Chom Isis 3 Guide
This brief guide will introduce you to the concepts of Chom Isis 3. I recommend that you read through the Introduction and the Getting Started Tutorial.Experienced players beware! Chom Isis 3 is very different from Chom Isis 2 (or 1). I'd recommend reading this tutorial at least. Do not employ a blasse attitude by logging in clicking about at random. You will profane profusely before experiencing a crushing cardiac arrest, followed swiftly by all your pawns dying and a final, bewildering defeat.
Introduction
Welcome to Chom Isis, the game where you protect your own pawns while trying to kill other people's. A selection of people in the general public are selected by Chom Isis to become pawns. These pawns are living their lives without any idea that they are Chom Isis pawns. As a player, you will spend resources to keep your pawns happy while making pawns protected by other players miserable. The happier your pawns are, the more resources you get to use in Chom Isis. Happiness is shown with a coloured box, white is very happy, green is happy, yellow is satisfied, orange is unhappy and dark red is suicidal.Pawns are the playing pieces in the game. Each pawn has a Deviant, which is a description of the main points of their personality. Example Deviants are Technophile (a gadget obsessed person) and Home Lover (who loves nights in with a cup of cocoa). A pawn's Deviant can't be changed any more than a leopard can change his spots. Each Deviant has a strength associated with it, white is a Deviant which is important to the pawn and red is less important (with gradients inbetween). If a pawn does not have a particular Deviant then that subject is not important to them. A pawn with two green Deviants is a generally very happy pawn and is easy to please. A pawn with two red Deviants is very difficult to please.
The pawn's happiness is based on their Deviants and Life Inputs. A Life Input is a facet of the pawn's life. For example, having a job is a Life Input. Having a spouse is another life input. To be happy, a pawn must have Life Inputs that correspond with one of their Deviants. Therefore, a spouse Life Input corresponds to a Romantic Deviant but not a Technophile Deviant. Why would a technophile want a spouse? Some Life Inputs are important to more than one Deviant. For example, a holiday home would excite both the Home Lover and a Materialist Deviants. Life Inputs can be unique, in that a pawn can only have one of that type, such as a spouse. Unlike Deviants, Life Inputs can be upgraded by clicking on the name (see the jobs section). A description of all the Deviants and Life Inputs can be found in the reference section.
It is very difficult to win Chom Isis on your own. Chom Isis provides an Alliances to help join forces. Alliances have their own pot of cash which members can request to help pay for jobs. Alliances also allow members to propose jobs against pawns anonymously, allowing you to not give away which pawns are yours.
Getting Started
Game Phases
Chom Isis is a game that runs through a series of phases. The first phase is Registration. Go to the homepage and click register on the envelope. Fill in the form and click Register and an email will be sent to your account. Go to your email and click the link included. This will activate your account. You can't log in at this point.- Pregame. Once registered, you have to wait for the game to start. You'll be notified by email when the game is scheduled to start. You are allowed, of course, to start scheming outside of the system.
- Start. The game begins, you can start doing things in the game.
- Endgame. No new pawns are added to the game, any player without pawns loses their resources and the winner is the last player still with pawns.
Your homepage
Use your username and password to log into the game, the screen you'll see is your homepage. It will look something like below. Your resources are the currency you have to use in game. The menu buttons are on the top right. Hover over the menu items to see what they do. Each pawn is shown in its own box, indicating when it was last updated, the price spent in the auction, its life inputs, deviants and latest diary entry. To update a life input, click on its name. Deviants are parts of the personality and cannot be improved. IMAGE OF HOME PAGEPawn's Location
Every pawn has somewhere to live in the Reading metropolitan area. Click on the name of location to see where this pawn is located. The location of the pawn can be used for intelligence gathering (see later).Pawn Diary
When jobs are done on the pawn, entries will be put into the diary. Diary entries are put in for most jobs performed on the pawn, whether they pass or fail. All except murder, obviously. This lets you know what has been happening to the pawn. To see all the diary entries, click on the link provided.Job Screen
The job screen allows you to manage your relationship with the Operatives in the game. Operatives perform 'jobs', which change the lives of your pawns. You can set new jobs, see the status of pending, in progress and completed jobs.To set a new job, select the red tab and select the type of job you want to perform and the pawn on which you want to perform the job on. Your pawns will not appear in the list. Every job has a cost and a probability of success. You can select to either specify the probability of success or the amount you want to spend. when you click 'get quotes' you will be given a quote from each operative. You can set a job but clicking on the set job button on the operative. After getting the preliminary quote, you may wish to add any intelligence to the job. Intelligence (covered later) modifies the final percentage probability of the job completing. Jobs cannot be more the 99% chance of completing, nor less than 1% chance.
Waiting jobs are those that the operatives have not started yet. In progress jobs are ones that are currently being performed by the operatives. Completed jobs are those jobs that have finished. The success or failure of the jobs is shown on the right.
Auction
In the auction you can buy new pawns or life inputs for them. In the auction, you bid for items hoping to win them. Each item in the auction has an end time, whoever has the highest bid at this time will get the item.Bidding
You can bid on as many different items as you like. The total resources you can bid at one time is the same as your resources. At the top of the auction screen, you can see the resources you have, how much you have spare to bid and how much you have on bids. The minimum you can bid is shown on the Next Minimum. Setting your bid is maximum you will pay for the item but the amount you pay will be a proportion more than the second highest bid. For example, if you bid 400 for a pawn and the next highest bid is 200, then you will only pay 240 (assuming 20% is the next bid minimum) when the auction for that item completes. You might pay anything up to 400, depending on other bidders. When you are winning a bid, a rosette will be placed by the item. You cannot remove a bid once set, you must wait until the auction item finishes.Auction end
When an auction item reaches its time limit, it is given to the highest bidder. If that bidder does not have the cash then the auction is extended. If the winner does not have the money to win the auction item, they lose any resources they have and all bids set.Having purchased a Pawn or Life Input
Once you've bought a Pawn or Life Input, they will appear on your main screen. New life inputs are held in a box at the bottom of your main screen, ready for you to assign to a pawn. Once a Life Input is assigned to a Pawn, it can only be improved or destroyed. You can't move the life input to another pawn. You can keep a stash as life inputs not attached to a pawn cannot be ruined by jobs.Alliances
Alliances allow you to form groups within the game, which get their own pool of resources to spend. The more people in the alliance, the more resources you get. You can get access to this pool by suggesting a Proposition. A Proposition is an action that you want to do, such as Murdering a specific pawn. Propositions are offered anonymously and are listed newest-first just underneath the pad at the top. When a proposition is confirmed, the creator of the Proposition gets resources from the Alliance pool that they asked for to do the job. Once the job has been performed, the creator completes the proposition.Propositions are confirmed by voting on them. The number of votes required to pass a proposition is relative to the number of people in the alliance. The more people in the alliance, the more votes needed. Vote for a proposition by clicking on the 'thumbs up'. If you do not like the proposition (because it is against one of your pawns), vote thumbs down and the proposition will be removed (or Vetoed).
Propositions are displayed in three colours. Yellow are other people's propositions. Blue are your propositions and Red are propositions that apply to one of your pawns. You will probably want to Veto the red ones by voting thumbs down. Propositions have a status. Awaiting confirmation is displayed when you are waiting for others to vote on your proposition. Awaiting confirmation is displayed when there are enough votes and the owner is performing the job proposed. When you have completed the job you said you would propose, click the tick to complete the job. A message will be written to the Alliance message board and the proposition will disappear from the list.
You can create your own Alliance for 50 resources. You will only start receiving resources into the alliance with 2 or more players.
At the bottom of the Alliance screen is the Alliance messageboard. These messages only get sent to those people in the alliance, not anyone else.