Shadow Empire is another game that my old rig didn't run the greatest, so I really need to check it out again.
How old is it?! The recommended requirements for Shadow Empire are basically the PC needs to have power.
The game has begun in earnest! My founding city, Photoglacier, had the tremendous good fortune to be sited right next to a ruins. Ruins provide good scavenging, providing among other things the very precious rare metals resource, which is vital for manufacturing machinery and used for any tech above bog standard. I therefore made the bold decision to start building there straight away. This being turn 1 I knew I wouldn't quite have the production chain set up to fully support the construction but it was a risk I thought was very much outweighed by the benefits.
In other news, as usual my peasants were worried about the threat of enemy units - at this stage almost certainly nomadic non-aligned units - so I immediately gave orders for all battalions under the command of the 1st Infantry Brigade to start sweeping outwards to claim some territory and provide a buffer of land to make everyone feel safer. We didn't encounter any units but we did reveal some water and metal spots to be mined later, and a geyser to the northeast which, when brought under my control, will provide some bonus energy. Always useful. We also found a couple of villages of "free folk" who, when they see how good my peasants have it, will begin migrating to Photoglacier each turn.
At the start of turn 2 I continued moving my battalions outwards. One of them encountered about 1,200 non-aligned infantry and settled down to get some entrenchment bonus going. Another, heading toward another village, was ambushed. We didn't lose many troops thankfully, but the enemy unit is several battalions strong, numbering about 3,600 troops. My unit is going to need reinforcements.
Development of the ruins went more or less as I expected. Currently we aren't producing enough industry points - an abstracted value of general industrial capacity - to pay for full construction costs each turn, so it will take longer than the two turns it would otherwise, but it's going well apart from that so I expect to be mining rare metals by the end of around turn 5 with any luck. At that point I will be able to start building machinery which has all sorts of uses - one of which is trading for credits.
Ah yes, credits. As always my coffers are running low. Since I don't have a particular need for lots of troops right now one of the first things I did in turn 1 was order my secretary to reduce the sign-up bonus to zero. If people still want to enlist, fine, but at least it won't cost me anything extra. I'm still running a deficit though. Happily Photoglacier is sited with range of a couple of lakes, meaning I'm producing more than enough water (for now). So I sold all the surplus water I could for a quick buck. It swelled the coffers slightly but money is going to be a mid-term problem if I don't turn my economy around.
In order to get a handle on all this, the first organisation I asked my secretary to create was the interior council. This council, when staffed, will start churning out strategems that will allow me to adjust tax rates and do various other things focused on boosting the economy. Until I get my economy under control organisations like the military research council simply aren't a priority. This is also the reason I chose commerce as one of my starting nation profile boosts. My plan is to do everything I can to support the fledgling private economy and then tax the living shit out of it.
My next short-term problem is finding replacements for my troops in the field. The battalion that was ambushed lost 100 men and at the moment I have no reserves to send. Raising reserves at this stage of the game is very cheap but one of the costs is those damn industrial points again, all of which I've committed to mining the ruins. So until that development is complete I can't send any reserves to any battalions. Hopefully we're at least producing enough food, ammo and fuel to send, and further hopefully the non-aligned forces won't have much of an appetite to go on the offensive, allowing my battalions to dig in and get that sweet entrenchment bonus.
Anyway, this is the kind of game you can spend all day writing about a single turn but I think I've outlined the start of the game well enough for now. As I've told Geek, I consider this a learning game so I don't mind posting this stuff where he can see it. I just won't tell him where my eventual nuclear silos are situated...
