4X Oriental Empires - 4X game set in ancient China

[titus]

This actually looks pretty good. Or at least it can't be any worse than the crap CA makes...
Combat appears to be automatic(a la Conquest of Elysium perhaps?) Not a big deal if they make the strategic layer worthwhile.

 

[Galdred]

This actually looks pretty good. Or at least it can't be any worse than the crap CA makes...
Combat appears to be automatic(a la Conquest of Elysium perhaps?) Not a big deal if they make the strategic layer worthwhile.

It looks like combat uses a simultaneous order phase, followed by a simultaneous execution phase. From the trailer, it looks closer from combat mission, as you can see the troops being ordered to attack a specific position.
It also looks seemless (no separate combat minimap, everything happens on the same map), as in the Hegemony series.
It looks pretty interesting if the trailer is to be believed.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

day 1 morgoth material so far

 

[hivemind]

the combat is so far the biggest lure for me

 

[dehimos]

Sign up for the Oriental Empires Beta: http://steamcommunity.com/app/357310/discussions/0/357284131784110074/
And videos with each faction: http://steamcommunity.com/app/357310/discussions/0/487877107133174417/

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

So I'm in the beta. Installing now, will be able to stream it from today to the 12th of august according to an announcement made.

 

[Castozor]

Well if you do plan on streaming please let us know. Otherwise I'll be expecting a nice first impression post!

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

First impression: it's shit.


The UI is pretty clunky but that isn't the worst of it. The game is a farming simulator. I spent 90% of my time clicking on the city interface to build farms and research new techs that unlock new buildings which cost too much upkeep to built or units that require said buildings to be produced.

Population management is non existent. You have nobles and peasants. The former get mad when your number of cities is above your authority limit which is raised by researching techs. The later get mad when your culture is low which is also raised by techs. Problem is that the peasants get mad whenever there is a natural disaster or a unit of bandits pillage one farm and end up rebelling and taking over half of your cities in one go and there is nothing you can do about it. Your garrisons either switch sides or dissappear, regardless of whether they are noble troops or peasant ones.

The battle system is also clunky. There's a bunch of attack orders like "surround" "outflank" etc but there is no need to use them as you can just mass infantry units and use charge which destroys poorly composed AI armies. Battles are never decisive and 90% of the time you end up chasing one bandit stack that you win against killing only 1% of their total force causing it to rout at 2x your speed and keep pillaging your areas. Which causes more peasant unrest and entire cities flipping over to the bandit/rebel side.

But that isn't the problem. Problem is the game has no content. There's nothing to do but wait for battles to happen which end up sucking due to the above reasons. The even worse thing is that at the end of each turn there is a battle phase where you watch battles happen. Most of the time it just makes turns take a lot longer than they should and make the game even more of a bore.

It's coming out in september so there's no way all these issues are gonna be addressed or more content introduced.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Honestly, everything costs an arm and a leg in this game. Having a full stack of soldiers tanks my economy at 11 cities. And since money making buildings don't exist or work as "trade" buildings whose upkeep far outweighs the income they make spamming cities is the only source of making money. Which in turn leads to more farming micromanagement.

 

[LESS T_T]

It's out now on Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/357310/

Why Early Access?
“Oriental Empires is almost complete, lacking only the multiplayer feature. Since many players will only be interested in single player, we are making it available early for them. The early access period will also serve as a final shakedown period for the game, to help uncover any remaining significant bugs or balance issues that still remain, and allow to us make final tweaks based on feedback from a larger group of players than the beta team.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“The Early Access period is estimated to last a maximum of 2 months.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The only major change planned for the final release, is the addition of multiplayer mode. We will of course be eagerly listening to user feedback, and making improvements to game balance, AI, UI and of course fixing any significant bugs that are uncovered. In addition we will use the Early Access period to localize the game to several other languages, while also adding Steam Features such as Trading Cards.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The English language single player version of the game is feature complete, although it may still contain some minor bugs. The game has had several months of beta testing to achieve a reasonable state of balance and tuning, but it’s likely that this can be improved further with feedback from Early Access players.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“No.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Community involvement will be primarily through the Steam Discussion Forum. We’ve had an active presence there since the game was announced, and will continue to monitor it closely.”

 

[Volrath]

Anyone here played it yet? Recommended?

It's 33% off at the moment.

 

[A horse of course]

Everything I've read on forums and watching some of the shill videos from Total War/RTS youtubers makes it look crap. Looks like CA will never have the competition they need to stop being such lazy fucks.

 

[Beowulf]

It's not a competition for Total War, but for Civ and Civ-clones.

It has some good things going for it, and I quite liked it; but I haven't played any game in that style in a while, so there's that/
You can change unit behaviour for the battles, but you cannot control units in battles themselves.
Turns are simultaneous and all battles are happening roughly at the same time.

I participated in the beta, but I think I'll buy it when it's done and out of EA (and they implement multiplayer).

 

[A horse of course]

It was marketed as "made by ex-Total War devs". Not that that's something they should be proud of

 

[Agesilaus]

It's not bad, but it's not great. If they end the time line at the Warring States period, and put more work into the theme, then they really could pull off something amazing.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/357310/announcements/detail/1441569378498087538

Oriental Empires to Launch 14 September 2017

Game launches in a month from today so be sure take advantage of this week’s 25% off.

After an interesting period of 1 year, Oriental Empires will be leaving Steam Early Access soon! What can you expect to see at full release? Aside from many improvements, fixes and updates, we will launch the game with multiplayer, more supported languages and a brand new historical campaign!

During Early Access we have regularly patched and updated Oriental Empires. We’ve added new languages, new diplomacy options and the battles and AI have been vastly improved upon. In addition, we made many other tweaks and changes to enhance the user experience and help first time players to find their way.

Upon release, we will present you with a major update. This update will bring all the latest tweaks and changes from the beta branches, as well as the multiplayer mode and a brand new scenario focused on the infamous Warring States Era. With this scenario, players will be able to jump directly into a populated map as one of several new factions. The Warring States scenario brings a completely new experience to the game, where factions have already established themselves and war might break out during the very first turn.

The final release of the game will by no means mean the end of development. We will continue to update and support the game, so keep your feedback coming!

 

[LESS T_T]

Now out of Early Access:

 

[hivemind]

torrent when

 

[fantadomat]

Sooo has anyone here played it yet? I am just downloading it.

 

[hivemind]

torrent?

 

[Agesilaus]

Sooo has anyone here played it yet? I am just downloading it.

I played it yonks ago, it was okay but still had a long way to go. I will give the new version a shot when I have some time.

 

[Hoggypare]

Sooo has anyone here played it yet? I am just downloading it.

In my oppinion it is an amazing game, especially if you care about historical authenticy (and if you don't mind several quirks it has)

The economy system is probably one of the best I've seen in any strategy game. It requires you to think and plan ahead, instead of just spamming buildings that give +10 goldthings each turn. It feels like playing a survival game almost, because you are always stretching the limits of your peasant patience, need for growth, income and expense for armies etc. Everything is a huge investment especially early on, and deciding what to build where is extremely important, because of trade system. You can only trade goods from a place that produces it to a place that needs it. Therefore, if you build ceramic factories in all your cities, that means no income, because there is no need to trade. Also, the income depends on the demand. The bigger the city you trade with, the more money you get. When trading with other civs, the higher culture you have, the better your goods are and you might push their goods of the market (by the virtue of yours being more advanced). What also matters are the road and river networks to move the goods around.

Additionally you have a sweet unrest system with natural disasters that are a HUGE deal. Every farm field you build, to satisfy your peasants needs, who breed like rabbits, requires forced labour. Which peasants dislike. But what they hate even more is, is starvation. So you, as the wannabe emperor have to balance all that, and everything can go straight to hell the moment a drought or flood hits. Of course you could always levy troops to put the goddamn riceeaters in line, but when doing so remember to NOT levy peasants, because they will just join in with the rebellion. You need therefore either specialized buildings that reduce unrest (which cost money), mercenaries (that also stretch your budget) or to levy nobles. However, you also have to keep them happy, and if they revolt...

Since I started talking about the military a little bit, there are essentially 3 classes of troops. Peasant levies, Noble levies and Professionals. What is really cool is that peasants and nobles cost nothing to muster, so you are naturally put in very historically accurate position of a leader who musters a force for a campaign, to disband it just afterwards, to save on upkeep. Peasants are in general garbage tier, but cheap and numerous, nobles are decent (especially mounted) but cost more and have smaller squads. Professional army is your security valve to take care of rebellions or conduct lenghty (and pricey) full scale campaigns from midgame onwards.

The other thing of note is edict system, which is what really forces historical accuracy on this game. Edicts are decisions (all based upon real historical events), that you can enforce for various bonuses, for example, you can tell your nobles to practice horseriding, which would unlock noble cavalry, or you can prohibit peasants from carrying weapons (which makes nobles happy and reduces revolt chance, but makes your levies less numerous). Also all taxation is introduced via edicts. Enforcing an edict obviously creates unrest, and it is another thing to take into account when managing your state.

There are however some problems. Some don't like the battle system (which is fully automatic with orders a'la dominions, but less elegant, units sometimes derp hard, but it makes the game proceed faster and I personally enjoy it). The resource system is much less varied than in any of the 4x contenders. There is also severe lack of variety between civs, as there are basically two kinds of them with some minor bonuses (like +10% strenght to mounted warriors, singular civs get one special unit), that is herders and farmers. The generals and leaders are very underdeveloped and the exploration is somewhat poorly balanced and rng based (you can find camps that can give you quite meaningful permanent bonuses or you can lose a lot of gold instead)

All in all, it is a solid strategy game, with a lot of effort put into making it feel historically authentic, where the main theme is balancing it out, military conquest with peaceful prosperity, peasants and nobles, your ambitions with disasters and things outside your power which, funnily enough is extremely fitting for a game set in ancient China.

I already wrote a hefty essay here, but if you have any detailed questions, feel free.

 

[vonAchdorf]

This game flew under my radar, I partially blame the name, but I watched some videos and it looks interesting. I missed the launch discount on GOG. If I didn't have 3 other games waiting, I'd probably even buy it full-price, but for now, after the sale is before the sale and I can wait.

 

[kris]

Is on sale right now. I picked it up.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

I was looking for strategy games with prestigious WEGO (or simultaneous turns or phase-based) system, and there doesn't seem to be too many. Especially actual strategic level ones, most seem to be tactical stuff like Combat Missions. So finding Oriental Empires was a nice surprise. It's even technically competent and has decent production values, woah!

It really doesn't have anything to do with Total Wars even if it's from Creative Assembly veterans (in Thailand!) Maybe the 'cinematic' visual style of the battles, but you don't control those, you just spectate AI commanders derping around like in Dominions. Hoggypare's post above is good.

Recommended.