Day two in this new land of Constantinople / Istanbul, and I've had it with being hand held! I'm off to strike it rich on my own without you, Yusuf, you wait right there in the HQ while I murder my way across this city and back.
He taught me a while ago about territory take-overs, and in the tutorial part, it was WAY easier than it is in practice. But it seems that I won't have to do it overmuch, as there are only maybe 7-9 territories in the city, and soon, they will all be mine, muahahahaa. The concept is, to walk up to the restricted area around a Templar Den and go into Eagle Vision to identify the Templar Captain. You do this by hovering over likely candidates for about a second and when you find him, it notifies you clearly that this guy is your target. All you've got to do is identify him, kill him, then climb a tower and light the signal, and the den is yours. Shops in the area can be renovated, more assassins can be recruited, and everyone's happier. The problem is the identification part, actually. You can't exactly just stand around and peer at people - it's a restricted area, so the guards are onto you no matter how casual you might act. And the Captain is often in annoyingly difficult-to-reach locations; of course in the tutorial, you can see him from a nearby rooftop and then send a thrown dart spinning his way and that's the end of it. In some areas, he's practically stashed inside a building behind several guys standing watch. You have to get creative with the killing and the smoke bombs to even figure out who or where he is, and there are way too many guards to keep a low profile. But if you're spotted, some of the captains run, and you have to "come back another day" to liberate that area. It's proving to be the most exhausting and failure-prone part of Faffing About Creed.
The remainder of the mechanics of step-by-step city takeover are all going well. The teleport spots (tunnel entrances) are all pre-unlocked, so you can go where you please. Romanis replace courtesans in this game, serving the same function, though in fact, they are wearing less. Renovating structures, strangely, puts you on the templars' radar, by about 25-30% 'awareness' per renovation, which I find a touch odd conceptually, but not in execution, because this means you can't exactly go willy-nilly renovating every thing in sight once you come into a little money. At 100% awareness, the next provoking action you take will apparently result in one of your assassin dens coming under attack from the templars, and after the trouble I went to in order to free those areas, I'm certainly going to take time out to reduce my awareness levels between spending sprees. It's just a matter of murdering an official or bribing a herald. So I spent hours alternating between increasing and decreasing my templar awareness. It's all for the good, you'll see - every structure renovated adds to my hourly income. While I'm off doing storyline missions later, my coffers will be auto-filling at a disgusting rate.
Look, I'll play Faffing About Creed my way, we'll get to the rest momentarily.
