Field Of Glory: Empires Crack Code

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About This Game 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?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.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 your Empire on a scale that fits you: adjust all the details of an important region, form provinces to oversee your growing realm.Construct buildings to enhance your army, the life of your citizens, and the economy. Establish and grow a trade network of goods and resources.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.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!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.And once you think you are ready to be challenged, play against real opponents in one of the largest asynchronous multiplayer system ever created. 1075eedd30 Title: Field of Glory: EmpiresGenre: StrategyDeveloper:AgeodPublisher:Slitherine Ltd.Franchise:Field of GloryRelease Date: Coming Soon Field Of Glory: Empires Crack Code field of glory empires beta. field of glory empires wiki. slitherine field of glory empires. field of glory empires gameplay. field of glory empires of the dragon pdf. field of glory eternal empire. field of glory empires skidrow. field of glory 2 empires. field of glory empires forum. field of glory empires challenge. field of glory empires release. field of glory empires pc. field of glory empires. field of glory empires - ageod. field of glory clash of empires pdf. field of glory empires vs imperator rome. field of glory eternal empire pdf. field of glory empires release date. field of glory empires dev diary. field of glory empires download. field of glory empires review. field of glory empires steam Dev Diary #10 Units: Abilities and Modifiers: Units in Empires have very diverse profiles and different roles. Some are heavy hitters, like phalanxes, legions and other heavy infantry. These units cost a lot to recruit and maintain, and will use a lot of metal, so can’t be mass produced easily. They have drawbacks too, like being relatively slow and not fit to fight in terrain like forests or mountains.Another category is the medium infantry, which is apparently less powerful, more affordable and has the useful ability of being a besieger, meaning it will provide a bonus when you siege a city. This reflects the value of these formations in being able to construct heavy siege engines on the spot (you did not drag siege towers along your army when you were on the march). Given they are more affordable, you can field a lot of these troops, and this might be necessary since battles have an important concept of ‘frontage’, which is the width of the battle line. Previous players from AGEOD game will be well aware of this feature, as it appeared in 2004 with Birth of America, and it never ceased to play an important and realistic role in all our games. Failure to fill out your available front line will leave you very vulnerable to being outflanked or forced to commit your skirmishers to actual hand to hand combat (not a good idea!).[www.matrixgames.com]The skirmishers are another sort of unit. They are not costly, although the manpower they need is close to the types above (so make a lot demands on your population to fill out their ranks from the pool of conscripts used for units). In melee, they are quite weak, but this is not where they should be used. They are there to help support your main infantry, by providing a combat bonus to them. A medium infantry unit backed by a skirmisher is as strong, if not more so, than a heavy infantry without support. Add to that they will weaken the enemy before melee through their missile attack, and you will quickly come to see that they are not optional to a good army composition.Cavalry is another subset of units and plays an important role on the battlefield and the strategic map. Light cavalry will perform as skirmishers but most types can also flank the enemy. It means that should your opponent don’t fill up the battle line, then they will deal bonus attacks against the enemy. Should you manage to inflict a defeat to your opponent, then their pursuit bonus will deal significant damage during the retreat phase. On the strategic map, they are faster than even skirmishers, so can act as a fire brigade of sort. But they are not ideal if they have to fight on their own as they are rather brittle, except perhaps if they are heavy cavalry or cataphracts. Plus skirmishers help a city resists a siege, while cavalrymen don’t do much but eating the food stockpile in this situation!The important thing to remember is that through quite a lot of fine tuning and testing, we have managed to give each unit a role that defines them well. And also that costlier units are not always better in all circumstances, so if you enjoy tweaking your army composition, then you should have some fun testing out combinations.[www.matrixgames.com]But there is more to it than that, as units also have some custom abilities contextual to some terrain. For example, many Celtic nations have light and medium infantry which are woodmen, so they are better when fighting in the huge forests of Gallia. In the same way, German warriors benefit from this trait too, given how large and continuous, almost overwhelming, was the big Hercynian forest where many lived.You’ll also fight mountainmen, if you have to deal with Celtiberian tribes, or people from Armenia or Colchide. Arabia Felix or the vast expanses of desert bordering Carthage proper will see cameliers with the desertmen traits, etc.But some traits are not a bonus, they are a drawback. For example, elephants dislike cold terrain, and Phalanxes are not fit to assault a city.Other traits are about how units fought on the battlefield. For example, skirmishers, horse-archers and light cavalry can deal damage even when they lose a duel, or to add insult to injury, they can even shave off part of the damages they received by evading the melee! As some of you know, the battle of Carrhae was a major defeat for Rome against Parthia, mostly because the latter had a lot of horse-archers (backed up by supply wagons to replenish their stock of arrows) while the legionnaires were trying (and failing) to reach the enemy line. In Empires too, I would not bet on the mighty legions if they have no support from archers or skirmishers, against a full battle line of Parthian horse archers!Hopefully this will give you an idea about how Empires manages units and the different possible battles you will experiment.But traits, also called modifiers, are everywhere in the game. Rulers have traits, ranging from being a superior administrator to being paranoid. The variations are numerous, and the chance to get the same ruler twice is very small. This in turn will shape your nation and alter your strategy, as a good military ruler will provide a lot of bonus which will be a boon to your army, while someone who despises the idea of expanding his realm will be an issue if you wanted to conquer and gobble your neighbor.Units and rulers have traits (or modifiers) but each government is also different using their own range of abilities. For example, a tribal government will provide a bonus to manpower, and that’s fitting as units filled with warriors will need a lot of men and not that much heavy armor to be recruited. A merchant oligarchy like Carthage will enjoy extra bonuses for commerce but will be heavily penalized on manpower, thus lending to a style of gameplay where you’ll need to recruit a lot of mercenaries (and the ones for Carthage are rather good!). In the end, through the judicious (or so we hope) use of modifiers, you’ll see that all the nations play rather differently from one another. Because their units are different, or perhaps their government. And then there are the custom buildings with special abilities! Here, we are mostly not talking about something like “Get +10% from that or that”, this would be dull… Buildings have specific abilities or behaviors that significantly alter the game and how you will tackle a nation. Judea with the possible, but difficult, task to rebuild the Solomon Temple (coming in no less than 7 levels of upgrades!), Saba with the impressive Ma’rib dam which can be either a boon or a curse (depending if you repair it or not), Dacia with its mountain fortresses, etc. [www.matrixgames.com]. 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…. Field of Glory: Empires Challenge #2 – Carthage: With the Challenge #1, you have witnessed the birth of Rome and its military power in Italy. Now, it’s time to see what one of its first mortal enemies can do, on a bigger scale.Welcome to the Challenge #2 – Carthage!This time the Challenge goal will be different. While in the first one you had to focus mostly on the military aspect of the game, this challenge adds a new layer of complexity (and fun!).Carthage was renown to be a very wealthy civilization, establishing colonies in many Mediterranean regions and creating a successful trade network. Its defense was guaranteed by a powerful navy and a semi-standing mercenary army.To better reflect this historical situation, the Challenge #2 is shaped more on the economic element of the game. Challenge #2: Try to amass 7500 money in your treasury while reaching at least 20 regions in less than 50 turns and avoiding to be in the last tier in the progress & decadence chart.Nation Available: CarthageTurns: 50Map: All playableMechanics and features: All activeProgress and Decadence: Stay in the 1st and 2nd TierREAD HERE FOR MORE DETAILS[www.slitherine.com]. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #8 - Legacy: Winning the GameIn 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.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.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.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.. 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.[www.matrixgames.com]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.[www.matrixgames.com]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.Ethnicityis 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![www.matrixgames.com]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!Follow us on Facebook![www.facebook.com]. Field of Glory: Empires - Challenge 1 with DasTactic: Watch DasTactic playing Challenge #1 of Field of Glory: Empires!www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sSomUSZgrs&t=14sHere are the rules:- Conquer Italy playing as Rome in as few turns as possible-The map is locked to the Italian Peninsula and its closest surroundings.- All mechanics and features are activeWho can join?Influencers and media members. The participation is mainly by invitation, but if you think you qualify to compete, write to us at challenge@slitherine.co.uk, with your name/nickname and your channel/media.If you want more info please visit http://www.slitherine.com/FogE_Challenge. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #9 Battle System: Warfare in EmpiresOne of the major components of Empires is waging wars. Ultimately, you will win if you gain more Legacy than any other nation, but conquering your objectives and holding rich regions, some with world wonders, is definitely the most straightforward way to achieve that.Once you have defined the objectives for your military campaigns, you’ll have to assemble your units into armies. And this process is not something to do at random, because, as you all know, battles are often won before they are actually fought.This was one of our design goals in Empires. To have the players enjoy a bit of ‘theory crafting’, by thinking what the force composition is needed to secure your goals as efficiently as possible. We tried hard, and we believe have succeeded for the most part, in having no unit that excels at everything. Sure, if your economy is ten time as strong as your opponent, then you can probably drown him under the sheer number of your legions, to cite one of the best units of the game. But even legions have weaknesses, like not fighting that well in forests and mountains, and being pretty costly, both to recruit and maintain.So how does it work, in a situation where you have a decent economy, but need to recruit a powerful force to defeat your enemy? You’ll have first to identify if your opponent’s strongholds are in difficult terrain or not. If yes, then the heavier units might not fight much better than the lighter ones, while being much more costly (so if you are not careful you may end up using an expensive, inefficient, army that is outnumbered, and out-classed by your opponent’s cheaper troops). If he has large walled cities, then again, some units will perform much better. You’ll also want to combine your powerful melee units with support units, as these weaker units are essential when the actual battle starts. For example, your army might be cut into shred by weaker infantry, if they benefit from skirmishers or archers in the support line and you lack these lighter troops. Then you have cavalry units. On the strategic map, they are very fast and will allow you to do all sort of things, like acting as a fire brigade, or snatching an enemy region then pillaging it. In the tactical battle, some cavalry on the flanks (or in reserve) will go a long way in winning a battle, and if this does happen then their ability to pursue will greatly inflate the losses of your defeated opponent.Then there is the matter of the navy. Never move unescorted your units through a sea, as this is a sure recipe for a disaster if they are intercepted. Losing precious and costly phalanxes, when their transports are sunk by humble light warships really is a waste of good men. Ships will also be almost mandatory to conduct successful sieges against cities with harbors. Don’t think you can starve a garrison that has the backup of an unblockaded harbor.It is also said that an army marches on it’s stomach. This is quite true in Empires. Supply will be given automatically to units from adjacent friendly regions, but beyond that, if you don’t maintain your supply lines, then your units will weaken over time and will be of no use. Equally a large army in a poor region, or where the land is already pillaged, will suffer supply shortages.But without further ado, on to battle! Once two enemy armies meet in a given region, a battle will ensue, unless if one side has retreated behind the walls of a city (in this case there will be a siege, with a possible assault, at the besieger’s initiative). The first important factor is the terrain. Terrain has two main effects in battles: how much they provide in defense, simulating that the defender had some time to set up and prepare positions; and, what is the frontage, or battle width for the following combat. Frontage is a concept known by veterans of the AGEOD games and is very important in battles. Depending if you have enough troops to fill the battleline or not, the battle will shape very differently. For example if you are fighting in a forest, then the frontage is 6 in fair weather and 5 in harsh weather. If your army has 12 or more units, then your deployment will be optimal, as 6 can fill the front rank and 6 will provide support to the melee.Now imagine you get caught in the open field, like a plain, a steppe. Frontage here is 12. Your army of 12 units will deploy in its entirety in the frontline! Imagine your archers and slingers to the front having to fight a melee with better equipped troops … Chances are that, unless the opponent is not too numerous, you’ll be beaten.But frontage provides another interesting benefit to how the game plays. It really reduces the effect of ‘death stacks’, i.e. stacks that can overwhelm their enemy through sheer numbers. Because once you have filled your battle line, the rest of your army will be in reserve, and will only fight if there is a draw when they can replace weakened units in a subsequent round. Otherwise, they will do nothing (apart from cost you money and supplies). Think of the Thermopylae battle in 480 BCE as the perfect illustration of a very low frontage situation…So our armies are setup, with melee units to the front and supporting units behind them. The very first phase of battle will be the ranged phase, where each unit capable of ranged attack will do so (the others will only throw insults at the other side). As a cosmetic enhancement, the skirmishers will appear to the front of the melee units, perform their attack and then retreat through the frontline to their final position at the back. That’s cosmetic, but it’s nice to watch! Seeing a line of legionnaires throwing their pilum, while the Velites to their front harass the enemy, and then fall back through the cohorts, is quite pleasing for the would-be Imperator.hen the main phase will begin, the melee phase. There will be a series of duels, between each melee combatant of each side. If one side has extra units (because he is more numerous than the opponent), then flanking attacks happen to the unlucky wing of the enemy.The battle system is an example of the Triangle Rule. The Triangle Rule is the very core design element of all battles. We thought hard to have a system where winning was not simply the matter of maximizing a given parameter and forcing your way to victory by exploiting this aspect. It had to be subtler. We want the player to balance and consider three things at once (so the Triangle Rule…):How powerful a unit is;How experienced and what is its current fighting condition; and,How good is the general in chargeFor us, it was very important that none of these 3 aspects outweigh the others. Said differently, you must design your armies and conduct war in such way that each of these 3 criteria are the best possible, knowing that having ‘only’ one of them as very good will not compensate for the others.So back to our duels. The aim is to achieve the highest possible duel score. This score comes from two things: the total combat value of the unit, and the dice rolled.The total combat value of the unit is made of the base combat strength of the unit. For example, a medium warband will have 3, a legion 5 (well, there are 3 generations of legion, so I’m speaking of the pre-Marian one here), and a phalanx 7 in attack but only 5 in defense (most units behave differently in attack and defense). Note also that this value by itself might have been modified by the terrain. A legion fighting in wood would be worth only 3, like, for example, a mundane medium infantry.To this value is added the support value, between 1 and 3. The best support units are the Archers (but they are rare for most nations, costly and have no extra abilities). Many skirmishers will provide a value of 2, and the simple fact of having another friendly unit as a support (even another melee unit) will provide a 1. So, as you see, having superior numbers is important, but having a similar ratio of melee and support units is more important (although the melee units are more likely to be lost in combat so you need some replacements for them, even if you are victorious).This combination of factors will tend to produce a value between 2 to 8, in most cases. Now for the second part, the dice rolls. That’s where the two other sides of our ‘Triangle’ kick-in…Each unit will add up his best dice (ten-sided dice) to his combat value. And a unit will get one dice roll plus one per rating of the general in charge. This rating varies from 0 to 2 (again generals have attack and defence scores and will use this is appropriate if they are leading the attacking or defending army). So the best general would be a 2-2 general, with this possibly modified by an appropriate trait (many Generals are better – or worse – in certain circumstances …). Now there is an added twist to the formula, and this is where unit experience and effectiveness (a combination of fatigue and morale) comes in to play, the third and last facet of our Triangle rule.From all the. 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!. Dev Diary #10 Units: Abilities and Modifiers: Units in Empires have very diverse profiles and different roles. Some are heavy hitters, like phalanxes, legions and other heavy infantry. These units cost a lot to recruit and maintain, and will use a lot of metal, so can’t be mass produced easily. They have drawbacks too, like being relatively slow and not fit to fight in terrain like forests or mountains.Another category is the medium infantry, which is apparently less powerful, more affordable and has the useful ability of being a besieger, meaning it will provide a bonus when you siege a city. This reflects the value of these formations in being able to construct heavy siege engines on the spot (you did not drag siege towers along your army when you were on the march). Given they are more affordable, you can field a lot of these troops, and this might be necessary since battles have an important concept of ‘frontage’, which is the width of the battle line. Previous players from AGEOD game will be well aware of this feature, as it appeared in 2004 with Birth of America, and it never ceased to play an important and realistic role in all our games. Failure to fill out your available front line will leave you very vulnerable to being outflanked or forced to commit your skirmishers to actual hand to hand combat (not a good idea!).[www.matrixgames.com]The skirmishers are another sort of unit. They are not costly, although the manpower they need is close to the types above (so make a lot demands on your population to fill out their ranks from the pool of conscripts used for units). In melee, they are quite weak, but this is not where they should be used. They are there to help support your main infantry, by providing a combat bonus to them. A medium infantry unit backed by a skirmisher is as strong, if not more so, than a heavy infantry without support. Add to that they will weaken the enemy before melee through their missile attack, and you will quickly come to see that they are not optional to a good army composition.Cavalry is another subset of units and plays an important role on the battlefield and the strategic map. Light cavalry will perform as skirmishers but most types can also flank the enemy. It means that should your opponent don’t fill up the battle line, then they will deal bonus attacks against the enemy. Should you manage to inflict a defeat to your opponent, then their pursuit bonus will deal significant damage during the retreat phase. On the strategic map, they are faster than even skirmishers, so can act as a fire brigade of sort. But they are not ideal if they have to fight on their own as they are rather brittle, except perhaps if they are heavy cavalry or cataphracts. Plus skirmishers help a city resists a siege, while cavalrymen don’t do much but eating the food stockpile in this situation!The important thing to remember is that through quite a lot of fine tuning and testing, we have managed to give each unit a role that defines them well. And also that costlier units are not always better in all circumstances, so if you enjoy tweaking your army composition, then you should have some fun testing out combinations.[www.matrixgames.com]But there is more to it than that, as units also have some custom abilities contextual to some terrain. For example, many Celtic nations have light and medium infantry which are woodmen, so they are better when fighting in the huge forests of Gallia. In the same way, German warriors benefit from this trait too, given how large and continuous, almost overwhelming, was the big Hercynian forest where many lived.You’ll also fight mountainmen, if you have to deal with Celtiberian tribes, or people from Armenia or Colchide. Arabia Felix or the vast expanses of desert bordering Carthage proper will see cameliers with the desertmen traits, etc.But some traits are not a bonus, they are a drawback. For example, elephants dislike cold terrain, and Phalanxes are not fit to assault a city.Other traits are about how units fought on the battlefield. For example, skirmishers, horse-archers and light cavalry can deal damage even when they lose a duel, or to add insult to injury, they can even shave off part of the damages they received by evading the melee! As some of you know, the battle of Carrhae was a major defeat for Rome against Parthia, mostly because the latter had a lot of horse-archers (backed up by supply wagons to replenish their stock of arrows) while the legionnaires were trying (and failing) to reach the enemy line. In Empires too, I would not bet on the mighty legions if they have no support from archers or skirmishers, against a full battle line of Parthian horse archers!Hopefully this will give you an idea about how Empires manages units and the different possible battles you will experiment.But traits, also called modifiers, are everywhere in the game. Rulers have traits, ranging from being a superior administrator to being paranoid. The variations are numerous, and the chance to get the same ruler twice is very small. This in turn will shape your nation and alter your strategy, as a good military ruler will provide a lot of bonus which will be a boon to your army, while someone who despises the idea of expanding his realm will be an issue if you wanted to conquer and gobble your neighbor.Units and rulers have traits (or modifiers) but each government is also different using their own range of abilities. For example, a tribal government will provide a bonus to manpower, and that’s fitting as units filled with warriors will need a lot of men and not that much heavy armor to be recruited. A merchant oligarchy like Carthage will enjoy extra bonuses for commerce but will be heavily penalized on manpower, thus lending to a style of gameplay where you’ll need to recruit a lot of mercenaries (and the ones for Carthage are rather good!). In the end, through the judicious (or so we hope) use of modifiers, you’ll see that all the nations play rather differently from one another. Because their units are different, or perhaps their government. And then there are the custom buildings with special abilities! Here, we are mostly not talking about something like “Get +10% from that or that”, this would be dull… Buildings have specific abilities or behaviors that significantly alter the game and how you will tackle a nation. Judea with the possible, but difficult, task to rebuild the Solomon Temple (coming in no less than 7 levels of upgrades!), Saba with the impressive Ma’rib dam which can be either a boon or a curse (depending if you repair it or not), Dacia with its mountain fortresses, etc. [www.matrixgames.com]. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #8 - Legacy: Winning the GameIn 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.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.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.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.