Field of Glory: Empires Reviews

Fine

It's a very basic slow moving game.

This game is a huge disappointment. Everything about the game is great, EXCEPT for the battle system, which completely and totally ruins the game. The battle system makes absolutely no sense, and you have absolutely no control over any aspect of the battles. I can only assume that everyone who could find their ass with both hands worked on the other aspects of the game, and then the found some morons with fetal alcohol syndrome combined with profound inbreeding to design and code the battle system. What a shame...

FoGE is a novel historical strategic game in a few senses. It gives a strong role to culture, creating strongly asymmetric factions with distinct units, buildings, and bonuses -- even at the expense of balance. Some factions will never be able to build the top-end army units, and some of them (I'm looking at you, Greek's with access to the stoa) have unique factional structures that are strongly superior to every other faction in the game. Second, the build system is randomized, in the sense that you can't pick any structure, but are given a list of options. You can continually reroll the options on the build list, but this requires a full turn and wastes resources. The result is a sometimes frustrating process of being unable to get the one building you need, but it also helps to make each city unique and distinctive, and promotes specialization. It also makes for varied decisions, as each building's value shifts situationally in ways that make for endless permutations of interesting short-list decisions, rather than one global optimized build queue -- This one, or this other one?! Once you accept this, the other novel feature of the game is the concept of an unavoidable time-dependent cycle of power. Factions advance and regress through various states of political development, and as nations accumulate "age" (an in-game attribute that can be changed or reset by various events) they can become old and penalized in ways that make it hard to avoid fracture and collapse. On the easier settings, this mostly affects the AI, and players can avoid age-related collapse. On the highest difficulty settings, human players become substantially challenged to advance and AI factions are stabilized. Empire size is a huge factor in these calculations, and trying to create a massive "blob" empire that spans the map will make for a difficult process in managing the decadence statistic that drives old empires toward collapse. Graphics are minimal, making the game a retro and low-frills experience, but the gameplay systems are solid and based on diminishing returns formulas that result in constantly varying challenges. The combat system can be integrated with Field of Glory's tactical engine, allowing for any interesting and balanced battles to be played out in full detail as a mini-game (though not, alas, in the multiplayer version of the game). The multiplayer game is highly skewed toward diplomatic strategies rather than military conquest, and most games can be won with the simple strategy of "grind favor with large factions and use diplomacy to buy their territories". There are no geographic restrictions on this, resulting in weirdly ahistorical outcomes like "the Gauls purchase large portions of Persia and eastern India". This is also true in any multiplayer game where a large faction's player suddenly quits, creating a desperate feeding frenzy where all allies try to buy up the most valuable territory rapidly ("Egypt quit, quick, buy the pyramids!"). Reducing the power of diplomacy would go a long way toward making the game feel more authentically like Rome sequentially conquering its neighbors. Overall, this is a uniquely satisfying game with a "cycle of empires" mechanic that creates the real feel of empires rising and then collapsing if they become arrogant and expand aggressively -- the AI empires on easy settings and yours on the harder ones! This makes for a more varied and unpredictable experience than the linear or exponential power curve of other similar games.

Great game. Kicks my rear on a regular basis. Not sure why I consider this a relaxing game; but it is very fun. I haven't grasped all the mechanics yet, since FOG:E is complex. Perhaps being more aggressive would work better than my typical passive-waiting-building style. Either way, the game is well done and a joy for someone like me who is looking for a really strong computer to play against. I'd recommend it, especially whenever you can get it during a sale event!

Played as England ( not that England but the one that starts there ) united south England, conquered wales and united the north of England, conquered Scotland, conquered the isle of man. united Britain. left to fight the Gauls. on route to France a harsh winter set in and i lost half my army due to Starvation and the other half landed poorly and were defeated by the locals. Ran back home to build a new army when the Welsh, Scots and English rebelled against me. after 6 years of unrest and in fighting i was defeated and i am now on my way to be beheaded. brilliant game 10/10