Exactly. ‘Declining’ is more succinct than ‘in decline’. I really don’t know why they thought ‘old’ was a good term to use. As you say, an old empire is often a powerful and healthy one. It does not denote what it should and is confusing. ‘Declining’ has no ambiguity.
Plus, Gibbons did title his history ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ after all. :)
@Tamas : Congrats on (almost) making the game I wanted to build many years ago. My dream game has more politics, but it’s hard to get everything into a game. The strategic layer is very well done and I like the trade/build system - don’t think I’ve seen this approach before, but it’s cool (board game influences showing). Also like the built-in combat system - I think it suits this level of game perfectly.
If I’m to make some critique, it’s the approachability of the game, as several people have mentioned above. Although I had no major issues getting into the game, I can definitely see where people who are having trouble are coming from.
Piece of junk game uses adjective I disagree with. Refunding now. ;)
Joking and nitpicking aside, I’m really glad I got this game. I appreciate the fresh mechanics it brings to the table. One of the reasons I enjoy CK2 so much is that the game has so many entertaining and (mostly) bearable ways that your empire can collapse. This is an even more ambitious angle on the design question of how to make a strategic game challenging and fun once the player has gotten ahead of the pack. I could see this game paving the way for a lot more creativity in how this question gets addressed in future games.
I started a game as Rome and have played it a bit. So far I like it. The only issue I see is that the amount of time it takes to process turns is kind of slow, even at turn 1. I just hope it doesn’t slow down dramatically later in the game. We’ll see. Maybe they can do some optimizing there.
One of my objectives was taking Senones so I did so with a bit of effort. The types of units you bring to battles makes a big difference, apparently. After I took their second province, the patricians in Rome basically said, ‘nice job, now stop, that’s enough’. However, on that same turn, another province right next to Rome declared war and raided us so we’ll see how that all goes.
Two other states asked for cooperative agreements which we accepted. Interestingly enough, the Roman senate has set one of them to be a conquest objective so this should be interesting to see how it all turns out. I may have to do some backstabbing.
If you and an ally take a region cooperatively, what determines who takes possession?
Specifically, my ally declared war on youbetistan, and I got dragged in. Fortunately the capital was already an objective, so I sent my army over, defeated theirs, and started sieging.
After several turns the walls are breached, and oops, here comes my buddy’s army. We defeat the garrison together, and he takes control.
I did all the heavy lifting, and all I got was an “attaboy” in the form of improved relations.
Grrr…
I’m pretty sure it’s the one that initiates the action that gets possession. He was the one that declared war and you were just assisting him in the effort as their ally. So, he gets the prize.
I’ve only played 15 turns as Rome and my god, I’ve seen more action already than in 100 turns of other such games. I’ve finished off one war but have now had war declared on me by 3 of my other neighbors. I don’t particularly want to expand right now but it’s conquer or die at this point.
I’m already convinced that this was a good purchase. I like the way it’s put together.
I do too. I didn’t expect to like it more than Imperator, but I do.
And @Coldsteel I really don’t know who DOWed who. All I know is at the start of the turn I found myself at war because my ally was.
If you have a save game from that time or a few turns afterwards, you can look at your past turn messages to see what actually happened.
I think most of my critiques of the game come down to trade not being very good early on(the high tier buildings that demand the higher end goods don’t really populate for quite a while), and the auto battler makes skirmishers really good and cavalry almost completely useless.
It’s sad because cavalry should be a strength of a nation like Carthage but instead it’s a pretty serious weakness- you generally want to be spamming sacred band and mercenary skirmishers instead with just enough mercenary warbands to siege effectively.
I haven’t had much luck with cavalry either, they don’t seem to hit very hard and are incredibly squishy. They get an extra flanking bonus but that requires numerical superiority on open terrain, so that doesn’t help in most situations. Elephants are pretty great though!
I really really am enjoying this game. Started a new game as Nubia last night and was up until 2am fighting with Ethiopia. I thought I could end the war early, but they managed to move their last viable army into my undefended heartland and take a bunch of my most developed provinces. That forced me to slowdown and replenish my manpower before I could raise sufficient armies to finish them off.
My general strategy for country development has been to focus on food,health, and infrastructure at the start while sustaining just enough culture to avoid the bottom tier. As Nubia I was able to hold off a bit on the culture by taking a number of easy objectives. There are some really good provinces down there, but also some 1 population desert provinces that are a pain to develop. The resource sharing from forming provinces is huge for being able to make those regions viable.
Prior to war with Ethiopia I had moved into the next phase of construction. Built up some commercial regions on the Red Sea and spread culture buildings out to my rapidly growing population centers. Nubia has some decent mineral options, so I’ve been able to expand my metal and equipment production too. With all my culture buildings built up, I’ve moved into the top tier and with getting the early objectives I’m #3 in Legacy points.
Now I have a solid base to work from and Egypt declared war on me before I finished up with Ethiopia. They haven’t attacked yet, and I should be in a good place to launch an invasion and hopefully work my way up to capturing some wonders.
Yeah, this game is the poster child for “One more turn” syndrome.
Dacia has been a lot of fun as a building opportunity, generally surrounded by factions unlikely to overrun my superior forts. And no one is being pointed in my direction by their objectives.
But now Macedon and Rome are looming, so the pressure is building. Will they square off against each other, or turn on me?
Yeah even though turns seem to process quite slowly, I am enjoying this.,
And yeah, Cavalry are…finicky.
I’ve managed to make good use of them but usually when i have numerical superiority, and I chase off the enemy flank (s) and then hit their infantry in the rear while they’re engaged with mine.
Mind you you can do this with the javelin cavalry ok.
FoG2 cavalry are fine, it’s mostly the FoGE combat system where cavalry are weak- their only real advantage over skirmishers are in battles you’d win anyway.
I’ve bought most AGEOD games cause I like the fantasy they’re selling. Couldn’t get into any of them, even when I successfully won some scenarios I didn’t understand what’s happening. And the games themselves don’t seem to be that complex. Plus the performance was surprisingly bad.
I already own FoG2 so I’m probably getting this game either way and I like what you guys are doing but I just hope that FoGE is more accessible than previous games.
I am a big fan of the old AGEOD games, but I feel important to stress Empires is not using their old engine.
Empires uses Slitherine’s in-house Archon engine, so it’s a clean slate for AGEOD development.
Being more accessible has been one of the main objectives during this engine change. I am not saying everything is perfect, because what is, but I do believe we have improved the situation vastly compared to the old engine.
So I guess what I am saying is, bad impressions on previous AGEOD games should not hold you back. :)
Yeah, I’m happy seeing this game having a new engine. Hopefully it means I could actually play future AGEOD games even if I don’t like this one.
I’ve played some of the previous games, and Empires is definitely easier to learn.
Agreed! I’ve struggled to find my way around their older games that I’ve tried and that hasn’t been the case here. There is definitely a learning curve and you’ll either want to have the manual around to consult or watch some videos. However, I feel like jumping in and fiddling around can teach you a lot in this game with the references available to fill in the holes.
Question I still haven’t found the answer to: How does naval supply work? The manual says that troops get supply from boats in the neighboring sea zone, but what are the rules for those navies themselves getting supply?
I remember loving the idea of Civil War 2, and trying endlessly to get into the game. But just the mechanics of organizing military units seemed more complex than most of the college courses I took.
Empires is definitely a complex game, but the complexity seems to be in the area of deciding what is wise. If I have military units, I can send them off to fight as an army without a whole lot of fuss over the mechanics. (But as to whether it is the right army to send to that terrain and frontage, against that particular enemy, that might call for some study.)
I can see that military side of things is helped by troops being somewhat abstracted and strategic scope is much higher. In something like Rise of Prussia I would send an army of several corps of several brigades (or however it was called) that had jegers, grenadeers, engineers, conscripts, bombards and whatever else. Even after reading the manual I couldn’t see what am I to do with all that except putting my light cavalry in coward mode and sending them behind enemy lines while my big stacks trying to take on smaller enemy stacks without losing too much supply. Combat screen shows some mysterious numbers and I win or lose for some reason.
Even if I don’t load battles into FoG2 I can still see what they’re simulating and will get why that skirmishers can’t take on phalanx even if they have higher combat value.
