Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Like all Sims type games, you have to decide how and when you want to end a game in Guild 2: Renaissance. Technically the scenario ends only when the last member of my rival dynasty, the Muresans, are dead but short of devoting all of my resources to murdering each and every one of them, down to the last child, I can’t see how that would be possible in any reasonable amount of time. Even adopting an orphan from the church counts as adding a family member. So I’ve decided to try to get a Kant family member to become sovereign (mayor actually) and end the game on that note.

Of course it can’t be Julia Kant as she is too old and sure enough in autumn 1472 she passes away peacefully. I pull in Clarissa Kant, Harold’s sister, but she’s just a placeholder while Maria Kant’s son, Bradley, grows up. So the plan is for Maria Kant, the new matriarch to work on her political career while the other two focus on making money. That means putting all available XP into the rhetoric and empathy skills.

Another tool that Maria has up her sleeves is the Ghostly Fog vapour that she can brew at her family inn. Hopefully it will addle the brain of opposing candidates and spoil their speeches. It took me a while, but I finally realized that in order to apply for a political post you need to be already holding a post in a tier one step down. So Maria has to work her way up, starting from executioner. As there is only one election per season, it will take a while for Maria to climb to the top.

In winter 1476, Bradley Kant comes of age and becomes an active family member. I immediately set him to court a girl and they get to have to have a church wedding. Ruinously expensive of course, but Bradley is the third generation son of the wealthy Kant family and he gets to have the best of everything. Strangely, the church is locked out to other people while the ceremony is going on. You can see people queuing outside for regular church sermons and everything.

Maria moves from being executioner to being dungeon master that same season. She can supposed torture prisoners (if there were any in jail I suppose) and command the dungeon guards (which I don’t see any of on the map). So she mostly just walks around scaring people with her piercing gaze. But she could do that as executioner already. And oh, the Kant buys the slightly damaged windmill. It takes wheat and barley from our farm to grind into flour. We probably own half the businesses on the map with this purchase.

In spring 1480, Maria becomes the town Bishop despite not knowing a lick about religion or ever stepping into the local church. Again, it comes with a bunch of powers that I don’t understand and don’t really care about because it’s just one more stepping stone on the way to the next post. Actually climbing the political ladder has been a lot easier than I expected, mainly because the game is sort of broken at this point. Many of the original families who used to be high up on the social hierarchy seem to have died out completely. The game compensates for this by adding new families. Unfortunately as they have lowly ranked titles and not much money, they can’t compete with me in politics.

It isn’t until after Maria become chief magistrate in 1484 that she runs into any real opposition. The post comes with immunity from prosecution. That’s one power that needs no explanatory note. One Kelsey Baldwin already occupies the post of Sovereign and won’t take kindly to a challenger. Notice how the rest of the posts are almost all vacant. That’s because the new families in town aren’t bothering to play the political game.

So in autumn 1488, Maria arranges to run into Ms. Baldwin just hours before the election. She brings along her personal bodyguard of course, in case things turn ugly. But our plan of strolling up to Ms. Baldwin and spraying a dose of Ghostly Fog in her face goes off without a hitch.

Moments later Maria is safely installed at the apex of the town’s social hierarchy. We take a moment to reflect on the humble beginnings of the Kant family and how we have risen to own almost all of the town in a mere three generations. Then before we exit the game for the last time, we have Maria loot the town treasury. It’s the principle of the matter.