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 Howdy folks. I'm Kaiju15 and welcome to my Shadows of Forbidden Gods SSLP. What is Shadows of Forbidden Gods you might ask? I'll let the steam summary give you the basics. Steam store posted:A strategy game in which you attempt to bring about the apocalypse, by moving covert agents through a complex fantasy world to accomplish a wide range of schemes, plots and rituals. You start the game by bribing guards and infiltrating minor farming communities and slowly build up your forces until you are bringing about ice ages, eradicating entire nations with plague, summoning volcanoes and commanding city-devouring snake-gods. It's basically a Paradox-style grand strategy like Crusader Kings except instead of controlling a noble family, you're controlling a big, nasty elder god struggling to be reborn. Plus it was made by fellow goon, Bobby Two Hands, so that's pretty neat. Why this? Why me? Why now? It doesn't look like anyone else has done any kind of LP on Something Awful, and there isn't a ton of content out there on Youtube. That's a real shame, so I figured I'd give this whole Let's Play thing a try. I've put around a hundred hours in this game and won more than I've lost, and gotten at least one win with each god if that counts for anything. How's this gonna work? Dudes on a map gameplay doesn't make for the most compelling Youtube video, so this will be a screenshot let's play first and foremost. I might dabble with some heavily edited Youtube videos in the future if there's interest and I'm feeling ambitious. Also there are a TON of systems at play and options for interacting with those systems so I will be sprinkling in some choose Updates Fundamentals of Forbidden Gods The Setup The Slow Road to Seal 1 (Turns 1- 34) Ramping up to Seal 2 (Turns 35-69) With that out of the way, let's have a look at our elder god contenders. She Who Will Feast  The most beginner-friendly god. Focused on spreading shadow and pursuing the basic victory conditions. At full awakening you get a big old snake to control that can defeat entire armies, but typically my games end before that becomes necessary. Iastur, the Laughing King  Iastur is focused on madness and reducing the sanity of rulers and heroes by strategically planting a cursed tome. There's typically sort of a two steps forward, one step back situation where you'll give someone the book, it will drive them mad, then a hero will bind the book and use it against you so that you can take the book back and drive someone else mad. Vinerva  Vinerva is a nature-focused god whose central mechanic revolves around sprouting Hearts of the Forest, a unique point of interest that offers rulers boons like money and food in exchange for their souls. Eventually you can fully enshadow rulers who have taken your boons instantaneously as well as transform their cities into Manifestations which massively increase your victory points. Ophanim, the Divine Beyond  Ophanim is one of the trickier gods to play. Victory with Ophanim involves creating a massive, public religion that eventually saps all free will from those who follow it. While other gods sneak around and covertly pursue their goals, Ophanim operates in the open and hopefully you can create a powerful enough theocracy that the chosen one's forces can't crush you. Mammon, Wealth of Man, Spirit of the Mountain  Mammon is basically an evil mountain full of gold. You can lure in and devour civilian populations to increase the wealth of the mountain and grow your network of influence, but that also increases the likelihood that heroes find and raid the mountain for its riches. You can also instill greed and decadence in the rulers of the world to start wars between kingdoms and eat their sins. Cordyceps Hive Mind  An evil fungus/bug thing who infects the people of the world with its spores to either transform them into drones and hives or paralyze and feed them to your swarm. Eventually you will have quietly converted and/or devoured enough of the population to openly attack and destroy entire cities with your swarms. The Evil Beneath  A giant tentacled monstrosity living beneath the surface world introduced in the DLC that released earlier this month. Devour people to grow the god thing and eventually become so massive that your tentacles erupt from the earth and drag entire cities into the underworld to be consumed. The other two gods are a sort of new game plus focused god and a god focused around drawing random effects from a deck of cards, but I don't feel like they're really suitable for this let's play. Let me know which god you'd like to see or if I'm totally wrong and the goons crave card god or new god plus. Also let me know if I should play with the DLC on. For the base game gods, I don't anticipate making much use of the underworld layer, but I can include it if there is interest. Kaiju15 fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 01:17
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When I last played, I found Iastur and Vinerva to be some of the more fun ones, Vinerva in particular had some very obvious loops to exploit people and turn them into plants, but felt a bit too easy once you got going. Ophanim was also fun but definitely tricky, I had a hell of a time getting my evil empire off the ground. SoFG is one of those games I keep telling myself I should go back and do another playthrough of, but at the same time it feels daunting because it's one of those kind of Paradox-esque games where your first task is to apply a certain amount of mental bandwidth to parsing the non-default UI and mechanics and keeping track of a ton of things happening at once. Big props to the dev for basically taking a bungled/scam kickstarter("That Which Sleeps") and turning it into a real game partially out of what I can assume is spite and "for gently caress's sake, let me show you how it's done."
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Mar 25, 2024 01:31
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She Who Will Feast. I want a playthrough I can copy for my first run if I decide to finally buy this game after having it on my wishlist since it came out.
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Mar 25, 2024 01:37
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Iastur intrigues me!
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Mar 25, 2024 01:38
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I do enjoy an apparently jolly king, Iastur seems like a fine example.
BraveLittleToaster fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 01:51
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This game is absolutely amazing. In for the show, and all the gods are awesome, so I can't decide.
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Mar 25, 2024 01:55
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Bobby Two Hands walked the walk when That Which Sleeps failed to be real. Let's see some Vinerva.
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Mar 25, 2024 01:55
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The full saga of this game is amazing. The earliest build was basically all court politics! Ophanim I've never been able to get them off the ground. Which reminds me I bought the DLC and haven't actually run it yet... Any plans to run a modded villain? I can't imagine going Deep Ones without that mod expanding them...
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Mar 25, 2024 02:10
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I've never actually Ophanimed so Ophanim, please. E: Speaking of mods, Pareidola / Adolia is a mandatory playthrough IMO.
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Mar 25, 2024 02:10
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Deep Ones best mod.
Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 02:19
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This game has one of the steepest learning curves I've ever seen. I don't have the DLC, so I'll nominate The Evil Beneath to see something I haven't before.
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Mar 25, 2024 02:26
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I've never heard of this game but it sounds super cool. Tossing in a totally uninformed vote for Iastur because driving people mad with the Power of Literacy seems pretty grand.
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Mar 25, 2024 02:34
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PurpleXVI posted:Big props to the dev for basically taking a bungled/scam kickstarter("That Which Sleeps") and turning it into a real game partially out of what I can assume is spite and "for gently caress's sake, let me show you how it's done." wiegieman posted:Bobby Two Hands walked the walk when That Which Sleeps failed to be real. 
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Mar 25, 2024 02:46
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There isn't an awful lot more to it, That Which Sleeps was a Kickstarter which promised everything SoFG delivers on: being an evil lurking horror doing all sorts of fantasy villain bullshit, initially from behind the scenes, then escalating to full aggression, with a lot of neat-looking screenshots and promises and then... nothing. Bobby Two Hands started off creating a couple of rougher cuts called "Shadow Behind the Throne" 1 and 2, which were still fun and interesting, then silence for a bit, and then suddenly this excellent game dropped on us. TWS never even officially imploded, sometime in 2017 the dev just ghosted everyone.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:23
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Here's the original thread where you can see people get hyped for That Which Sleeps, then slowly sink into disillusionment: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3708603 And here's the post where Bobby Two Hands goes 'gently caress it, I'll make this game myself just to prove it can be done': https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3708603&pagenumber=88&perpage=40#post471026440 Apparently someone decompiled the beta of That Which Sleeps which was sent to backers and found out there wasn't even a game, just a few scripted interactions.
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Mar 25, 2024 04:17
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I've never heard of this before but it seems incredibly cool.
Sindai fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 04:55
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Ophanim sounds interesting.
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Mar 25, 2024 06:57
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I've beaten the game in the easiest difficulty and learnt absolutely nothing, so it will be interesting to see a competent player doing things. Ophanim seems appropriate this time of year.
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Mar 25, 2024 08:09
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Let’s see Ophanim
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Mar 25, 2024 08:27
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Vinerva looks interesting
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Mar 25, 2024 10:25
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The Evil below I've never done that one... mostly because I didn't know there was a dlc coming out. The game is very fun, interesting and sets up for all sorts of different game play based on what god you picked and what the world gens.
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Mar 25, 2024 11:37
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The Ophanim is both the most interesting and the most pain in the rear end to play, so I'm going to vote for Vinerva instead.
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Mar 25, 2024 11:47
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If you know how this game works, clearly we gotta make you play the thing you're least familiar with. The evil below.
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Mar 25, 2024 13:46
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I've been meaning to check this game out for ages; I'll toss vote for Iastur because driving leaders insane sounds fun.
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Mar 25, 2024 14:28
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Iastur.
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Mar 25, 2024 14:53
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Vinerva. Ophanim is a bit too depressing with modern day evangelicals being that already.
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Mar 25, 2024 15:12
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Gonna be the odd one out and vote Mammon because that sounds like fun. This whole game seems really fun, can't wait to see what it plays like.
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Mar 25, 2024 16:26
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Fajita Queen posted:Gonna be the odd one out and vote Mammon because that sounds like fun. Mammon is my personal favorite, but also easy compared to the others.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:17
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That Which Sleeps is literally the only Kickstarter I ever backed. I'm glad someone was able to take the concept and make an actual game out of it, but I've bounced off it in my attempts at the demo. Interested o see someone who knows how to play go through it. Vinverva
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Mar 25, 2024 18:26
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AtomikKrab posted:Mammon is my personal favorite, but also easy compared to the others. Any tips? The only time I won with Mammon it was thunderdome style. Recruiting the courtier purely to tag in to combat while the Baron takes their nap.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:01
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habituallyred posted:Any tips? The only time I won with Mammon it was thunderdome style. Recruiting the courtier purely to tag in to combat while the Baron takes their nap. Not getting too much aggro is the key, giving the heros something else to distract them (a nice plague can help) and accepting that you might get looted some, getting looted helps reduce your heat level as well, so basically keep topped off as you can and use your powers more than anything else to attract more souls in.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:22
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I'd like to see Ophanim, please. Tricky sounds... fun.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:32
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OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...?
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Mar 25, 2024 20:01
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The closest I can think of is stuff like AI War 2 (asymmetric PVE 4X), Against The Storm (roguelite city-builder where you’re fighting heavily against the environment to survive), or Six Ages 1 or 2 or King of Dragon Pass (fantasy-Viking clan management games, other clans are a factor but your biggest issue is normally random events or some ancestral enemy like trolls or chaos). Oh, and a bunch of asymmetric tabletop games like War of the Ring. Also, Ophanim.
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Mar 25, 2024 20:19
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Ophanim sounds cool and that nice young lady who stopped by my door to tell me about his salvation couldn't possibly be wrong.
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Mar 25, 2024 21:49
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Blenderkitty posted:OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...? Abandon Ship is also a game where you play through trying to stop the apocalyptical death cult
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Mar 26, 2024 00:45
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Blenderkitty posted:OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...? Secret government along with cults and daggers both allow for playing as well intentioned groups, with a good chance of making the world better.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:41
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I remember following the original That Which Sleeps thread and watching that insane implosion only for Bobby Tow Hands to deliver an amazing product! I've never even managed to beat a single game, but this is one of those "losing is fun" games that I'll happily plug away time into. Always been curious to see a game with Ophanim pla out!
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Mar 26, 2024 03:07
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Blenderkitty posted:OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...? Probably the closest relative is The Last Federation, which is about your character as a lone agent running around pulling levers (with the goal of forming the titular last federation). Besides that there’s Rebel Inc which uses the spreading victory idea (only infrastructure instead of shadow) and Terra Invicta which uses the agent-driven-grand-strategy idea in its early game. Anyway Ophanim looks intimidating as heck for someone only just starting out with this game and I’d love to see how it all works
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Mar 26, 2024 03:48
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Alright, I remember the original implosion when that insane kickstarter began and I own this particular game but I never really got started. I would love to see our golden Ophanim guide our chosen people into the Glorious Heavens.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:13
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