Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

field of glory EMPIRES

Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Welcome to the first Field of Glory: Empires developer diary! We felt we ought to start off with a summary of what the game is, and what you can expect. We will be following on with detailed explanations in subsequent diaries.

FoG: Empires is a strategy game set in the Ancient World roughly from the fall of Alexander the Great’s empire. It seeks to provide strategic empire management together with the AGEOD staple of turn-based play and historical detail. We believe we have unique features to deliver these, while also remaining familiar and easy to understand for the fans of the genre.

Speaking of the features themselves, we certainly have plenty of them in Empires, closely interconnected with one another as it should be in a grand strategy game.

Screen_00000024.jpg


Region and population management. In Empires, the map is divided into Regions. Each region has its own population, represented by abstracted units. Each population unit has a culture (which can change) and a status – citizen or slave.

The regions can host a number of buildings depending on the level of population. We have a lot of different buildings in the game, both generic and nation-specific. There are a lot of possible synergies in building up your empire-wide infrastructure, but you do not have total control over what is available to build in a certain region at a given time. You will need to adapt to circumstances and make the best of it.

Every region also shows its major city/settlement on the map, which can be fortified via building choices to resist siege attempts by the enemy.

Finally, trade happens between regions. While it is automated, you will have a lot of influence over it via buildings and other choices.

We will talk about all this in detail in the next diary!

Screen_00000023.jpg


Battle system. Our battles are much more than just trying to pile up the most number of units in the same place. Unit abilities, quality, and leadership are decisive and will influence your approach to battles and how to conduct your wars. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your own forces and those of the enemy will decide the winner.

Progress and Decadence. This mechanic simulates the dynamics behind the rise and fall of empires. It has been tried in a few games before, but we believe our approach should please you, as it captures particularly well the momentum some countries can get, and the ebb and flow of successful empires trying to deal with their own success and with new challenges.

The details will be the topic of a separate developer diary. The gist of it is, that you will feel pressed to move your nation upward on the "ladder" of nations, but with moving ahead you are sowing the seeds for an eventual decline and possible collapse. A collapse that in turn can lead to a rebirth and restoration, or the start of something new. A fall is not inevitable, but it does not mean game over, either.

There are a lot more we want to cover (provinces, decisions, types of nations, etc), but we hope to have given you a general idea on what we are aiming for with the game.

Stay tuned for the next Diary!

Screen_00000025.jpg

http://www.matrixgames.com/news/2782/Field.of.Glory.Empires.Dev.Diary.#1.-.A.Brief.Overview
 

Maggot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
Messages
1,243
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Have they shown the export process? Seems cumbersome to switch between this game and FoG2 for battles.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Steam page:



Civilizations come and go; common men and kings they get covered by the dust of time in the same way. Monuments and wonders crumble under their own weight. But the cultural legacy is not bygone. Stories and tales about ancestors and their deeds pass through generations, the old knowledge is not lost forever. Soon, new societies, new kingdoms, new civilizations rise from the seeds of the ones which predated them. Decadence is not the end.

Will your legacy stand the test of time?

FoG-Empires_grand-strategy-game-button.jpg


Field of Glory: Empires is a grand strategy game in which you will have to move in an intricate and living tapestry of nations and tribes, each one with their distinctive culture.

Set in Europe and in the Mediterranean Area during the Classical Age, experience what truly means to manage an Empire.

FoG-Empires_decadence-concept_button.jpg


Expand your dominion through wars of conquest and make your culture a beacon of light, but be careful though. The risk of Decadence is not trivial. Many civilizations have collapsed for not having seen in time the signs of impending crisis. The older your empire, the more challenges will lurk in the shadows. Just expanding your borders without carefully shaping your form of government and culture won’t be the wisest of strategies.

manage.jpg

Manage your Empire on a scale that fits you: adjust all the details of an important region, form provinces to oversee your growing realm.

construct.jpg

Construct buildings to enhance your army, the life of your citizens, and the economy. Establish and grow a trade network of goods and resources.

battle.jpg

The battle system is not just about who brings the larger force. Army composition and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of you and your enemy are decisive, so is choosing wisely the battlefield and the general to lead your troops.

FoG2.jpg

And, if you want even more direct control, Field of Glory: Empires lets you export and load your battles into Field of Glory II and then load the results back into Field of Glory: Empires!

wego.jpg

War is decided not just by battles though, but also clever manoeuvres. Simultaneous (WEGO) turn resolution means thinking ahead to intercept – or to escape! – enemy armies will be essential. Field of Glory: Empires offers a living world where every decision has an impact on every actor.

multiplayer.jpg

And once you think you are ready to be challenged, play against real opponents in one of the largest asynchronous multiplayer system ever created.
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2014
Messages
1,563
Buried under the hype about FoGII-connection is the fact that this is also the first game on the new AGEOD engine. Hopefully performance and stability are better than in the old one, its games were often painful to play. (Pride of Nations being probably the worst offender)

Visually this seems somewhat generic, which is a shame considering the old games had very distinct and pleasant visuals.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661


you can export the battles to field of glory 2 and play them there,the games battles are too simplistic it seems.


The visuals on that trailer are very good but the sound effects look like they were yoinked from Fruity Loops trial version or something.

Also, I question going the Rome-route when Paradox is about to slam its big dick Rome game really soon here.
 

razvedchiki

Erudite
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,265
Location
on the back of a T34.
i guess they tried to hop on the paradoxe's rome marketing since they dont have any gold coins to spent themselfs.
well they have the player base of the aogeod and field of glories games so they could at least break even.
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #2 - Region Management, Population, Loyalty

During the next few weeks, we will aim to show how you manage a country in Field of Glory: Empires. So let’s get stuck in!

The map of FoG Empires is divided into Regions. Although as your realm grows you will be able to organise these into Provinces, Regions are where the game “happens” – your armies move from Region to Region, and your population, buildings, and trade are all linked to individual Regions



As you can see, the population part dominates the whole panel and it is in the middle while doing so, and for good reason. Their production determines what you get out of a region (although buildings affect this as well), and their loyalty determines if the region is in unrest. Their loyalty in turn is determined by their status and ethnicity. But more on that later!

The four rows of population show which production category they are assigned to. These are (as is also written to their right where total output is shown): Food, Infrastructure, Money, and Culture. Let’s look at these for a moment:

Food has three uses: feeding the existing population, population growth (when you have a surplus) and feeding armies in or adjacent to the region.

Infrastructure is used to construct buildings, and to maintain existing ones. As such, the more buildings you have, the more population units you will need to keep them up and running. You can also gain extra Infrastructure points from several buildings, but beware: a region can only have as many buildings as it has population units, so you need to make choices. Buildings themselves are a long and interesting subject so we will cover them separately.

Money might not buy you happiness, but it is useful for a great number of things. It is mainly used to recruit and maintain military units (especially mercenaries), but also a great deal of it may be needed to push through some of the Decisions available to your nation. Money, unlike the previous two, goes into your national stockpile, not the region’s.

Culture is probably the most abstract of the four. It represents an aggregate of cultural life, works of art, luxuries etc. While it does add to your national total Culture, it has both national and regional uses.

On the regional level, Culture reduces Unrest and helps keeping the local population content with your rule. There is a limit to that though, and for populous regions, you’ll need to boost loyalty with dedicated buildings.

Nationally, your overall Culture production drives your progress in the Progress & Decadence mechanics defining your nation’s age and status. This is a key and fairly unique system that we will be covering in a separate diary.

On the left of the population units, you can see the buildings in the region. These are organised into the same rows as the population are and they largely relate to the production row they are in, although not entirely. We have six building categories: the four outlined above plus Health and Military buildings.

To the right of population you see the aggregate of the region’s outputs. The four main ones we have just summarised. The other three resources are derived from your overall population level and your buildings. They concern military units:

Manpower and Metals are national resources that are required for the recruitment and maintenance of units. How much, depends on the unit type. As you might expect, armoured units require a lot of metal, whereas almost naked tribal warriors will not use that much.

Equipment is a regional resource and represents the region’s ability to equip and field new military units. It can be stockpiled (within limits) so you can gather up a reserve that will let you react to unforeseen challenges relatively quickly.

To finish summarising the general overview of the region panel, we should also mention the top row of the panel, which contains some general information (such as terrain, defence value, Loyalty) and icons of any good or ill conditions that apply to the region.

We have mentioned earlier how important a region’s population is, so let’s take a closer look at it.



A population unit in FoG Empires has three attributes: its Status, Ethnicity, and Unrest.

Status can be either Citizen or Slave. Citizens are your free population. They grow based on your Food production. Slaves are obtained via major battles, or events and Decisions. Citizens perform better when assigned to Money or Culture production. Slaves are very inefficient at those tasks, but they are more efficient than Citizens when it comes to Food or Infrastructure production.

Ethnicity is the cultural identity of the population unit. Each nation has a primary Ethnicity, and if the pop unit’s is different to this it affects its Unrest negatively, especially if the nation in question is at war with the pop unit’s perceived brethren (i.e. a country with a primary Ethnicity matching the population’s). Population units can, in time, convert to their region’s majority Ethnicity (only true for citizens).

Unrest shows how dissatisfied the population unit is with their lot in life. As mentioned, this is affected by Ethnicity but also by the region’s overall Loyalty rating, which is derived from a number of national and regional factors. In fact, let’s have a closer look at it!



Regional Loyalty is one of the cornerstones of the game, because it meshes with others major features, like progress and decadence, army recruitment, supply, and productivity. Usually at start, loyalty is not a major issue (except for the Seleucids and a few other nations). That’s because your starting regions are of the same ethnicity as your nation’s government, plus the population is not so high that the bored citizens demand too much from the state.

As you expand, and as time passes, you’ll probably conquer new regions, and they might be populated by citizens from another ethnicity group than yours. Say you are Rome and past Italy, you start conquering Gaul. Gaul is made of Celts, and Rome ethnicity is Italic. This alone will make the subdued population much more restless. With some effort and the passing of time, you might convert them (shall we say Romanize?) to your ethnicity, but it won’t happen quickly. Slaves too have an ethnicity, and they are never converted, so expect troubles from a massive influx of German slaves for example.

In addition to that, each of your national citizens, when your main cities grow bigger, will demand more and more from the state, and this translates to an increase in their unrest, which in turn can lead to revolts. As you can guess though, you have several possibilities to fight off unrest. A major one is to build loyalty-boosting buildings. Some are rather virtuous in their use, like the line of religious buildings, which provide a moderate loyalty boost and an increased chance of converting the local population to your ethnicity. But for larger effects, it will be required to build structures like an arena, a gambling ring, a pleasure house, a noble district, and many more. And in the short term, they are doing exactly what you need, they will up the regional loyalty quite a lot. All is well, right?

Not so. In the long run they distil their poison… They will produce a bit of decadence over time. Which in turn will perhaps make your nation regress and have larger issues, like a civil war! But we will talk more about Progress & Decadence in another diary, as this is a major feature of our game, with a quite original approach.

Thanks for your time, we will continue explaining the game’s regional-level features next week!

Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #3 - Buildings

One of the pillars of Empires is how regions, the basic geographical unit are handled. Regions are at the heart of the game and managing them properly will make or undo whole nations.

We have already mentioned that regions have a population, split into different ‘population units’ and the buildings constructed in the region. Today we will speak of buildings, as they are every bit as important as the citizens and slaves of your regions, if not more even!

Buildings are both a complementing to population, as they too can produce resources (money, manpower, metal, etc.) and have unique properties and aspects which complement each other and affects every sector of the game. Indeed, you can bet that with around 400 different buildings, there is one for each situation, from a mundane cattle ranch, to a more impressive trade emporium, to the complicated (in its usage, not its understanding) Black Market with its variety of intriguing effects.But before digging into some of the benefits they offer (and we won’t give a comprehensive list there, because of the sheer magnitude of possibilities), lets talk of how they are built, as this is a gameplay mechanism that diverges from what you usually encounter in most strategy games since the beginning of the (computer-gaming) world and Sid Meier’s Civilization I appeared at the dawn of it.

Upon selecting a region and clicking on the build structure button, you will get the construction panel to pop-up, that might look like this one:



As you can see, there are 6 buildings categories: Agriculture, Health, Infrastructure, Military, Commerce, Culture. For each of these categories, a choice is offered to you, in the form of a specific building. The list is far from being random though, although there is a random element as to what choices are available. What you are shown heavily depends of what you have already built in the region (including whether you opted to specialize the region or not?). What is the current population. If the region is a plain, in forest, bordering a sea. What is your government, your ethnicity. And so on.

As you know, having meaningful choices is at the core of a good strategy game. Here too, you’ll have to weigh and decide which building you want the most from the 6 you have available. Will you want a wall to be built, because those pesky tribal raiders find your land such a pleasant place to be? Do you prefer to prioritize a ranch, to increase your food production while producing cattle you want to export? Choices … And they will be at times very difficult to make because intrinsically, all buildings provide benefits!



And as soon as you have finished your current buildings, all choices are reshuffled. So the improved walls you wanted, and the less desired commercial harbor might not reappear the next time (rest assured, they are still there and the option is not lost for ever!). To help you decide and handle your construction plans, you have a few tools at your disposal though. First, you always see the complete list of possible buildings, for each category. This helps you to decide and plan ahead. Second, there is a reshuffle button, for the time where none of the buildings are what you want. The Reshuffle action don’t cost a lot and will probably be done in 1 to 2 turns in your region (and the code is smart enough to not propose again the same buildings as the previous list). Finally, you get another tool through a National Decision (more on that later) that will force the focus of your nation to particular types of buildings among several categories.

So in the end, you have substantial control over what your regions will be made of, but this control is not complete. Hopefully you’ll come to appreciate this system, as it prevents players from being stuck doing always the same things in most of their regions (and that’s also why you get so many different buildings).



To help you picture how diverse the buildings are, we will provide a few examples.

The Vineyard is an agricultural building generating some income, plus the Wine trade good, that can be used by your own taverns and palaces or exported for profit to your neighbors. It is restricted to warm climates though.

The Sanitation system is a Health building. As such, it will speed up population growth and prevent (most of the time) bad events like disease and plague in the region. It can be upgraded to a Sewer network.

The Shrine to Epona is a military building, a building only available to Celtic nations. It will improve slightly the cavalry units recruited in the region, and should you manage to build the 4 different Celtic shrines in a region, then you are in for a nice surprise (some games would name that a ‘finisher bonus’).

The Gambling Ring is a culture building (yes, it’s culture, as in ‘entertainment’!). In addition to providing some income, it will raise the loyalty in the region. Alas it has a drawback, one shared with many loyalty-boosting buildings: turn after turn it will add a bit of decadence to your nation. But rest assured, not too much, nothing to worry about, really…

The Land Expansion is a rather special building that provides more room for even more buildings in the region (because you have a limit on the number of structures based on your population amount, this one increases it nicely).

The Satrape Palace is a provincial palace. We will talk about Provinces in another diary, and each has a palace acting as the provincial capital. But the Satrape Palace, a building unique to the Seleucids does a few other things. As a drawback, it costs a lot (and really a lot!) to maintain, to represent how easily the appointed governors (former generals of Alexander the Great for many) adopted the extravagant life style of the Persian empire. But it has benefits too: It allows the levying of powerful local militias, should the region be under attack. If not, then it provides free units to the national army of the King of Kings.

We will end up there, with this Seleucid Palace. That’s a tier II building, i.e. a building that is a bit more complex and involved than tier I buildings, like the vineyard, the cattle ranch and so on. We will let you discover the variety of effects of tier III buildings in-game, including the national unique and world wonders we have for you. In the meantime, stay tuned!

Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #4 - Commerce and Trading

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Empires dev diaries. This week, we will talk about trading and commerce, and how buildings are very important in relation to this.

As you might remember from our previous diary on buildings, they provide a lot of opportunities and benefits. But many will need trading goods to work to their full capacity. They will still function even if the trading good is not available, but you’ll pay a hefty sum each turn, to simulate the convoluted ways by which you manage to get a trickle of the precious trade good. For some buildings, this is sometimes worthwhile as they might be instrumental in how you have setup your empire, but in other cases you will be better to disable or destroy the building.

So … trade goods! There are a lot around, something like 50 or so. Some are naturally produced in regions, and you don’t have to do much to gain access to them, even if by themselves they won’t generate any benefits (you would still need an appropriate building for that). Here, we are talking of wood, stone and the like. Some are manufactured, like pottery, clothes, weapons, sails. And a third category are imported resources, which are produced by another region or country (although as you can guess, these too are either natural or manufactured).



Buildings will often need a trade good. Some good examples would be a spinning mill, in need of cotton (or flax). A mint would need gold, and stables would need horses. This will generate trade between your region, where the structure is, and an exporting region. And, depending of how good your nation is at commerce, the exporting nation can be a neighbor, someone on the other side of the sea or one of your own regions (if it has the trade good obviously). The whole process is automated, and you don’t have to worry about who can provide what, as given the scope of the map and the possible size of your empire, this would become daunting to handle, and then, to put it simply, a source of tedium. Now, we did not say it was done randomly. There is a measure of your trading efficiency, named ‘Trade Acumen’, which will be used when there is competition between several potential sources of supply. As you can guess, your internal trade is much favored here, as well as trade with your allies. But sometime, a powerful trading nation, like Carthage, will literally snatch trading opportunities and get richer from doing this. And that’s how you end up with Carthaginian olive oil in Rome while some Sicilian farmers are discontented!



Trade Acumen is something you can improve though, either at your national level, with the right decisions and a proficient ruler, or at the local level, by building trade ports, paved roads, trading centers. All in all, trading is a smooth process in which you can gain significant money, while providing your buildings with what they need. Now, sometimes, trade is not a possibility or is too difficult to achieve, so you’ll want to inspect the ledger and see where the nearest source of iron is and then snatch it from the hands of its current owner…

You might think that’s all about trading, but definitively no! Because having a good availability of trading goods is much more useful than just having your buildings work without an extra fee. Trading goods also play a very important part in what the buildings will themselves produce. This is done through the mechanism of bonus trade goods. An example will probably be the quickest way to convey how it works.



Let’s take a fairly advanced building, the Thermes, in which your citizens will wash, relax and gossip. The Thermes are a healthcare building, and as such give a health bonus in the region, which speeds up population growth while protecting (partially) against diseases. By itself it requires no trading good to work smoothly. But, should you happen to have, either in the region it is in, or an adjoining region, marble or perfume, then you’ll gain extra culture and money from the building, as it operates much more efficiently, being now so beautiful and sophisticated! So playing and optimizing these bonuses, although definitively not mandatory to get a good game and win, is one way of getting the most out of your nation. And this might be mandatory, if you like to play at a high difficulty level or against live opponents. For some, this will be the pleasure of enjoying the ‘mind game’ that this kind of gameplay demands, finding the right supply chain and combining buildings so that one needs a resource that will then be further used by another, etc. A game in a game, for those minded to paying close attention!



And so, to sum up, the surface of trading and commerce will feel simple and easy for newcomers, and it is, as everything works by itself. But when you start delving into the numerous buildings, the goods they need and the goods that would provide extra bonuses, you get a quite rich system, strongly tied to the general economy.

Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #5 Governments and Rulers

Hi and welcome to the 5th developer diary for Empires, our upcoming grand strategy game set in the Ancient Era.

Governments come and go, but nations stay. Well not always, these too can disappear in Empires, although we will only brush lightly on this subject today, as it will be the topic on our 6th diary when we turn our attention to culture and decadence!

Still, governments in Empires are a fundamental part of how your nation operates. They are sorted in 3 levels, that we call ‘Civilization Levels’. Within each level, 5 possible governments exist. At the very bottom in development, your nation can be a tribal horde or a tyranny. Perhaps a sect even! Then as you progress, your nation can transform, for example, into a Republic, a City-State. Finally, upon reaching the last level of civilization, you can become an Empire or a Federation!

And all this is not just cosmetic, as you can guess. Each government has specific traits also called modifiers, and there are dozens possible. A City-State might have a bonus in commerce, while a Monarchy allows more experienced troops to be trained in your barracks. Combining these traits with other possible modifiers derived from your ruler (or political party for Republican Rome and Carthage), so that each state ends with a very diverse profile, and these can work together or, on the contrary, can help to offset a specific penalty.

This means that most of the time you’ll see that a clear identity is created for a nation, through its government, its ruler and its national modifiers. For example, Carthage is a merchant oligarchy and has some good bonuses for trading and commerce. On the other hand, it has great difficulties in levying en masse its citizenry, so it will have to rely on mercenaries to compensate for this lack of manpower. But Carthage being Carthage, the national treasury should be sufficient to recruit quite a lot!



Then there is your ruler. He too comes with modifiers related to his profile. Here again, there is a wealth of possibilities and rulers are generated randomly for near infinite combinations. Rest assured though, there is a sound logic applied when a ruler is generated, and mutually antagonistic traits won’t appear. You can then end up with a good administrator which is also a reformer (if you are lucky). But on the other side of the coin, should you be unlucky, a depraved and cowardly king is always a possibility! This will in turn greatly influence what you’ll do with your nation. For example, some rulers will allow easier conquest, either through giving a bonus to your military or how well they can administer the new conquered, unruly, regions. But some will cripple and syphon away your money or will negotiate so badly that a war might erupt from their blunders (try coming at the negotiation table and insulting a tyrant, see how it goes!).



Another important strand in this multi-layered approach to your nation profile is your government status, which is strongly tied to progress and decadence. Over time, your government will have a change of status and might become stable, old, decadent even? This, in turn, will influence how you can play your nation and can even influence when and how your ruler dies! Perhaps you’ll then wish ‘good riddance’ to the old fool who was ruling your nation if he decides now is a good time to wrestle a bear in an arena!



Next week, you’ll see how governments mesh together with culture and decadence to create the sense of ‘rise and decline’ for your nation. Stay tuned!

Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #6 - Culture and Decadence

One key feature in Empires is how it deals with the progress and decline of nations. This impacts how your empire will evolve in a major way and is a focal point for gameplay.

Practically, these mechanics first act as a limit on simply conquering as fast as possible as it is hard to assimilate your new gains without increasing your decadence. Thus your quickly acquired Empire might be impressive but will probably prove to be ephemeral. The new territories will be unruly, and in turn this can cause large issues for your government and ruler. However, decadence is not just a problem for the over-ambitious conqueror, it will affect almost every nation over time, no matter how grand, making long term stability a real challenge. Once you pass into relative decline, citizen loyalty will drop, civil wars and revolts will become more common making the risk of major collapse very real.

Of course, even if this does happen, your previous greatness will have generated a lot of legacy (a topic for another diary), ensuring your reputation lasts – and that you have a good chance of winning the game despite your current problems. In Empires, with this ebb and flow, and added difficulty in maintaining stable large nations, nothing is a given.

As you all know, the Roman Empire had its times of crisis, some minor, some more serious, to the point that it was, sometimes, on the edge of collapse much earlier than the date it did collapse historically. But it recovered, more or less, several times and the Western part lasted centuries, until 476 CE. All the while, it managed to expand from Scotland to Mesopotamia. And yet, over time it suffered many civil wars, usurpers and rampant inflation.



This is what we aim to simulate, albeit in perhaps a gentler, less frustrating way, in Empires! We want you to consider, seriously, that your nation is a complex, fragile construct. If you manage it well through several simple yet subtle mechanisms, then -- most of the time – things will be all right. If you throw caution to the wind, by conquering rabidly and neglecting the welfare of your citizens, then there will be an internal reaction that sends your nation into turmoil and revolts.

Ok after this long preamble focusing on the core design principle, let’s get practical! One of the very important measures of the progress of your nation is the Culture of each region. It comes from assigning your population to the Culture task, supplemented by your buildings. As with other types of ‘production’, this can be further modified by traits at the national level, from your ruler, government, etc. At the national level, there can also be events that change how much culture you generate. An artistically minded ruler can lead to benefits across the nation.

Culture is pivotal to the game, because it serves many purposes. The most straightforward and direct usage is ‘welfare’, a bonus to loyalty, which you get if you have population assigned to Culture production. Thus you can offset unrest by placing your population in ‘unproductive’ (compared producing food or money) activities. There is a limit to how much bonus to loyalty you can get from welfare, so this tool has its limits, but it works well as a ‘first line of defense’ against discontented and demanding citizens.

Because, as you might have guessed, citizens, and population in general, are not always fully happy with their condition. The more numerous the population of a region is, the lower the loyalty will be, due to citizens expecting services, welfare and entertainment. Slaves bring different challenges in this respect compared to citizens. They, oddly enough, want to change their condition by revolting, or at least escaping. This too lowers the overall loyalty in the region. And when loyalty is too low, you can get revolts, either from the slaves, or from the citizens. They might even turn back to their former nation or master, if they are not from your main ethnicity. People are so ungrateful!



The second, slightly less direct use of Culture, is to fight off Decadence. Decadence in the game appears under several conditions. First, as your government grows older, some decadence appears over time. Second, when your nation grows and conquers other people, you get extra decadence, coming from the turmoil and instability of having to assimilate new territories. And then you have what your nation is made of, its infrastructure. Some buildings are very nice and will greatly help you, but they come with the cost of generating decadence over time.

And so, you have on one side the overall culture of your nation, and on the other side its decadence level, giving you a ratio between them. If the ratio is good, you are a nation that is progressing in terms of civilization.

This ratio is compared to all the other nations in the game and will place you into one of three ‘tiers’. At the top, you have momentum and perhaps you might even be qualified as being glorious, like the ‘Glorious Roman Empire’. Then there are other nations that are in the middle of the chart. For them, nothing special. They can go either way. And then there are the ones losing ground, in term of progress. For those in the bottom tier if they do nothing to deal with their problems, bad things will happen.

All of these effects are very gradual. You don’t switch from being a young and dynamic empire to a crumbling kingdom made of senile senators and pampered citizens in a few years. You’ll have time to react and adjust, but doing so may demand considerable effort though!



All this leads to the status and civilization level of your nation.

Your status can be ‘young’, ‘stable’, ‘glorious’, ‘old’ or ‘decadent’. Civilization level gives the tier of your government. For example the Republic is a civilization level II government, as is the Monarchy. And an Empire is a tier III government. Status and Civilization level are combined, depending of your progress in civilization and how decadent you are. It is entirely possible to be the ‘Glorious Roman Republic’ but later on the ‘Decadent Roman Republic’. It will depend on how well you handle the progress and decadence of your nation.



There are rewards from being a nation progressing through the civilization levels. As time passes, if you maintain a glorious status long enough, then you might evolve to a new civilization level. And this is how the Republic might transform to an Empire for Rome! And then if you are already at the top civilization level, being again Glorious has its own reward, with the fabled Golden Age!

So we talked about how nice it is to have significant culture in your nation. We also spoke of Decadence and how it is gained. Rest assured, you also have some tools to remove decadence, even if they are rarer. First, when you manage to make your nation evolve, moving from young to stable, or even from a civilization level to another, you remove half of the accumulated age of your government, which automatically will remove quite a lot of decadence. Then when you conquer a region, over time turmoil will recede and this will in turn remove some decadence. And then a few buildings will remove decadence over time, like an Academy for example. But for the most part, the more powerful buildings tend to have some drawbacks…

This is where we have almost come full circle back to our loyalty issue we talked about initially (as you can see the game features mesh with one another). It won’t be possible, if you want large populous regions, to fight off disloyalty only with the welfare bonus from culture. You’ll need something else. It happens that we have a lot of buildings in the game (400). Several of these (circuses, gambling rings, theaters, noble districts, brothels, monuments, gladiator arenas, etc) will greatly boost loyalty in your region. In a very ‘panem et circus’ way of the Romans (we want bread and games!). The only issue with these buildings is that they generate decadence over time. And so we are back to the problem of fighting off decadence.

We said earlier that we did not want to be too punishing and frustrating, it’s a game after all. Depending of your difficulty level and rate of expansion, it will be entirely possible for a player paying some attention to his empire to avoid the more acute crisis that struck the roman empire (civil wars mainly). But you’ll have to make choices and be watchful of your expansion rate and how your citizens feel. Failing that, a usurper is always around the corner!

As you can guess the AI nations too are subject to this ebb and flow of progress and decadence. This makes for a rather dynamic map where empires expand, splinter and reform. Some nations can even be reborn because their old master is crumbling in decadence! So there are opportunities to grab desirable regions, if you see that your neighbor is rife with internal problems…
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #7 Provinces

Scaling up your Empire: Provinces

One of the common issues for strategy games is moving from a small nation with a handful of things to do per turn to a bigger one with dozens of decisions to make. What was fun and thrilling in the early game, like deciding if you want to build a cattle ranch or a sawmill becomes more mundane. And yet, sometimes for specific reasons, you still want to check, as the wise ruler you are, what’s going on in a precise location.

Many games try to create tools for this reduction in micro-management. But most if not all adopt a ‘forced approach’, where at some point the game tries very hard to make you do things in a very specific way. In Empires we decided that you can eat your cake and sell it too … with Provinces!

Provinces are a grouping of regions, the basic geographical unit in the game. You can create a province when you have at least 51% of the regions belonging to the same provincial area. These are fixed on purpose, because they are grouped logically and historically. Plus, there are a few perks attached to them, like a regional unit. For example, the Sicilia province is made of 5 regions, the ones making up Sicily plus Melita (Malta). In our case, having 3 of these 5 regions allows you to create the province.

The-Syrtica-province-needs-at-least-one-extra-region-to-be-formed,-but-they-are-held-by-the-Garamantes.jpg


At this point many of you will think: “I don’t want to create a province and have my precious regions handled by the AI”. And some might add say, “by the stupid AI”

So let’s talk about eating your cake, and selling it. Twice! First, we adopted a reverse approach to how other games try to reduce micro-management. Creating a province provides bonuses. Not creating provinces mean you don’t get bonuses, but you don’t suffer any penalty. If you don’t want to create any province, then that’s fine, have it your way. But you’ll want to create them, believe us.

One of the reasons is that when regions are handled at the province level there is no mandatory automation. A region, as part of a province, can still be accessed and have all his population reshuffled to your liking, and you can order the buildings it should construct as before. But should you don’t want to do that, then you can use the Province panel to decide what the governor AI should do. For population and for buildings (one set of options for each), you can decide that the focus should be on a job (like producing more money, or constructing extra agriculture buildings). You can also decide to have the governor try to balance production with the needs. Here, the not-that-stupid AI will take into consideration the need at the region level, for each region, and at the national level. So for example if you have a severe lack of money, then clicking on balancing will result in more population than usual put into the money-making job.

Holding-this-province-provides-African-War-Elephants.jpg


The AI will also check your upkeep, so as not to overbuild structures that you would have trouble maintaining. It is even capable of checking which of the regions have particular bonuses and have them focus on something specifically. If you look at this screenshot, I have requested a balancing of production for Sicilia. And yet you see we are far from having the population split evenly within each region. For example, Melita has a lot of people in infrastructure. If you checked Melita specifically, you would see that the region is the one with the biggest Infrastructure bonus within the whole province!

So all in all, we believe these AI governors do quite a decent job. We will be honest (sometime it pays off ), the AI is not equal to a veteran player who can fine tune everything each turn. But it plays like a competent opponent…

As you see, Province management has never been so easy. You can automate in different ways, including handling everything manually. But there is more. There are province-specific bonuses.

A Province pools some of its resources and then redistributes them either equally (for food), or where it is needed (for infrastructure). So for food, it means that regions with poor land (like a mountain or an underdeveloped forest region) will benefit from the food sent by other regions, within the province, helping them grow. Also, if you have large body of troops, it might be difficult sometimes to sustain them from a single region. With a province, supply will arrive from several regions, easing the logistic challenge of feeding your army.

As for infrastructure, all regions can help the process of creating new buildings, so you end up with your structures built much faster, in a more focused way. And again, you might use this trick to funnel infrastructure from powerful regions to a poor one, helping it develop much faster.

Melita-is-the-region-with-the-biggest-infrastructure-bonus,-so-citizens-are-more-productive-in-this-task.jpg


Recruitment is also handled at the provincial level. Each province has a provincial palace, and this is the place where all units are recruited. And each province has its own special ‘provincial unit’ that you would not have access too otherwise. For example the Africa province (centered around Carthago) would provide African War Elephants, to any nation holding it. Or Crete will allow the famous Cretan slingers…

All in all, we have tried with provinces to provide you the tools so that your games scale up well when your empire grows, while staying as discreet and unobtrusive as possible, for people who like to micro-manage. We hope that you’ll come to appreciate our Province system as much as we do!

Rome-at-this-stage-can-recruit-no-less-than-4-legions-at-once-in-Rome,-as-Latium-produces-a-lot-of-military-build-points.jpg
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
Combat needs to be exported to their other game?

No.
It can be exported to their other game, with very good battle engine and decent enough AI.

It's a ctually a nice feature to have, if they enable realtively easy files export, people will tempted to play at least the important major battles.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Decadence system and civilisational status sounds like a more interesting anti-blobbing mechanism than what Paradox have been doing (aggressive expansion mega alliances that collapse after ten minutes anyway). Considering how excellent the Field of Glory II battle system is this could turn out very, very good indeed.
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #8 Legacy

Winning the Game

In Empires, you are building your nation so that it endures the passage of time, and your achievement is measured through the legacy you’ll leave, even if in the end, your nation is no more.

There are several ways to achieve this goal of being first in Legacy. It’s not just something to be only achieved by conquering part of the map, although that approach remains a possibility, rest assured.

If you take a military approach, then you’ll want to plan your campaigns so that you conquer and hold your objective regions. These regions are set for each nation and represent loosely their historical progress or areas of interest. Some nations will have objectives set in a concentric way, around their capital, so they will expand outward in each direction.

Other nations have several possible ‘tracks’ to follow, and when they get an objective in one of the tracks, then they are provided with another. For example, Rome has a track that represents its progress against Carthage, including Spain and Africa. Another track will let the Republic fight Epirus, Macedon and then go to Asia Minor, and so on.

Another possible approach to gaining Legacy is to make your regions very cultured, so that they produce legacy points by themselves. There are two levels here, and both demand substantial investment in the right buildings and decisions with the second level being quite a challenge to achieve. But if you devote your nation to the creation of prestigious buildings, it’s a possibility.

Some-nations-can-get-Legacy-Points-through-special-features.-For-example-Ptolemy-can-have-a-bonus-if-he-controls-a-large-fleet.jpg


Yet another option is to pursue actively those national decisions that provide Legacy Points. These can include domestic reforms, or mounting a far away expedition to the border of the known world.

A final way to generate legacy is to try enduring the difficulty of managing a nation past its glory. Like Sparta perhaps, that clung to life for centuries well beyond its climax. This has no doubt left a lasting impression to the future generations, as few people know nothing about Sparta, even nowadays. Practically speaking, when your government is old or decadent, each turn you manage to survive the vicissitudes happening to your nation, then a significant amount of Legacy Points will be given.

Syracusae-is-an-objective-for-Carthage.-Once-it-is-conquered,-the-next-one-will-probably-be-in-the-boot-of-Italy.jpg


If you can build, and sustain, a substantial legacy lead it is possible to win the game before its actual end-date of 190 CE. This might reward a high risk strategy where you try to gain legacy quickly and accept the inevitable problems such a focus will bring. A modern equivalent of the traditional Spartan instruction to ‘return with your shield or on it’? Equally possessing substantial amounts of legacy will help you during the game as there are a number of rewards to being seen as an impressive state by your contemporaries.

The-heart-of-the-Seleucids-empire-is-made-of-several-regions-that-are-quite-cultured-but-they-generate-also-some-decadence.jpg


So the game is much more about painting the map in your color. Even if in the end all nations are trying to generate more legacy than their rivals, you can still get these points from different approaches, although admittedly it is probably better to try a balanced approach perhaps with a focus on one.

The-old-monarchy-has-troubles-ruling-his-subjects.-On-the-other-hand,-being-on-the-verge-of-decadence-produces-some-decent-legacy-by-itself.jpg
 

Morkar Left

Guest
Really interested or even cautiously excited for a full turnbased global strategy in the roman times AND the possibility to fight out battles in a complete extra engine :bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:
 
Joined
Jan 16, 2017
Messages
136
Seems pretty inclined, we will see. I like so much that they include populations and ethnicities even in a simple way. Also culture, decadence and legacy mechanics could be great. I hope that as seems to be, no fixed groups of provinces were made, but only the flow of the factions in more or less accurate small regions, because usually the provincial groups and regions are extremely unhistoric and misplaced in strategy games. I hope smaller territories aren't too bad named or placed, and mod support to be great

"Iberians" weren't where the initial factions map seems to mark... not even remotelly: Iberia core at was Iberian peninsula easter coast, mostly around Valencia-South Catalonia, with some sort of expansion towards north (the rest of Catalonia, Southern France) and south (Murcia, the Easternmost part of Andalusia):

Iberia_300BC-en.svg
 

razvedchiki

Erudite
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,265
Location
on the back of a T34.
Theoritically this could be a great game,AOGEOD makes excellent operational type games and siltherine has an excellent turn based combat engine.
What troubles me is how the games unit types will translate into the field of glory 2 game,ie in empires the heavy infantry of the romans is one unit called legion-in field of glory 2 there are the 3 usual ones hastati/principes/triarii.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
You tend to command a lot, lot more than say seven units in even a medium point battle in Field of Glory (usually about 20+) so I wouldn't be surprised if one legion -> one hastati, one princepes, one triarii in the field.
 

razvedchiki

Erudite
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,265
Location
on the back of a T34.
Yes but they have as a legion the same stats,but the 3 different battle lines were different in experience/equipment.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom