Some of my favorite moments (and how to find them)

It's been a while since I last posted anything about this game, and I just realized that I never posted any hints about the moments that I enjoy  most in this game and how to get to them, since they're sadly very easy to miss.

Most of them focus on events in Years Nine and Ten, but require set-up decisions in the first few years.  (No wonder it's easy to miss them, eh?)

For example, did you know that you can send Patroclos out to fight in Achilleus' armor, as per canon, and then have him survive?  It's actually my favorite moment in the whole game (the only time I could justify having them kiss in front of other people!), but it's really hard to trigger.  See, Patroclos--despite much modern misunderstanding of his abilities--is actually pretty much the #4 badass in the Greek army.  (Seriously, he kills 27 Trojans in a single sentence in the Iliad.  That's more than even Achilleus manages!)  Therefore, there aren't many men among the Trojans who could defeat him, even naked and unarmed.  I figure it's pretty much only Hector and Aineias who have any chance of it, in fact.  So, if you get rid of both of them at the beginning of the game, and then follow canon otherwise regarding Achilleus and Briseis, then...tada!  Patroclos survives! :D  (This, of course, doesn't work if you get rid of Hector by having him and Achilleus kill each other in Year One.  If that happens, then Patroclos dies when you send him out in Achilleus' long-abandoned armor, whether or not Aineias is still around.  Because without Achilleus, Patroclos wouldn't even want to survive the battle.)  Aineias is just as hard to be rid of as Hector, and it works basically the same way:  there are two people you can send to raid Dardania who will remove Aineias from the equation instead of merely setting him up as a recurring enemy.  (I know, I know, that's not much of a hint, but there is an "undo" button down in the lower right hand corner of the screen...though it's possible for both the two people to die in Year One and therefore not be a choice...)

Another favorite moment with Achilleus (yes, he gets most of the special treatment, because he's just so much fun to work with, being completely ruled by his temper and his lusts) is to send him out to face Penthesileia if he did not ever receive Briseis as a concubine.  (The key thing there is that he can only be awarded Briseis if he's the one who kills her husband.  So if you send someone else to attack Lynessos, then she can't go to him.)

You may or may not have seen that if you make any decisions to part Achilleus from Patroclos, even for a day, he will start to get mad at you about it very early on.  Maybe you even pushed your luck far enough that he started threatening you.  But did you know that if you push him too far, he'll actually snap and kill you?  More that that, if you actually work at it, keep him just one push away from snapping, and then get Patroclos killed according to canon...well, it's not pretty, but I kind of love it anyway.  :P  (Just make sure you're using the save game function, because you can't undo from there.)

But I do have some favorite moments that don't involve Achilleus!  If you more-or-less follow canon and are faced with the choice to be without a concubine or take away someone else's, you don't have to take Briseis away from Achilleus.  Try taking  Odysseus' or Aias of Salamis' concubine away instead.  Those are also moments I treasure.  :)

Oh, did you know that you can also have what I consider a "reverse canon," where you get to see Patroclos mourning at Achilleus' funeral?  Achilleus' canon death can easily be avoided, of course, by not sending him up against Alexandros when the time comes, but if Patroclos is still alive, it can give you that interesting reversal.  You might have discovered, though, that Achilleus' death at Alexandros' hands is not 100% decided even if you do send him up against the adulterous prince.  There are three factors in whether or not Alexandros kills Achilleus as per canon.  The first two both boil down to whether or not Achilleus has pissed Apollo off; there are two people who Achilleus canonically kills who are sometimes said to be the sons of Apollo rather than of their mothers' husbands, and if you let Achilleus kill them, then Apollo will absolutely ensure that Alexandros' shot doesn't miss.  Also, if Patroclos meets his canon fate, then Achilles will piss of Apollo by his abuse of the corpse of Patroclos' killer, and thus Alexandros can't miss.   If you did not let Achilleus do anything to tick off Apollo, then Alexandros will have a 50-50 chance of killing Achilleus if they meet in battle at the traditional moment.  (And if he survives past his traditional death, whether through luck or through your decision not to send him to face Alexandros, then a few events later, you can have the reversal of Alexandros being killed by Achilleus.  Particularly brutally, in fact.  But first you have to deal with Achilleus realizing he's survived a brush with fate, and therefore wanting to meet Helen.  (Which is actually something he does canonically want to do in some late versions of the myth, though in the canon version it's merely between  the end of the Iliad and his own death.))

Anyway, in case anyone's reading this who hasn't given the game a try yet, I hope you will try it out.  And I leave you with two pieces of advice:  never, ever send Achilleus on any mission that requires tact or diplomacy, and always, always remember that Nestor will never steer you wrong.  (Well, okay, technically he does steer you wrong once, but that's canon.  And hopefully you won't have followed canon closely enough to get into that situation in the first place.)

Also, advice to all and sundry, be sure to read the credits. ;)  (Just be careful after you do...)