Bought a few months back, I've only just started delving into Field Of Glory: Empires
It's probably best described as a 4X game in a similar vein to Civilisation. in FOG: Empires, it's all about balancing legacy and decadence. It's not about how much you conquer (although that can be a route to victory) but about how your regime will be remembered. For example, stumbling through my first number of turns, I have progressed Athens from stable city to glorious city state. This is done via culture tokens that are generated through investment of manpower, infrastructure etcetera in cultural aspects of your regimes existence. This investment is part of your overall economy where food, armies, navies etc also have to be paid for.
Of course, certain areas of the regime are prone to and sometimes generate the negative effects of decadence and these can limit or even reduce your progress.
It's all still very new and I don't really know exactly what I'm doing (or what I'm supposed to do) with regions or provinces (regions being the smallest unit of land and a number of regions can be combined to create a province).
Strategy reviewers give this game a fairly positive score but I'm finding the User Interface a bit of a nightmare. Take regional decision making. In the strategy element of Total War, a window would open offering a choice. You either clicked yes or no. Sometimes that happens in FOG: Empires but there are also a number of pre-existing regional decisions that can be made each turn (at a cost). Opening this dialogue and selecting a decision to implement, I fully expected to find somewhere that I could click to activate this choice but no. Half an hour later, I decided to look on the internet for the answer. It turns out that you have to click on a region in the world map (all qualifying regions glowing a subtle shade of green). The regional choice window is overlayed over the map and, maybe it's just my own stupidity, I never thought to look to the map for the answer. What if the region you want is hidden behind the choice window? Why do it this way? It just doesn't make any sense to me?
Surely a list of names of qualifying regions could be shown within the open dialogue window? Clicking on one could then zoom you in to the map area containg that region in order that you can then confirm your choice is the right one. That's how I would do it anyway.
Verdict so far. Interesting with the possibility of a very good strategy game underneath a needlessly cumbersome interface that could put off players before they really get to grips with the game.
It's probably best described as a 4X game in a similar vein to Civilisation. in FOG: Empires, it's all about balancing legacy and decadence. It's not about how much you conquer (although that can be a route to victory) but about how your regime will be remembered. For example, stumbling through my first number of turns, I have progressed Athens from stable city to glorious city state. This is done via culture tokens that are generated through investment of manpower, infrastructure etcetera in cultural aspects of your regimes existence. This investment is part of your overall economy where food, armies, navies etc also have to be paid for.
Of course, certain areas of the regime are prone to and sometimes generate the negative effects of decadence and these can limit or even reduce your progress.
It's all still very new and I don't really know exactly what I'm doing (or what I'm supposed to do) with regions or provinces (regions being the smallest unit of land and a number of regions can be combined to create a province).
Strategy reviewers give this game a fairly positive score but I'm finding the User Interface a bit of a nightmare. Take regional decision making. In the strategy element of Total War, a window would open offering a choice. You either clicked yes or no. Sometimes that happens in FOG: Empires but there are also a number of pre-existing regional decisions that can be made each turn (at a cost). Opening this dialogue and selecting a decision to implement, I fully expected to find somewhere that I could click to activate this choice but no. Half an hour later, I decided to look on the internet for the answer. It turns out that you have to click on a region in the world map (all qualifying regions glowing a subtle shade of green). The regional choice window is overlayed over the map and, maybe it's just my own stupidity, I never thought to look to the map for the answer. What if the region you want is hidden behind the choice window? Why do it this way? It just doesn't make any sense to me?
Surely a list of names of qualifying regions could be shown within the open dialogue window? Clicking on one could then zoom you in to the map area containg that region in order that you can then confirm your choice is the right one. That's how I would do it anyway.
Verdict so far. Interesting with the possibility of a very good strategy game underneath a needlessly cumbersome interface that could put off players before they really get to grips with the game.
