ME-1000 - It's a whole new age.

As with the 2950 scenario, this scenario requires some major rework of strategy in many key areas. I've only played about 60 turns of the Fourth Age scenario, in 3 different games. However, even with this limited experience, I've noticed a lot of changes form the earlier scenarios.

EVERY GAME IS UNIQUE!
I have only played one 2950 game, and 3 1650 games. Even with this slim experience, trends were easy to see in these scenarios. The Dark Servants use their superior agent strength to counter the superior military strength of the Free Peoples. The artifact war is settled very quickly by the quick recovery of a few key agent artifacts. Neutrals can change the balance of a theater, but there are insufficient neutrals to truly dominate the flow of the game.

In the Fourth Age, none of these "patterns" are present. There are different races available to each allegiance, but the race differences are not strong enough to cause the development of game "patterns".

The ability of any nation to select the +20 assassinate, name characters at 40, 20% market adjustment, conjure mounts or hire armies for free, means that any nation can be any kind of power it chooses. Few of the SNA's are limited by race, and none of these are all that great.

The discount on starting character at 60 does contain "incentives" for the Dark Servants to start with better agents and for the Free Peoples to start with better mages and commanders. However, these incentives are very small and can be quickly overcome with SNA's or a few turns of training. One exception is the starting emissaries at 60, but this discount is available to all allegiances.

More importantly, many games of the Fourth Age have proven to be a dog-eat-dog world. In the Third Age alliances were well defined. Even in individual games, it was very rare to see nations of the same allegiance fighting each other. (Except, perhaps, in a late game character war to punish non-team players.) You could count on a Dark Servant fighting the Free Peoples, or at least not attacking a Dark Servant.

In the Fourth Age, the expectation of one nation to be an ally of another nation, just because they have the same icon, is much less. The chaotic nature of the game seems to attract chaotic players. In an individual game, expect chaos and you probable won't be disappointed.

THE INFORMATION DILEMMA (This does not apply to grudge games.) How much information should you share with other nations?

This question is huge in the Fourth Age because every game is so different. In the Third Age, it was 10 against 10, with a few neutrals. Alliances gave the neutrals information that was know by the enemy and made them look good. They avoided information not known by the enemy or that made them look bad.

Communication within allegiances was also a lot easier. If I was going to be a team player, I shared all pertinent information with other nations in my allegiance. If I wasn't going to be a team player, I shared information that helped us win, but coveted the details to protect myself. Wait, I was always a team player.

The dynamic nature of the Fourth Age makes allies far more important and far less stable. The Fourth Age requires the construction of alliances from the ground up. The biggest tool in doing this is information. But one must be careful. Information given to an ally(even with the same icon) today, may be information possessed by an enemy tomorrow.

THE END OF THE CURSE SQUAD
I hereby proclaim the death of the curse squad. It is my belief, which is not likely to be confirmed by GSI, that access to "Lost Lists" was only a stable power. The unstable powers were the lesser "Heal", "Perceive", and "Move" spells. The stable powers have been removed from the Fourth Age, and it appears that the access to "Lost Lists" was not incorporated into the unstable power logic.

As a result, there are no artifacts that allow the learning of "Spirit", "Conjure", or "Teleport" spells. This greatly increases the value of the Teleport and Conjure SNA's

BUT WATCH OUT FOR THOSE AGENTS.
For those that hated the ability to instantly loose a character that took 25 turns to build, do not rejoice at the death of the Curse Squad. The number of assassination capable agents in the Fourth Age is staggering.

All those good starting agents, combined with selection of agent SNA's, makes for a lot of death. This death starts surprisingly early. In one game, an ally has killed about 10 characters by turn 7. And don't count on guards. Don't be surprised if assassins are blowing through your 40 and 50 guards in the first 5 turns. Also, the shear number of assassins makes guarding all your key characters impossible.

Making the situation worse is the difficulty in spotting these high level agents. It is my observation that the higher the skill rank, the harder the agent is to see on a Scout Character order. An ally had a 60 agent with +20 scout show no enemy characters present, then lost 3 characters to assassination. Because these agents are difficult to see, the likelihood of doubling them is darn small. Besides, double only prevents the characters from performing orders against the nation that has it doubled, not that nation's allies.

NO LOYALTY IS HIGH ENOUGH
Just when you thought the number of 80-90 agents was bad, here come all those starting 60 emissaries that spent the first 5 turns placing camps. I've had pop. centers with 70+ loyalty lost in a single turn of InfOthr's. There is not much more to say about this one.

TO ARTIFACT HUNT, OR NOT TO ARTIFACT HUNT; THAT IS THE QUESTION.
Some time ago, I had an email debate with another player over artifact hunting in the Fourth Age. The debate lasted several days and ended with an agreement to disagree.

His point was that artifact hunting takes too many orders and starting character points to justify. He preferred to have his characters out being productive. Emissaries, agents and commanders are in great demand. Mages reduce the slots available for these more useful characters. My belief was that without artifacts, character would only be average. I want my characters to be "special".

After some more experience, I'm no longer sure of my stance. It is possible to spend a lot of orders, and have nothing to show for it. It is also possible to get a couple strong artifacts that can significantly alter the flow of the game. And surprise, 90 point characters are special and quite obtainable without artifacts. You might not get a challenge god without artifacts, but you can still execute almost all orders very well.

Besides, with all those agents, holding onto artifacts can be very hard. Here are a few things I've learned:

• There is no hurry to artifact hunt. There will be a lot of good artifacts available for a long time.
• A 40 mage can start with Learn Artifact True at a decent skill level.
• A lot of artifacts can be retrieved with the Find Artifact order. So far, Spirits and Wights have protected EVERY artifact that I've failed to retrieve with the Find Artifact order. Moral: If FindArt fails with a 50 mage, don't InvEnc with a character with a challenge rank under 80. If you plan on artifact hunting, choose the Conjure Mounts SNA. At least the mage is productive while doing all those Research Artifacts and Learn Artifact Trues.
• Research Artifact may not make since if you don't have low level mages with nothing better to do. With 1 mage, Learn Artifact True is probably a more effective spell than Research Artifact . You will end up with a lot of +500 swords, but they are useful. Knowing the powers of artifacts, but not locations, is far less useful. Also, don't worry about not knowing the secondary powers of those artifacts. If it has a secondary power, it is (probably?) just perceive, heal, or move.

CONCLUSION:
I love the Fourth Age. I love the fact that I start even with all other nations (well, except those damn kingdom.) and that I have so much control over the success of my nation. The chaos is quite difficult for an old "team player" like myself, but I've been able to gather up enough other "team players" to defeat those chaotic ones.

If there were one thing that I would change, it would be the agents. There needs to be a better weapon against them. How about "Scout Agent". Allow agent powers to track each other down and wipe each other out, leaving the world safe for the emissary, economic, military powers like myself. There needs to be a scenario for those of us who like to plan, plot, and scheme for many turns, and hate having our plans, plots, schemes blown to heck by an agent company that shows up at the last moment to slaughter everyone in sight.

Hey GSI, how about a Fourth Age individual game where no one is allowed to use the assassinate and kidnap orders? Agents would be useful for stealing artifacts, blowing bridges, stealing gold, and scouting for characters to double or challenge. I bet a game like this would fill in a couple days.