After 300 h: Issues and hints on Empires

[thisisnudge]

Hey there

I think that Field of Glory Empires is a nice game, but after playing it for some time, I feel I should say something. I played the new DLC, so it was a nice chance to return.

General

- The decadence mechanic is broken. After 100-125 years, or in mid to late game, your provinces are so developed that you steam through the world map. A few ideas on how to solve it below.

- Generally, the game is very easy and predictable. Once you solved your decadency issues, you can do whatever you want -- except for Persia, but Persia is too OP anyway.

- Unit stats do not translate easily to Field of Glory 2 stats, which makes it hard to read and plan.

DLC specific

- Persia is utterly OP. In all my campaign Persia not only conquers vast lands. If you play Persia yourself, you'll notice how much of early Persia is scripted. But why? Leave it be. It is powerful already. And the numerous extra perks and advantages do not good to the game. The Achaemenid Empire stretched far under Darius I, but it took 70-80 years to get there. In all my games Persia has eventually an very high CDR rating after 100 years, as if normal game mechanics would not apply to it.

UI

- Why is there is no building overview in the game? I am forced to open a wiki for a building overview, but why?

- The army units do not tell you how much they cost, what they need, once you own them. So, you look it up in the unit creation screen, and then switch back to your army? Urgs.

Battles / Field of Glory 2

- The unit stat overview is not helpful. It should show attack value, defense value, range etc. with tiny icons, instead of walls of text.

- Archers behave strange in FoG2, much like walls of infantry. Archers cannot pass like skirmishers the infantry? But they should. Big tactic difference. What happens with Persia is this: As Persia, you have archer-heavy armies, so your massive archer armies end up in melee with the enemy? All it needs is to allow archers pass through infantry like skirmishers.

Minor suggestions

- Could you damage buildings in provinces that were at war, where a siege or battle took place? Currently, you just build, build, and build. Even Total War is doing that. Also, remove or downgrade a random 1/3 of the buildings after every conquest. It makes the game less predictable and the world map feels more dynamic.

- Since decadency only works in the first 50-75 years, it actually breaks the game once you've solved it (due to cultural and anti-decadency buildings). From there nothing stands in your way, and the game is utterly unbalanced, much like the beginning of the DLC as Persia. The issue seems to be the anti-decadency buildings (i.e. Preceptor House). What if you remove anti-decadency buildings? Instead, focus on a culture increase. At the same time, balance the nation size punishment. This is where the courthouse etc. could help. Initially, I thought that the decadency system is an interesting change for the strategy genre, a different take on empire building, but by now decadency feels badly designed. It's so easy to break it -- and once broken, the game shows that it has no counter mechanic to balance an overexpanding empire other than decadency. Maybe find a quick, pragmatic solution for Empires 1 and drop it in Empires 2?

- "Colonization" is extremely easy in Empires, though historically this was risky business. Once you take a province, maybe let surrounding tribes attack you for a few turns? Small, ugly attacks, but nothing serious.

- Diplomacy feels a little odd, because everything depends on paying your way to friendship. In Paradox' games, there is at least common sense, common interests and goals that improve the opinions so much that the nations "cooperate". I haven't seen AIs in Empires suggesting cooperation without my help, which is pity.

- Losing whole armies is no catastrophe in Empires. In no time, you can rebuild multiple armies within 1 turn.

- "Enbolster colony", "Implant Trade Settlements" (colonization), "Build Harbor" and some other Regional Decisions are very powerful early game. Remove those. You are breaking your own game by jumping 20-30 turns ahead early game, but why?

- I should be able to liberate any region I want, whenever I want. Why? Because sometimes you accidentally conquer too much, and it affects your decadency.

- Remove the decadency and culture rating in occupied regions that are not part of your empire after a peace/truce treaty. It is weird anyway that some foreign regions that you occupied should influence your own nation right away? It makes the CDR more reasonable and predictable, I think.

- Those random "Objectives" are boring and arbitrary. Why don't you let me create them as a casus belli in the diplomacy screen or elsewhere? It is an important part of the gameplay, yet the player has no saying about it? It should be the opposite. Whenever something is important, the player should have a big influence on it, even if it is expensive and risky.

- Regions with huge slave populations remain slave regions. There is no way to solve it yet. The slavery Regional Decision is of no help once the slave population becomes huge.

[travling_canuck]

Of your comments, the only one I disagree with is the losing a whole army not being a catastrophe. I think that's historical for the period. As long as you had the manpower reserves to replace a lost army, empires kept rolling on. So I don't mind that in the game, in fact I like it, as it makes the impact of a lost battle/army local, and affects war score, but isn't determinative of the final outcome of the war.

I will, however, say that, the number and size of armies that you can maintain are too big, manpower is too plentiful, and the manpower maintenance costs are too low. That's exacerbated by mercenaries being very cheap relative to gold income. And to round things off, metal is even less frequently a limiter than either of the other two.

A lot of the above is a result of population growth being too high, and much of that relates to the free slave pop growth that comes from winning a battle. There's a weird cycle between food and manpower costs for one empire turning into pop for another empire after a battle. If local regions lost pop more often after battles, then the slave issue would be fine, but it seems like (haven't verified) like you earn slaves more often than the local region loses a pop, so fighting causes the general population level to rise, globally.

Your comment that I agree with the most is decadence and it's irrelevance. However, I haven't played above Difficult yet, and I've only just started to play the DLC, so I haven't confirmed whether this is simply because I've been playing on too easy a level. I don't remember exactly what scales with the difficulty level, but I'm hoping it's primarily related to decadence, because considering what a core system it's intended to be, it's been a non factor in all the games I've played so far.

[jimwinsor]

In my experience, what makes the Decadence system seem solvable is the national decision that comes up from time to time that allows you to cut your government age by 1/3. Experienced players know that that decision choice should taken each and every time it pops up. And it seems to come just enough to make a decadence a non-issue, at least for many many centuries (I admittedly have never played a full 500 turn game, so I'm hedging a bit here).

I wouldn't mind seeing that option removed entirely (perhaps for Normal difficulty and above). Without it, the only way to remove government age would be through taking objectives, which will work only for so long as you have obtainable objectives. Maybe tone those age reductions down as well?

Without those crutches, I would think government age should catch up with you eventually, no matter how much your culture output. Someone should try a game with a house rule of no age reduction decision, as an experiment?

[USGrant1962]

The thing I notice in mid-late game that snowballs is money, even with administrative burden. In mid-game the trade range starts extending, bringing in multiple bonuses for certain structures (mostly trade-type ones). And with a lot of money the player can do pretty much anything.

Looking at 147 turns in on Athens, I see a Level 1 Market producing 52 money, a Level 2 Stoa producing 70 money, and a Level 3 Trade Port producing 48 (with a potential for 60 with two more bonuses), all in Atticus. I wonder if reducing the money bonuses (not the base income) would be more balanced in mid-late game? Especially on structures that can obtain multiple bonuses like Markets and Trade Ports. So perhaps 4 instead of 5 money per bonus on Markets, and 9 or 10 instead of 12 per bonus on trade ports?

Athens is supposed to be a rich nation, but I've never had money problems in the mid-game with any faction that I recall.

EDIT - I suppose further tweaks to Administrative Burden could accomplish something similar. Come to think of it, should Admin Burden apply to manpower and metal too? The general concept of AB, being inefficiency in a large empire, would certainly apply to recruiting and resource collection just as much as money.

[Surt]

The regional decisions for help start a colony are a very nice to enhance regions you would want to expand. A way for the "central" government to control the development.

[poesel71]

I would like to know on which difficulty level you play if you think that the game is too easy.

[travling_canuck]

EDIT - I suppose further tweaks to Administrative Burden could accomplish something similar. Come to think of it, should Admin Burden apply to manpower and metal too? The general concept of AB, being inefficiency in a large empire, would certainly apply to recruiting and resource collection just as much as money.

I think that's an interesting concept, and worth considering for the player at higher difficulty levels.

[Quivis]

In my opinion, the game is well balanced at the beginning. After that, the population growth is too high. As a result, we have too many buildings and resources (by which I mean: money, manpower, metal). This hyper development of provinces is obvious even after 100 turns. Everything is snowballing because there is really nothing to stop your development. Even desert provinces are highly developed after 100-200 turns.

The only thing that may slow your development at the beginning is your population. You can’t build too much, if your population is too low. Resources doesn’t limit your development at all, because these are used mainly in order to build and maintain your armies and navies. Administrative burden is more like an income tax due to the fact that most of the provinces are highly developed, meaning that you will still earn more by conquering more.

Resources are not really important after a while, because you have a very high population, and therefore, you can totally focus on putting everything into fighting decadence and producing culture. You can put all you citizens into culture buildings and focus on building culture, and you will still get plenty of resources. Most of the culture buildings doesn’t really cost you anything to maintain (and they often give you money), so you can spam them in every province.

I would therefore suggest to have an option that would limit population growth, for example cut the growth in half. It could be an option that is independent from the difficulty levels. We could see if the game changes and how it impacts the game. I think it would be the easiest option to start – no need to rebalance the whole game.

[Pocus]

Some good remarks here, please continue the discussion, there is indeed again room for improvements.

Also don't forget that not everybody is the perfect armchair general. For some the game is easy even at Experienced level of difficulty (and that's the level I would recommend playing if you know the game well) and for some it is hard even at Balanced difficulty! The game must be approachable to every one and if too easy for you, you have difficulty levels. You might disagree because you don't want a cheating AI, but lets be pragmatic, the so called AI in a strategy game can't compete with the human brains. So perhaps WE are cheating by using our marvellous 100-billions cells brain against a mere 15k lines of 'AI' code

That said, I like the suggestion in trying to curb population growth, perhaps as an option. It might be the root of all evil.

[Hister_MatrixForum]

I gave the too high population remark quite some time ago. It is defenitely a valid one. Historical levels can't be simulated because then players will get bored but still a defenitive curb must be done in this regard.

[defekt]

The slave problem as a function of population growth is real. You just don't have the tools to deal with it. (And, arguably, a slave problem should be the easiest to solve, from an authenticity standpoint.) I like the way decisions arrive semi-randomly but the slave problem is allowed to escalate out of all control, and no self-respecting tyrant would ever allow that.

[Pocus]

I'm not too sure about that, see the numerous Helots revolt in Sparta. Or that the Roman often minored the revolts they had, and they had a lot. You just can't prevent revolts indefinitely when there is a 7 to 1 ratio between slaves and citizens (citing from memory what I think was the ratio in Rome at a given time ...)

I do agree though that the regional decision that can disperse slaves should not be limited to a certain population level.

[defekt]

Fair point.

I was faced with a serious slave problem and it was solved by three successive slave redistribution decisions. I don't know if those three decisions came as a result of the game doing a good job of anticipating their need or just pure luck.

[Surt]

Or use the decision to sell slaves.

[USGrant1962]

A minor tweak to slow population and perhaps add some historicity is to jack up the effects of the plague. It looks to me like all plague does is provide maluses to loyalty, health, and manpower for three turns.

I've been reading Victor Davis Hanson's A War Like No Other about the Peloponnesian War and it seems that the root cause of Athens' defeat was that they lost ~30% of their population, army, and navy in the 431BCE plague (region of Atticus in the game). It damaged their economy and military for a generation.

Now, that much loss to a random event in the game would make the players rage quit. But perhaps losing say 15%, rounded down, of the population in a region hit by plague (in addition to the existing maluses) will make a noticeable impact, reduce the overall population, and not be so severe as to cause rage quits.

[Pocus]

Yes, that's the issue here, sometime you have to twist history or players would not play. Most casualties were not from battles either ...

[MarkShot]

WWII was the first war in history where more died from combat than disease.

I am not sure if that would be true if only the Pacific Theater was considered, since tropical diseases played a very significant role.

But we remember wars for combat. Seemingly, there is little glory in dying of Cholera.

[Ancient One]

Come to think of it, should Admin Burden apply to manpower and metal too? The general concept of AB, being inefficiency in a large empire, would certainly apply to recruiting and resource collection just as much as money.

Absolutely. Manpower and metal should have some relevance for a large country other than just something to sell for money when those decisions come up.

[Horseman]

WWII was the first war in history where more died from combat than disease.

I am not sure if that would be true if only the Pacific Theater was considered, since tropical diseases played a very significant role.

But we remember wars for combat. Seemingly, there is little glory in dying of Cholera.

I thought it was the first world war that was the first to see more die from combat than disease?

[MarkShot]

No. TB epidemics and the start of 1918 pandemic.