A Strategy Game

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The Strategy Game

Battles and adventures are optional – the strategy game is the “main” game in Birthright. Nowadays, the turn-based strategy game genre seems almost to have died out completely in favour of «real-time strategy games» (a genre that, back in the day, we diehard turn-baseders used to call simply «action games» or «click-em-ups»). In its own day, however, Birthright was but an insect in the whole jungle of turn-based strategy. Despite this, I still remember how fresh the strategy part of the game felt. Of course, it had elements in common with many of these, like a map divided into provinces, and different (actually just 2) types of resources the player needed to manage: Gold (duh!) and the more innovative concept of «regency», representing the aura of royalty emanated by a regent. Provinces, however, were not just controllable bits of map but, like players, actually had two «stats»: civilization and magic. Regents could actually «level up» the civilization stat of their provinces to increase its economic potential, but, except for elven provinces, this would hurt the magic stat. But the true innovation, at least to me, was the «holdings» system, which to me still seems fairly unique, and contributes to the replayability of the game.

Holdings and replayability

Much of the regents’ power come from their holdings in different provinces. Holdings are of four types:

• Law holdings, which allow you to tax a province more heavily.
• guild holdings, which generate gold (independently of taxation) and also allow you to build trade routes for even more gold per turn.
• temple holdings, which generate gold (independently of taxation) and also allow priest characters to cast priest realm spells (including some useful ones like «dispel» other magic and «bless province» to increase its tax revenues).
• source holdings, which allow wizard characters to cast wizard realm spells (the most powerful spells in the game). You can also forge ley lines from strong sources to weak ones to be able to cast higher-level spells from lower-level sources.

The sum total of holdings of each type depends on the provinces’ stats – sources depend on the «magic» level, the other three on «civilization». I.e., a civilization level 3 province can have no more than one level 3 holding in each category – temple, guild or law – or one level 2 and one level 1 holding. Without the proper level holdings in a province, you can’t cast spells or get much money out of a province, even a province you own; but if you have holdings in other regents’ realms, then you suddenly have a way to gain regency, gold, influence and power there too.

If you want to, you can spend much of the game building new holdings and levelling up existing ones in your own or other territories and defending them against competition. (Winning out in a holdings competition with another regent is largely a matter of determination and the amount of regency spent on this, though the military may also be used to occupy your own or enemy provinces to reduce foreign holdings there.) Since the different realms in Anuire vary widely in terms of both provinces and holdings, there is scope for a good deal of roleplaying in the strategy part of the game. For example, as a wizard, you could focus on sources to protect and expand your lands with magical wards or summoned armies. As a priest or thief, you could focus on temples or guilds to earn gold enough for successful diplomacy (see below) or to field a larger army. As a warrior, you would of course also be in need of gold to support your army, but would perhaps focus more on law holdings, since law holdings yield regency for warrior regents, whereas priests gain regency from temples, thieves from guilds and wizards from sources. The main limit on your regency income per turn, however, is the strength of your character’s bloodline, so this is undoubtedly the most important stat of your regent character.

Still, combined with the differences between the realms themselves, the holdings system makes the game score high on the replayability factor. Already won the game with your warrior and his realm? Try a wizard’s approach in a different (or even the same) realm – if you play this way, it may prove a different type of challenge. Of course, you will be most powerful if you use lieutenants of different classes to combine several types of power. A large army paid for by trade routes, protected by priest’s blessings and supported by summoned units and realm spells to hamper enemy mobility and raze castles protecting enemy provinces is of course going to be more deadly. Note, though, that you only get one lieutenant action per turn, as opposed to your own regent’s three actions per turn, so wizard regents will get to cast a lot more magic than say, thief regents with wizard lieutenants. Also, since civilization and magic are somewhat at odds, a balanced approach is to single out some of your provinces as civilized, money making provinces and work on their economy; pick other provinces as magic provinces to provide source power and create ley lines from them into your civilized provinces. (Magic provinces don’t have to be your own, but note that regents with few provinces will tend to level up the civilization of those provinces to get more gold, which wil automatically reduce your source holdings.)

Diplomacy

Through diplomacy, you can trade gold, holdings and even provinces and their armies with other regents to change their diplomatic reactions to you and forge alliances with them. Diplomatic relations between realms in Anuire can be at one of five different stages:

• At war(red): Declaring war on an enemy is the normal way to allow you to move your troops into their provinces and occupy them (and of course they can attack you the same way). As mentioned above, if you get into war with one other realm, you will atomatically become at war with its full allies and vassals/lieges.
• Neutral (grey): Neutrality, neither at war nor allied. Note that although usually your troops cannot enter a province belonging to a realm neutral to you, if armies of two neutral countries meet in the same province – this may happen, for instance, if they both have a permissive alliance with a third realm – then the armies will have to retreat or fight.
• Permissive alliance (green): Permissive allies can move troops and trade routes into each other’s territorries without fighting each other. Note that permissive alliances will be broken off if you get into a war with a permissive ally’s full allies or lieges/vassals.
• Full alliance (blue): Full allies not only move troops and trade routes through each other’s provinces, they also go to war together, i.e., declaring war on one ally means war with the other; also, if a country declares war on you, its full allies will join in the war.

• Vassal/liege (purple): Here one must distinguish between lands and «non-landed-realms», i.e., factions like High Mage Aelies, who owns a lot of holdings but holds no provinces. A vassal land (with provinces) is closely allied to its liege country, and they will march to war together. The main difference between full alliance and vassalage is that while the the vassal gets only two points from its liege lord’s provinces (the same as they get for full allies), the liege lord gets three victory points from each of the vassal’s provinces (the same as they get for their own provinces). If non-landed-realms (say, the priesthood of the Militant Order of Cuiraecen) become vassals of a land, however, then the non-landed vassals will become the lieutenants of the landed liege lord, handing over all of their holdings and revenues to the liege lord and placing their class skill at their liege’s disposal as lieutenant actions.

Gaining non-landed vassals is a quick way for a regent to gain holdings, income and powerful servants. While extremely useful, especially for protection against powerful enemies like the Gorgon, this may unfortunately reduce the characteristic «feel» of the different lands (since any landed regent can gain the vassalage of any non-landed faction, and some of the non-landed factions are very attractive to most realms). Unfortunately, too, you need patches for the AI to be smart enough to use this option extensively enough to give you competition in this area. (For a scenario where all the temple and guild factions already belong to realms that make sense, see the downloads section.)

An interesting touch is that when negotiating with others, your character’s alignment comes into play: Good, Neutral or Evil, and (to a lesser extent) Chaotic vs Lawful as well. Evil characters will find it easier to negotiate with other evil realms but harder to be heard by Good realms, and vice versa. However, hired lieutenants of different alignment than the regent’s will let you negotiate effectively with realms aligned opposite to yours.

Making allies that attack your enemies for you can be fun, but since the AI isn’t very bright, diplomacy tends to be more useful for gaining victory points fast without having to take the time to attack, occupy and invest other realms’ provinces one by one, and also to avoid having to fight large alliances of too many enemies at a time. A somewhat annoying fact is that you cannot negotiate with realms that have lost their regents (in battle or through assassination). If you haven’t already allied with them, you can of course concquer them instead, though this is a pain when they are far away – as the game progresses, the map tends to get broken up badly enough by the computer lands warring on each other (since the AI shows no regard for creating continuous borders). You may even try to use diplomacy to trade provinces around to make the map retain some semblance of sanity, though likely this won’t last for long.

Realm magic

Using wizard magic to trick and suprise your enemies, especially very powerful ones, is a lot of fun. See the «tips and tricks» section for how to use realm magic in smart ways.

Onward to battles and armies