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Dear Quadriga: I love you, but you are a really difficult game.
I keep forgetting, as I play this game about Roman chariot racing, that:
a) Hiring aurigas will cost money. Hiring good aurigas will cost you more money. This is even more true when you're hiring an auriga because your highly-skilled driver with VIII victories under his belt got run over by that jerk from the green team and is now just a bloodied smear somewhere in Gaul.
b) Buying chariots is expensive. Buying good chariots is very expensive. Corollary to this: "High quality" does not mean "indestructible," as Duo found out when he flipped and wrecked a 9000 sestertii chariot a turn and a half into a race. I just bought the damn thing, too.
c) Buying teams of horses is expensive. Buying good horses will cost you. Of course, horses are rather fragile beasts, and such fine steeds aren't really meant to be abused by getting whipped by chariot drivers or rammed into by chariots. Problem is, when a horse dies, it has a tendency to just drop dead on the track, and now one of your fine Arabian racing horses has just become Everybody Else's Problem. Should be easy to dodge, at least, because your maximum speed goes way the hell down when you're minus one horse. (I got two horses killed in one race once. I just changed lanes, walked away from the computer, made some soup, ate it, washed and cleaned the bowl, and when I got back to the computer, I STILL HADN'T FINISHED THE RACE. Thankfully, the game won't let you whip your horses for more speed when it knows doing so would kill your remaining horses.)
d) Buying medical care, veterinary care, or crafting services is inexpensive, but still digs into the sesterces, especially if you play the game like I do and are spending more money than you ought to on veterinary care.
e) Hiring permanent staff is hideously expensive; seriously, I've been playing this game for over a year and I finally scraped together enough money to hire a team of blacksmiths! I'm afraid to hire doctors or farriers because I don't know if hiring them will dismiss the blacksmiths!
f) Traveling from city to city is expensive; if I wanna cut down the expenses, I gotta win more races, but racing's expensive.
g) Traveling from province to province is REALLY expensive, but if I wanna get to Rome, I gotta win more races locally...
h) Any betting odds higher than 3:1, maybe 4:1, is code for "don't plan on winning this one." I know I get money for finishing the race (and more money for actually winning the race) but I gotta bet smart enough to not obliterate my winnings. (Or get smarter at racing.)
i) The auriga and the horses have to cross the finish line to finish the race. You'll note there's something missing from that equation. I have a screenshot of me winning a chariot race by getting dragged behind my horses (presumably) screaming the whole time.
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Posted: Sun Nov 16, '14, 6:08 am 
