What is next for Field of Glory?

[medkirtys]

Been having a lot of fun with the latest DLC Swifter than Eagles and I can't help but wonder what is next? Blood and Gold? The Far East? Renaissance? A Battle Pack? Something else entirely? I'm hoping for either Blood and Gold or a Battle Pack.

[SimonLancaster]

Zero and maybe FoG 3 in a few years!

No more DLCs for Ancients or Medieval, anyway.

[Telesino]

Maybe some new army list?
I suggest Catar and other medieval heresies (Latin and Greek).

[Karvon]

While no new DLCs are planned, the game is open to mod'ing, so users could create new and alternate army list mods and even change the rules of the game via scripting. The Silk Road and Table Top mod's are popular examples of the former. The Greek era mod with new rules on flanking and anarchy charges is an example of the latter. We should be grateful the game was left open in this way for the community to expand on Richard and team's excellent base.

[locustmustdie]

Maybe Italian Wars,maybe Hegemony of Hungary,maybe Timur Impire. None knows

[Adraeth]

My dream is a new FOG Renaissance, i own every pike and shot and i love them; anyway i will really appreciate a FOG from 1500 to 1700, maybe even early spanish succession war.
Considering FOG Kingdoms and FOG 2 Medieval exported battles, why not dreaming for a FOG 2 Renaissance with at least 5 DLCs and... maybe a FOG Reanaissance "Empires/Kingdoms" from Ageod as well?

[VideogameghisKhan]

A more modest request is that I'd like to see a patch to incorporate the newest FoG2 expansion into the Time Warp module.

Beyond that, I would love to see East and Southeast Asia added in officially, both ancient and medieval. And then of course another crack at the pike and shot era, building on the engine improvements that FoG2 brought and potentially going beyond.

[SnuggleBunnies]

A more modest request is that I'd like to see a patch to incorporate the newest FoG2 expansion into the Time Warp module.

Richard said elsewhere that this will be coming in perhaps 6 months ish

[canuckgamer]

My understanding is that FOG and FOG2 are cyber versions of table top games so I'm wondering what time period did the tabletop extend to? Will we be seeing FOG2 games involving gunpowder. For example the American revolution where the forces were relatively small compared to the American Civil War or Napoleonic battles.

[Athos1660]

My understanding is that FOG and FOG2 are cyber versions of table top games so I'm wondering what time period did the tabletop extend to? Will we be seeing FOG2 games involving gunpowder. For example the American revolution where the forces were relatively small compared to the American Civil War or Napoleonic battles.

There is a Field of Glory Renaissance tabletop rulebook (and a venerable (to avoid the word 'old') PC version of it, released in 2015 : Pike and shot) made by the same game designer as the FoG2 PC series, Richard Bodley Scott. And there is also a Field of Glory Napoleonic tabletop rulebook made by someone else.

Anything is possible.

[Athos1660]

My understanding is that FOG and FOG2 are cyber versions of table top games so I'm wondering what time period did the tabletop extend to? Will we be seeing FOG2 games involving gunpowder. For example the American revolution where the forces were relatively small compared to the American Civil War or Napoleonic battles.

There is a Field of Glory Renaissance tabletopcoreball rulebook (and a venerable (to avoid the word 'old') PC version of it, released in 2015 : Pike and shot) made by the same game designer as the FoG2 PC series, Richard Bodley Scott. And there is also a Field of Glory Napoleonic tabletop rulebook made by someone else.

Anything is possible.

The information you provide is very helpful. Many thanks.

You're welcome.

SInce this post written in March, there have been rumours and innuendos seemingly implying the next FoG2 game would be neither a Pike & Shot 2 (Europe 1500-1700) nor a Napoleonic one (Europe 1800+). Of course, don't take that for granted. We have to wait

[SimonLancaster]

Yes, hints that it could be Horse & Musket 17th-18th century. Marco said something before about Napoleonic being one step too far for now (in terms of engine requirements, etc).

[VideogameghisKhan]

SInce this post written in March, there have been rumours and innuendos seemingly implying the next FoG2 game would be neither a Pike & Shot 2 (Europe 1500-1700) nor a Napoleonic one (Europe 1800+). Of course, don't take that for granted. We have to wait

When you say Europe, does that open the possibility for a 1500-1700 game with a more global focus? It would be nice to have the Pike and Shot and Sengoku Jidae territory both get covered in the new improved engine, plus filling in some of the previously neglected regions and major players, like the Mughals and Safavids.

[Athos1660]

No, that wasn't what I meant. But who knows ?

18th century Horse and musket, Fantasy or Ancient/modern Asia are among many other possibilities.

[Butchbird]

As the game developpers themselves pass by this forum, I'll first take this occasion to do a "hats off" to the superb game FOG2 is. Long story short, I had the same computer from 2001 to 2020 (with just enough upgrading in between to play civ4). When I came back to the world of post 2004 gaming, I was simply blown away by FOG2. Superb wargame really. Sad that I don't have enough time to play, but always a delight when I can manage it.

This being said, FOG being based on a system that can cover the 17th-18th century...Well, I pray to the wargame gods that a FOG2 game covering notably the "french and indian war' gets developped someday. Not EXACTLY the right fit, most (but not all) battles of that period and region being small skirmish and "guerrilla" actions, but that would be just plain marvelous.

Much like good ol' talonsoft east front/west front is all I'd ever need for WW2 "serious wargaming" (if only gog could get those), FOG2 is all I'll ever need for ancients and medieval, and I'M sure it could also be the case with horses, muskets and tomahawks.

So yeah, I love you byzantine games team and please consider the french and indian war.

[Scottydog1756]

The problem with moving the game forward into the Renaissance, much less early gunshot eras is evident if you've ever played any of the fun user created mods covering the time period. It's the artillery. Bayonets and musketry is an easy development to mod. The medieval games already have early firearms and bombards/culverins, etc., but the most serious development of warfare in the age of Gustavus Adolphus was the mobility of field artillery. FoG2 simply is not designed with the highly mobile field artillery, much less horse artillery, in mind. Maybe this can be coded into the system, but I just don't know.

I agree that I'd love to see the Blood and Gold development, especially after watching the Spanish language mini-series "Hernan."

[Athos1660]

FoG2 simply is not designed with the highly mobile field artillery, much less horse artillery, in mind. Maybe this can be coded into the system, but I just don't know.

Pike and Shot, the old version of FoG2 set during the Renaissance and the 17th century and made by the same developers has already done mobile artillery after firing. That's just coding.

[Paul59]

FoG2 simply is not designed with the highly mobile field artillery, much less horse artillery, in mind. Maybe this can be coded into the system, but I just don't know.

Yes, Athos is quite right, adding more mobile artillery would be easily done. You probably don't realise that FoG2 uses a slightly more advanced version of the game engine used for the Battle Academy WW2 games, so a small change like that is not an issue. Mind you significantly more mobile artillery didn't appear until the 18th century, so would be out of scope for a Renaissance game.

What would really be the problem is the maximum 16 figure unit size, and the limitations on portraying complex formations (including multiple troop types) with the FoG2 engine. Currently we can have wedge or rectangular shaped formations, and that's all. 16th and 17th century warfare is characterised by several large and/or complex infantry units (ie; the Spanish Colunelas and Tercios, and other Pike and Shot formations). They just couldn't be represented with the current game engine, I reckon something more sophisticated would be needed.

[Athos1660]

Not all the current videogames follow the path of realism (as the FoG series did). Quite a few choose a more simplified|abstract|lowpoly but still nice way to represent reality, such as Lonely Mountains: Downhill or art of rally that are both indie games. So maybe the unanimated one-piece 3D models of P&S1 could serve as a basis for new more modern and stylized ones. Way more easily said than done...

[MVP7]

Not all the current videogames follow the path of realism (as the FoG series did). Quite a few choose a more simplified|abstract|lowpoly but still nice way to represent reality, such as Lonely Mountains: Downhill or art of rally that are both indie games. So maybe the unanimated one-piece 3D models of P&S1 could serve as a basis for new more modern and stylized ones. Way more easily said than done...

Personally I think the animated units of FoG2 where you can actually see state, losses and formation at glance is vastly superior to the static blocks and repeated UI images of P&S and SJ. For me the aesthetic comparisons of both solutions are a distant second to the sheer functionality and readability of FoG2 approach.

FoG2 and FoG2M are limited to one unit having up to 16 instances of the same model and anything beyond that (war carts, mixed box and spear units, complex formations etc) has to be hacked in by animation and texture gimmicks that are really inflexible and eat away directly from the time budgeted to models and animations.

For Pike and Shot 2 or any game that doesn't directly expand on the current FoG2 and FoG2M suite of games, it would make a lot of sense to move on to something new, in practice, Unity engine. It would basically remove all hard engine limits when it comes to models, textures, animations, sounds etc. and offer a far more modern game engine (with better optimization, multiplayer framework, post processing etc). By far the biggest hurdle would be rewriting the core functionality of FoG system in a new engine but it is ultimately a fairly straightforward square based I-GO-You-GO wargame so the general architecture would work in the new engine with few changes. A lot of the stuff that currently needs to be hard coded or hand crafted in 3D modeling software could be moved into the editor to simplify pretty much all content making pipelines.

Simplified visuals with blocks of men could still be a perfectly valid approach and could easily allow bringing the scale of units to say 1 model to every 10 men or even lower while saving modeling and texturing time. Unlike the old engine though, a newer one would allow for individual "units" to have several different models so details like losses, formation changes and minute differences would be far easier to implement than with the old engine's animation-heavy workarounds that aren't really scalable.