AoW2SM

I started playing Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic again, after seeing Darter playing Civ 3 at Crossroads reminded me of it. It has a random scenario mode (in addition to the campaign or various pregenerated scenarios) and for the last few nights I've been doing an 'Empire Building' scenario, where you start with a settler, a wizard, a hero, and a few units, and a biiig mostly empty space to expand into.

I think I'm winning, but I haven't seen most of the map. I set the computer to the second difficulty setting (out of 5) and it seems able to put up a decent defense, but isn't so good in attacking except to take back cities I just captured. And it seems to be a bit slack in the expansion department.

I'm playing the draconians. Playing a neutral race in that games means having to commit a minimum amount of genocide... although most of the cities I've captured have been Gabriel's frickin' Archons who are 'pure good' and therefore won't tolerate my rule -- I was kicking his butt until he pulled out the chemical weapons and gassed my armies. Now the massive clouds of fallout surrounding his capital are making it hard to position myself for a final offensive.

So yes, it's turned into yet another front in the eternal battle between good and neutral.