Real time strategy and Ponies don't mix.

by Coal

Real time strategy and Ponies don't mix.

It's been a pretty good day so far, it's my week to pick the game and I chose one of my favorites. Dan says that the anniversary additions of a game made thirty years ago was just a waste of money, but that isn't true. They didn't just give a graphics upgrade to the old game and send it out, they added in a lot of new features while still holding to the original game. One of my favorite features that they added in is how if you want you can send a personal avatar down to observe the battle from the front lines, you can't fight, but having the feeling of being there in person, wearing the regalia of an ancient general is pretty damn sweet. Technology sure is a wonderful thing.

"Stan, pick your faction already, I finished selecting all of my units for crying out loud." Alex's drones through his microphone and into my ear.

"Easy for you to say Alex, you just always go with the Gauls, I like to change it up every once in a while." I throw back at him.

"Would you two ladies stop bickering?" Dan asks us as we're having our petty squabble.

Alex doesn't say anything back and I go back to picking a faction, he is right that I'm taking forever to pick. I've played the hell out of all of the Romans, and the same goes for Egyptians and Carthaginians.

Hmm, well it has been a while since I played as the Seleucid. And I know how much Alex hates having to deal with phalanx units.

"Oh come on, really?" Alex moans in complaint as he sees which faction I decided on. "Now you're just trying to spite me."

"What, you don't like my pointy spears?" I ask with a chuckle.

"Uh hey guys, what's the one with the best infantry?" James inquires, his tone of voice showing just how out of water he feels with this game.

"I'd go with one of the Roman factions, they all have the same units so it doesn't matter which one." Dan explains, "I'd say try and stay to the side once this starts or else you'll get killed off kind of quickly."

I see my screen show that James decided on the Brutii, and with that everyone has selected their faction, it looks like Dan decided on the British while we were arguing, and Mike chose the Greeks. Seeing as I don't want to hold the game up anymore I quickly go through and select my units, and as I do so, I admire the little animation they have that showcases the unit you have selected fights. Eventually we're all ready, and the loading commences.

Now, a couple of decades ago, loading would have meant staring at a screen as a bar filled up, with maybe a cool looking picture and a quote of some kind. Now though, it was a pretty surreal experience, you're consciousness is put into the game, allowing the interface to be more seamless than ever before.

Eventually, I see the battlefield laid out before me as I look down from my place in the sky, the deployment phase has begun and soon the virtual mayhem will begin. I see the grey banners marking my troops and I rub my hands as the fun begins.

"Alright, first off lets get my Silver Shields into position."

"Come on now Scoots, ah don't think there's anythin' here." Applebloom lets her orange pegasus companion know just how she felt about wandering so far out of town. Luckily however, they weren't wandering into the Everfree for once.

"Oh, so who's the chicken now? Come on, you were the one who said you heard somepony shout something out here."

"Ponies shout things all the time, why are we coming all the way out here?" Sweetie bell asked, her legs a little sore from wandering this far out of town.

"Ah told ya I'm not sure what ah heard."

"Well, what did the voice say then?" Scootaloo asks, looking back over her shoulder at her earth pony companion.

"It said somethin' like, 'Damn your phalanx, damn it to hell!' or sumthin'."

"What's a phalanx?" Sweetie bell asks, confused by the foreign word.

"I'm not sure, what's hell?" The purple maned pegasus asks, and from both her companions she receives a shrug.

The three intrepid crusaders continue their trek across the grasslands, after several minutes they see some strange silver contraption in the distance. The three crusaders exchange an excited glance at the strange object and start to shuffle their hooves in what might be considered a gallop.

As they approach it they see it's some weird set of boxes set up next to one another. One of them is silver on all sides with one of them having a series of buttons. The other box was thin and had one of it's sides mostly taken up by some kind of shiny black panel.

"What is it?" Scootaloo asks as she edges closer to the shiny side of the box. She lifts hoof up to poke at it, and when she does she's surprised by the black screen coming to life. "Ah!" She exclaims as she stumbles back from the now glowing screen.

"Scoots, what did ya do!?" A frightened Applebloom cries.

Before anypony else can say or do anything, words begin to crawl across the box's screen. all three fillies watch with undivided attention, which is a sizable feat for these three, when the words finally stopped appearing it reads as such.

"Wait is that thing saying, 'Welcome Discord? And what pony in their right mind would spell a name with numbers?'" Sweetie bells asks to no pony in particular.

"And what does it mean by 'Join game in progress?' Ah haven't heard of anythin' like this before!"

The three fillies sit there staring at this strange glowing box, feeling varying mixtures of excitement, fear, and confusion. None of them is very sure of what they should do in this situation. Do they leave and pretend this never happened? Do they go and try to find some older pony to deal with it? Do they choose 'Yes' and see if they can get their 'discoverers of mysterious boxes' cutie marks?

"I'm going to press yes." Scootaloo decides. If she backed down from a weird box of all things, she didn't have the right to be the head of Rainbow Dash's fan club!

"What!? Now yer just talkin' crazy talk. We don't even know what this thing is!"

"Scootaloo don't, Rarity already scolded me this week for spilling grape juice on one of her dresses."

Paying little heed to her friends' pleas however, Scootaloo raises her hoof again and touches the part of screen where 'Y' is highlighted. When she does so, the words on the screen disappear, and new ones take their place.

"Now Scoots, why did ya have ta go and do tha-" Applebloom begins to say, but is cut off in mid sentence as the screen suddenly lets out a flash of blinding light.

"Ha ha, that's right fear my barbarian cavalry!"

I hear Alex's voice gloat as his light cavalry manages to pick off one of my archer units. My phalanxes move too slowly in their formations to save it, and if I take them out of formation and run over his other cavalry with hit them in their flanks. Unfortunately, I have to accept that archer unit is lost. Recent events excluded, my fight with Alex has gone fairly well, my missile units have been able to shoot at him from behind the relative safety of my battle line, and he's not ready to try a frontal assault on my infantry just yet.

Taking a moment, I look away from my fight with Alex and see what the other three are up to. James seems to be off towards one end of the map, his forces positioned near some trees. I hadn't paid any attention in particular to it, but from how many units he has visible it's safe to say he has units hidden in the treeline. A good plan in theory, but a little poorly executed.

Off to the other side of the map, I can see a fight similar to the one I'm in going down. The only major difference is while Alex seems content with running around my lines and trying to make an opening for his cavalry, Dan invested more heavily in missile units, and is choosing to soften up Mike's Hoplites with arrows. Seeing the chariots and swordsmen in his lines I have a fair idea of what he plans to do once his missiles are out. Mike isn't as happy sitting in one spot as I am it seems, as he's trying his best to force Dan into a confrontation by marching his units forward.

All in all, not too bad of a game so far.

Out of the corner of my eye I could swear I saw some kind of flash. It wasn't all that obtrusive, but with how out of place it was it still caught my eye. Deciding that Alex's taunts weren't really all that important I move my vision over to where it looked like the flash came from. It was a little ways off to the side of my battle with Alex.

I can make out something over there, but with my current aerial view I can't make out what it is. There aren't enough forms there to be a unit, and even if it was something that routed and miraculously came back there wasn't a banner to identify whose it was. Zooming in more I'm surprised by the sight of three small, brightly colored... horses.

Looking at them, and how they seemed to be gawking at the battle going on, I can come to only one conclusion.

"Dammit Mike, I said no mods!"