Released 14 Sep 2017
- Overfall 03 22 2017 – Turn Based Combat Strategy Games Pc
- Overfall 03 22 2017 – Turn Based Combat Strategy Games
Challenging and addictive turn-based combat - careful strategy and cunning skill combinations are the key to victory against your foes! Interactive story encounters where the choices you make and the allies you recruit ensure no two journeys are quite the same. An unparalleled sense of style, superb turn-based combat, some truly compelling characters and themes and a genuinely engrossing world make Persona 5 not only one of the best JRPGs ever made, but also one of the finest games in years. Persona 5 is priced at $79.99 and is available on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
Ancient China really doesn’t get the attention it deserves in gaming. Stalwarts like Ancient Rome and Greece are depicted time and again by genre heavy weights like the Total War series. Meanwhile, Ancient China is often left out in the cold, its rich history of civil war, innovation and myth being watered down in Western portrayals into a single unified state.
Oriental Empires by Shining Pixel Studios goes a long way toward rectifying these oversights. With more than 2000 years of history to play with, from the various civilizations that ruled prior to China’s first unification to the invention of gunpowder and beyond, the result is a heady mixture of rich Chinese culture, angry (and playable!) steppe tribesmen and a sprinkling of Sun Tzu. A concoction let down only by its inflexible and opaque AI.
If Total War is a combination of Civilization and Age of Empires, then Oriental Empires takes that combination a step further. The game’s turn-based gameplay takes place over a single unified (and vast) hex map of China, where players found cities, build farms and infrastructure and direct armies. Turns take place using using the WEGO system where all players’ have their turns resolved simultaneously when a turn is ended.
Overfall 03 22 2017 – Turn Based Combat Strategy Games Pc
Taken together, these features make for a smooth game with minimal downtime and is undoubtedly a step above current historical game design, where alternate turns and long loading times hurt immersion and flow. The approach gives Oriental Empires a lot of freedom to allow proper ambushes, flank attacks and the arrival of reinforcements. It’s an exciting new world where many of the artificial restraints placed upon would-be strategists are removed. It’s unfortunate that once battle is joined, Oriental Empires comes up short in the tactics department.
Coming from Total War where the player has godlike control over all their units all time, Oriental Empires can be a jarring experience. Battles take place during the simultaneous turn resolution. The player has no control over the course of the battle itself and must rely on the AI to command the battle. Theoretically, this is good: a ruler shouldn’t command in war, Sun Tzu was quite strong on that one. The player does have some control.
There are a good number of tactical stances for the player to choose from for each unit their army, ranging from full blooded charges, to withdrawals to harassment and outflanking maneuvers. These provide a tense planning element to each battle, where the player must decide, looking at the enemy’s and their own dispositions, how each battle is to be fought. However, without extremely careful handling by the player and considerable prescience about what where and how each unit will function on the battle, the player will spend much of their time tearing their hair out in frustration at the AI’s lack of competence in much of anything.
The crux of the matter appears to come down to the AI’s inflexibility and its slavish following of orders even when the battle situation (to human eyes) makes the player’s orders irrelevant. Thus units ordered to advance and attack in a battle line will remain in the battle line rather than coming to a friendly unit’s aid when it is clear that they are unthreatened. Archers ordered to advance will often close into close combat rather than continue firing.
Many of these issues come down to the game communicating precisely what each order will do and I have yet to obviously lose a battle to the AI’s inflexibility. Yet it remains that learning how to game the system to ensure that my units perform precisely as ordered makes for an uninspiring experience. Matters are not improved by the unnatural manner that the AI handles its troops, with units stopping and starting like the worst moments of a Total War: Rome II AI bugs video. It is reasonable to have a certain amount of “FUBAR” included in your battle AI, but it must be immersive FUBAR. Oriental Empires’ AI is not immersive.
Whilst combat is nothing to write home about, strategy and empire management are something else entirely. Unlike games like Civilization, where expansion and warfare are heavily penalized and discouraged, Oriental Empires encourages both. It’s a satisfying change of pace. Technologies are handled through four different themed research trees. Unlike other games, the player is able to research a technology in each tree simultaneously, meaning that the player isn’t forced to ignore one tree for another, resulting in thoroughly immersion breaking situations where a civilization has impressive technology in tree, but remains in the Stone Age in another. Edicts are well fleshed out and add period flavour, with many edicts having both positive and negative consequences.
Overfall 03 22 2017 – Turn Based Combat Strategy Games
Cities have only a limited number of slots for buildings and as many buildings combine with others, careful planning is necessary to reach some of the more powerful units. Farms and road are built by the city and are tied directly to a player’s population level. Burn enough farms and the enemy’s cities might begin turning against them.
Unit variety, always a concern in a setting that, to Western eyes, might appear tediously homogenous, is handled well. There are a large variety of units differentiated not only by how they are equipped but how they are raised, each with their own advantages. A cash strapped state will find the cheapness and flexibility of levy troops appealing, whilst a rich state will find standing armies valuable for their professionalism and loyalty. These are supplemented by a glorious array of siege weapons ranging from the standard catapult to rocket(!) artillery.
The campaign isn’t flawless, with several curious bugs resulting in my entire profits being wiped out for no obvious reason, leading to many turns being wasted whilst I pulled my state out of debt. Despite this, the game was stable and the transition from the Civilization style god’s eye view of the map to a first person view is almost seamless, with only a few frames lost on my aging system. My one concern regarding campaign gameplay is the potential for the campaign to become homogenous, with every playthrough essentially the same series of building up your cities and empire the same way.
Like the battle AI, the campaign AI is problematic. Whilst at times cunning and resourceful and willing to see when it is beaten unlike so many other AIs, it suffers from the same issues that Oriental Empires’ competitors have gone some way toward solving, namely that of AI transparency. It is impossible to tell or understand what makes this AI tick. Did I build a city in the wrong place or declare war on the wrong person? I shall never know. All I know is that they seem to delight in declaring war on me. Upon meeting them for the first time, they are invariably hostile. To make matters worse, the UI doesn’t always make it clear that they’ve declared war on me in the first place. When I look at their armies, their ranks are usually filled with the bog standard levy spearmen, rather than the archers, halberdiers and artillery that I have available. Needless to say, the AI doesn’t make for exciting wars. Hopelessly outmatched by my elite infantry and often outnumbered, the AI can present little challenge. Whilst cunning and usually quite reasonable compared to the inflexibly homicidal AI of other games, I honestly wish Oriental Empires’ AI would, if not play better, at least play with a bit more variety.
Ultimately, you really must make up your own mind about Oriental Empires. Despite taking it to task for many things, this reviewer has thoroughly enjoyed its history and its innovative mechanics. But if you are looking for a tactical wargame where you must out think their opponent, perhaps look elsewhere. The AI in this simply isn’t good enough to handle the expectations of a human commander. If you are looking for a grand strategy game, Oriental Empires is well worth your consideration. The innovations in Oriental Empires are a breath of fresh air in a genre whose big names seldom innovate in any meaningful fashion. For those looking for a change of pace, Oriental Empires, imperfect as it might be; is well worth your time.
For those who enjoy strategic more than tactical gameplay, Oriental Empires is a welcome breath of fresh air thanks to its unusual setting and innovative mechanics.
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The Roman Empire is the empire as far as historical nerds are concerned, though Chinese historical nerds might disagree. However, it was just a republic before it became an empire, and it had a fair share of military blunders. And while Rome had an extreme ability to bounce back from defeat, I doubt Numantia the game does.
After the Romans defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War (of Hannibal fame), they got a foothold in Iberia – modern Spain. Unfortunately, Iberia was full of Celtiberians, the local variety of Celts, who didn’t much like being conquered. The game begins with the Second Celtiberian war, when the Romans accused the town of Segeda of building walls in breach of their treaty. Rome sent in 30,000 troops under Quintus Fabius Nobilitor while the Segedans, having not finished any walls, fled to the more defensible town of Numantia. And so began a series of Roman military blunders that eventually crushed the Celtiberians.
Screenshots like these almost make it look exciting.
Since the game doesn’t have a multiplayer mode, the campaigns are its meat and bones. You can choose to play as the Numantians (Numatenes?) or the Romans. Each campaign has both real historical figures who make the more strategic decisions, and some made-up soldiers to handle the more low-level stuff. The campaigns are separated into chapters (called “capitulum”, because it’s Roman times, you see), which are just a linear series of “events:” some of them are non-combat, allowing you to win resources, troops or impact the morale (though some might end in combat if you mess up) while others are straight-up fights.
The campaign map is separated into nodes, marking settlements. You don’t interact with it in any way besides firing off events. Each faction has their main settlement – like the Roman camp – which has its own map, again, separated into nodes. In the main settlement, you can hire and fire troops, equip items, exchange resources and, again, deal with events.
When battle comes, you will (usually) be able to choose what troops you’ll take, up to the scenario limit of around 14. Your troops are separated into types: heroes (powerful, single man versions of other units), melee, cavalry, ranged and special. You can take any mix of them, as long as you have enough type-allotted slots. The units' stats are simple: endurance (health points), number of soldiers in the unit (6-to-8, usually), morale, melee attack, ranged attack (and range), initiative, movement range and occasionally, some powers.
In the battlefield, units move according to their initiative, from highest to lowest. The factions don’t really share any initiative steps: for example, only Numantians have 8 initiative (fastest) units, while the fastest roman unit has only 7. Units can move and attack but not vice versa, and they can expend morale to move an additional hex. Morale may or may not influence how much damage a unit deals and/or takes. The is also something about flanking.
Numantia is a not a very clearly explained game. The tutorial exists and battles have a tracker that shows who did what and how much damage they dealt, but that’s it in terms of information you get. I never knew why one unit did more damage than other, how morale impacted things or if flanking ever happened. Outside of some lazy particle effects that go with some powers, you really can’t say if you did anything special. It took a while to realise the ripples that radiate from where a unit was killed symbolised the morale effects for surrounding units.
Morale is a stat that is of dubious value, and doesn’t really work as one would hope in a game created in 2017: units don’t panic, retreat or run away. Every battle is a battle to the death of the last opposing soldier. Which will usually be a Roman, because I can’t shake the feeling that the game thinks Celtiberians are much better than Romans are. Mix up studio 3 1 5 full.
As a person who is vaguely aware of Roman history, I know that pre-Marian reform Roman legions were a different beast that the popular culture image of them. Your citizen-soldiers were separated by age and income, with melee units going from young and lightly armored hastati to principes who went into battle once hastati had bloodied the enemy to the veteran triarii who were committed if the going was tough. You also had velites as skirmishers, and most of the rest – ranged and cavalry – was provided by auxiliaries.
But in the game, it seems like almost every Roman unit is inferior to Celtiberian. Melee almost always favor the Numantians, and, what is super important, their ranged units almost always go before the Roman ones, allowing for some alpha strike capability. Even a single attack on an enemy unit that kills a soldier or two drops its effectiveness, and the AI does love to pour its love on one unit until it becomes ineffective by the time you get to use it.
It’s hard to communicate, but the action in the game feels as if everyone is stuck in molasses.
Units are fragile in this game, and not even the big shields can help you against slings and javelins. So a Roman force is likely to start the battle already mauled, since the enemy will have had time to pepper it with both ranged units and attack it in melee. Only heroes and special units like war machines or elephants are mostly immune to this -- a unit loses attack damage as it loses soldiers when its endurance goes down, like some visual representation of HP dropping. However, your hero is a single-man unit with the endurance of a Praetorian guard squad, so they retain their effectiveness until they die. Same goes for war machines, though those are immobile, can’t fight in melee and, like all ranged units, can’t fire if they have an adjacent enemy (no area-of-control in the game, so any mobile ranged unit can just retreat a hex and fire at their attackers). Elephants, meanwhile, have two beasts in one unit, and they’ll keep on trucking until one of them dies. Incidentally, javelin-armed cavalry is your best bet, since they move further than elephants while still able to throw pointy sticks at them.
So the battles are a dreadful and dreary slog – and I can’t really praise other aspects of the game, either. The campaigns hop around haphazardly, and I’m still not sure if the Numantian campaign doesn’t jump from the Second Celtiberian War (154-152 BC) to the Numantine War (143-133 BC) without really notifying the player. In fact, if you don’t know the histories of those wars, you won’t get a lot of what’s supposed to be happening.
How did the elephants doom Romans? Not explained in the game.
You won’t even know some game mechanics, like how units aren’t healed/refilled after battles – that only happens at chapter break . Having a spot of bad luck early in a chapter can leave you crippled for the final battle. And while you can hire and disband normal troops (they don’t gain experience levels or anything like that), you can’t really do that with heroes.
On the visual side, the game fails to leave any good lasting impression. The character portraits that appear in events are ugly, and the drawings used for cutscenes aren’t that great, either. 3D graphics would be OK in our niche market if the battlefields didn’t look so flat and lifeless (all maps are flat, barring houses or fences or other objects), and the combat didn’t feel so dull. When two units in neighbouring hexes fight, they rush to the hex border, take a hack at each other and some dudes fall to the ground if the units suffers enough damage. Fights in Civilization are more animated these days! Here, only the elephant attacks are special, throwing rag-dolling corpses around.
But elephant attacks are the only impactful thing in the game, since no effort was put into showing the scale of events. The ambush that killed 10,000 Roman troops at the start of the expedition is merely a scuffle for you, while I only identified the siege that ended with scared elephants trampling Roman troops because I read Wikipedia.
The game is really frustrating to use, stinking suspiciously of a console port – the campaign and settlement maps basically don’t have any use for mouse. Sometimes, even trying to goad some information about unit abilities from various is impossible. Also, I’ve encountered bugs related to equipable items not showing correctly or Spanish words creeping into the text (I know that “Endurance” is “Resistancia” in the original!). I’ve experienced crashes, too.
At the time of writing, Numantia has three Spanish, three Russian and one English review on Steam, and it feels almost like something that was released as modern Celtiberian propaganda. The game feels stacked for Numantians and even if it wasn’t, it’s still too impenetrable for such a simplistic game. If you want history, there are some really good Rome: Total War realism mods out there!
Numantia is a game about some of the lesser know Roman conflicts and that’s the only good thing it has going for it.