Armageddon Empires: Post-Apoc Turn-Based Strategy

<strong>[ Announcement ]</strong>

<p>There's a new contender in the indie turn-based strategy arena and it's a post-apocalyptic sci-fi title. <a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/AE/armageddon_empires.html" target="_blank"><strong>Armageddon Empires</strong></a> by <a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/" target="_blank">Cryptic Comet</a> has just been released and is available to anyone with $29.95 in their pocket. Here's the details:</p><blockquote><p>Turn based strategy game in a post-apocalyptic setting versus 1 to 3 AI opponents.

Hexagonal maps depicting the ravaged wastes of earth circa 2345 featuring 3 map sizes ranging from normal to huge.

4 playable factions each with unique units, art and playing styles.

Over 75 faction heroes lead your armies into battle. Heroes allow for larger, more effective armies and have their own special abilities that can change the tide of battle or even create new weapons and technology cards.

Over 200 unique units wage battle across the savage landscape; command infantry, cyborgs, robots, powered battle armor, armor, artillery, mecha, biomecha and many more.

Over 80 unique special abilities for heroes and units; abilities like multi-targeting, shock attack, double attack, fanatic, military genius and valor allow you to find exciting combos of play just like you would in a collectible card or miniatures game.

Collectible card game flavor without the expense. Each hero, unit or facility is a card that can be added to your play deck.

Board game mechanics. Roll a unit&rsquo;s attack die versus another unit&rsquo;s defense die and play special abilities and cards to alter the results.

Assassinate enemy heroes, sabotage enemy facilities, gather intelligence through espionage and stealth, hunt down enemy heroes and hold them prisoner.

Drop thermonuclear weapons on your enemies or load out your units with tactical nuke cards created by your leading technologists.

Customizable game parameters allow you to select deck point values, tile point values, map size, resource rarity, specials rarity, and victory conditions

Challenging goal based AI agents see the same game you do and must gather intelligence, build armies and formulate plans just like you: &ldquo;No cheating.&rdquo; </p></blockquote><p>Find out more about the game at the developer's <a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/blog/" target="_blank">blog</a>. Or, better yet, download the <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/AEDemo/ArmEmpiresDemoSetup.exe" target="_blank">59 mb demo</a> and <a href="http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/AE/AEManual.pdf" target="_blank">pdf manual</a>.
</p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.wargamer.com/">The Wargamer</a></p>

 

Seems like it could be fun enough. The time limit and card selection in the demo is too crippling to find out for sure though. $30 is a weird price point. It's fair for a game like this, but enough that I need to know I'll like it. I'll risk $20 on a game with potential, but not $30.

Watching die tumble around for 10 seconds just to see who goes first each turn is stupid fucking waste of time, and the interface adds extraneous steps to several things.

 

The demo is useless.. first game I didn't even encounter anyone to fight by turn 20. Second time I had one fight, that happened just at turn 20 (and never fully played out). The dice rolling also bugged me, they should just skip it and show the result.

My main issue tho, is that they seemingly built it with Macromedia Director - probably explaining it's clunky scrolling and lack of tool tips, etc. It also means it can't run in a window, or alt-tab nicely - minor point, but I quite like running games like this, that way.

Overall though, looks quite interesting. I really like the look of the setting (and I love the portraits - remind me of dune2), but there's too many little UI niggles and too little shown in the demo for me to be sold just yet.

 

I'm a sucker for the post apoc setting and enjoy these kinds of games so I'll probably buy it tomorrow and check it out. Reminds me a little bit of Star Chamber with the CCG elements.

I'll post up my impressions of the game if I end up picking it up.

 

Yeah, please do.

 

Ok so I picked up the game and played it through a couple of times, so here is my early review.

The game is something like Settlers of Catan meets Mad Max. Very much board game oriented and 4X (explore, expand, exterminate, exploit) style gameplay.

I won't go into too much detail about gameplay because you can get a good idea from the demo and reading the manual, which is available on the website. Unfortunately the demo is a bit short at 20 turns - in the games I played this is where it started to get interesting with more battles and manouvering against the enemy.

You build and recruit almost everything from a "deck" of cards - with four races and a heap of different cards there's alot of different strategies available to win the game. For example you can go for light elite recon infantry supported by precision airstrikes or a more brute force approach with tanks, artillery and tactical nukes.

At the start of the game you start with a measly resource income and the goal is to spread out across the map capturing resource points and developing some infrastructure so you can afford the heavier hitting units.

The art in the game is great especially considering the large number of units - it really ads to the atmosphere of the game. If you're a fan of the post apoc style (Fallout is obviously a big influence on the game) you'll love the artwork.

Too early to tell if the AI is any good. It seemed to be actiing in a reasonable manner - attacking when it was strong and retreating when it was weak, etc. Because the game is a solitaire game this will make or break the game in the long run. Will probably take a couple of weeks to really get a feel for how the AI plays. Apparently the developer has built the game from the ground up with AI in mind and has put alot of effort into making the AI play well.

I'm a bit baffled as to why the game doesn't support hotseat or some kind of multiplayer, the game structure seems to be perfect for it. Maybe this is the ace up the sleeve for the sequel?

Summary - check it out if you're a fan of post apoc and 4X games. Good to support indie developers and the game has Vault 13 as a buildable structure!

 

I've forked out for the full game too - it really is nice. I'm not usually into card based games, but am finding it extremely addictive.

Further to what Recruit has said; the AI is pretty good in my exp. I've been caught out quite a few times, it likes exploiting weakness in your defences (and is esp good at using agents to fuck you over). Here's a scenario showing how devious it can be:

I had a firebase, very heavily defended - but only one AA unit. It got attacked twice by the AI land forces, both times I won. Next thing I knew it had sent in a gunship, it got shot down by AA unit - next turn it sends in a precision bomber and targets the AA unit - blowing it up, then sends in conventional bombers to target my stronger units (doing a lot of damage). It kept this up for a few turns then steam rolled in with a strong landforce

Only real flaw is that I haven't yet seen them attempt to retreat from combat, even when it's in their interest - hopefully it will be fixed in a patch. Worth noting he has already released a quick patch, and is taking on-board input from players. Fast dice rolls are now in, as are quite a few other tweaks, like roll over info for cards (very handy). The demo has also been updated and now has 30+ turns, which shows it off a lot better. Still wish it had MP and a windowed mode though.

There's a few threads on wargamer/quartertothree with input from the dev, for those who may be interested.

 

New patch out today.Never played a card based game before but I am having a lot of fun with this one.