If you’ve been reading the Groghead’s front page for the last week or so you have seen the couple of teaser articles we published in anticipation of the Field of Glory: Empires (FogE) launch on July 11. It has been a while since a PC strategy game has generated the kind of excitement that we have seen in our forums. So, we’re going to continue with our coverage here to hold you over until our detailed review is ready – the only difference being that you all can now play the game along with us. We even have a massive MP game set to kick-off on July 18 between 16 different GH forum members!

Lloyd Sabin,

FogE is admittedly far bigger than I anticipated. Despite that, in my single player campaign as Pontus, I continue to hold my own! Right now I am ranked 5th overall in the game world, and I have earned three progress tokens toward the ‘perfect classical age society,’ having made advances in law, politics, tech, etc. I did make it as high as 4th, but then fell back a turn later. There is still so much left to discover and do – there’s no way I could cram it all in to one traditional review. That’s why the coverage here will continue. I just don’t want to keep you waiting for our impressions. There is a lot to discover and we want to touch on everything!

In the last few days I feel that I have truly begun connecting with FogE, after watching some online tutorials and glancing at the manual (but not nearly enough – I definitely have to review it further). For me personally, the best way to get in to FogE, as I said in the previous weeks, is to try to relax and let the game pour over you. While complex, FogE is not unforgiving. It won’t hold your hand, but it won’t bite it off either.

As I progressed, I discovered the beauty of being able to direct production by shifting where I have my citizens and slaves working, whether it be to create more food, infrastructure, money or culture. This is a key mechanic of the game, maybe even the most important, and also a bit of an exploit. If you hold your own militarily (or even if you don’t) and pour all your resources into getting cultural points, you can win the game through a cultural victory.

During my last couple of sessions I pretty much turtled up, and did not get into any battles with foreign powers; just a couple of slave revolts which I auto-resolved. Once I consolidated the territory I won, and tweaked where my citizens and slaves were working, the money I earned increased dramatically per turn. I got a bit overexcited and spent the incoming cash on new military units, which then hit my manpower levels as well as ongoing cash flow because of upkeep.

But I’ve also been able to build up my infrastructure, building markets, waterworks, dams, industrial metal furnaces, etc. With these advances my stock of metal, used for the military and for trading, should also go up as long as I don’t get too excited and spend all the money on new military units immediately. Time will tell.

So for this week, the key takeaways for FogE are to take care in tweaking what your citizens and slaves are working on, what you build, and don’t sweat trade too much since it is automated anyway. Are these good attributes or bad? It is somewhat up to personal taste – if you love micromanagement, then you will miss being able to tweak your empire’s minutiae. But, it also makes the early game of FogE more manageable.

Moving on I am really looking forward to get into some scrums with vulnerable neighbors – Colchis is looking particularly soft on my eastern flank. I’m also looking forward to our GH MP game to start on this Thursday, the 18th. Future installments here will cover both my single player campaign as well as the multiplayer game. Thanks for reading and see you back here next week!

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