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ILLUMINATI®
How to Approach Your First Turn in the Basic Illuminati Game
By Chris D. Castro {part one} (from Illuminated Newsletter #58, July 1995)
You've got your set-up sheet and, assuming it's a Basic game, a mere ten actions to set your illuminati on the road to victory. These actions are precious and you must not waste them. This article is a brief description of how I start basic games; my method has worked very well, although that may change if everyone starts following the advice below.
First, examine your set-up sheet, and five stats in particular: income, cadre, fanaticism, secrecy, and special power. These five aspects, and any weakness among the first four, are the most important at the start: your initial actions should reflect efforts to eliminate deficiencies here.
Perhaps your power is low. Or your influence. Your corruption might be too high, or your fanaticism too low. Your set-up sheet may advise you to correct these problems, and you will, but not now! NOW is for getting yourself up and running. Your starting power and influence will be good enough to take a group or two, and that's what counts on turn one.
I prefer to take TWO groups on my first turn. One group is a keeper, the kind of group that any player would like on their structure. Some people recommend you go for a good, yet less popular group to start (e.g. Spain, Australia, Canada, World Bank, etc.) Too many people do this, though, and the best groups (e.g. England, Japan Inc., Germany, Wall Street, etc.) are scooped up by just a few (usually more experienced players). I shoot for the stars on my Keeper groups. (Again, if everyone starts following this advice, you may have to go back to taking "second-rate" groups to avoid endless tug-of-wars over the primary ones.)
My second target is a Loot Group, one that I will drain of money, perhaps cadre, and use for a turn or two to change alignments, raise morale, etc. (Sometimes, taking two groups is NOT possible, as you'll see below.) No matter how good your income, you can ALWAYS use extra wealth. Thus, whoever you are, you'll want to seize loot groups (and the good ones go fast, so the earlier you start, the better).
Here's a table of actions that I consider doing, based on my set-up sheet, on my first turn. (With eighteen choices and only ten available actions, one must choose carefully; fortunately many of these choices (sp. 2-7) are usually not needed.) "Self" refers to your illuminati itself, of course.
1. -Income: This is basically your way of borrowing money from yourself. Your income will drop, but you'll have more wealth NOW. If you start with really lousy income and need more bucks, or have tons of cadre and want to fund more of them, sell some income (keeping in mind the minimum limit of 100 MB).
This maneuver is a little risky and you must use this looted money wisely to capture targets. These targets, the loot group for example, will later provide money back that you can invest to raise your income again.
What if you don't succeed in taking a loot group? What if someone takes the group from you? Well, there are always risks in this game...
2. Promote Leaders: Most, if not ALL, illuminati start with enough leaders (six per control point or so) to have three control points. You only need two on your first turn, so this action will probably NOT be required. However, there may be an illuminati that only starts with, for example, twelve leaders.
You don't want to shoot for two groups and then, losing a leader to attrition, end up with only eleven leaders and ONE control point. So, if you have only twelve leaders or less, you'll need to promote some guys. But like I said, this most likely won't be required.
3-5. -Fanaticism: High fanaticism can really hurt your efforts to subvert targets. If you have high fanaticism, I normally recommend lowering it to six before subverting.
6-7. +Secrecy: Most groups start with 8 or 9 secrecy, so this action probably won't be needed. However, some start with five or six, which is too low. There's a VAST difference between doing subverts with a group that has five secrecy, and nine secrecy.
For those with low secrecy, I strongly urge raising it to at least seven, and preferably eight, before doing any subverts.
8. Subvert Loot Group: Whatever target you choose, it should probably have decent income and be fairly vulnerable to attack (high corrupt, low fanat, low secrecy, etc.) Most businesses make excellent loot groups; some notable examples are Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Big Media, etc.
I usually use 100/100 to subvert my first turn loot group. The really open targets will yield a 100% return on your subvert; even with less open ones, you'll normally get enough leaders for the control order to succeed.
9. Control Loot Group: Like for subvert, I usually use 100/100 to control my first turn loot group.
10. -Infiltrate Loot Group: Do you need cadre? Is your loot group easily attacked? If the answer to either is yes, then you should probably do this action to withdraw your men. (As noted in the rules, withdrawing the leaders of a group makes it tougher to take if the cadre level is high; plus, you'll find guarding large and/or open groups does little to protect them on your first turn.)
11-12. Subvert Keeper Group: You're going to have to choose what you want as a Keeper. Most of the time, I try to eventually have a country, a financial group, a terrorist group, and an espionage group on my structure. You DON'T need a terrorist group at the start, and they, like espionage groups, are harder to take than others.
Go for a country, or perhaps a financial group, depending on your illuminati's stats (see below for examples). These nuts are usually not too difficult to crack and that's why I do NOT recommend you do an infiltrate; instead, do two subverts. The first one (say 100/100) will pick up some leaders, the second one will give you a high return for your money. (Save infiltration for the really tough targets.)
If the Keeper is a fairly open target, (e.g. California, Wall Street, etc.), and you expect a high percentage return, then you should do one LARGER subvert and thereby save an action here.
13. -Wealth Keeper Group: If you suspect/know the target has a substantial amount of wealth on it, or you need every MB you can get your hands on, then do a steal. Very open groups with lots of wealth do not require a steal; for example, I never do steals versus Hollywood despite its excellent starting wealth. I would rather have that action than the small profit a steal would gain.
14. Control Keeper Group: Usually I use about 150/150 to take control of the Keeper.
If you're afraid of losing this group (and you always should be if it's a popular target), you might want to make the Subvert and Control orders of this group STANDING orders. This way, if you lose the Keeper before your Turn 2, your T2 standing orders will have a shot at taking it back when your turn is processed.
15-16. Guard Keeper Group: It is believed to be more efficacious to do two smaller guards than one big guard when trying to raise security. So if you've got actions to spare, feel free to do two.
If the Keeper is an "open" group or, worse, has lots of cadre, a second guard will make little difference. (When guarding England once, I raised its security to 26 and then 33. Needless to say, the second guard did virtually nil to help me. On the other hand, two guards versus "open" Wall Street raised its security to 33 and then 55, a distinct improvement.)
17. -Infiltrate Keeper Group: If the group is open or large, and you expect to have, minimum, ALL of the leaders, you might want to withdraw the men you've subverted, as mentioned above. Keep in mind that you won't be able to use it next turn to take another group, unless you promote new leaders first.
18. Guard Self: Always a good idea if possible, but normally not important early in the game. (I have heard of one player being subject to a (failed) destroy effort on turn one (!) of a game; this type of event is incredibly rare, though.)
EXAMPLES: Here are some made-up illuminati, each with an explanation of how I would play them on their first turn with ten orders:
THE BARBARIAN HORDES
Wealth--Income-Leaders-Cadre---Recr--Power-Influ--Morale--Security---Alignments --Cont
612 --------212------106------ 1841----86------64-----33----88---------56---------78485866---------3
Group Type(s):
Special Power: Bonus to affect all groups with 800+ cadre.
Analysis: Fanaticism--not bad, consider lowering a point now
Secret--good, for now
Income--bad
Cadre--good (Hell it's awesome!)
Strategy: This situation is a little tricky because of the special power. Clearly the illuminati needs income, and a financial group could help to generate money for the illuminati's investment. However, most financial groups tend to have lower cadre levels, while many good countries have large cadre numbers; the Hordes would have a bonus versus those countries, which means all efforts versus such targets would be more likely to succeed.
I would argue take the loot group and a financial group, although one could instead go for the loot group and a country. (The really bold/insane would go for a country AND a financial group, and I've seen it done successfully before.)
Following the scheme above, and selecting the Bankers and Big Media as my targets, I would do the following:
SHADOWS OF THE CURIA
Wlth--Income--Ldrs--Cadre-Recr--Powr--Influ--Morale--Security--Alignments--Cnt
780----380--------19-----521---12------34------47----- 70-------85-----------69076421---3
Group Type(s): Financial, Religious
Special Power: Bonus to buy, sell, and transfer assets; to affect Vatican, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Solidarity; to resist all other religious groups.
Analysis: Fanaticism--good
Secret--good
Income--good, for now
Cadre--Aaaah!
Strategy: Clearly this group does not have money as a primary concern. Its low cadre level, though, is alarming. I believe I would shoot for Hollywood and the much larger, open California:
BLACK OPS INC.
Wlth-Income-Leaders-Cadre-Recr-Power-Influ-Morale-Security-Alignment---Control
595-----195-----18---------591-----8------35-----50-----90---------95-------99090900---- 3
Group Type(s): Government, Terrorist, High Tech, Espionage
Special Power: bonus to assassinate, sabotage, and -morale versus all except military; bonus to probe; bonus to influence military, hi-tech, and countries; bonus versus government. Large bonus versus CIA and FBI.
Analysis: Fanaticism--too high!
Secret--good
Income--bad
Cadre--bad
Strategy: This is the type of group that has a great special power, and will be very powerful by the middle of the game, but only if it gets there. It has all sorts of weaknesses plaguing it NOW though (and the extreme alignments won't helps us either).
With so few cadre AND a need for wealth, I would forgo any loot groups for now, focusing all of my effort on getting a financial group to generate cash. The Federal Reserve is a good choice, given this illuminati's bonus versus government groups.
I hope this article helps some of the more "lost" players. If I get a chance, and don't quietly vanish, I'll try writing some advice on your second turn, or first-second turn synergy, or illuminati tips, or something else perhaps. Fnord.
How to Approach Your First Turn in the Basic Illuminati Game Part 2 By Chris D. Castro (from Illuminated Newsletter #59, Aug. 1995)
EXAMPLES:
Here are some made-up illuminati, each with an explanation of how I would play them on their first turn with ten orders:
THE BARBARIAN HORDES
Wlth-Income-Leadr-Cadre-Recr-Power-Influ-Morale-Security-Alignments---Cnt
612---212-------106----1841-- 86-----64-----33-----88------56--------78485866------3
Group Type(s):
Special Power: Bonus to affect all groups with 800+ cadre.
Analysis: Fanaticism--not bad, consider lowering a point now
Secret--good, for now
Income--bad
Cadre--good (Hell it's awesome!)
Strategy: This situation is a little tricky because of the special power. Clearly the illuminati needs income, and a financial group could help to generate money for the illuminati's investment. However, most financial groups tend to have lower cadre levels, while many good countries have large cadre numbers; the Hordes would have a bonus versus those countries, which means all efforts versus such targets would be more likely to succeed.
I would argue take the loot group and a financial group, although one could instead go for the loot group and a country. (The really bold/insane would go for a country AND a financial group, and I've seen it done successfully before.)
Following the scheme above, and selecting the Bankers and Big Media as my targets, I would do the following:
SHADOWS OF THE CURIA
Wlth-Income-Leadr-Cadre-Recr-Power-Influ-Morale-Security-Alignments---Cnt
780---380-------19------521----12-----34------47----70-------85---------69076421-----3
Group Type(s): Financial, Religious
Special Power: Bonus to buy, sell, and transfer assets; to affect Vatican, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Solidarity; to resist all other religious groups.
Analysis: Fanaticism--good
Secret--good
Income--good, for now
Cadre--Aaaah!
Strategy: Clearly this group does not have money as a primary concern. Its low cadre level, though, is alarming. I believe I would shoot for Hollywood and the much larger, open California:
Leave Vatican for T2 perhaps; if you want a good group you can better defend, shoot for a target like England on T1:
BLACK OPS INC.
Wlth-Income-Leadr-Cadre-Recr-Power-Influ-Morale-Security-Alignment---Cont
595----195------18------591------8----35------50----90--------95--------99090900-----3
Group Type(s): Government, Terrorist, High Tech, Espionage
Special Power: bonus to assassinate, sabotage, and -morale versus all except military; bonus to probe; bonus to influence military, hi-tech, and countries; bonus versus government. Large bonus versus CIA and FBI.
Analysis: Fanaticism--too high!
Secret--good
Income--bad
Cadre--bad
Strategy: This is the type of group that has a great special power, and will be very powerful by the middle of the game, but only if it gets there. It has all sorts of weaknesses plaguing it NOW though (and the extreme alignments won't helps us either).
With so few cadre AND a need for wealth, I would forgo any loot groups for now, focusing all of my effort on getting a financial group to generate cash. The Federal Reserve is a good choice, given this illuminati's bonus versus government groups.
I hope this article helps some of the more "lost" players. If I get a chance, and don't quietly vanish, I'll try writing some advice on your second turn, or first-second turn synergy, or illuminati tips, or something else perhaps. Fnord.