Oh yeah, me too.
(Though I am skeptical about decadence mechanics because the concept of cultural “decadence” is at least wrong and even a bit ugly, but games are not history and I can see how it would be useful as an overexpansion or badboy kind of thing.)
Its not about Decadence in this sense:
More along the lines of “Decay” in terms of trade and societal cohesion in a very broad way. Given, as Tom related, that there are no great technological leaps to be made in the game.
OK playing this again and actually paying attention to the trade and logistics instead of just mashing buttons. The Tomsplaining in the review made it all make sense now and I agree it is kind of neat.
I’ve been replaying a lot of Imperialism 1 & 2 lately. They managed to solve the 4X problem of late game bloat nearly 20 years ago. All production takes place only at your capital for the entire game. Additional territory merely brings in more materials. It’s such a simple and effective solution that it’s amazing no other 4X has copied it in two decades.
Of course, I’m the only one who thinks that Master of Orion 1 had the perfect amount of strategic depth and was superior to MoO2’s Civ model.
Eador did this as well–another of my all time favorite games.
You’re not alone. There are dozens of us!
This usually goes on sale during the Steam sales, and if you have Field of Glory 2 I think it brings the price down to around $23.
Yeah, it’s $27.99 at Fanatical right now. I’ve never used Fanatical, but Google tells me it’s safe and legitimate – right? As for a Steam sale, I don’t own FOG2, so it sounds like I wouldn’t qualify for that $23 deal. So I suppose I should just go for it from Fanatical? I’m pretty interested in the game.
Fanatical is fine, and sometimes they have a code for another 5 or 10 percent off. The steam sale should start in a minute so you can see what the price will be for non-FoG2 owners. It has been $29 in past sales, but you never know.
I’ve shopped very often with Fanatical and never had a problem, just to add another data point for you. As robc04 says, it’s a good idea to check and see if they’ve got a 10% off coupon going, as they often do.
Steam has the same price as fanatical unless you can find a coupon.
Seconded. I love MoO2, but there is an elegance in MoO’s design which the latter games failed to replicate.
I thought this too, or maybe it was just a thing at launch of the game that you got an additional discount if you owned FOG2, but I just threw it in a steam cart and all I have showing is 30% off and I own FOG2?!
A little lower on the page is the package deal.
OH, misunderstood what it was showing me when I clicked on that, haha. It said Field of Glory Masters Edition and I just thought they were offering me FOG with FOGE.
Thanks for the replies. I’m glad you mentioned the Steam sale, because I tend to be lazy about checking my email for notifications like that. Now I’m debating whether to get the bundle that includes FOG2.
Imperialism is one series that really needs a modern remake. It’s frustrating playing 1 & 2 because they’re so close to being perfect, but each one has a significant flaw that makes you pine for the other while you’re playing it.
1 absolutely nailed the aesthetics and theme, in terms of art, fluff, and gameplay mechanics tying into it. The drawbacks were that the minor power diplomacy mechanism was obtuse or outright broken (did you know the “per turn” grant option would take your money without boosting relations, so you had to manually give grants each turn to count?), and AI economy boosts turned the late game into a slog since they could afford to maintain a ludicrous, impossible to crack army despite being reduced to their capital with no merchant marine.
2 had a better infrastructure model (no more depots!) and a slightly better tactical mode (non-artillery units now worth building), with countries now being properly crippled if you sank their traders. The drawback was a drab look, zero attempt at an immersive theme, bare bones slider bars instead of the fun capital screen, a less interesting time period range, a switch to a Civ-like tech research model (everyone getting access to new technology at the same time in Imp 1 was more enjoyable; the trick was having the infrastructure to support it), and mechanics that subverted the whole theme of racing to the new world (the optimal strategy was to completely ignore the new world, not a spend a dime on research, and focus solely on increasing food production for the military).
They really need an Imp 3 to combine the strengths of each one.
Really? Wow. I certainly never played it that way… how boring it would be!
Sign me up!
Just the opposite! You get into war quicker, and focus more on the fun logistics building. You’re rushing to horse artillery so you have a chance at taking old world minor nations, scrambling to develop their infrastructure, then invade more minor nations before they start signing pacts with other major nations. You’re trying to gobble as much territory as you can before one of your war declarations triggers a minor nation to join a major power and draws you into war with them.
You still climb the tech tree. You just don’t spend any money. You make 1 or 2 spies right away, then put them in the capital of rival nations with the tech you want. Select those techs for research, then reduce the $/turn to zero. You’ll still research them in 6-12 turns at no cost (as opposed to 4-8 turns at high cost). You don’t fall as far behind as you think, and your huge manpower advantage from more food more than makes up for it. The importance of skilled workers is also much less than Imp 1, so you can completely ignore the new world luxury goods and rely entirely on unskilled workers all game.
It beats the heck out of a slow waiting game of low manpower as you put resources into slooooowly exploring the new world which mostly just comes down to luck of who finds diamonds. You can still eventually grab them once you’re at war with major powers. Let the AI waste time doing all the exploring and infrastructure building then snipe the diamond territories away from them.