...How do you play this game? No tutorial, No manual...

[Snek!]

...So what am i suppose to do? If you put no guide or anything in your game, and the online guides don't help, what the fak do i do?

[Snek!]

Oh, and why would you EVER use mind control? The AI does a much better job than people can ever do.

[Friedrich]

AI control is mostly if you want to make things harder, if you think letting the AI play by themself is getting to easy.

[Friedrich]

But the whole point of the game is to build up the strongest galdiators in the empire

[Friedrich]

I have played the game for a bunch of hours, so tell me if there is anything in particular you are wondering about

[0ptimistPrime (the Gray)]

In my experience, Mind Control is good for Chariot races (even with AI level 100, your AI will screw up at least half the time), or when you want to pit a weak gladiator alongside a strong one in order to powerlevel him. So if you know your strong glad can take out all the enemies on his own, you Mind Control the weak one and keep him away from the fray. Boom, free levels.


EDIT: Regarding figuring out how to play, that's just it. You figure it out as you go along; personally, I think it adds to the game's charm. I royally butchered my first run, and when I look back at my horribly-failed early attempts, losing was still a lot of fun. I'm glad I got to experience that.

I ended up consulting a couple guides after doing a few runs playing it on my own. They taught me plenty of stuff that I failed to pick up on my own, some nice little "Aha!" moments, but I still enjoyed the self-discovery phase.

The one tip I'll give: if one of your gladiators ever surrender (they give up at low HP before they die), you'll see a Meter on the post-battle summary. The meter, with it's wobbling needle, will only be there for maybe 2 seconds. Key-jam your keyboard. If you succeed, your surrendered gladiator will live. If you don't successfully get the meter up high enough, your gladiator will be put to death and you'll lose him.
(tl;dr - Key-jam when you see the Surrender Meter in a post-battle report)

[Friedrich]

And, if i ever use mind control. Then it is because i need 1 of my weaker gladiators to get better stats/skills and the best way of getting this is by giving them battle experience. So if i ever use Mind Control then its because i want to keep them away from the fight at the same time as im giving them battle experience.

[MechaTails]

Some video games feel like the developers throw you a stack of playing cards and expect you to know how to play Gin Rummy.