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[ChairmanPoo]

It's the same as the difference between fraud and being wrong. Were intentionally false claims made?

The tws kickstarter said they already had a working game that needed art assets. This was a lie.

This is an unproven assertion. We do not know if they had a working game. They may have, and wrecked it trying to add stretch goals to an engine that did not support them (endless mode, wasn't it?). If they had bad version control, they may not have been able to roll back to a working version even if what they were promising now did not include said stretch goals; i.e., they were committed to adding something they could not deliver and did not previously have a working version of. Everything about their process suggests poor software engineering practices, so poor version control would follow from that - though again, they had at that point committed to delivering something that was more than what they claimed to have initially. Couple that with a mental breakdown (and the dev's behavior screams clinical anxiety and depression; possibly even something like Avoidant Personality Disorder), and it's easy to accept the idea that there was no demonstrated fraud. Not least b/c the "reverse engineered mod tools" mentioned above as ironclad proof don't necessarily reflect the dev's full code base, just their Kickstarter tech demo's codebase. We're fully into "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" territory here. All we know for sure is that they failed to deliver. Frankly, that's enough.

But as you said despite chosing to go on this tired, beaten digression, that's unrelated to Shadows Behind the Throne. Which is why it would have been better for OP to never even broach the subject. Barring something along the lines of discovery in a civil lawsuit, there's no way the public can actually know whether it was incompetence or fraud, and all we can do is speculate based on necessarily incomplete information - even if some of us have concluded those speculations are incontrovertible facts.

(I'll dip out of the thread here.)

We know they didnt because all that was posted was fake footage and all that was released were a quantity of tools to produce said fake footage. We can't prove a negative but there's no evidence to suggest there ever was a game.

This is the reason why TWS discussions are banned btw.


(But it totally was a scam)

[Damiac]

I wasn't aware tws discussion was banned, I just know the thread for it got locked, unlocked, and locked again.  Because some very... Optimistic people can't accept the idea that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and makes false claims to bring in investors like a duck, it's fraud.

I just assume people still defending it are connected to the dev in some way at this point...

"Yeah, he's holding a gun with smoke coming out and a bullet missing, and he said he was going to shoot that guy, and that guy got shot, and said the guy with the gun shot him, but we don't actually know for sure that guy is even really shot! So it's irresponsible to claim otherwise."

[nenjin]

JFC, take the baiting reference to TWS out of the thread title and discuss the actual game. That way we don't have to flog this dead horse yet again.

[Damiac]

JFC, take the baiting reference to TWS out of the thread title and discuss the actual game. That way we don't have to flog this dead horse yet again.

What, are you some kind of dead horse sympathizer? Should we flog the living ones instead? Do you hate horses?!? ;P

For real though, you'd be wise to remove any TWS references or the whole thread will be like this. It's irresistible bait...

[forsaken1111]

Yeah let's stick to talking about this game. It looks interesting, if a bit rough. I'm tempted to pick it up over the weekend and try it out. How content-rich is it at this stage?

[EuchreJack]

I hate you all.  It's like you're trying to make me poor and unproductive. 

...all hail the dark lord. 

[Salmeuk]

Alright, this kind of low-fi Paradox-esque evil being simulator was interesting enough to pick up.

My first notable game I picked the Deep one and Teeth names, as well as starting with a noble enthralled. After worldgen, a central nation by the name of Sennerect had managed to gain control of %60 of the landmass (this is important later). I picked a low-prestige noble in some out-of-the-way northern country. All of my society was deeply afraid of Sennerec's aggressive expansion. At this point I was unaware of many game mechanics, so my first choice was an obvious one: immediately reveal the horrible, dark truth to my Soverign Archduchess and drive her to insanity. With this insanity, however, came %100 suspicion of my enthralled noble, which meant the Archduchess was constantly calling votes to turn the countries focus inwards. This forced her into conflict with the rest of society who (for very good reasons) were more afraid of Sennerect than some supposed dark forces at work.

Over the next few turns I was able to align myself with the majority vote enough to gain reputation with most every noble, excluding the Archduchess of course. At this point, a vote for assignment of a unlanded title arrived - unlanded meaning it would stack with my enthralled's already existing landholder title. I cashed in my reputation with enough lower nobles to upset the vote (Archduchess had like 30 prestige, enough to vote herself in if I hadn't done anything) and I was suddenly the most powerful vote in the country.

While all this politicking was occuring, I was also planting Deep One lairs all over the large, northern ocean. Slowly but surely the sea was filling with stacks of lizard people. The Deep Ones have a useful ability to start cults in coastal cities, which increase infiltration without risk to your agents. So I started a few cults as well for good measure.

Anyways, at some point I became Archduke of my country, and all was going well . . but I used 'uncanny glamour' at some point and this evidence would lead to my downfall. Over time, agents from other countries arrived and revealed more and more evidence, and while I could use reputation to pawn off the evidence onto other nobles, there was enough suspicion toward me that the dislike grew and grew and I was unable to influence other's votes. Despite my prestige advantage, the country voted to execute me.

At this point I wanted to start a new game so I just all-inned with my Deep One army. The attack was GRAND and it was quite exciting seeing the little armies pile upon the coastal cities . . but then Sennerect rallied, and with their 20 cities came 20 armies, and little did I know these armies also double as navies, and my assault was not only rebuffed but annihilated as Sennerect commanders swept through the ocean lairs, killing and destroying the colonies that had taken many, many turns to create.

So, it's pretty fun. I think it's kind of simple, however, for how much data is being thrown at you. If you just keep an eye on your reputation and try to find 'free' methods of increasing infiltration, using a Hierophant you can easily break and entire country.

One trick I found with the Teeth name is the save your enthrallations (?) for when an agent starts getting in your business. Just enthrall them, and they have this 3-turn ability that can lower suspicion for other agents. With one agent infiltration, another claiming innocence to the nobles and fighting off any other agents, you can piece-by-piece take over a weak enough country.

Funny story, when I tried the above strat of enthralling an agent, the country I was enshadowing was apparently very happy with his performance because they immediately promoted him to investigator. That's my investigator, thank you!

It's a fun game if you're the kind of player who constructs narrative around game events. The game does a great job at creating interesting and unique scenarios, and giving you the power to enshadow and infiltrate through MANY different methods. If you're just in-it-to-win-it, the game might be less complex than it appears, and you will likely find broken or overpowered combinations (though I personally haven't seen anything obviously imba) I have also found that certain agents are kind of monotonous to play - the corpsefiend is cool in concept, but becomes repetitive when you have to move them and steal corpses every damn turn.

My next goal is to enshadow one of the larger countries, with 20 or 30 nobles to keep track of, and see if the society dynamic opens up in a larger playing field.

[Cthulhu]

Currently running another game, deep ones+fear, with seeker and red death agents.  While seeker was doing his thing I used the fear powers to break up the northernmost kingdom and my deep ones wiped it out, then did the same with a second kingdom that was plagued to hell, but by that point the two biggest kingdoms had united against me.  At that point though I had the seeker ready.  He's actually pretty good, you need to find 12 secrets which show up as eye icons on random settlements.  It's pretty easy to keep him alive despite what the tooltip says, since he's constantly moving around.  Once you get twelve you learn a secret spoken by a dead god that drives anyone who hears it insane.  Then he can go around dropping insanity on nobles every turn, which causes huge relationship penalties leading to civil wars.  Hit the emperor of the alliance with it, along with 10 or 15 of the nobles, and it's about to blow up.  Now refilling my deep ones for the big shindig.

Edit:  And the game just crashed.  Cool.

[thegoatgod_pan]

New Name in an update: Fog!

Fog is pretty sweet, now granted I tried it out in a game where I had the name with all the powers, but honestly I could see it really synergizing with any of the builds--it might be really fun in a Unholy Birth game too.


It gives three powers:

1. Well of Fog: you cast it on a broken noble and their region starts spewing fog your agents are harder to catch in the fog, and completely ignore pesky things like being declared enemies of the state (thus no longer taking damage).

2.  a fairly boring but useful spell to keep fog in a place for 16 turns, even if the "well of fog" noble got themselves executed for consorting with dark powers.

3. the gem:  you cast it on a foggy region and all your agents in the fog ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD teleport there.  This is huge and is a great tool for the Seeker, who can now leave a trail of broken kingdoms and still be halfway around the world before the paladins get there-- virtually uncatchable as long as you don't make a mistake (the spell has a 5 turn cooldown).  It also has a nice "gathering the council of evil" vibe, where all your agents gather and, I assume have awkward conversations about how half of them started as the good guys' investigators.

Fog definitely makes Dark Empires far more viable and useful and you can always keep them fogged and use them to run away when needed.

[EuchreJack]

Couple interesting new features in the beta branch:
1) Create a false savior character.  Build them up by having them counter some of your other stuff (monsters/plague), then have them push your noble into the ruling class.
2) Free up existing player agents either by destroying them, or letting them go on and create shadow for you on their own.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Couple interesting new features in the beta branch:
1) Create a false savior character.  Build them up by having them counter some of your other stuff (monsters/plague), then have them push your noble into the ruling class.
2) Free up existing player agents either by destroying them, or letting them go on and create shadow for you on their own.

Haven't tried the savior yet--feels a little bit too similar to the Hierophant in terms of noble frens. LOVE the freeing up agents option--I am always in that position of "you are no longer useful, yet here you are" and really need to have this and populate the world with my people.

[Ramidel]

So, after fiddling around with several failed games, I got a win. I was playing as Fear/Deep.

Fear is Freedom!
I started with the Grand Duchy of Prat, which was a compact middle power (four locations and 60 power) on the edge of the big continental Empire of Deux, with a single big archduke governing a metropole on the coast, and a couple of smaller nearby duchies to snack on. Well, if the map seed was going to be that obliging...I started infiltrating the metropole with a deep cult while my vampire and an enthralled agent worked over the rest of the lords, and I took advantage of their fear of the Empire to turn a bunch of namby-pamby pacifists into a proper war faction. I did not madden anyone in this duchy! Instead, I got them to 50% infiltration and shadowed them till they broke. Once everyone except the archduke was shadowed and broken, I finished infiltrating him and made a Dark Hierophant to enthrall him.

Subjugation is Liberation!
On the noble side of things, I had my hiero and my agent (now a knight) schmooze up the lords a bit to get everyone on the same page, work the duchy to Offensive Stance and go charging at the next-door duchies. That wasn't a complete success, but I got most of the first duchy (one fiefdom captured with its lord dead somehow, and another destroyed one that I could recolonize) and destroyed the second duchy (one hold) - but the latter rebuilt and I decided it wasn't worth messing with again, especially with my lords hunkering down into Defensive Stance all the time. Meanwhile, I built up a couple of Deep Cults on the sides of the Empire, maddened the Deux Empress and stirred up trouble for her with a couple of lords, and pretty soon the Empire flew apart in a big, chaotic rebellion. Perfect. I didn't even have to ask my lords to take offensive stance and target the Empire, they did that for me - I just was the one to call the war vote. Boom. When the dust settled, the Empire was gone, I'd eaten a chunk of the West and there were a whole buncha pieces churning around. I targeted a next-door Grand Duchy and declared war just after a bunch of the other shards vassalized under it. Well, more for me. After that point, the world panic was starting to rise and everyone feared Prat's shadowy nobles already, so I went "what the hell" and declared the Dark Empire. Then I killed my Hierophant.

Contradiction is Truth!

So now the world is actually taking evil seriously. The Grand Duchy of Chaler in the north started voluntarily absorbing some vassals on the other end of the map and got big enough to declare a Lightbringer Ritual. I herded my nobles into a war with them (by that point it was like herding cats - everyone was worried about the Kingdom of Avees, which had taken most of the east of the old Empire) and raised the Deep Ones against the Kingdom. The fishfrogs weren't too effective, but they had Chaler's armies flanked while Prat took the kingdom, and I ended up with all of Chaler either ruined or conquered. Unfortunately, then my armies started attacking the Deep One units for no reason. Sigh.

Avees triggers the Lightbringer Ritual now. This time, though, I don't have to do anything because they break out into a civil war without my intervention and shatter into pieces. Then the Duchy of Avees (one of the shards) becomes the Avees Guardians, vassalizes everyone back and starts another Lightbringer Ritual. Well, that was productive. However, I'm too distracted with a lot of factionalization in my Dark Empire and risking a civil war, and I have to bring all that under control through some careful socializing and vote manipulation to rebuild the Emperor's faction. (I have too many unshadowed nobles right now from my conquests, and the wrangling I had to do to get the war in the North going had divided my lords.) So while my agent is holding the Dark Empire together, I madden the King, then send a vamp to shadow him. One revolution later, the Avees Guardians are replaced by the Kingdom of Pues holding all of their territory. Well, at least the Lightbringer ritual is sto...

...Another Lightbringer Ritual.

Fortunately, I have my lords together by this point, so I target them, declare war, and conquer the place. After a bit, this gives me enough shadows for a win.

[EuchreJack]

Wow, that is impressive!

...I just grew the flesh and let it eat everyone.  It's generally more effective than the Deep Ones.  Also, glad to hear they fixed the Deep One, they used to be too broken to work.

[Ramidel]

I mostly used the Deep Ones for easy infiltration in coastal metropoles (without triggering the security), for extra firepower against enemy armies, and for a couple of fear denunciations. They syncretize well with Fear, but you're right that they're not really a super-effective power. They're a distraction.

[ChairmanPoo]

I find the infiltration of deep ones useless. Its way too slow, and adds to world panic. I'd much rather use vampires and other agents.plus well of fog