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FIELD OF GLORY: KINGDOMS!!

Sinilevä

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Yay, we get a preview ! & to see what DasTactic actually looks like (a bald friendly nerd, who would have thought...) :


Interesting, but it looks like mechanically it's almost the same as Empires with an addition of some characters, authority instead of culture and some changes to trade(no more bonuses from adjacent provinces.) Hopefully they fixed the diplomacy, so no more buying the entire countries with a couple of thousand gold coins.
 

Dwarvophile

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Yay, we get a preview ! & to see what DasTactic actually looks like (a bald friendly nerd, who would have thought...) :


Interesting, but it looks like mechanically it's almost the same as Empires with an addition of some characters, authority instead of culture and some changes to trade(no more bonuses from adjacent provinces.) Hopefully they fixed the diplomacy, so no more buying the entire countries with a couple of thousand gold coins.

Yes so there's this authority system instead of decadence, and I didn't look into that in detail but it doesn't seem to be impacted by your conquests. And yes, a dynastic character system which is a nice addition and I thought was missing in the first. Kingdom management seems as good as in FOG empires. And there's no changes in the combat system which was already p good anyway. There's also a 3h long livestream on Das channel, so maybe a longer playthrough and oppôrtunity to see if there are changes in diplomacy.
 
Last edited:

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Currently a bundle medieval + kingdoms on sale for 40€. Is it worth a buy?
I obviously cannot comment on the newest iteration, but I had a blast playing FOG:Empire with FOG2 for major battles (don't do it for uneven battles, though, as these are much less interesting to play).
That said, you can get Medieval for even less with the current sale on Fanatical (and even first get Medieval for a couple of bucks, then get FOG:Kingdoms if you want for a total of 30+whatever you paid medieval).
 

thesecret1

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Playing this right now (kingdoms + medieval) and having a blast, albeit I'm still only very early in. So far it's basically Total War, except it's good instead of shit, and with much more depth in virtually every department.
 

Beowulf

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Yes, it's a really good building focused strategy, and a brilliant total war game when paired with the tactics module.
For the tactical battles you need only the bare FoG Medieval, without any DLC's, and you can get the core game for peanuts now.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yes, it's a really good building focused strategy, and a brilliant total war game when paired with the tactics module.
For the tactical battles you need only the bare FoG Medieval, without any DLC's, and you can get the core game for peanuts now.
And was the release bugged? I'm thinking about waiting for my birthday coupon, but it won't be before mid summer.
 

Beowulf

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I've not encountered any bugs personally. But since it's a 1.0 release there are certainly some present, just perhaps not any critical or game breaking ones - the forums don't mention anything big either (so far).
 

Turn_BASED

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This looks awesome. For someone totally new to the series, how deep does diplomacy go?
 

thesecret1

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Alright, I'm roughly 300 turns in, playing on one of the higher difficulties (don't remember which one exactly), featuring the Grand Campaign scenario with Debeurath march. I took that little thing and first reformed as Wales, then went on to conquer Ireland and England, and am just about to take over Scotland too for good measure.

The game's central resource is definitely Authority, and you'll likely see your early and even midgame revolve entirely around it, especially if you play a tiny nation like I did. What Authority is is basically a control switch for all the anti-blobbing mechanics the game has. Have high authority? Anti-blobbing gets turned off. Have it low? Get ready for your realm to fall apart. It actually works and does slow any map-painters down massively in that expanding over your domain limit costs authority each turn, and the only reliable way to raise it is to build some high-tier buildings (and be in top 10 most pious nations, if you can). This means that if you want to play well, you can't just conquer shit, but also build your regions up – not only is playing tall fully viable, it's actually kind of mandatory, as you need to build tall first to play wide later (though that's less of an issue if you start with a country that already has most of the reforms behind it, I imagine).

On that note, building stuff is kinda fun. There's lots of different building chains for everything, and the building options get randomized (though you can decide to pick manually if you're willing to take an authority hit), which keeps things from getting too repetitive. Sadly, I found resources other than Authority to be so easy to amass as to not really be an issue ever, which drained a lot of the fun from the system – usually, I just tried balacing piety and health on the local level (as being low in either causes problems in the province), while aiming for authority-raising buildings whenever I could. Also, AI is kinda garbage at this – I always see their regional development horribly stunted. As a result, it's not difficult to be one of the most pious nations even as a tiny country, or to start amassing legacy (ie. victory points) at a mass scale while being just a smudge on the map, simply because you're the only one utilizing your lands to their full capacity.

Militarily, I saw the AI as being reasonably competent (it can launch successful campaigns against its enemies and conquer territory, even if not nearly as efficiently as a player would), but its failings in the economy area cripple it quite a bit. They just get curbstomped by your doomstacks. Come to think of it, that may be the reason why resources feel too abundant – I never really had to build my army up as much as possible, because my opponents didn't require it – two doomstacks striking out of Wales was enough to conquer all of England without even a hint of difficulty. A definite shame – I hope they improve this aspect of the AI in the future.

Flavor-wise, there isn't much in terms of writing, but I appreciate that your country name can change (depending on your origins and conquers, ie. Debeurath->Wales, etc.) and that there's tons of unique units for each area of the world. You also get different building chains depending on your religion (and sometimes even on your culture).

Overall, it's pretty fun, though a bit of a diamond in the rough.
 

Removal

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heh, historical events can swing off course. William the Conquer directed his army at Paris instead of invading England
 

Sinilevä

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Alright, I'm roughly 300 turns in, playing on one of the higher difficulties (don't remember which one exactly), featuring the Grand Campaign scenario with Debeurath march. I took that little thing and first reformed as Wales, then went on to conquer Ireland and England, and am just about to take over Scotland too for good measure.

The game's central resource is definitely Authority, and you'll likely see your early and even midgame revolve entirely around it, especially if you play a tiny nation like I did. What Authority is is basically a control switch for all the anti-blobbing mechanics the game has. Have high authority? Anti-blobbing gets turned off. Have it low? Get ready for your realm to fall apart. It actually works and does slow any map-painters down massively in that expanding over your domain limit costs authority each turn, and the only reliable way to raise it is to build some high-tier buildings (and be in top 10 most pious nations, if you can). This means that if you want to play well, you can't just conquer shit, but also build your regions up – not only is playing tall fully viable, it's actually kind of mandatory, as you need to build tall first to play wide later (though that's less of an issue if you start with a country that already has most of the reforms behind it, I imagine).

On that note, building stuff is kinda fun. There's lots of different building chains for everything, and the building options get randomized (though you can decide to pick manually if you're willing to take an authority hit), which keeps things from getting too repetitive. Sadly, I found resources other than Authority to be so easy to amass as to not really be an issue ever, which drained a lot of the fun from the system – usually, I just tried balacing piety and health on the local level (as being low in either causes problems in the province), while aiming for authority-raising buildings whenever I could. Also, AI is kinda garbage at this – I always see their regional development horribly stunted. As a result, it's not difficult to be one of the most pious nations even as a tiny country, or to start amassing legacy (ie. victory points) at a mass scale while being just a smudge on the map, simply because you're the only one utilizing your lands to their full capacity.

Militarily, I saw the AI as being reasonably competent (it can launch successful campaigns against its enemies and conquer territory, even if not nearly as efficiently as a player would), but its failings in the economy area cripple it quite a bit. They just get curbstomped by your doomstacks. Come to think of it, that may be the reason why resources feel too abundant – I never really had to build my army up as much as possible, because my opponents didn't require it – two doomstacks striking out of Wales was enough to conquer all of England without even a hint of difficulty. A definite shame – I hope they improve this aspect of the AI in the future.

Flavor-wise, there isn't much in terms of writing, but I appreciate that your country name can change (depending on your origins and conquers, ie. Debeurath->Wales, etc.) and that there's tons of unique units for each area of the world. You also get different building chains depending on your religion (and sometimes even on your culture).

Overall, it's pretty fun, though a bit of a diamond in the rough.
I tried to play for several nations. Not sure if I like that authority thing. In Empires it was pretty straight forward, that you need to increase culture of your nation to progress by investing into cultural buildings etc. Here it's pretty weird. When I played for Danemark and Novgorod it was pretty easy to gain since you are already fairly big with vassals, but I after reading your post I tried Wales too and got completely screwed. I started by invading indies to the south and giving their land to my vassal which made me gain 0.9 authority per turn. And that's it. I was stuck with this number. How do you even play? Tried to build the whole bunch of religious and admin buildings but that had zero effect. Is the only way to gain authority to reduce my demense to 1/5 by making my vassal huge and myself supre tiny? This is dumb if that's the case. At least you should be allowed to create vassals out of the regions at your own will. Then it would somewhat make sense, but you can only do it through a rare decision and for the entire province.
 

thesecret1

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Alright, I'm roughly 300 turns in, playing on one of the higher difficulties (don't remember which one exactly), featuring the Grand Campaign scenario with Debeurath march. I took that little thing and first reformed as Wales, then went on to conquer Ireland and England, and am just about to take over Scotland too for good measure.

The game's central resource is definitely Authority, and you'll likely see your early and even midgame revolve entirely around it, especially if you play a tiny nation like I did. What Authority is is basically a control switch for all the anti-blobbing mechanics the game has. Have high authority? Anti-blobbing gets turned off. Have it low? Get ready for your realm to fall apart. It actually works and does slow any map-painters down massively in that expanding over your domain limit costs authority each turn, and the only reliable way to raise it is to build some high-tier buildings (and be in top 10 most pious nations, if you can). This means that if you want to play well, you can't just conquer shit, but also build your regions up – not only is playing tall fully viable, it's actually kind of mandatory, as you need to build tall first to play wide later (though that's less of an issue if you start with a country that already has most of the reforms behind it, I imagine).

On that note, building stuff is kinda fun. There's lots of different building chains for everything, and the building options get randomized (though you can decide to pick manually if you're willing to take an authority hit), which keeps things from getting too repetitive. Sadly, I found resources other than Authority to be so easy to amass as to not really be an issue ever, which drained a lot of the fun from the system – usually, I just tried balacing piety and health on the local level (as being low in either causes problems in the province), while aiming for authority-raising buildings whenever I could. Also, AI is kinda garbage at this – I always see their regional development horribly stunted. As a result, it's not difficult to be one of the most pious nations even as a tiny country, or to start amassing legacy (ie. victory points) at a mass scale while being just a smudge on the map, simply because you're the only one utilizing your lands to their full capacity.

Militarily, I saw the AI as being reasonably competent (it can launch successful campaigns against its enemies and conquer territory, even if not nearly as efficiently as a player would), but its failings in the economy area cripple it quite a bit. They just get curbstomped by your doomstacks. Come to think of it, that may be the reason why resources feel too abundant – I never really had to build my army up as much as possible, because my opponents didn't require it – two doomstacks striking out of Wales was enough to conquer all of England without even a hint of difficulty. A definite shame – I hope they improve this aspect of the AI in the future.

Flavor-wise, there isn't much in terms of writing, but I appreciate that your country name can change (depending on your origins and conquers, ie. Debeurath->Wales, etc.) and that there's tons of unique units for each area of the world. You also get different building chains depending on your religion (and sometimes even on your culture).

Overall, it's pretty fun, though a bit of a diamond in the rough.
I tried to play for several nations. Not sure if I like that authority thing. In Empires it was pretty straight forward, that you need to increase culture of your nation to progress by investing into cultural buildings etc. Here it's pretty weird. When I played for Danemark and Novgorod it was pretty easy to gain since you are already fairly big with vassals, but I after reading your post I tried Wales too and got completely screwed. I started by invading indies to the south and giving their land to my vassal which made me gain 0.9 authority per turn. And that's it. I was stuck with this number. How do you even play? Tried to build the whole bunch of religious and admin buildings but that had zero effect. Is the only way to gain authority to reduce my demense to 1/5 by making my vassal huge and myself supre tiny? This is dumb if that's the case. At least you should be allowed to create vassals out of the regions at your own will. Then it would somewhat make sense, but you can only do it through a rare decision and for the entire province.
There are three tier 2 buildings that give you 0.1 authority per turn, and can be built in each province. Of course, they need to be upgraded from tier 1 buildings (not directly built) and you need to be lucky enough to draw them. Alternatively, you can do a lot of fighting - winning battles gives you authority - just don't conquer until you reform to a duchy. Chance to get progress tokens starts at 60 authority so it's not that difficult, but yeah, starting as a march is painful as hell. I was only learning the mechanics so it wasn't so bad, but still.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So you are encouraged to play with a limited demesne? That sounds like a good idea, because I loved playing as a small faction in FoG:E (like Sparta or Athens), but I found playing as Romans way too slow with a bazillions revolts to suppress and regions to manage every turn.
 

thesecret1

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So you are encouraged to play with a limited demesne?
Depends on what country you play. If you start as a micro state, absolutely. It'll take you half the game to reform to something that can go big, if that's what you set out to do. If you start big you don't have this problem, but you have other issues – basically, every political figure (aside from your heir, maybe) is a disloyal piece of shit that'll backstab you in a heartbeat, something that I've observed happening fairly often when you're on low authority, while not happening at all at high authority (they have loyalty scores each, but raising this is tied to RNG and the bigger you are, the more people you need... you see the issue there).
 

Sinilevä

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I don't know man, it seems like you are screwed as a small nation unless you are lucky with the ruler with good bonuses. How do you increase authority by fighting? The declaration of war costs 15 authority, losing so much is a death sentence lol. To be honest it's a bit silly to have crumbling state, because of authority even though you have stellar economy.
 

thesecret1

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I don't know man, it seems like you are screwed as a small nation unless you are lucky with the ruler with good bonuses. How do you increase authority by fighting? The declaration of war costs 15 authority, losing so much is a death sentence lol. To be honest it's a bit silly to have crumbling state, because of authority even though you have stellar economy.
You get authority for each battle you win (the bigger the battle the more authority you get). You can mitigate the cost of DoWing by having a claim (easy to get - just repeatedly insult his emissary) or even better, by getting the "sneak attack" regional decision, which will bypass this cost entirely.

You don't need a ruler with good bonuses. You can just sit still and wait like 100 turns as you play tall and build all the authority-raising buildings in all your provinces. It's a pretty shit starting position, tbh, and after playing through it, I think I'd recommend going for something bigger just so you needn't sit still and wait for so long. Your max demesne allowance is actually pretty generous after you get past the lowest tier, but the lowest tier really is crippling.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I don't know man, it seems like you are screwed as a small nation unless you are lucky with the ruler with good bonuses. How do you increase authority by fighting? The declaration of war costs 15 authority, losing so much is a death sentence lol. To be honest it's a bit silly to have crumbling state, because of authority even though you have stellar economy.
You get authority for each battle you win (the bigger the battle the more authority you get). You can mitigate the cost of DoWing by having a claim (easy to get - just repeatedly insult his emissary) or even better, by getting the "sneak attack" regional decision, which will bypass this cost entirely.

You don't need a ruler with good bonuses. You can just sit still and wait like 100 turns as you play tall and build all the authority-raising buildings in all your provinces. It's a pretty shit starting position, tbh, and after playing through it, I think I'd recommend going for something bigger just so you needn't sit still and wait for so long. Your max demesne allowance is actually pretty generous after you get past the lowest tier, but the lowest tier really is crippling.
Bigger than Wales then? I planned to go with Brittany or Normandy, but the issue would be even worse.
 

thesecret1

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I don't know man, it seems like you are screwed as a small nation unless you are lucky with the ruler with good bonuses. How do you increase authority by fighting? The declaration of war costs 15 authority, losing so much is a death sentence lol. To be honest it's a bit silly to have crumbling state, because of authority even though you have stellar economy.
You get authority for each battle you win (the bigger the battle the more authority you get). You can mitigate the cost of DoWing by having a claim (easy to get - just repeatedly insult his emissary) or even better, by getting the "sneak attack" regional decision, which will bypass this cost entirely.

You don't need a ruler with good bonuses. You can just sit still and wait like 100 turns as you play tall and build all the authority-raising buildings in all your provinces. It's a pretty shit starting position, tbh, and after playing through it, I think I'd recommend going for something bigger just so you needn't sit still and wait for so long. Your max demesne allowance is actually pretty generous after you get past the lowest tier, but the lowest tier really is crippling.
Bigger than Wales then? I planned to go with Brittany or Normandy, but the issue would be even worse.
Check what government form they have. If it's the lowest one (in Europe, it's called a "march") then you probably don't want to play it. Duchy is right above it and provides a much higher demesne limit. Normandy may actually be a good idea since I think (not sure, but I find it likely) the game may have some special events should you reenact William's conquest.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I don't know man, it seems like you are screwed as a small nation unless you are lucky with the ruler with good bonuses. How do you increase authority by fighting? The declaration of war costs 15 authority, losing so much is a death sentence lol. To be honest it's a bit silly to have crumbling state, because of authority even though you have stellar economy.
You get authority for each battle you win (the bigger the battle the more authority you get). You can mitigate the cost of DoWing by having a claim (easy to get - just repeatedly insult his emissary) or even better, by getting the "sneak attack" regional decision, which will bypass this cost entirely.

You don't need a ruler with good bonuses. You can just sit still and wait like 100 turns as you play tall and build all the authority-raising buildings in all your provinces. It's a pretty shit starting position, tbh, and after playing through it, I think I'd recommend going for something bigger just so you needn't sit still and wait for so long. Your max demesne allowance is actually pretty generous after you get past the lowest tier, but the lowest tier really is crippling.
Bigger than Wales then? I planned to go with Brittany or Normandy, but the issue would be even worse.
Check what government form they have. If it's the lowest one (in Europe, it's called a "march") then you probably don't want to play it. Duchy is right above it and provides a much higher demesne limit. Normandy may actually be a good idea since I think (not sure, but I find it likely) the game may have some special events should you reenact William's conquest.
Both should be duchies, so it should be good!
How are sieges and chevauchées (ie, lare raiding operations) handled? I suppose you can't play them in FOG2:Medieval, right?
 

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