Field of Glory: Empires Unveiled!

[zakblood]

hooray our own thread, ty

[Pocus]

Empires is definitively not only about combat. There is a very strong 'develop your civilization' feature into it. Plus decadence, the rise and fall of empires.

[Tamas]

Hi guys,

I will be moving this to the now-created FoG Empires forum, to keep discussions on-topic at both places.

[saber255]

So Excited for this new Ageod game .I am a big fan of there games. but this is a dream come true .Just hope they keep the offices portraits that ageod is famous for
always loved the art work

[sIg3b]

Hi guys,

I will be moving this to the now-created FoG Empires forum, to keep discussions on-topic at both places.

Good idea. Thanks.

[sIg3b]

Empires is definitively not only about combat. There is a very strong 'develop your civilization' feature into it. Plus decadence, the rise and fall of empires.

I was never suggesting it´s only about combat. But that´s my point: 4X and tactical combat resolution tend not to go well together. Each of the two disturbs the balance of the other.

[FluffyFoxy]

Only too bad that it is probably a bit inconvenient to export the battles to Field of Glory 2 and export it back and these balltes are not directly integrated into the game.

We know that the current interaction between the two games in the form of import/export works and that is probably all the developers care for right now. But the game is far from finished. I could imagine a closer integration eventually. In case of a battle you could just press the FOG2 button after which the game and battle might automatically start. To that end, FOG2 could bypass the main menu and load in a much more streamlined fashion. And once you are done FOG2 is closed, Empires automatically started and the battle result imported. The whole process can be very streamlined and made as seamless as possible.

[Tamas]

Empires is definitively not only about combat. There is a very strong 'develop your civilization' feature into it. Plus decadence, the rise and fall of empires.

I was never suggesting it´s only about combat. But that´s my point: 4X and tactical combat resolution tend not to go well together. Each of the two disturbs the balance of the other.

Well, Empires has been designed as a standalone game, so it doesn't need FOG2 to play as intended. The FOG2 integration aims to fit into that model, "translating" between the two games in a way that's realistic, accurate, and balanced. Balancing work is still needed obviously (as we are just about to enter Beta) but early results have been very encouraging, hence us showing the feature off.

Needless to say, if you play the same battle in Empires and FOG2 you will not, usually, get the exact same result. That's sort of the point of the whole thing anyways - letting the player become the general on the battlefield making the decisions, so to speak.

And as with any strategy game that includes tactical battles, if you use FOG2 to play out battles, your skill in playing FOG2 will heavily influence your success in your Empires game.

[JaM2013]

why 2 years per turn? doesnt that mean your characters will die too fast? besides army could move quite a distance in two years, while here it looks like you only move to neighboring province is kinda strange... it was one of the big mistakes Creative Assembly did with Rome 2 Total War, so its kinda surprising you decided for the same..

[Tamas]

why 2 years per turn? doesnt that mean your characters will die too fast? besides army could move quite a distance in two years, while here it looks like you only move to neighboring province is kinda strange... it was one of the big mistakes Creative Assembly did with Rome 2 Total War, so its kinda surprising you decided for the same..

There is always abstraction involved when you try to simulate so many aspects in a single game and we have experimented with different time frames trying to adjust mechanics accordingly. Two years appears to work well with the mechanics and balance we are aiming for. Nothing is absolutely final yet so if overwhelming beta testing evidence proves us wrong, we might adjust it to a different time scale, but as I said, it works well at the moment.

[JaM2013]

i'm mentioning it because i was present when Rome 2 came with same setup, which was then highly criticized. One of valid points against it was that it made characters die of old age way too fast (practically in 20-25 turns), while certain politics positions in Roman society were appointed for 1 year..

20-25 turns "live span" of characters means player will not get too attached to them, which reduces the immersion of the game a bit.

And its just one point, whole campaign map movement is another thing.. with Legion being able to move to Gaul, campaign there for summer-autumn, then return to Roman lands for winter, while Early Republican Legions were formed from citizen Levy which only signed up for campaign season, as they had own farms they had to attend to.. which eventually led Roman Government to move towards "professionalization" of legions (or at least financial compensation).. yet with 2 years/turn, these factors will be nonexistent.

The Creative Assembly in defense of their decision said they did not want to have campaigns that are too long, yet Rome 2 most popular mods all came with at least 4turn/year setup, while some even used 12turns/year and players were quite happy with it. At the same time, all expansions which had such granular turn setup, were a lot more popular than base game.

After all, if you want to play through Second Punic war, you don't want it to end in 10 turns.. as in such short time, you barely scratch the surface of things.

[TheGrayMouser]

I get why a larger timescale is utilizided based on the map scale and Area movements, but I too like the concept of turns representing less time.

Seasonable would be ideal, and would help nudge RBS into adding snow and monsoons into FOG

[Tamas]

I understand the concern and I well remember the uproar during Total War 2's launch. I happened to be one of the players who were not too bothered by it.

Simulating history in a game involves translating various real-life processes into a workable and fun system. In Empires, we want to simulate the "lifecycle" of empires in the ancient era and the interesting things that go on with that, warfare and realm-management in particular. We have found so far, that two years per turn gives us the ideal middle ground to simulate what we want to simulate while giving us the kind of game we are aiming for, as well.

Once again, if beta tester feedback will prove us wrong, we will consider re-balancing for some other time frame, but we are quite happy with what we have at present.

[sIg3b]

I understand the concern and I well remember the uproar during Total War 2's launch. I happened to be one of the players who were not too bothered by it.

Simulating history in a game involves translating various real-life processes into a workable and fun system. In Empires, we want to simulate the "lifecycle" of empires in the ancient era and the interesting things that go on with that, warfare and realm-management in particular. We have found so far, that two years per turn gives us the ideal middle ground to simulate what we want to simulate while giving us the kind of game we are aiming for, as well.

Once again, if beta tester feedback will prove us wrong, we will consider re-balancing for some other time frame, but we are quite happy with what we have at present.

Couldn´t agree more.

I wouldn´t even consider buying a game that drags on for 1500 turns.

Please, please, please, keep the longest campaign within a low 3-digit-range, turnwise.

[sIg3b]

Well, Empires has been designed as a standalone game, so it doesn't need FOG2 to play as intended. The FOG2 integration aims to fit into that model, "translating" between the two games in a way that's realistic, accurate, and balanced. Balancing work is still needed obviously (as we are just about to enter Beta) but early results have been very encouraging, hence us showing the feature off.

Needless to say, if you play the same battle in Empires and FOG2 you will not, usually, get the exact same result. That's sort of the point of the whole thing anyways - letting the player become the general on the battlefield making the decisions, so to speak.

And as with any strategy game that includes tactical battles, if you use FOG2 to play out battles, your skill in playing FOG2 will heavily influence your success in your Empires game.

For me it´s mostly about suspension of disbelief.

Say the Consul is an extremely stupid man like Terentius Varro.

It simply feels wrong to be able to step into his shoes and win the battle at Cannae with an overwhelming victory against Hannibal.

So the problem is: How do you simulate the effect of having a very dumb C-i-C? This is currently not possible in FoG2.

In other words: If you don´t auto-resolve and use FoG2 instead, you are going to win battles that you are not entitled to win. This is the balance problem.

[melm]

That's simple. What we need is just some units or most units don't follow players' order because their cohort leaders are "stupid". However, we have already seen that not few players don't even like the automatic pursue(which is out of player's control) or follow-up melee. Perhaps it's human natural trying to control everything.

[canuckgamer]

FOG Empires will be a wait and see for me. I had the AGEOD Civil War game and it was dull, dull, dull. Every game they put out after that was exactly the same and I never purchased another one. I just found their system very bland.

Since I have FOG2 I am wondering if you can play the battles initiated in FOG Empires in a PBEM game. I only play solo games to learn the mechanics of a game and then move to PBEM. It indicates that up to 6 players can play so if player A initiates a battle with player B and they decided to resolve their battle using FOG2 that would mean that the other four players would have to wait until A & B completed their battle. I know it takes a few weeks for me to finish a battle PBEM so I can't see this being a viable option. Maybe the option of resolving battles using FOG2 is for solo play only?

[TheGrayMouser]

Well, Empires has been designed as a standalone game, so it doesn't need FOG2 to play as intended. The FOG2 integration aims to fit into that model, "translating" between the two games in a way that's realistic, accurate, and balanced. Balancing work is still needed obviously (as we are just about to enter Beta) but early results have been very encouraging, hence us showing the feature off.

Needless to say, if you play the same battle in Empires and FOG2 you will not, usually, get the exact same result. That's sort of the point of the whole thing anyways - letting the player become the general on the battlefield making the decisions, so to speak.

And as with any strategy game that includes tactical battles, if you use FOG2 to play out battles, your skill in playing FOG2 will heavily influence your success in your Empires game.

For me it´s mostly about suspension of disbelief.

Say the Consul is an extremely stupid man like Terentius Varro.

It simply feels wrong to be able to step into his shoes and win the battle at Cannae with an overwhelming victory against Hannibal.

So the problem is: How do you simulate the effect of having a very dumb C-i-C? This is currently not possible in FoG2.

In other words: If you don´t auto-resolve and use FoG2 instead, you are going to win battles that you are not entitled to win. This is the balance problem.

You aren’t going to be fighting Cannea...If you begin campaign in 300Bc, and somehow manage to get into a similar alternate 2nd punic war, it’s fantasy at this point any how, so who cares if you chose to use Fog to fight a tactical battle where perhaps the scripted general is Varro and you do better than him? ( i have to add,it’s unlikley Varro was stupid, he did his duty as most romans would, try to win in the center before the flanks fail... before Hannibal, it usually worked).

Btw, I get what you saying, a player whose a good tactician can win battles All over the place during the same turn, in effect simulating the nation being played has a surplus of Hannibal’s in every army, big and small. But of course, the player is going to be guiding the nation with a single minded purpose on the strategical level with a greater efficiency than even the most ruthless (and immortal) autocrat ever known. (And many of the nations in this period were ruled by many persons, so what happens to you immersion then? ) Its clear any imbalance is more likely to be from that end of the game...

[willard]

This game looks great so please keep up the good work! I have looked forward to this type of game for a very long time. I am very interested to see if AGEOD and Slitherine can successfully create a hybrid game system to integrate the tactical battles of FOGII and the operational/strategic campaign of FOG:EU.

My understanding is that AGEOD tried something very similar for their American Civil War game with the Take Command series. The idea was that you could export a file from AGEOD's ACW into the Take Command game. You would fight the battle using the Take Command battle engine and then export the files back into AGEOD's ACW. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, that attempt at integrating the two games was not a success. If you played those games a lot, you can find some similar files in the game directory, so it looks like they got pretty far along.

[rbodleyscott]

So the problem is: How do you simulate the effect of having a very dumb C-i-C? This is currently not possible in FoG2.

In other words: If you don´t auto-resolve and use FoG2 instead, you are going to win battles that you are not entitled to win. This is the balance problem.

The quality of the Field of Glory: Empires generals is taken into account when transfering the battle to FOG2. This is currently done by altering the quality of the troops to reflect the confidence they have in their general, the effect of his care (or otherwise) for the welfare of his troops on their fitness for battle, and the discipline he has instilled.

This will obviously need fine-tuning during beta testing, but we are happy that it already works pretty well to reflect the effect of the generals' ratings on battles fought out in Field of Glory: Empires.

We cannot take away the player's tactical skill, but the above system does make it significantly harder to win if he has a worse general than the enemy does.

As has been said before, nobody is forced to play the battles out in FOG2, and if a player does not want his tactical skill (or lack of it) to influence the result, he can simply let Empires resolve the battles.

It's a win:win situation. Those who want to use the FOG2 linkup can do so, those who don't need not do so. As Pocus has said, Empires is designed to be standalone. The extra tactical depth added by the FOG2 linkup is only for those who want it.