Solium Infernum had us backstab each other during lunch to become ruler of hell

My demon army is immune to lava, right? Right? – A Solium Infernum chronicle

Astaroth is a crimson-colored, horned, beefy kind of fellow with big anger issues. The Conclave is enabling that behavior by allowing him to just go ham on a fellow Archfiend for a turn without any prior justification as his special ability, which is pretty nifty for a warlike playstyle. It also means that this guy is basically Khorne from the Warhammer universe, so that made him an instant lock-in for me on my noble quest to become the next Dark Majesty.

Being specialized in wiping other people from map made my plan pretty simple: Level up my starting legion, recruit a strong commander, and conquer as many Places of Power as I can while hoping to plot some Schemes supporting that playstyle. This would hopefully get me enough Prestige to win the election.

Things started alright as my loyal troops were able to slay a nearby Titan, a neutral entity with the singular purpose of being XP fodder. I even got a fairly solid Praetor from the Bazaar to lead my army and plotted some Schemes that seemed very in line with my initial plans. I opted to keep these secret for the time being, which meant that I wouldn’t get the Prestige for pulling them off immediately. Since Solium Infernum is very boardgame-like and every boardgame in existence has some sort of mechanic to screw over the guy in the lead, I figured that masking my true score would be a prudent measure.

However, things took a turn for the worse quickly. With everyone being demons and accustomed to life in hell, I thought that standing on hexes with bubbling lava rivers wouldn’t hurt my soldiers. Well… it did and I didn’t realize. Parking my legion in front of a Place of Power I needed to take over for a Scheme, the fiery ground melted it away. Oops. While each Archfiend’s bodyguard legion respawns after a couple of turns, this early loss did set me back a lot – I could not get territory, I could not hunt for XP to upgrade my troops, and I could not fulfill any objectives.

Having no troops to command – a task that takes up lots of Order slots – I focused on the economy, filling my turns with collecting Tribute. I checked out the Bazaar as well, bidding on a nice Artifact of Pride to decorate my capital with. Along with giving me some resistance to Rituals performed by my enemies, this piece generated Prestige passively every turn. This actually helped out a lot over the course of the entire game, especially since I got it so early. A worthwhile investment.

Meanwhile the AI seemed to be running away with the match – both humans had made some early blunders stunting their growth (Ollie lost a legion in battle, not realizing it took extra damage during the ranged combat phase) and the AI Archfiends were happily gathering Prestige, opting to upgrade their Rank, which gave them more Tribute and additional voting power in the Conclave.

I feared the worst for my victory chances, but even without an army there was a surprising amount of stuff I could do to try and recoup my losses. Erzsébet, that conniving fiend, wanted to rub salt into my wounds by demanding Tribute from me – but no one demands anything from Astaroth. My new-found wealth bought me a Praetor that I sent off to duel a champion of her choosing in the arena. It’s basically a little rock-paper-scissors game, as every Praetor has a set of abilities of one of three types, some with a special effect. Luckily, mine gave me a pretty good chance to counter Erzsébet’s. Plus, my wealth allowed me to make a little donation to the referee, just to make sure. Having vanquished her champion (who apparently was executed for his failure), I won some of her hard-earned Prestige, which made her pretty sulky in her messages to me.

Ollie said that Solium Infernum is “a surprisingly funny game, despite its setting in literal hell. The writing is sharp and witty, with insults and demands sent between players often being exactly the right kind of silly. In a well-realized world, such as this, a little bit of levity goes a long way.” I fully agree with this – while the visual style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the entire atmosphere of the game is actually very charming thanks to all aspects coming together quite well.

For me the amount of systems Solium Infernum is offering certainly is a plus, giving you various ways to engage with the game and switch strategies on the fly, but it can be pretty intimidating to navigate for someone less into those nitty gritty details. I’ll let Ollie speak on this point: “Solium Infernum does feel like it goes a little bit overboard with its gameplay systems. There’s a lot to take in, and a lot to keep in mind. And when you’re actually in-game, there’s a lot to balance, too. There’s a dense but largely underutilized diplomacy system, a bunch of different currencies to gather and spend, and an extraordinary amount of tiny systems with big impacts.”

All currencies come in coins between a value of one and two, but since you can only store a limited amount of them and payment at the Bazaar is likewise limited to a certain amount of coins, you need to combine them into bigger pieces. This takes an entire Order, so you even need to plan your shopping sprees ahead of time. It feels a little bit like this system is simply there to add busywork and block players from doing other things with their two Orders every turn – it definitely fulfills a purpose (combining currency is a risk, concentrating your wealth in a few pieces that might easily be stolen), but it’s not the most enjoyable mechanic the game has to offer.

Hunting some Titans after my legion returned, I got the troops a promotion for some additional damage. Supported by an Enfeebling Ritual, my bodyguard was able to grab a Place of Power as well, adding more passive Prestige generation to my realm. Browsing through the Bazaar, I bid for another useful Artifact to place there as well. While I was down there, it was easy enough to provoke a vendetta against Erzsébet, allowing me to wipe out one of her armies to fulfill one of my Schemes.

I think the AI somewhat dropped the ball at this point – they started squabbling with each other in addition to losses against Ollie and me, who somewhat stuck together in order to avoid getting embarrassed by the AI (it’s already coming for our jobs, so we may as well beat it up in-game). Ollie even managed to subdue Erzsébet after a while, making her a vassal.

Going on a shopping spree, I got myself another legion as well as an Artifact of War to support it, though those purchases really broke the bank. Luckily, I happened to be the Regent that turn and got a nice little event to play – one that redistributed every Archfiends’ wealth evenly to everyone. Infernal communism, baby!

My revenge against the Place of Power protected by the lava that set me back so much at the start finally came, meaning I had another successful scheme to my name. Another duel, this time provoked by Belial, netted me even more Prestige. A previous event card hid everyone’s Prestige, so I was surprised to find myself at the top of the scoreboard when it finally ended, even after I paid for a higher Rank – by a solid margin as well. My early investments into that passive Prestige gain really paid off, I think.

Belial, the Lord of Lies, was still sore from his loss in the arena, so he used his special ability to insult Ollie in my name, hoping to stir discord – an evil deed he bitterly regretted a few turns later when I destroyed one of his legions in revenge and forced him to become my vassal. Ollie was a great sport about it, even taking a Prestige hit to avoid going to war with me (we were still a bit paranoid about the AI having an ace up its sleeve despite its low Prestige score).

I wish I could say I was as steadfast an ally. Alright, I’m coming clean – Ollie, you probably didn’t realize it, but when the only Place of Power you conquered rose up in rebellion against you, that was my doing through an event card. I’m sorry, but I felt like we’d have played the game wrong if we didn’t backstab one another at least once. It’s like a Dothraki wedding being considered a dull affair if not enough people die – what is a good game of thrones in hell if there are no betrayals?

The AI, it turns out, did not have an ace up its sleeve. With everything added together, I took the throne by a large margin to be elected as the new Dark Majesty – a wise choice, if I do say so myself.

I think Solium Infernum is going to be an amazing game to play with other people, once it’s out – the more players and the longer the match, the better. Ollie and I just played a short game of something like 45 turns, which was enough to let us dive in and experience but a glimpse of the game’s immense depth.

What makes the game really stand out is the asynchronous multiplayer. These 45 turns were played over a couple of days last week. We submitted our Orders for the current turn whenever we could – after finishing an article at work, during lunch, before going to bed, and so on – and then things played out. When it was time to give Orders again, Steam sent a notification to us. It’s super simple and smooth. And when we both were online at the same time, we were able to play “live” without a problem.

Ollie had lots of praise for this aspect of the game as well: “It’s honestly a little bit difficult for me to get into most strategy games, in part because of the time investment that goes into them. I’ve spent days playing just one game of Civ 5 with a friend, and while I very much enjoy it, it’s hard to dedicate 5 or 6 hours to a game each day when playing with friends, and playing against the AI just isn’t quite the same. Solium Infernum’s innovative asynchronous multiplayer system solves all of those problems.

“Logging into the game for a few minutes every couple hours to play a 40-turn game over a week instead of 6 hours in one day is a huge boon for people who don’t have the time to dedicate to a huge game. The fact that you can play an asynchronous game as if it were a live one makes it even better, because it means you and whoever you’re playing with can offer as much or as little time as you want and still keep the game rolling.”

Ollie summed up the experience as follows: “Outside of micromanaging 400 different types of currency, Solium Infernum is all about maintaining pressure. You need to make sure your units are in the right place, you hold control of the right land, and you always have the upper hand in the long-term. You always have some kind of insight into your opponents’ actions and goals, but piecing it all together is the hard part, and it’ll likely take a lot of time investment to get to the point where that becomes second nature.“

Solium Infernum is definitely oriented towards players who love to dive deep into crunchy mechanics and flourish when there are more pulls to string than seems necessary, but at the same time its boardgame-like setup and simple goal (collect Prestige) is something that any newcomer to the genre can grasp and work towards. While there are still technical issues to iron out for developer League of Geeks, this looks to be a worthy successor to the cult classic.

Solium Infernum is coming to PC on February 14, 2024.