Field of Glory: Empires

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jztemple2
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

So I've been continuing my game as the Saka faction. To increase my legacy accumulation rate, I'm trying to capture regions that have Saka Objectives; these are objectives that the game semi-randomly assigns to give your faction a long term goal. Sort of like, err, Germany wanting to invade Poland in the 1930s. Hmm, probably not a good example. Anyway, it gives your faction a purpose.

So the nearest objective that I hadn't captured was in the Bactria faction's land holding. Bactria itself is a client state of the Seleucid faction, who are the biggest faction right now. However, they are fighting a dozen wars simultaneously so I ought to be able to grab some regions and then press for peace.

I invaded one of their border regions and took it easily. My next target region was the capital of the province, so it was likely to be more heavily defended. This was true. A battle was queued up and I decided to fight it out in Fields of Glory II. After a few mouse clicks the battle was underway, looking like this:
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My troops are near the bottom of the picture. I have lots of skirmishers, nomad horse archers, some medium cavalry with lances and a bunch of foot soldiers who are pretty much pike fodder. The enemy has several very heavy infantry units, some cavalry, but much less than me, and some barely a step above rabble urban militia units. My plan was to sweep around his left flank while trying to hold on in the center and my left.

After a very shaky start I started chewing through his backfield and routing his militia. I had a number of units rout but in the end I had the better time of it. The results below are as show in FoG2:
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Going back into FoG:E, here are the results in the terms of that game:
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And here is a shot of my army outside the town of Bactra, in the region of Bactria, in the province of BACTRIANA. Who thinks of these names?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by dbt1949 »

I find I just don't know what to do when I first start. There are so many things to check.
Do I just sit there and build things? Or should I start invading provinces? Or maybe yell at the screen?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

dbt1949 wrote: Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:25 am I find I just don't know what to do when I first start. There are so many things to check.
Do I just sit there and build things? Or should I start invading provinces? Or maybe yell at the screen?
Yeah, the flow of the game is pretty obscure at first. At first I tried the small scenario and got absolutely lost. So as I mentioned I started the grand campaign (the long scenario) and picked a faction, Saka, way out on the north-eastern edge of the map. Fewer neighbors so I could concentrate on learning the game systems.

Here's the flow of the game... get resources, build military units, attack your neighbors. The resources you want to build military units are money, manpower, metal and equipment. Then you need money and manpower to sustain the unit. You'll see this in the image below. Obviously there is a lot more going on, but these are the basics.
Image

Now, how do you get those resources? At the very basic level, it comes down to the region, the smallest land unit in the game. Below is an image of the structure of a region. The little gold arrowhead cursor is pointing to the region "Parthia", which is part of the province of PARTHIA :roll:. I'm going to mention the bare basics, there is a lot more info in the manual and videos. Basically you move by clicking those little people symbols in the lower center, the ones in the four rows. Each row corresponds with the resource on the right, Food, Infrastructure, Money, Culture. Assigning people to the different rows will affect how much of the four resources are produced. However, the buildings on the left also can contribute. You'll have to play with it for awhile to get a good feeling for it. Also check out this Game Guide for more info on each of the buildings. And there are lot of buildings. Finally, the three resources on the far right, Manpower, Metal and Equipment, are derived from the population of the region without respect of which row the little people are in.
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OK, on to the Province display. This is a roll-up of all the regions in a province. You do not need to create provinces nor do you need to control all the regions in a province. In this example I control four of the five regions; by the way, I didn't chop off the bottom of the image, that is actually the way it is displayed in the game. Across the top of the display you'll see the seven resources collected across the region. If any of the seven are negative, then you aren't producing enough and you are eating into your stockpiles. As far as I can tell, food and infrastructure are shared within a province, so it is not necessary to make sure each region has a positive gain each turn in each resource. In the middle of the display you can see which people are assigned to each of the four types of buildings, just a summary of the same info on the region display. And on the right it shows which building is being built if any.
Image

OK, so how does this all fit together? Regions produce resources, either by the count of the population or by actually assigning people to each of the four rows. Resources are used to build buildings and feed people so they become more people. Both these contribute to help get you more resources. And then you use those resources to build military units and do other things, like bribe your neighbors. And everything else comes from that.

I have ten hours in the game right now and I'm still learning things. I was lost the first couple of hours, then confused but getting by the next few. Now I'm actually understanding the flow of the game and what I need to be doing each turn.

Ultimately it is that region screen that is the key to learning the game. Mouse-over every item, click every button, read the in-game help and the manual and watch the videos to understand how production works. Production is the cornerstone of running a faction.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by dbt1949 »

Thanks! I got 7 hours in the game but I just keep starting a new game see how something works and start another game which I find out how something else works.
The tutorials do a good job on everything but when you start a new game it just sits there looking at you.
I bet I spent an hour figuring out how to meld armies together. The manual doesn't say and neither do the tutorials. It may be child's play to figure out for some people but not me.
It was pretty simple when I figured it out. :oops:
I think I had over 200 hours in Civ 5 before I figured most everything out so I'll probably go that here too. Because I see a good game here.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by ColdSteel »

I picked this up today. So far, I'm very happy with my purchase. The 25% off for already owning FOG2 certainly did help make the decision to purchase it easier. And thanks to jztemple2's posts, I had a pretty good idea of how to get started playing. It really helped so thanks for those posts. :D

I'm playing Rome on easy to get used to things and after 15 turns I've already taken 3 regions from 2 neighbors that declared war on me and now 2 other neighbors have declared war on me. I will have to bring them pax romana, I guess.

I had two nations offer cooperative agreements already which I accepted. However, one of them was declared a conquest objective by the senate so that might complicate things in the future.

There sure is a lot that happens in this game. The first 15 turns have had more stuff happen than I can remember happening in many more turns in other such games.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

ColdSteel wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:03 pm I picked this up today. So far, I'm very happy with my purchase. The 25% off for already owning FOG2 certainly did help make the decision to purchase it easier. And thanks to jztemple2's posts, I had a pretty good idea of how to get started playing. It really helped so thanks for those posts. :D

I'm playing Rome on easy to get used to things and after 15 turns I've already taken 3 regions from 2 neighbors that declared war on me and now 2 other neighbors have declared war on me. I will have to bring them pax romana, I guess.

I had two nations offer cooperative agreements already which I accepted. However, one of them was declared a conquest objective by the senate so that might complicate things in the future.

There sure is a lot that happens in this game. The first 15 turns have had more stuff happen than I can remember happening in many more turns in other such games.
Good to hear that you did well as Rome. I started a game with Rome on Balanced but made a few mistakes early on, such as fighting too many battles in a row and weakening my army. This was a bad thing because, as you mention, my neighbors started declaring war on me. I'm going to give up on that game and start another game as Rome, this time on Easy and try to not make the same mistakes.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention in that first playing as Rome I played out a battle against the Senones. The Senones got a Gallic-type army and the battle was pretty interesting. I got my ass kicked early on but my heavy foot soon turned the tide:
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

Started my game again as Rome, this time on Easy. One of the early things I did was to build up my military and focus on just taking out the Senones. I tried to make nice with the Etruscans but they seemed bent on declaring war on me. Whether it was because the game was on Easy rather than on Balanced, or because I kept my army in being healthy and stronger than before, the Etruscans took a few turns to declare war and then they didn't invade. This paid off as I was able to conquer them and the regions in the south. I'm now pretty much the ruler of Italy, or rather the Senate is.

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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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jztemple2 wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:52 am Whether it was because the game was on Easy rather than on Balanced, or because I kept my army in being healthy and stronger than before, the Etruscans took a few turns to declare war and then they didn't invade.
Yeah, I took out the Senones right away. As soon as I did, the nation to my south declared war and raided me. They only had two regions so I took the weakest one first and was sieging the other when the Etruscans declared war and immediately attacked. I had to break off my siege and run my army over to break that up. As soon as I did that, the neighbor at the bottom of the boot declared war as well. At least that one is one of my national capture objectives. So, one army and a war on 3 fronts. Lovely.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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What's the situation of becoming a client state?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Sepiche »

After a few false starts I finally have a reasonable game as Rome going. It's tricky since the AI is so aggressive about attacking you if you look weak, but once you get a couple of armies built up it gets easier to manage.

I took a turn at the beginning to build up my army a bit, and moved the army I started with to the province next to the Semones who obligingly attacked me. That let me break their army and start taking their land. The Etruscans declared on me right after that, but they had been fighting down south and I managed to catch their army returning with my fleet and destroy it over a couple of turns.

After that, as long as I kept growing my army as much as I could, it was fairly smooth sailing. Getting two full strength armies and getting the roads to make sure they can get around quickly is pretty key there too.

Overall I like the game, but it has some oddities and hopefully it will get some tweaks.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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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.

All in all, I'd say this game is pretty accessible. I don't completely know exactly what I'm doing, but I'm just using common sense and so far so good.

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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Sepiche »

You might need to look into expanding your army a bit more... I have about the same turns played, but for the most part the small border empires have stopped declaring on me. I've got 3 ~120 point field armies and 2 ~100 point fleets. Might be unrelated, but it seemed like I stopped getting pulled into new wars around the time I completed the second army.

One of my tiny complaints with Empires, because of how they display resources, it can be a little hard to figure out how much free manpower, gold, etc. you have to expand your army. In my first couple of play throughs, I expanded my army conservatively, based on what I thought I had available, and got overwhelmed after a short while. In my new game I expanded my army past the point it seemed like I should, but growth and construction early on seems to be plenty to keep a sizable army in the field.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by ColdSteel »

Sepiche wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:10 am You might need to look into expanding your army a bit more... I have about the same turns played, but for the most part the small border empires have stopped declaring on me.
They just released a new update (see below) that scales back on the AI aggression so they must have seen it as an issue.
Sepiche wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:10 am One of my tiny complaints with Empires, because of how they display resources, it can be a little hard to figure out how much free manpower, gold, etc. you have to expand your army.
I've just been looking at the totals at the top of the screen. If buying one more unit drops my gold total below zero I don't do it. I agree manpower is fuzzy. I have a total of around 500 with a +2 after that. I've been getting warnings about losing units when that plus number drops into negatives, but I'm not sure exactly how that all works yet.

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
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by $iljanus »

This seems like a fun game that doesn’t get bogged down in Hearts of Iron complexity. How’s the UI? Does it do a good job in helping you manage your empire?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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$iljanus wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:35 pm How’s the UI? Does it do a good job in helping you manage your empire?
I think it's pretty good. The game presents you with a ton of information and most of it is pretty easily accessible in tabs. I just briefly skimmed the manual and have been doing okay so far with just whatever information the game presents.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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ColdSteel wrote:
$iljanus wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:35 pm How’s the UI? Does it do a good job in helping you manage your empire?
I think it's pretty good. The game presents you with a ton of information and most of it is pretty easily accessible in tabs. I just briefly skimmed the manual and have been doing okay so far with just whatever information the game presents.
This is good to hear. Not as good for the wallet but it sure looks like a fun game!
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by ChuckB »

I have to say that, unfortunately, I'm bouncing off this game HARD. I want to spend more time with it and from everything I read it sounds like there is a good (to very good) game in there but so far I find it extremely unattractive to look at and not at all immersive. I'm somewhat frustrated by this myself but I have picked up the good old Alea Jacta Est from 7y ago again and are having so much more fun with it (and yes, completely different scope) and it covers my current interest in everything ancient/Roman.

I have tried the Phyrrus scenario twice and failed (I think they made a terrible mistake offering this as something many will perceive as an "introductory" scenario) and then tried different local tribes in northern France, central Germany, and the Balkans but it feels like a slog. I was immediately hit by the negative tokens and my army is too weak to even win against any of the unorganized tribes around me. All the building takes ages to build (10 to over 20 turns don't seem to be uncommon) while all my (organized) neighbors start to happily expand every turn.

Will try to spend more time with it but I'll have to find some flavor that I like and so far, I'm not seeing it
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Sepiche »

I felt the same way with the first few games I tried, but I'm enjoying it more now that I have a better grasp on the mechanics.

A few things that might help:
- If you're getting aging tokens, it means your culture to decadence ratio is low compared to the other nations out there. Increase your culture by assigning workers to it (preferably citizens) or building culture buildings. You can see the details of this by clicking on your nation button in the top center of the screen. Do know that as things progress, most nations ratio will start dropping which should help boost you up when it happens.
- If it's taking a long time to build new buildings, assign more workers (preferably slaves) to infrastructure, and focus on building things like a brickworks to increase your infrastructure points. Buildings are built using those, not money, manpower, or metal.
- Early on, recruit as many troops as you can. The main thing to watch is the upkeep and how it effects your bottom line. Money will probably not be the issue after the first few turns, but rather manpower and to a lesser extent equipment.

I ended up playing as Nubia, and it helped me get a chance to learn some of the mechanics off in a corner of the map rather than being thrust right into the thick of it as Rome. Nubia is not easy as you have Ethiopia to deal with, but there is a lot of independent land you can gobble up, and it helps with understanding the culture/decadence system.
Last edited by Sepiche on Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

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ChuckB wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:07 pm I have to say that, unfortunately, I'm bouncing off this game HARD. I want to spend more time with it and from everything I read it sounds like there is a good (to very good) game in there but so far I find it extremely unattractive to look at and not at all immersive. I'm somewhat frustrated by this myself but I have picked up the good old Alea Jacta Est from 7y ago again and are having so much more fun with it (and yes, completely different scope) and it covers my current interest in everything ancient/Roman.

I have tried the Phyrrus scenario twice and failed (I think they made a terrible mistake offering this as something many will perceive as an "introductory" scenario) and then tried different local tribes in northern France, central Germany, and the Balkans but it feels like a slog. I was immediately hit by the negative tokens and my army is too weak to even win against any of the unorganized tribes around me. All the building takes ages to build (10 to over 20 turns don't seem to be uncommon) while all my (organized) neighbors start to happily expand every turn.

Will try to spend more time with it but I'll have to find some flavor that I like and so far, I'm not seeing it
I'd suggest playing Rome on the Grand Campaign on Easy difficulty. You have only three regions to deal with at start and your focus is to build up your military, so you can concentrate on the best way to do that. Be careful to understand that the money cost for Legions goes up an additional 25% for each one you already have in service, and by an additional 10% for each Alea (Ala?) you build. And be sure to build an all around army with skirmishers and light horse too. Manpower is tied to population so be sure to grow enough food to increase pop in a reasonable time, and put the rest of the pops in money making, except what is needed to maintain infrastructure. Don't worry about putting pops on culture at first.

UPDATE: I might have suggested starting with a small faction way off on the edges of the map, but they grow very slowly and their mechanics are often skewed by location, tribal content, or a lack of interesting events.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Freyland »

How does this compare to Agressors: Ancient Rome?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by ChuckB »

Thanks, Sepiche and jztemple2 for the tips - I'll continue to try to get into the game, I'm just annoyed that it's turning out to be so difficult (especially given that I'm currently very much into the ancient era). I love the connection with FoG 2 and that may be another reason to try Rome on easy next - battles among Barbarian tribes are not the most interesting to fight in FoG2, it mostly boils down to a big beat-em-up with many troops that are basically not under your control.

I have to see if I can find the flavor I'm looking for. I think they did a good job of distinguishing between different factions through the modifiers but everything looks very samey to me and seems to be lacking details. Comparing this to previous AGEOD (such as Alea Jacta Est) games, this is a VERY different approach (and yes, it should be since this is not a military strategy game with some political flavor but a historical grand-strategy 4X game.

I'll read all the tips in this thread again (which already have been helpful) and will also spend more time on the manual
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Sepiche »

ChuckB wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:51 pm Thanks, Sepiche and jztemple2 for the tips - I'll continue to try to get into the game, I'm just annoyed that it's turning out to be so difficult (especially given that I'm currently very much into the ancient era). I love the connection with FoG 2 and that may be another reason to try Rome on easy next - battles among Barbarian tribes are not the most interesting to fight in FoG2, it mostly boils down to a big beat-em-up with many troops that are basically not under your control.
This is definitely a plus of playing Rome: assuming you aren't on terrible ground or heavily outnumbered, you can usually rely on your legions to hold the line against anything but the heaviest of enemy infantry. They are an excellent ace in the hole for almost any battle.
Last edited by Sepiche on Sat Jul 20, 2019 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

I have found one QoL item of annoyance, unless I'm missing something. Right now I have three provinces and 22 regions, not all regions being in a province. When I go through my lands on a province by province review, province being the collection of regions, I then have to figure if I have regions that are not part of a province and look at those separately. Is there some quick way to find the regions that are not part of provinces?
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by ColdSteel »

Freyland wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:47 pm How does this compare to Agressors: Ancient Rome?
Aggressors: Ancient Rome is a classic 4X game like AoW3 where the emphasis is mostly on the military aspect and capturing everything. It has a random map mode which is more like the standard 4X and a classical world map mode which is more static. It does not have tactical level combat like AoW3. It's an excellent game but it's not a grand strategy game like FOG: Empires is. Two different types of games.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by dbemont »

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:30 pm I have found one QoL item of annoyance, unless I'm missing something. Right now I have three provinces and 22 regions, not all regions being in a province. When I go through my lands on a province by province review, province being the collection of regions, I then have to figure if I have regions that are not part of a province and look at those separately. Is there some quick way to find the regions that are not part of provinces?
One of the ledger pages makes that easy to see.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

dbemont wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 9:34 am
jztemple2 wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:30 pm I have found one QoL item of annoyance, unless I'm missing something. Right now I have three provinces and 22 regions, not all regions being in a province. When I go through my lands on a province by province review, province being the collection of regions, I then have to figure if I have regions that are not part of a province and look at those separately. Is there some quick way to find the regions that are not part of provinces?
One of the ledger pages makes that easy to see.
Thanks, I forgot about that page in the ledger, I'd seen it before but didn't think about that use of it.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Apollo
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Apollo »

I really, really, want to try this game, but some of the Steam reviews have me concerned, this one in particular. Are his points valid, is he making mountains out of molehills, or does he need to RTFM?

...1. Random Selected Objectives - The objectives your leader chooses often make no sense. Strategically, capturing them would leave your exposed or they are islands where you have no fleet. Many stronger nations have declared war on you but your new objective is a nation you are cooperating with working towards an alliance. Taking regions that are not objectives gives major penalties damaging your culture and giving a lengthy period pacifying the region. Why won't your leader choose the last rebel region that will give you 100% control of the province?
2. Building Selection - The way building selection works is frustrating and irritating. I'm beset by enemies but I'm unable to build a palisade for defense because it hasn't been offered. Why not? It just makes no sense.
3. Gold Disappearing - You have what you think is plenty of gold. Great chunks of it just disappear. I now believe it's to refit units after battle. You don't have a choice to refit/rebuild. Your nation goes broke and you are unable to control it.
4. Supply for ships - You move to the next coastal sea region beside your owned region and you are out of supply. Sending troops by sea to invade or support an ally is problematic. Being out of supply hurts your units rapidly.
5. Sieging Fortifications - You spend 3 turns reducing the fortification level of a region. The fortification level reaches 0 and you notice that a neutral army that is an enemy of your enemy enters the province. Your begin the assault and end turn. After the AI turn you are booted from the province and it is given to the neutral AI player....
6. Clumsy UI for managing regions/provinces - The popup windows often cover the map you need to see. To manage things properly you are regularly swapping between popups, the main screen, and various summary screens. It's just not nicely setup to display the information needed.
I feel like I'm winning the things I can control but losing to the things I can't...

I'd appreciate any feedback you gents who are playing the game can provide.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

Apollo wrote: Mon Jul 29, 2019 11:59 am I really, really, want to try this game, but some of the Steam reviews have me concerned, this one in particular. Are his points valid, is he making mountains out of molehills, or does he need to RTFM?

...1. Random Selected Objectives - The objectives your leader chooses often make no sense. Strategically, capturing them would leave your exposed or they are islands where you have no fleet. Many stronger nations have declared war on you but your new objective is a nation you are cooperating with working towards an alliance. Taking regions that are not objectives gives major penalties damaging your culture and giving a lengthy period pacifying the region. Why won't your leader choose the last rebel region that will give you 100% control of the province?
They aren't 100% random, since they are usually located near your empire, but yup sometimes they aren't terribly convenient. It appear to be a game mechanic to encourage you to expand, but there is no mandatory reason to take the objectives; they just serve to increase your legacy total. One of the concepts of the game is that you are not an omnipotent ruler, there are factions and forces within your empire that drive you to make decisions to make them happy (IE increase your legacy). I think of it as an influential group of my people who have been insulted/injured/taken advantage of by the people in that objective region Capturing that region will influence my people to think of me as a great ruler.

(Do objectives also affect decadence? I didn't think so, but maybe they do. Anyway, same answer applies).
2. Building Selection - The way building selection works is frustrating and irritating. I'm beset by enemies but I'm unable to build a palisade for defense because it hasn't been offered. Why not? It just makes no sense.
Again, this is part of the game design concept that you aren't in absolute charge of the empire. As before, I think of it in abstract terms; you may want to put up a palisade, but investors and influencers really would prefer that you authorize a forge or a farm or an infantry training ground because of their own vested interests. Now if you build that infantry training ground, which is in the same color group as the palisade, the next option to come up for that color group *might* be a palisade, or might not. Also, you always have the choice to ask for a new set of all building options, although this does take some time.

And in this specific example, if you have troops in the region you can build a Roman Camp which functions as a palisade.
3. Gold Disappearing - You have what you think is plenty of gold. Great chunks of it just disappear. I now believe it's to refit units after battle. You don't have a choice to refit/rebuild. Your nation goes broke and you are unable to control it.
This isn't a problem, you have an obligation to keep units up to strength over any other optional spending. There is also maintenance, which is listed on the description of each unit type. I think this is a design decision to keep the game from being too complex, which it would be if you had to manually assign where your gold got spent each turn. Think of the Roman Empire; if you want to stay on the throne, keep the troops happy! They have first dibs on any cash in the till.
4. Supply for ships - You move to the next coastal sea region beside your owned region and you are out of supply. Sending troops by sea to invade or support an ally is problematic. Being out of supply hurts your units rapidly.
This is intentional for a good reason, in my opinion. In this period most ships beached themselves almost every night, or at least fairly frequently. If your fleet shows up off the coast of an enemy region you don't have a place to land and get water, food and fuel. However, being out of supply is not the same as being destroyed. I used this tactic to land troop from Italy over onto the Greek coast. My fleet stayed offshore (because it was off an enemy coast) to protect my friendly troopships. The next turn my troops landed and my warfleet sailed back home, having taken hit point losses but not actual ship losses. And if you have an ally with a port you can keep your fleet in the adjacent sea region with no problems.
5. Sieging Fortifications - You spend 3 turns reducing the fortification level of a region. The fortification level reaches 0 and you notice that a neutral army that is an enemy of your enemy enters the province. Your begin the assault and end turn. After the AI turn you are booted from the province and it is given to the neutral AI player....
This hasn't happened to me, but I could see it happening. Put yourself in the position of the AI "enemy of your enemy". If you had an opportunity to jump in and take the city after the other guy has knocked down the defenses, wouldn't you do it? It's bad manners, but Realpolitik. You can always decide to go to war with this sneaky AI fellow.
6. Clumsy UI for managing regions/provinces - The popup windows often cover the map you need to see. To manage things properly you are regularly swapping between popups, the main screen, and various summary screens. It's just not nicely setup to display the information needed.
I feel like I'm winning the things I can control but losing to the things I can't...
There are a lot of screens, but no different than a lot of 4X games. There is a lot of information in the game, but after a few hours of playing I've developed of rhythm of which screens I open in which order. And I think the "UI for managing regions/provinces" works quite well. Having regions combined into provinces means you don't have to look at the individual regions unless you are selecting which building to build, once the previous one is complete. About my only wish would be for a single screen where I could manage all the regions I own that aren't in an owned province, but that's more of a nice to have than something really necessary.

I think more than some 4X or empire building games, FoG:E uses a greater degree of abstraction, for instance the system for selecting and completing buildings, but I think it works for this game. It really does take a few hours to understand how the game engine works, and there is that 200+ page manual that you should at least skim for a better sense of what is going on.

Finally, I'll post my Steam Review, which pretty much is how I feel about the game:
I'm ten hours into the game right now and I've just posted to my local forum a response to someone's question about the game. Basically he was completely lost. That's fine because for the first couple of hours I was completely lost too. Then in a few more hours I started to get the hang of understanding how the game system works, how regions produce resources which can be used to build buildings, create more people and do other things, including creating and maintaining military units. It's not an easy game to pick up. There is a lot to the game, even though it is not a very complex game.

It is a pretty good game however. The internal game systems like resources and culture and decadence many seem overwhelming, but once you get a handle on them you start to get a feel of how to run your faction. And while conquering your neighbors is nice, the point of the game is to overcome external and internal challenges to create an empire (or republic or whatever) that will leave behind a legacy of greatness.

On the technical side, it looks nice, I haven't seen a bug or a glitch and also I haven't come across any glaring historical errors. And I've tried the integration with Field of Glory II for several battles and it really does work very well, simple to switch back and forth and a really nice, although very much optional, feature.

I'll be honest, after the first hour I was ready to chuck it in and get a refund. After ten hours I'm really pleased with the purchase and with the game.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by Apollo »

Thank you,Thank you, Thank you for such an in-depth rebuttal to the review I posted! This definitely looks like something I will be picking up soon, though I may start with just FOG II and add Empires in later. Thanks again!
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

Apollo wrote: Mon Jul 29, 2019 7:24 pm Thank you,Thank you, Thank you for such an in-depth rebuttal to the review I posted! This definitely looks like something I will be picking up soon, though I may start with just FOG II and add Empires in later. Thanks again!
You're welcome :D

By the way, your troops don't need a fleet to invade an island or cross a strait, they provide their own transportation. A war fleet provides protection if they are attacked on the water.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

Silly me, I also just realized you can merge land combat and water combat units into the same force. That way you don't have to rely on the timing of moving your war fleet into a sea region and defeating an enemy before your troop ships arrive. Of course I don't know how sea combat works with a merged fleet, but maybe I'll see how sometime.
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Re: Field of Glory: Empires

Post by jztemple2 »

The shitius has hit the fanium. As Rome, playing in Balanced Difficulty, I was going along pretty well. I'd conquered part of SE Gaul, all along the Adriatic on the Balkan peninsula and with an ongoing war with Macedonia I'd conquered the Greek regions. Then Macedonia started hitting back and I started losing regions. I figured I could raise enough troops and force Macedonia into a peace, but something happened first...

My Empire went from Old to Decadent :shock:. And then the civil wars started:
Image

See all those purple regions? One in Gaul, one area in Greece, the Dalmatian coast and northern Italy, and finally south-central Italy. Those are all areas where usurpers have overthrown the local legitimate Roman government. It's going to be a long slog ahead :roll:
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
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