What I did: I played ~100 turns as Egypt because the game marked it as easy, before realising it started out too big to be a good beginner nation. Then I scored my first victory as Rome, winning on turn 426. Now I'm 100 turns into playing as the Picts/Caledonii.
What I liked:
- The building/trade system. The fundamentals are quite simple, but thanks to the dizzying range of buildings and the need/bonus mechanics, there's a whole lot of depth here. You could make an entire game out of just the building. The randomised building selection gives it the delightful frisson of gambling - it's always exciting to see what's going to come up next once you've finished a building, and it means you need to think about your strategy every time you make a choice. Obviously the sheer number of regions I ended up with while building my empire as Rome meant I eventually had to turn most of it over to the AI, but I kept a couple of my core provinces under my control just because it was fun to keep doing it.
- The battles. I don't have FOG2 btw. Honestly the tactical battles are usually my least favourite part of these kinds of games, because having to put the strategic part of the game on hold to shuffle units around on a tactical map or similar tends to piledrive the pacing. But these battles go by fast and don't require direct input from me, making that much less of an issue. The battle system itself has a lot of facets but is quite transparent and sensical once you wrap your head around it, and again manages to squeeze a lot of depth out of a small set of fundamentals.
- The progression and decline system. This puts a curb on map-painting in an organic and believable way. Because the link between decadence and decline is so indirect, it's never immediately obvious that you've hit the limit of acceptable expansion, making those strategic decisions a lot more interesting. Because your progress depends on what on other nations are doing by way of the ranking table, you can never quite feel comfortable resting on your laurels. Because so many of the things that generate decadence are also tied to legacy, you're constantly incentivised to try and walk that thin line. Because even regions that are already fully integrated into your empire still cause decadence, you can never feel quite secure in your gains. This system is what really makes the game stand out.
- The fluidity of the simulation. This is a game of constant change, with empires expanding, collapsing and expanding again, smaller nations being consumed and then reappearing. The progress and decline system is intimately tied into this, preventing the game from devolving into a few giant invincible blobs grinding endlessly away at each other. This is exemplified by the fate of the Antigonids during my Rome campaign. The Antigonids dominated most of the map from Greece eastwards and were the most powerful empire in the game by a considerable margin. I spent a lot of my game scrambling for territory to try and prepare myself for the inevitable apocalyptic war. Then in one turn the entire Antigonid empire abruptly collapsed, all their lands instantly taken by rebels. Within a few turns they'd disappeared, and Greece and Anatolia were a patchwork of smaller states. After getting over my shock and quickly googling to make sure this was the game working as intended, I was really impressed by this. I think it probably handed me an easy win, but it also made for a great story and completely rearranged the eastern half of the map, making the ensuing campaign much different than I'd expected.
What I didn't like:
- The game runs increasingly slowly as it goes on. I have a decent computer but by the endgame everything was taking a while to process. I'm not a programmer, I'm not going to claim this could have been done better. Seems like there's a lot going on under the hood here, so perhaps this is inevitable. It's a shame nonetheless.
- Not being able to automate individual regions, as opposed to provinces. This leads to a lot of extra micro. It also means the little bits around the edges of your empire require individual management, while the important core provinces can be left to their own devices. I ended up doing my best to avoid taking regions that I couldn't quickly form into provinces because of this.
- Army management. When you've got a couple of dozen armies/fleets spread out over your empire, keeping track of and maintaining them all turns into a huge amount of work. Replacing casualties after wars is a particular problem if you're trying to make sure they're all well put together. It's hard to assess at a glance what needs fixing, and building units then marching them where they need to be to reinforce an army is a multi-stage process that takes at least a couple of turns without adding much to gameplay. When it came time to do this I'd usually find an excuse to take a break and go and do something else for a bit.
- Your copy is alright but needs proofreading. It has the air of being written by someone who is fluent in English but doesn't speak it as a first language, I have no idea if that's true or not. It's not a huge problem but it does result in the occasional hit to immersion.
- The UI is overall pretty good but definitely requires some avoidable clicks to do things or gather information. These build up over a few hundred turns.
Overall: I like this game an awful lot. In fact, I think this might be the game I've spent the last few years looking for, and I wish I'd bought it sooner. The last week or two I've found it very difficult to do anything but play this game and I anticipate playing for hundreds of hours more yet. It's not perfect but all that really needs changing about it is polish and balance, the core is rock solid.
A couple of suggestions because I want this game to be the best it can be:
- Allow me to automate individual regions as well as provinces. This would halve the micro at a stroke.
- Take some steps to smooth out army management. For example, being able to set a template, and then automatically build or replenish to that template on request. Being able to press a button to recruit a unit direct to an army rather than have to build it in the province and then march it over. Perhaps showing what units this army used to have that it lost. Not automatically merging newly recruited units with armies or fleets already stationed in the province would help a lot.
Thanks for the game, keep up the good work, and apologies if any of the criticisms I've raised have already been addressed. This is a big game and I'm still learning about it 100 hours in.
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