Generals make such a big impact on combat that I wish the game was more helpful in reminding me when I have stacks without generals even though generals are available in the pool.
I’d like to know this too. I lost about half of my fleet and I wasn’t sure why. I got a popup message about being out of supply and then they were just gone.
It seems weird to me to have supply rules apply to ships. Ships do not forage off the land like armies do. They are self contained and carry all their supplies with them. To think that you would lose half a fleet one zone away from port due to supply rules is kind of crazy. Columbus would never have made it to the Americas that way, that’s for sure.
I think the idea is that you can’t keep ships perma-parked in a sea zone without your own port there- this is fairly historical. They do drop off supply for coastal provinces(there’s a message that will discuss this), but for example if you want to take Rhodes, it’s best to take the Anatolian cost opposite it first so you can keep fleets in the vicinity.
Not in this era. Ships are really boats, rather big, but not like Columbus’ vessels. This is a long time before the technological innovations that allowed the Age of Exploration (or Age of Rape and Pillage) to commence. These ginormous row boats often pulled ashore at night and foraged like anyone else. They had comparatively small storage spaces and primitive abilities to preserve food and water. And they had large crews, of rowers. So they could not and as far as I know did not carry large amounts of food and water with them, certainly not enough to be self-contained. It’s entirely proper that the game gives them supply from the friendly coastlines.
You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.
I’ve got a 50% off coupon from Slitherine/Matrix for being a member for 18 years and it seems like it works for more than one game in your basket so it looks like not only can I get the FOG2 game for the discount if I get it together with Empires but I’ll also get the 50% off on top of that so both games for $35 CDN which seems like a pretty good deal. The only problem is that I’m worried that I would end up playing them as much as I do most of the games I’ve purchased from Matrix/Slitherine over the past years, which is very little! lol
I think I have some other coupons left from Slitherine, not sure if they still work but if people would like to give them a shot then send me a PM.
Tom just streamed it. I won’t say how many turns he went through… but it does look fascinating.
I find I have a ton of games I don’t ever play, but I’ve been playing both Empires and FoG II and liking them. They are both very well done, and at the price you can get them for with your coupon, I’d definitely do it.
I’m up to turn 37 in my first game. I’ve been able to make progress and paint Italy’s boot red for the most part. Carthage already has a foothold there at the tip unfortunately so that’s eventually going to be a problem.
I thought I’d taken out the Senones completely but they keep popping up again like roaches. They must have had an army I didn’t see in another region when I exterminated them previously and managed to take that northern province as a survival foothold. They don’t seem too bright though as they once again declared war on me with nothing much behind it to fight it.
The Etruscans have given me the hardest time, overall. They have decent armies, their regions have been well fortified, they have navies and have generally been a pain in the butt. In the pic below, one of their fleets is sieging one of my port cities while my attention was elsewhere.
The AIs in this game are extremely aggressive. I guess it makes sense for tribal states but I’ve been slaughtering everyone that declares war on me and so far no one is deterred. I’m one of the top nations in CDR and Progress but no one seems to respect that as they all want a piece of Rome.
Really, that is my #1 criticism of the game at this point. Attacks from factions that seem to disregard their own interests. I have been trying a Rome game and Samnium has Land Power 10, I have Land Power 104… so they attack? When I am otherwise at peace, except for a minor independent invasion? They ought to be raiding, not starting a hopeless war!
Did he even finish a turn?
He finished 2 full turns and started a 3rd!
Finally, someone said something to make it easier not to buy this! :-)
I’m not fully kidding. Aggression just for aggression sake can be an annoying AI behavior if it doesn’t really make much sense.
Game update:
GAMEPLAY
• Limited population boom events to regions under 25 pops
• National citizen can never go above 8 unrest each
• Rome special civil war eased up
• Periplus decision twice rarer
• You need to have some legacy to enact the emergency army decision
• Pyrrhus scenario: if playing SP in easy or balanced, extra income per turn
• Dacian provincial HI are converted to heavy warband in FOG2
• Melita town repositioned
• Fix to endless shuffling in a province not building anything
• Fix to losing fifth token the turn you evolve
• Fix to emperor not named in due time
• Show a sea battlefield for naval battles in dual terrain
• Fix to 2 late wonders not proposed at a proper date
• Fix to no pirate raiding possibility under some circumstances
• The Weird Parade is better than before
AI
• Less eager dogpiling on countries already at war
• AI: If under severe threat, AI will be more inclined to disregard the other nation holding some of its objectives
• AI less aggressive in unbreached assaults
• Slightly less aggressive AI overall
UI-QoL
• If Rome can be subject of a civil war, you’ll get two advance warnings.
• If the death of your ruler can lead to a Civil War, you’ll get an advance warning
• Invasions are preceded with an advance warning
• Added tooltips (English) for visual options, battle export button, message log restore button, multiplayer new game settings.
• Show only a single progress bar during AI processing.
• Various minor edits on text typos
MULTIPLAYER
• Fixed error displaying multiplayer challenge list
MISCELLANEOUS
• Rare audio crash fixed
Wow, I am impressed! When I left, I feared it would would merely be Tomsplaining stuck in exposition-mode.
So, my camapign became quite pedestrian until I overextended somewhat by taking over Carthage, which led to the neighbours dog-piling me, but I beat them down, but whilst I was doing that, the Antigonids invaded with the largest army I’ve seen so far, strength score 600 or so.
They captured 2 regions in Italy, and marched to the gates of Rome. Luckily I was able to recall my Marian legions and recruit a huge amount of Italian foot, and then the battle began.
I won, but if you check out the casualty numbers, this battle was the equivalent of Cannae really, or would be if there was more death involved.
I think my ace card was Elephants, and having more Cavalry overall, so I was able to neutralise their Cavalry quite handily.
Italian foot aren’t anything as god as Legionaries, but they are flexible and cheap, and if I hadn’t had them I would have been overwhelmed most likely.
Very enjoyable battle.
I got 80 or so turns in as Rome and decided to pack it in and start with another nation. The Etruscans…man, even outnumbered by me three or four to one were kicking my ass!
The game could really do with some accessibility fixes (a lot of stuff that you can only discover when you run into it in game + there is a lot of information you need for decisions - e.g., when chosing buildings, the info you need is not easily accessible where you need it in the building view). But it’s easy to see when you’re new to the game - not easy for those who’ve played the game for awhile.
Yeah - kind of annoying. I played to around turn 60 and had conquered Italy and Southern Gaul/Germania + Dalmatia + Illyria + Africa +, Numidia and the Islands and tribes which don’t have a chance against one of my standard armies (typically 8 legions + 4 provincial cavalry + 8 skirmishers), still declared war on me, even though I had 5-6 of those monsters running around. Biggest problem is that I’m often not even interested in their provinces, because I don’t need the extra decadence, but the game doesn’t allow you to go in and smash their armies around a bit (which is what I’d like to do to keep them pacified) without also conquering their useless lands.
Made the mistake of advancing to Empire (around 250 BC) and started getting hit by an absurd number of civil wars - hope the patch fixes that, because they were neither fun, interesting or historical. Seems like it makes most sense to stay at Glorious Republic for a good long time and letting the realm stabilize before moving on.
Yes, rapid conquest causes enormous problems. Which I think is quite historically accurate.
But not being able to go in and smack around hostile armies without now owning their land? That strikes me as weird.
But then again, the idea that no matter what, there is going to be an endpoint of your control, and enemies are going to pick away at you from beyond, that is fairly accurate.
So in the end, I think they have a better grasp on the historical realities than the usual game, but they have created some new oddities of their own.
I’m in two minds about this. Rapid conquest did cause problems historically, but I don’t really think the game captures them - I had to be careful about decadence, but it was quite manageable. And off-hand, it feels like I could very easily just have stuck around at Glorious Republic without any loss other than wasted progress tokens.
I like the idea of the culture/decadence mechanic, though. In many ways, this is a very different game from other of similar type, and it’s better for it.