All revved up but having gone nowhere with my copy of Blocks!: Julius Caesar, I find myself looking anywhere to get my swords and sandals fix. This has me revisiting, again, a game I sampled a while back. I’ve changed a bit since then and, if I’m not mistaken, the game has changed a bit as well.
If you read that earlier post, you’ll recall that I used the starting date of the Field of Glory: Empires grand campaign to engage in a kinda-sorta historical Battle of Sentinum. Among my complaints, I highlighted the fact that, not knowing what kind of army my opponents (the Senones) were fielding against me, I blundered into a battle having too much of a disadvantage for me to overcome. Again, if you read that earlier post, you might glean that I quickly moved on, from FoG: Empires, to other things.
Since then, I’ve had some more time with Empires and that has led me to a greater appreciation as to how it works. I’m now able to appreciate, even if not master, the economic and diplomatic aspects of the game, especially if I keep the setting on easy.
My first departure from the previous go-around is that I now know not to rush into that first battle. Helpfully, the game advises that, before taking the field, it would be wise to raise a couple more legionary units. This advice (and other helpful hints) I don’t remember from when I played before, leaving me to believe that it was added in patch. It’s also possible that I simply didn’t know what I was doing and missed, in my eagerness to get to the historical battle, this obvious instruction. Either way, I appreciate the way that the game guides one along the historical path.
In addition to these opening hints, the player is also presented with a series of objectives to help drive one to one’s historical destiny. On top of this randomly-generate objective system, there seems to be the occasional scripted mission. In the screen shot above I am executing one such mission, assigned by the senate, that would have me conquer Etruria in exchange for the currency of victory, “legacy” points. Between the in-game urgings on one hand and a history of the Republic of Rome in the other, I can imagine myself reliving the flow of history.
The feature is only available for single-player and only if you have Field of Glory II in your library but, for me, the key to all of this is the auto-generation of tactical battles based upon your strategic decisions and operational movements. Yes, I complained about this previously and none of my concerns from that first time around are resolved. The armies remain a little too small and broken down into not-quite-the-right scale. The course scale of the turn-based game means that operational movement is more representative than realistic. Yet, once these two layers are interwoven, a better experience emerges from the mix.
When you meet an enemy in battle, your own generated army makes at least as much sense as the campaign or generated-battle options within FoG2. That is, of course, if you’ve properly managed your military at the strategic level. Within the constraints of the engine, the Roman legions look like Roman legions and perform appropriately against their lesser-organized northern neighbors.
Now, I know I’m never really going to “replay history,” even at the level that a game like Alea Jacta Est might offer me. But if I look at this instead as a “battle generator,” I come away with a much different, and better, impression. Empires/ FoG2 offers a whole bunch of stuff that previous takes on the campaign layer for this engine lack. The open-ended strategic layer means that you are allowed to fully guide your empire and not have to rely on a few, offered, strategic decisions. It means that losses, including partial losses, feed back into that strategic layer in a self-consistent way. It also means, for me, avoiding the escalating difficulty of the FoG2 campaigns that generally leave me unable to play them to their conclusions.
As I indicated above, I’m currently playing Field of Glory: Empires on its easiest setting. Unlike many games, built to challenge the player, this easy setting seems to live up to its sales pitch. Playing on easy is not meant to challenge but to allow a bit of casual play within the parameters of the system. If anything, I might be taking it a little too easy. You might see, in that top screenshot, that I’m flush in all my strategic resources – an advantage that increases with every turn. As it stands, the only real strategic challenge is against the “aging” and “decadence” mechanic; a key aspect of the game that penalizes a players for trying to grow too big, too fast.
On the other hand, that might be just what the doctor ordered. It allows me to play as a Roman Republic whose only real barrier to conquering the world is put up by Rome itself.