The game is fun, recapturing old school RTS vibes but with a few interesting ideas.

But one of my biggest pet peeves is convoluted bs monetization, and this has it in spades. Glyph, I don't want to buy pieces of your game. I don't want to have to unlock things like it's a MOBA. Let me pay you once and give me the full product as it unfolds through early access, instead of pretending to be free then nickel and diming me over basic features like co-op. This sort of thing reeks of Age of Empires Online, and endless content packs to come, and I can't support that.

The game was pretty solid for an early-access. However the community is being moderated by people who don't know what community is. Every game comes with its trolls and toxic players. Recently they added a punishment system to the game, through their discord, but it only punishes those who try to stand up for themselves against these offenders.

The game will slowly die at this pace and I've had quite enough of the game myself. If you enjoy teammates attack ground on your base, or talk trash without a way to mute them. Try this game, you'll enjoy it.

I won the last tournament, and the moderators, even with proof, do nothing against the offenders in this game, both vocal, typing or in-game teamkilling.

Currently a group of us are trying to fix this together with a developer, if this doesn't get fixed, we're all out.
I suggest new players to pass this game and find something else meanwhile.

This game start out cool. The past few months it just gets better and better. The devs are looking at how the meta changes and are balancing out the game very well. They still have not released actual nations and you can only play as generic nations but the gameplay itself is really good. From the base building to the resource management to the combat this game has done a lot of things right. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys RTS games!

Edit:

The game is going in a strange direction. It is no longer about war. This game should be re-named "Wonder Selection" because the meta right now in team games is to build the wonder and wait 25 minutes for the win. Gone is strategy of attacking early in team matches because by time you reach their back line guys they have machine gun towers that destroy everything you have. They are ahead of you in tech and by time you catch up the 25 minute timer on the wonder is completed.

They claim to have addressed this issue by moving the timer from 20 minutes to 25 minutes. The issue was not fixed by this small change. FFA matches might require a Wonder to end the game in a timely manner but there is no reason to have it in Team matches where 10v10 every game is decided by who builds the wonder first. That is really boring game play. Most games once the wonder is built by one team or the other the opposite team just leaves.

I do not believe this game is fun anymore because of the Wonder mechanics and how maps will give a small choke point for 10v10 to fight across. Both teams fortify the choke point and pray their back players build the wonder first. Boring. Very boring. Not fun.

This issue was brought up to the developers and backed up with a straw poll that showed that 80% of players do not want the wonder in Team games. We were all told to just deal with it. Well, if this is the direction they are taking the game then I'll deal with it by finding another game because my friends and I do not want to play any more.

Edit 10/4/21:

The game has developed a good bit. I still do not recommend this game unless you enjoy being angry. The Wonder of the World is still a stupid thing for team games where the map has a bottle neck. Most games there is almost always someone who rushes it and their team dies and then they die because they didn't support their team. There is no match making system that can be seen so you get games where teams are completely lop sided almost every game. Light Knight rushes still kill half the enemy team because all you need is one friend to feed you a small bit of resources and you can upgrade horse units to Light Knights well before anyone could do it solo.

The balance between nations is also very very bad. I enjoy playing Germany but the amount of Metal on the map isn't enough to build their units unless you save all your metal for just those units and only use food and wood units up until IR2. The balance is not just in resource availability but also in timing when units become available. Mounted Guardsmen are capable of killing an entire base work force unless you invest heavily into towers. Even then the other player can just camp your towers and your workers are gathering 0 resources, not fun.

China gets infinite melee troops that deal enough damage to kill light tanks with their machete and they never stop coming. India wheeled tanks are small and fast while dealing 90 damage which can kill any building in the game except for tank traps. Wheeled tank rush is 100% impossible to survive and is easily done. Russia has access to basic soldiers that have grenades that deal 60 damage to buildings, essentially they can kill any tank or building with basic troop spam.

Then you have the early game. Right now if you spawn in the front line you will most likely never seen IR tech. This goes back to the lack of metal on the map and if you use up what is around you for early war then you are just useless late game. Not very fun to anyone and this issues usually caused 2-3 players to just quit in the first 10 seconds of the game. A leaver penalty was put into the game so now the new strat is to afk until the enemy kills you. Balance of teams is a complete joke and premade teams with even just 2 players can result in a completely lop sided victory for one team.

You constantly are fighting up front vs 2-3 players and using all resources to build towers and defensive walls while your ally in the back is building no troops because they only want to make their cheese IR units. In an organized game where you can trust your team mates this could be fun but in random games it really sucks the fun out of the game.

There are so many units that nobody uses because they are pointless. The french aircraft carrier is never used because regular airfields are just as good and cannot be sunk by ships. The crossbow is hardly ever used because it has almost no range at all. Longbows have such an insane range advantage on them that there really is no point in using crossbows unless you are defending a bottleneck where the enemy MUST pass through.

Nobody builds Fighters because they are so weak it is a joke. A single fighter attacking a single bomber will run out of fuel before the bomber dies. Worse yet the bomber will just run back to their AA defenses and the fighter will die. A horde of SMG soldiers can shoot down a WW2 bomber better than equal population of Fighters. What the hell kind of sense does that make? None, so nobody builds the Fighters because they can't even do their job.

Nobody builds a lot of medieval units because getting to IR is just a couple minutes of tech time. Why waste resources on a Longsword that does 21 damage when you can just wait 5 minutes and make Soldiers that cost less resources and are far more effective at killing. It is far too easy to rush IR tech and use overpowered units to just demolish the enemy. Anyone who has invested into early war just dies. The result being 90% of players just rush IR and you hardly see any battles in the early game and big fights dont happen until someone's cheese Light Knight or Militia spam attack is going.

I keep trying to make the game fun but I don't end my game sessions thinking "That was a fun time!" more like "Well I stomped or got stomped no inbetween how boring" So if you like being attacked by 3 players and dying because your team doesnt want to help this game is for you. If you like waiting 40 minutes for the wonder clock to tick down on a bottleneck map and nothing you can do to stop it then this game is for you.

You gave camels to Turks. It has nothing to do with our culture!

CHINA ruins this game.

Surmised, this game is ALMOST fun. Speaking from personal experience with multiplayer team games being my preferred mode, each game seems to be a coin toss between a genuinely great strategic battle and a gonk show with either my team stomping the enemy or the enemy stomping us. Balance of troops is arguably my biggest qualm with the game at the moment as it's the spam of "OP" units that turn what could be an engaging experience into the RTS equivalent of "No Russian"

Positives:

Possibly the first RTS I've genuinely enjoyed learning how to master
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Playing private matches with friends is really quite fun
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Lots of unit diversity, shame most of them aren't viable because of current meta's
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Easy to pick up, hard to put down :)
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Surprisingly low queue times especially for large scale multiplayer matches

Negatives:

The game is literally unplayable when a select few early game units are completely overpowered (COUGH COUGH LEGIONARIES) whilst the rest are pretty much just lemmings waiting to die.
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Every nation you pay for (or spend dozens of hours grinding) has vastly superior equipment and capabilities than the free industrial revolution making it painful and un-fun to counter them (It's doable but the odds are stacked against you if you're playing against a competent enemy)
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Honestly getting light knight rushed for the 400th match in a row because it can out manouver literally everything at that age makes me wanna uninstall because everyone competent knows thats one of the best strats.
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Furthermore worker repair on buildings is overpowered as hell IMO meaning you can just camp your townhall with workers and its unkillable unless using vastly superior firepower "awesome game nice design absolute aids watching the health bar spike more than Gamestop shares" ~ Quote from me ingame
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Everyone on your team will DC at the start of the match meaning you will lose because itll be a 1 or 2v6 and there's no meaningful system punishing leavers thus far
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Furthermore the devs shamelessly plug china as a p2w broken as ♥♥♥♥ op nation which literally everyone has bought because mounted cavalry go BRRRRRRRRR.
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90% of the playerbase has the IQ of asparagus but they have money to buy op nations so it doesnt matter ,they'll win regardless with better range, health and damage of units

Conclusion:

GG devs your game gave me brain aids but I cant stop coming back to play. Playing with friends and banning certain troops (Legionaries, Light knights, Mounted guardsmen) genuinely provides a very worthwhile experience, its just a shame that every man and his dog seems to use them because they're so strong.

I'll make a comprehensive post explaining why certain units are OP etc etc if wanted / I can be asked. Otherwise take this post with a grain of salt, it's a review based on my personal experience as a F2P player who only recently unlocked one nation (Turkey). (I do have probably 70-90hours of private game time tho which doesnt give tech points)

The game itself is good but the monetization scheme this game has makes it hard to want to buy anything. It's F2P but has Pay2Win factions to get an advantage. Also you have to pay money just to try any of the factions in any vs. ai mode they have. Everything is behind a separate paywall and it makes it hard to want to buy anything. Every faction alone costs more than what I'd pay for this game, don't even get started on "skins" they've added to the game to purchase, even while it's in early access... each "skin" costs about as much as a deluxe edition of this game should cost.

I will give this game a positive review when they add AI skirmish. For right now online is dominated by high level players that win before you enter the industrial age, and even if you do enter that age they are already maxed out on everything. This review is just my experience, but no matter how i play i always get a player running over my tribe at the beginning with units two ages in advance. When AI is added and i can practice with some bots ill change my review.

Game had potential (and still does) to be a great game. Had nice mechanics, the progession wasnt too slow or two fast. Now their greed and avarice is readily apparent. Her are some examples.

Wanna play bots to practice the game? $8.00. (They have a "Skirmish" mode, "under development", though they will probably charge for that too following the current montizing scheme.) Oh and if you have friends they all have to pay $8.00 to play bots with you.
Tired of getting beat by a F2P player who better than you? Buy a nation for 8.00 bucks and smash them into dust.
If you don't buy the horribly overpriced Imperial Edition (($40.00)horrible price for an incomplete game) you will have to fork out $80.00 bucks for everything.

It's a disgusting market strategy that locks what should be BASIC CONTENT IN AN RTS behind a very expensive paywall. Until they learn to get their greed under control I cannot recommend this obvious cash grab.

This will be my review for now since this game is in Early Access. Considering that they will improve the game soon.
For now the game is just P2W. Why ?
because you buy germany. you get big bertha. and an OP tank.
You buy russia. You get katyushas (rocket trucks) which is easy to make and op af. Make just 20 of them and there. instant win.
The other stuff you can buy is just useless nations who doesn't give you any advantage. which is just a waste of money since the others do.
You don't buy a nation ? you get regular stuff.
What about the players who doesn't want to pay the game ? who doesn't have any money to pay for games ?
will they get perished by ones who can spend hundreds ?
i know your game is free and developers needs to get paid. But this is not how it works.
You can't make a game free but make it pay to win.
Period.

Looked for games under Free to Play. Found this. Watched the showcase video on its steam page which mentioned - Sandbox mode without enemies. Appealed to me as I was looking for a chill casual game to play.

Download it, and try to setup a sandbox match. Turns out I have to pay for/buy a license/approval to play sandbox.

That's straight up lying if you ask me and I'm very disappointed. I've spent enough money and more on games so It's not like I mind spending for it, but this type bait and switch thing is something I wont tolerate.