FIELD OF GLORY: KINGDOMS!!

[Beowulf]

How are sieges and chevauchées (ie, lare raiding operations) handled? I suppose you can't play them in FOG2edieval, right?

You can only play field battles. Which is a pity, as there are more complex scenarios available in FoG2. But I guess getting the balance right when transporting the game state wasn't that easy. Or FoG2 wasn't flexible enough to easily generated other scenarios than field battles.

 

[thesecret1]

How are sieges and chevauchées (ie, lare raiding operations) handled? I suppose you can't play them in FOG2edieval, right?

I'm not sure how raiding works, I've only been the target, never the raider, in which case there was no battle – instead the game rolled a dice against the local defenses in the raided region and used the result for whether the raid succeeded or failed. Successful defense against a raid gives you 2 authority, by the way, and I made sure to exploit that fact to the fullest.

 

[Sinilevä]

I played around 60 turns hoping to stop crumbling, manage to get total authority over 50 and was hit by a "sedition from nobility" modifier, that made me gain only 0.3 authority per turn. My nobility is pissed off that we are doing better? You can't win lol. I'm still in the red and keep getting those bad tokkens with no hope of raising it, while my economy is excellent. Also as a vassal you can't declare war on other vassalas, which makes zero sense and other countries claims on your land reduce your authority. Even devs themselves now admitting it's too much lol:

 

[sser]

Anti-snowballing design has to be walked like a tightrope. I think he'll figure it out. Empires had the best iteration of that stuff I've ever seen; I think only Old World comes close, though it's more in the 4x territory.

 

[thesecret1]

I played around 60 turns hoping to stop crumbling, manage to get total authority over 50 and was hit by a "sedition from nobility" modifier, that made me gain only 0.3 authority per turn. My nobility is pissed off that we are doing better? You can't win lol. I'm still in the red and keep getting those bad tokkens with no hope of raising it, while my economy is excellent. Also as a vassal you can't declare war on other vassalas, which makes zero sense and other countries claims on your land reduce your authority. Even devs themselves now admitting it's too much lol:

View attachment 50928

You only get a chance to get progress tokens once you hit 60 authority, not before. Sedition from nobility is tied to your authority level – the higher it gets (above 50) the higher the mallus. The way to beat the system (and sit at stable 100 authority) is to build authority-raising buildings. Late game it's not a problem to get +7 authority each turn just from buildings. To prevent neighbors from raising claims on you, send them gifts to make them like you more. Also pro tip: if you're in deep shit in the tokens, just let it happen and let it fall all the way to the bottom. It'll spark a civil war, which is unfortunate, but also reset you back to stable and with 0 tokens. It's much faster to win a civil war than to revert all the decline.

 

[Axioms]

Chevauchees are a long running series of raids aren't they? You can't represent that in one battle or turn really.

 

[Beowulf]

Chevauchees are a long running series of raids aren't they? You can't represent that in one battle or turn really.

But you can issue Raid orders to your stacks, that will, well, raid an enemy region

 

[Galdred]

Chevauchees are a long running series of raids aren't they? You can't represent that in one battle or turn really.

Right, it is very hard to represent (and I don't know of any board game that managed to do so. Maybe the Levy and Campaign series?). The whole chevauchée of Gaunt was Gaunt trying to plunder France (from Norht to South West) while the French army shadowed him and occasilonnally engaged small groups in skirmishes to whittle it down and deny its raiding opportunities, but something simple like Raiding/counter raiding and trying to force a large battle would do.

 

[Sinilevä]

The more I play it, the more I don't like it. Feels like the devs were so transfixed implementing antiblobing, that they forgot to develop the rest of the game. The entire game seems to revolve around authority. Nothing else matters. Resources don't matter and neither money, since they are so easy to obtain even playing for some shitty tiny nation. Playing as a vassal is kinda pointless as you can't declare war on other vassals. In general the diplomatic options are very limited. They are no better, than in Empires. Not sure why all those characters were included in the game. The interaction seems to be limited to appoint someone as a governor and arrange royal marriage. Maybe in the future they will improve this, but so far there is very little value here, at least for me. If you want to play for POP mechanics and resources, just play Victoria 2, for characters CK2, for battles FOG Medieval.

To prevent neighbors from raising claims on you, send them gifts to make them like you more.

Makes zero sense, that neighbours having claims reduce your authority. It would only make sense if it was previously owned by this neighbour, so you could argue, that there is still some loyal nobility left. But if it's a complete foreigner? Why would anyone care?

 

[Harthwain]

Makes zero sense, that neighbours having claims reduce your authority. It would only make sense if it was previously owned by this neighbour, so you could argue, that there is still some loyal nobility left. But if it's a complete foreigner? Why would anyone care?

There is no authority cost if neighbours with claims are allies, vassals or you have positive relations with them. My guess this is supposed to model frictions between potentially rival states and encourages you to build relationships with them.

 

[razvedchiki]

yes, you need to be more active with diplomacy in kingdoms.

 

[Galdred]

Are naval powers worth playing? I had the most fun playing Athens in FoG:E. I'm launching my first game, and it is weird to have the HRE as a single faction, but it would be hard to make it work as a collection of semi-unified principalties.

 

[Lacrymas]

Anyone want a -33% coupon from Fanatical for this?

 

[3 others]

This seems to have some interesting iterations on the FOG:Empires design. The resource & trading system is more detailed as resources are produced in quantities of 1-3 instead of being infinite. A single Farm can no longer provide Grain for the whole province. Trading also is more affected by Acumen, which allows further away regions be prioritized when determining where a resource ends up as a trade good. This leads to an interesting implementation of medieval Merchant Republics that really punch above their weight commercially with their sky-high Trade Acumen. Generally, fiddling with the buildings and resource chains is as satisfying as ever but the overall commercial environment is more dynamic.

Combat seems to be similar as the last time. I think the unit supply, ranged support, general bonus/malus etc. systems are similar as in Empires. Raising an army has a bit more depth with different Standing Army / Levy / Mercenary categories, with their corresponding advantages/drawbacks. There also seems to be more variety to the Regional Decisions, which are a nice, chunky way to influence the realm.

The overall theme of consolidating the realm against internal division and external peers works well. You have to build tall to expand wide with the Influence and population mechanics working as a handbrake on overexpansion. Overall, Kingdoms is a small but consistent improvement over Empires.

There are downsides, however. The Grand Campaign has an obscene amount of minor nations on the map and it is quite slow to plod through turn-by-turn. The UI I think is actually worse than in Empires, with an odd gray-on-gray text scheme, almost unreadable realm names, and indistinguishable heraldic icons here and there on the map. Thankfully, the last two points can be reconfigured in the settings. The diplomacy UI is an atrocious clickfeast, and considering how important the trade good chaining part of economy management is, the tools to dig into which resources are getting shipped where for what reasons are painfully lacking.

The character system is also underwhelming. They have variable skills, sure, but the dynastic line doesn't seem to lead to any court intrigue or drama. Low loyalty characters are total liabilities, but I don't think there's any downside just keeping them away from positions of influence even if one of them is your firstborn son. There's just so little to DO with the characters, and very limited ways to interact with them.

The patch release rate for Kingdoms is still quite rapid, and the main dev is obviously a scholar, gentleman and a committed maniac who'll be grinding out balance tweaks and performance improvements as long as possible so in all likelihood the game will continue to get more refined over the near future.

 

[Axioms]

The FoG GSG games have the same limitations as Total War or CK as far as characters. Since the games don't simulate anything social at a low level you don't have many options for interactions. Sure you can do generic shit and +/- opinion buffs but those get boring fast and people get tired of doing it.

You'll never have much *interesting* stuff to do.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Its crazy that they didn't add an ingame building list since Empire. It makes region management much more fastidious than it should be.

 

[Dwarvophile]

I played around 60 turns hoping to stop crumbling, manage to get total authority over 50 and was hit by a "sedition from nobility" modifier, that made me gain only 0.3 authority per turn. My nobility is pissed off that we are doing better? You can't win lol. I'm still in the red and keep getting those bad tokkens with no hope of raising it, while my economy is excellent. Also as a vassal you can't declare war on other vassalas, which makes zero sense and other countries claims on your land reduce your authority. Even devs themselves now admitting it's too much lol:

View attachment 50928

You only get a chance to get progress tokens once you hit 60 authority, not before. Sedition from nobility is tied to your authority level – the higher it gets (above 50) the higher the mallus. The way to beat the system (and sit at stable 100 authority) is to build authority-raising buildings. Late game it's not a problem to get +7 authority each turn just from buildings. To prevent neighbors from raising claims on you, send them gifts to make them like you more. Also pro tip: if you're in deep shit in the tokens, just let it happen and let it fall all the way to the bottom. It'll spark a civil war, which is unfortunate, but also reset you back to stable and with 0 tokens. It's much faster to win a civil war than to revert all the decline.

What are the buildings that raise authority for instance ?

 

[thesecret1]

I played around 60 turns hoping to stop crumbling, manage to get total authority over 50 and was hit by a "sedition from nobility" modifier, that made me gain only 0.3 authority per turn. My nobility is pissed off that we are doing better? You can't win lol. I'm still in the red and keep getting those bad tokkens with no hope of raising it, while my economy is excellent. Also as a vassal you can't declare war on other vassalas, which makes zero sense and other countries claims on your land reduce your authority. Even devs themselves now admitting it's too much lol:

View attachment 50928

You only get a chance to get progress tokens once you hit 60 authority, not before. Sedition from nobility is tied to your authority level – the higher it gets (above 50) the higher the mallus. The way to beat the system (and sit at stable 100 authority) is to build authority-raising buildings. Late game it's not a problem to get +7 authority each turn just from buildings. To prevent neighbors from raising claims on you, send them gifts to make them like you more. Also pro tip: if you're in deep shit in the tokens, just let it happen and let it fall all the way to the bottom. It'll spark a civil war, which is unfortunate, but also reset you back to stable and with 0 tokens. It's much faster to win a civil war than to revert all the decline.

What are the buildings that raise authority for instance ?

There's one for each category of buildings, I think. Basically, each category has certain buildings that once built allow you to build plenty of other more advance buildings, essentially separating it all into tiers. These buildings all come with +0.1 to authority, IIRC (which may seem like little, but remember you can build them in each provice – they stack). It's been a while since I've played, but I think one of them was something like the estates for the nobility or something like that (and easiest to build, if memory serves). Do keep in mind that it's NOT the first tier of the building that gives the authority bonus - you need the upgraded version.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Do keep in mind that it's NOT the first tier of the building that gives the authority bonus - you need the upgraded version.

Yeah I feared something like that. I'm still early in game but passed too early the 9 regions threshold after which you have a strong authority malus. Got 5 tokens and now fell from stable duchy to unstable.

My first mistake was to ally to a bigger kingdom that led me to multiple conflicts. Then I made the mistake to send an army to the crusades. When you gain territory you get an autority malus/ but if you abandon it you also get a malus.

This is my first play through and I'm bleeding authority. I'm still having fun it's not that bad, but the manual and tutorial could really be more thorough.

 

[thesecret1]

Focus on stabilizing your authority gain and just let the tokens lead you to a civil war. Once you win it (and it's not hard to win) you'll be reset back to stable with 0 tokens, which is much, MUCH faster than trying to fix your shit normally.