few zones.  You will need to defend.  Keep all of your units in a ball and focus fire down enemies as you can.

You will have a commander.  The commander has an aura that boosts attributes, keep him alive and keep him in the back.

After you survive the first wave separate your forces into three groups.  One group will be the east, one group to the west, they should be balanced.  Your third group should be all cavalry.  All of your reinforcements should be cavalry.  Have your cavalry float between whichever area needs to be reinforced.

It’s important to note that both sides need to be defended.  Keep this up as long as you can and it will be an easy win.

Year 1: Part 4 – The Pact

For this mission you will have face off against two enemies who have made a pact with each other.

Slowly creep in using envoys to capture points.  There is no point in having any blood pacts because they simply will not hold.  Take the time to put peasants at every single point you can, gold is not going to be a valuable resource.

Once you get the dragon you simply have to destroy the enemy’s archers, the rest of their units cannot attack up and thus will not count towards the victory.  Once all archers are dead you will have a victory.

Year 1: Part 5 – The Power of Persuasion

You will have to save prisoners to the north.  Take an army of two cavalry and one archer north.  There will be units on the way so focus fire the enemies down.  There will be two armies, try to keep your archers out of melee combat.

Once you get to this town you will gain reinforcements in the form of the prisoners.

Next mission is to destroy 12 peasants.  They are in the fields around the towns you do not own.  It states to avoid patrols and simply take out peasants.  You will probably be able to take out one… but not many more.

Once you get all twelve done you will be tasked to destroy a group of merchants.  Merchants are generated from towns and carry gold from the towns to the keep.  These merchants can be found on horse back riding from the second most western town on the map.

After this you will get an army, simply move them to the appropriate spot and the mission ends.

Year 129: Dance of the Dragons

This single mission has two ways to complete it, so we’ll go through both.

Rhaenyra Path

Rhaenyra is the rightful heir to the throne.  It was obvious she is the key choice as she has been taught how to use statehood to her advantage, whereas Aegon did not.

In this mission you must create seven secret alliances with seven different towns.  To do this you will need spies.  You should have your first two spies going opposite paths.  The map is a loop so have them going back and forth on the loop.  Once your third spy arrives have him try and fill in a sector and simply have the three spies rotating their sector properly until you have all points.

Getting an assassin to kill enemy envoys, spies, and assassins is almost pointless as the enemy will eventually get Men-At-Arms to arrest your assassin.

Once you have 7/7 secret alliances, or if your own assassin dies it will activate a new fatal mode in which you have to hold five secret alliances for five minutes.  To do this simply continue to rotate your spies around the various locations.  Try to get out as many spies as humanly possible to help you with this.

After five minutes if you have held five points you will win.  If you do not have three spies for the last 2 minutes you cannot win.  The enemy will simply have too many spies of his own routing out the deception for you to possibly win.

Aegon II Path

Aegon II is the first born son and thus is the rightful heir to the throne.  But Rhaenyra with her expertise in statecraft has managed to get seven blood pacts signed.

So you’ll have to destroy the blood pacts.  This way of doing it is far harder.  You will need a spy and an assassin to move around the map.  The spy will detect the noble lady and the assassin will kill her.  This is one of the two ways to destroy a blood pact.  The other way is to siege which is too costly and not worth your time.

Your opener should be to buy two more envoys to try and defend your territories from the enemy.  These envoys will come in handy later

You will also need to hire on an army of mercenaries to try and help wrestle control of the map.  To the north is the Eyre.  Before it there are two bases and a bridge.  This is a point in which you can cut off any envoys, any soldiers, any assassins, any spies, and any enemy units.

You will want to station a giant army here, do not move out until you can get 5-6 units here.  Try to focus on getting a decent number of ranged, some guardsmen and some some knights, just to counter everything the unit can send.

Make sure to have your envoys working, have three at all time.  They will need to constantly be capturing points and holding them.  By the time you wipe out all blood pacts you should have control of most of the map with your envoys.

Once you have destroyed all the blood pacts you will get part two, Create 5 Blood Pacts.

The enemy is also a cheater, he will have an army spawn in your territory and will be able to spawn a lot of soldiers up north.  So hold off on noble lady production and begin  to spawn a small army to try and deal with this.

Then produce your five noble ladies and escort them to the various regions.  Once all blood pacts have been made, the mission is completed.

Year 157: Part 1 – Conquest of Dorne

In this mission you will start off with one guardsman.  This one guardsman can be quite critical.

Your first objective will be to build an army of three military units.  Remember these are the ones from the tab furthest to the right.

In order to do this you will need peasants, so start cranking out those peasants and get them on farms.  Remember peasants are from the non-military tab.

Once you have most of the fields up you should get a spy.  The spy will be able to detect all of the assassins and rogues that come into your territory.  It will allow your guardsman to arrest them.  This will either become a potential source of income later on (if your opponent decides to buy them back).

You will need to balance off your army.  Knights and pikeman will take care of most of the enemy’s units.  Bowmen and Crossbowmen will be very powerful with sieging, and if held back will take no damage.  The commander is almost essential as it will provide a very powerful buff to your army.

Once you have your three armies continue to make armies.  Your new objective will be to wait and defend while your ally gets into position.  Take this time to split up your army effective with a few units on the western flank and most of your army on the middle flank.

You will have to deal with rogues spreading insurrection, assassins killing your peasants and an army or two attacking.

Once the command is made march your army across the river into the eastern more enemy fort (to the south of your base) with your whole army.  Focus on wiping out armies using only a few units to siege.

You should also bring down your spy and guardsman to pick up any assassins that might try and get through.

After so long your ally will have permanently captured a point and will have a number of guardsman deployed to delay the enemy’s army.  You should be able to capture one fort in the least.  Once it is captured wipe out the enemy’s army and then head west and south taking those forts and those towns.

There are fields in these towns so you can deploy more peasants here so you can get more resources for more armies.  You should set your rally point to the fort so that your army will rejoin you quickly.

Head along the southeast with your army taking those points and finally take the one point north of the enemy’s keep.

Once you have captured all of these points you will be declared the victor.

Year 157: Part 2 – Prosperity

This mission you start off with nothing at all, not even merchants.  You will have to produce a large number of merchants for each town.  These merchants are all very cheap and it is worth maxing these out.

This is a timed mission, events and objectives will trigger at specific times.

You will need to get the maximum number of merchants to towns.  Select each merchant and right click on a town.

After so long assassins will start spawning in the north, so hopefully you will have started in the south with merchants.

Once the assassins spawn you will now have access to four mercenary types, noble ladies and spies.

You will need a guardsman and a spy.  As soon as you get the guardsman send it north.  The three spies are located in the three most northern towns east to west.  Use the guardsman to arrest the spies.

After so long two rogues will spawn on the map.  You will want another guardsman for this.  As soon as you see them, arrest them.  Otherwise use the guardsman to kill the riot leaders in the town.  The riot leaders will not be visible without a spy spotting them.  Luckily your spy is quite fast and can move around to help with that.

So far you have a guardsman cleaning up the three spies and another one quelling uprisings and arresting rogues.  Next up full on mercenaries will arrive.

There are some archers and cavalry spread around.  Make sure to build mercenaries and group them up.  Run around wiping them out one by one.

Once you have cleaned out all three of these types of units remember to max out your merchants again.  There are no more threats so save up your money for the final objective of holding 1000 coins.

Year 195: The Blackfyre Rebellion

It’s time to make as many blood alliances as you can!

You will have a few minutes to quickly capture as many places as possible and make as many blood alliances as possible…. but you really don’t have to.

Once blood alliance will be fine.  Get a second envoy, an assassin, and a guardsman.  You will want to use these to slow down the enemy’s envoy numbers.  You will also want to get a spy.  The spy can be used to spot enemy assassins, rogues, and spies.

The spy can also be used to make secret agreements with harder to reach enemy towns.

Eventually you will want to get a rogue.  The rogue can be used to buy out one of the enemy’s envoys to make fake agreements.

You should be stockpiling as much of an army as humanly possible.  Try getting tones of archers and guardsmen.

After you are caught you will need to get the gold mine with an envoy.  This gold mine provides two merchants instead of one and will provide very high income.  Combined with the secret agreements and your regular agreements, you should be in a good position.

Your next assignment will be to gain 1000 coins.  Instead of doing this try and get some peasants out to farm and start building an army.  The army can be used to destroy enemy units and guard your properties.  Once you have full peasant saturation on your areas you can use it to push forward and take more zones with your envoys.

While pushing collect your 1000 gold coins.

The next mission will be to get four different armies…. your existing armies do not count.

Simply make one of each.

As some tips make sure to use your spies to rout out secret agreements, especially if you see enemy merchants coming from your territory.  Use the assassin only when he is stealthed (there is a timer for it) and make sure they are wiping out any rebellions, envoys, spies, enemy assassins, or rogues you find.

Year 282: Part 1 – Battle of Summer Hall

It’s the War of the Usurper.  This is the war that brings Robert Boratheon, the original king in the TV show, to power.

This mission has two parts.  In the first part you will have two envoys.  Split them up.  The path you have to take is a circle so one goes left and one goes right.  Have them follow the paths of the road to create as much of a circle as possible.  The will be able to get all towns-1.  Each town you gain gives you an army later on.

As each envoy brings the alliance to full (signified by the color yellow) move the envoy to the next town.

The second part of this is rather simple.  Organize your troops into three control groups.  Non-mounted melee in one, archers in two, and cavalry in three.  Have the non-mounted melee up front, the archers in the back and the cavalry setup to intercept any units that get past your front.

The first wave of cavalry are the only ones that can touch your archers.  Have the cavalry come on them once they bypass your melee and you will have them trapped and killed quickly.

There are three flanks to worry about.  You will do first the west, then the south, then the northeast.  If you manage and control your army like this every time it will be no problemo.

Year 282: Part 2 – The Battle of the Bells

This is one of the clearly harder missions in the game.  Phase one of this is surviving.  For four minutes.  You have Robert who is injured.  To do this simply go where the enemy is not.  If the enemy is stopping in a place and might turn into you, stop for a second just in case.  If they turn the other way you can continue on the optimal path.  If they turn into you, you have the opportunity to turn around.

It seems the patrols really don’t like the south, so if you’re struggling with this head south and you’ll have a much better time.

After four minutes you will have to head northeast to the blue dot.

So here’s the hard part.  The enemy has vastly superior numbers and will call in another four cavalry units.  What you need to do is isolate them and pick them off one at a time.  The second you engage 2… you lose.  If you engage two their army will slowly creep on you and overwhelm you.

So move around with your cavalry units on a separate hot key (Ctrl+1) and try and get them to pick off the archers if you can.  All the while have your main army ball looking at the patterns and luring the enemy towards the northern area.  Try to stay away from inside the towns as they have a lot of patrols through there.

Once you have defeated all of them, you win.

Year 299: Part 1 – Pillaging

In terms of war if you do not show a banner or a flag you are considered to be a pirate.  Every single army traditionally will lay their flag on territory or have it flying high on a ship.

So the brother’s without banners are pirates, and this mission shows how they get their armies, through non-traditional means… or pirating!

With your first group move to the east, there is a T intersection, this is where you will engage the enemy.  Destroy the army and kill the merchant.

You will now have more income so purchase some cavalry.

Now you will need to head south.  Make sure to avoid heading east towards the merchant.  Instead wipe out the guardsman protecting the bridge and wait for the merchant and his escort to come into range.

With your units setup the trap.  Melee range units up front, archers in the back and cavalry will come in after the fighting begins.  The cavalry can also be used to pick off the merchant if it is getting too far away.

Next set of units you should purchase are melee or archers.  You won’t be using these for the next merchants.

Heading south you’ll note a bridge, don’t cross it.  Instead head to the west and there is another bridge.  This is where the merchant will pass through and you will be able to ransack it with your existing army.

After this happens you will have successfully hurt the Lannister’s enough that they will now turn on the people.  You will want to take the new money you’ve made and have an army of two archers and two melee for the northeastern flank.  Your existing army will intercept a merchant and unit to gain another bit of money.

Head west with the army you have and kill the two armies there.  Remember mercenaries are not as strong as armies so try and fight them individually, don’t engage the one in the town first.

At the same time have the army in the north engage the two armies separately.

Once both of these are destroyed converge on the final point to the northwest.  Once each army is taken out in each town you win.  The final place only has one army, so either army can engage it independently, whomever hits there first.

Year 299: Part 2 – Rebirth

You will start off with a large group of mercenaries.  Move along the linear road.  As you kill groups of armies you will gain more units.  The first group is easy enough to find.

The second group is split into two.  There is one along the northern path and one along the southern path.  You will need to get both to continue on.

As you move you will need your spy more and more.  This spy will be able to spot the armies ahead so that your archers can get the first hit in.

It will stop being linear as you get to the most northern part.  Here if you head along the southern path you will be ambushed on all flanks.  Instead go the more northern path and you will slow down their ambush.  The enemy will send one unit at a time instead of all at once.

Continue forward until you get to the castle, there are three guardsman here.  Kill them.

Move your lord unit into the blue circle and you will have to face off against two more waves of units.  That will complete the mission.

Year 300: Part 1 – The Wall

In this first mission of Year 300 you will have to find some wildings!  They come one at a time but you only have mercenaries… only three of them.

To effectively use them have your melee unit up front taking the brunt of the damage.  You will want your archers in the tear dealing damage.  Your cavalry should sweep in after the battle engages to add extra damage.

If any unit is below a hit point, simply move it to the base, nothing will spawn from there.

The enemy will spawn an archer and a cavalry unit to the east, a soldier to the south, and a soldier and an archer to the west.

Once you’ve killed all of these the second part of the mission will open up.

You will now have an army of three cavalry units, three archer units and a commander. Remember the commander has an aura that boosts all of your units damage, as well as being abel to do a little bit of damage itself.

Move north and you will have to fight off three mercenary cavalry units… very easy to kill.  Continue moving north into the base.  You will be told that your comrades are somewhere.  There is tones of territory.

Your comrades are the furthest west in a town.  There are a few mercenaries you will have to stomp down.  The middle area is a giant ambush so prepare for it.  These mercenaries all die very easily.

Once at the town you’ll get two units.  Once you get your two new units (melee) make sure to barely use them.  If one of them dies… you lose.  There are a couple of wildling mercenaries on the map, nothing to worry about.  The big worry are the GIANTS.

Giants are about twice as strong as an army… so they’ll chop your mercenaries to pieces.  There are two of them.  One is located in the middle of the map, he moves east-west and is unavoidable.  The one to east (traveling north-south) is avoidable but without vision of where he is it will be impossible to do it consistently.

If you get to the second giant, he will chop up all of your  cavalry… just make sure your commander and two melee are out of the fight because they CANNOT die.

After you’ve gotten through the giants proceed back the same way you came to base.

Year 300: Part 2 – The Wildlings

You will start with a massive army.  It will be composed of four swordsman, four pikeman, four crossbowmen, four archers, four knights, four riders, and one commander.  Swordsman will tank the brunt of damage, pikemen will deal with enemy riders, crossbowmen and archers are both pure damage dealers who stay out of melee, knights will deal with archers, riders will help pikeman with riders, and the commander will stay back to provide an aura.

That’s how you micro the army, and this one is purely about micro.

You will have two big battles to fight.  The pure one involves the enemy being scattered.  Every single time you see a mounted unit send your pikemen after that.  Other than that keep your knights and riders on the archers and the remainder of your melee on enemy melee.

The second battle is actually easier.  Maintain your army at the Y intersection and engage roughly the same way you did before.  With a bottleneck you will be able to chop down their front line easier.  You will also still be able to use your cavalry to wipe out the enemy’s archers and pikemen to deal with mounted units.

Terrible Game #2: A Game of Thrones Genesis

Here’s a Christmas miracle story.

I’m looking through Steam at available deals and my girlfriend goes “OOOOO A GAME OF THRONES” (caps indicate how loud she said it).  So I thought to myself, I’ll buy it for her it is after all on sale.  Well after it is bought she quickly realizes she will not have time for the game and I am in fact free to play it… so I do.

I am a huge lover of RTS games and this happens to be one.

So after playing it I find out that this game is actually… terrible.  It was quickly put together by the developers to try and cash in on the mid-half season of HBO’s A Game of Thrones.

So released in September (when the half season ended) it was felt fans of the show would buy this game to fulfill their need for A Game of Thrones.

So instead of looking at this game as a typical game and giving it a review I would instead look at why it is so bad.  I can tell you without having you read any further that you should not buy this game at full price and definitely not until it drops below $5.

#1: Poor Economy Design

I will say something positive, I actually like the fiefe resource system.  In this game you take envoys and take control of points on the map.  These points will feed you income from trade.  You can bolster that income with farmers making the fiefe more valuable.

Instead of conquering territories you make agreements with its owners.  You do this through an envoy.

If enemies are stopping you from making an agreement you can make a secret agreement with a spy or start a revolt with a rogue.  The revolt can be stopped by an assassin and the spy can also find any secret agreements.

This is how money works.  It is complicated but it is interesting.  It creates a first tier of resource management involving a proper balance of envoys, rogues, assassins and farmers.

That sounds neat.

Then you actually do it in practice and it is just awful.

You send three envoys out and two of them will die to assassins  so you are forced to open with a spy, an assassin and an envoy.  You broker more secret agreements than actual ones.

So let’s say you broken a secret agreement.  Because you have a secret agreement it means you cannot make an Envoy agreement.

Think of a secret agreement as a 50:50.  Both sides split that fiefe equally.

There is no way to off your enemy once you make a secret agreement… unless they expose your spy first.

It is infuriating that you are forced to make these secret agreements and that you can only get out of it if your opponent makes a spy and dissolves it.

It’s a pretty terrible design and something about it needs serious fixing.

One of the big potential fixes I see is making the game give you more money.  The cost of units goes up each time you purchase one.  I actually do not understand how this works because as far as I know the Fire and Ice world is not capitalist and will not have inflation nor supply and demand.  Obviously a set price will be better.  Second either unit prices need to go down or income in has to go up.

The big problem is that early on you need so much stuff, so obviously early stuff should be dirty cheap and more accessible.  It all builds from one place.  No matter how many things you get its all from one place.  You get a keep?  Who cares, it adds no advantage.  You get a mine? Doesn’t matter doesn’t do anything.  Towns, worthless.

The gameplay is thus very slow specifically because the economy is very slow.  In most RTS games it starts off relatively slow, however there are things you can do.  In most RTS games it means moving harvesters or scouting.  This game is so limited on its income that you cannot even do that.

#2: Bad Graphics

A game released in September 2011 for $59.99 should have pretty damn good graphics.  The price tag as it seems is entirely for the IP.

The game has AWFUL graphics that are awful to play it.

Look.

I don’t mind games that have zoom in and zoom in features so you can see the battles.  Those are great.

But when you zoom out you should actually be able to control something.  Even at normal view it is really hard to left click on your unit and right click on an enemy to issue an attack order.  It is a piss off when your archers run into the enemies cavalry instead of firing.  You should not have to play the entire game from the left side UI panel.

I tried zooming in thinking that it was a distance thing but even zoomed in it was really hard to target these guys.

Worst yet in full zoom in you do not get real battle animations.  They are actually the same ones you see zoomed out.  It is pretty awful.  Usually when you have a game with something very simple it can be visually stunning, this game does not have that.

The UI organizes your units in a very awkward fashion that I have not quite figured out yet.

It’s really weird how mercenaries are distinguished from your entire army as if there was any meaningful difference here.  Yes mercs are weaker, I get that, but really who cares just make the graphic different.

#3: No-Go Story

When you read through a 700+ page George RR Martin book you are captivating in the epic descriptions and the great sense of story telling.  When you watch the HBO TV show you are bedazzled by how well put together seven consecutive stories are in bringing together a single story.

When you play this game it tells a story with little meaning and little breath.  You get five missions in six different campaigns.  Each identifies new units available and gives you new challenges.

Each campaign is set in a different age and this is the crux of the problem.  In five missions they introduce an entirely different storyline from an entirely different era that is mostly unconnected.

Most RTS games struggle to tell a story within a period of a year.  By splitting it up into so many different stories they actually remove the chance for each to tell a story.

You know what the easy solution to this was?  Release one game with one campaign for one age.  Then, if it is popular release an expansion or DLC with the next age.  If it continues to be popular just continue producing DLCs until you get to the modern day story.  Once you get to the point of the HBO story you bust out an RPG and boom you have just made yourself a billion dollars in sales.

But it just feels so foreign as if nothing you do actually ever matters.

I think this style of game would have been FINE in any other release.  Stronghold (the original) really did not have a story to it if you remember.  It was just a series of missions putting you in different scenarios and maps.  If I remember correctly Stronghold: Crusaders would feature 50 of these missions with a set number of times you can lose before they kick you out.

This game was FINE… but only because it was not a popular IP.  There is no such thing as a Stronghold book or a Stronghold movie.  There is no Stronghold fan fiction.  They can get away with this because it’s just a game.

A Game of Thrones however is not … just a game.  It is a lineage.  It is a masterpiece.  It is a series with millions of fans who all want to hear the next story.

Think about Star Wars and Star Trek franchises.  As far as the gaming world goes these franchises have been horribly abused.  Millions of Star Wars fans line up for every single Star Wars game in hopes of experiencing this world and telling us a new story from a Galaxy Far Far Away.  Star Trek is one that is even worse as it has built the mos awkward games ever made.

Both of these franchises have tones of stories in them that could have been developed with thousands of characters to draw from.

A Game of Thrones as a franchise is huge.  The three books in the series is 2000 pages in total with over 300 characters.  There are over 500 settings and over 20 subplots.

So when a game comes out announcing itself as telling a story 1000 years before the events of A Game of Thrones it is expected that it will at least… tell a story.

But the game falls flat and is pretty dry.  The story is about the same thing as Stronghold how you sort of just guessed relations and plots based on people’s character… but never really knew how the story went.

It didn’t even have to have anything amazing like Starcraft 2 or Red Alert 3.  It just had to have something.  There is an expectation between every single mission that there will be a video developing a plot.  This game does not have that.

It makes me feel that the trailer and intro video for this game was actually done by a totally different studio.  If they could make that trailer there is no reason for them not to be able to build a decent video in between each mission.

Instead what you get are stories told by graphically rendered portraits that do not move at all with awful voice acting.  None of this of course would matter if the story was at least compelling.

Honestly there is a chapter called “Dance of the Dragons.”  Did you know there is also a book released this year by GRRM called “A Dance of Dragons” ?

Dumb AI

A lot of games suffer from bad AI pathing.  This is typical of Bethesda games where NPCs cannot observe objects in front of them so they just get stuck.  This is not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about AI that makes poor tactical decisions.

In a strategy game there is no excuse for having AI that are not tactically wise.  They have built a Chessmaster so powerful that even Chessmaster Bobby Fischer cannot beat it.

With such a powerful artificial intelligence… developed in the 80s how can any game have really bad AI?  I understand having a difficult scaling so that people can learn the game.  However once people have learned the game they want to go on extreme, nightmare, super hard, mega, or expert mode.  They don’t want to feel like the game is theme-parking them along an RTS player wants to earn mission wins.

In popular RTS Starcraft 2 people spend hours upon hours upon hours trying to grind out super hard achievements on levels that often feel impossible to beat.

If the only thing you have going for you is a campaign, AI has to be terrifyingly difficult on the hardest mode.  I as an experienced RTS player should turn on Expert and lose so badly so often that I am forced down in difficulty.  People play RTS for unit balance and difficulty.  If a game is easy an RTS player will just move on to something that gives them more of a challenge.

This is a game that the average RTS player will move on from very quickly.  No multiplayer.  No story.  Bad game mechanics.  Bad AI.  NO GAME.

CRASH

As a final and major complaint this game has some really wacky problems.  When it first loads up it has this massive loading bar that takes forever to load.  It takes a shit on your computer and nothing really works until this thing is loaded.

Once it loads everything is slow.  Some people report that the game crashes immediately.  Others indicate that the game will crash as they try and save the game.  For me the game crashed during the same mission over and over and over.  It took me two hours to finish a 20 minute campaign.

The game crashes way too much and even after all of this time it is still not play worthy.

Update January 29, 2014 – Still Broken

As of January 29, 2014 the game is playable and completable.  It still however has issues crashing on the loading bar.

agotachievement

I’ve completed the final campaign finally despite many problems in the game.  The game’s campaign is not as long as it seems.  Each mission is between 10-15 minutes long and the end content of the game starts to die off.  It stops being RTS and starts to just be a tactics game.  There are around 18 missions representing what ought to be about 3-4 hours of gameplay.

A Game of Thrones – Year 1 Mission 5: The Power of Persuasion

Your lord has decided that instead of attacking the enemy it may be advantageous to be defensive and make the enemy attack you.

To do this you are going to harass his food and income.

You will first have to rescue some more cavalry units.  March north and try hardest to lose as little damage on your cavalry as possible.

After you get your new cavalry (and spy) it is off to harass his peasants.

Your spy will act as a spotter for patrols.

The patrols have vision 5 and your cavalry only have vision 3.  You will need your spy to spot patrols.

The patrols will weave in and out of the areas.  Your goal is to move in and swoop the enemy without getting caught.  There are 12 on the map so you need to get every peasant.

As an opener send your archer to the right side map heading north and he can pick off a hard to get peasant.  Send your cavalry north and they can pick off some hard to get peasants.  This will leave you with 7 peasants to kill.  All of these are in the centre.  You will need to approach them at different angles. There are some in the middle that are hard to get.  There are acceptable losses here, all of them.

You will not need the units from this part for the next part.  In the next part you are rewarded one more archer and three more cavalry units.  You will need to defeat three merchants.

To make this easy send all your units to the northern cross roads.  This way you will have no archer patrols to deal with.  It is currently bugged to the effect that you only have to kill one merchant per group.  Once you kill the merchants the men-at-arms run away.

After this simple task is done your army will arrive.  Position them at the bridge and you win the mission.

A Game of Thrones – Year 1 Mission 4: The Pact

In this mission you must defend an envoy as he makes three stops en route to deliver peace information with a lord of the land.

The thing is you will have no archers for this mission so you will have to appropriately position your units.

You will get one man-at-arms, two cavalry units and a spy.  After your first stop you will pick up two more cavalry units.

The first attack before you get your extra units you will need all of your units up front.

At your first stop there will be assassins everywhere.  Use your spy to find them and get your man at arms to arrest them.

After this you will need to form a perimeter around your envoy.  Attacks can come from behind you, sides of you or in front of you.  Always make sure there is at least one unit ahead of your envoy.

Your spy can be used to search ahead and see what threats are coming.  Alternatively you can use your spy to cover your rear. Since you have no bowmen its not imperative to have great forward vision.

After you to get the keep you will find out you have been betrayed.  To finish the level kill off the invading army.  Aim for his archers and clean up with your dragon.

A Game of Thrones – Year 1 Mission 3: Counter Attack

This is one of the fastest missions you will do, it’ll take you between 5-7 minutes.

The goal is simple, defend two locations by splitting up your army.

You will have three waves of enemies to deal with.  Each wave will get more complicated and open up more flanks

Wave #1

This is a straight forward wave.  You will have a large army and no need to split it up.  They will have two men-of-war and one archer.  Send one of your cavalry units after that archer.

Once this is cleared up you will be given the option of two possible units, Man-of-War or Pikemen .

The choice will not have too much of an effect on the game.  I would personally choose Pikemen because it would make the final rounds easier.

Wave #2:

Take your two new Pikemen (or Man-of-wars) and send them to the eastern side.  Also send an archer over there.

Now you will deal with two attacks.  Be especially careful on the eastern flank.  These guys sneak up and they can capture villages pretty fast.

At the end of this you will have the choice between two possible units archers or cavalry.

Your first instinct will be to get the higher DPS archers.  However if you get cavalry you will be able to reinforce all points quickly.

Wave #3:

So this wave is three flanks.  Yeah three flanks on two points.

So the goal is to move your western army back to the keep so that two flanks become one.

So move your two new cavalry units to the eastern front for now.  After the first attack on the eastern front is over you can move the cavalry back to the western flank.  This will help you in defending the next few waves.  They will bull rush for your keep while trying to flank your archers.  Make sure your archers are behind the keep.

After you defend against this pincer move the game is yours.