the dlc should've just been an update to the game

This is a game for which you dont have to be committed 24/7. You dont have to come back or else your plants die. You dont have to come back for daily bonusses.

Here you play a game, a fun game, it doesnt have to be long but it can be if you want. Sick of all the games you cant play because you dont have the time? Get this game and play it whenever you want!

Overview
Circle Empires Rivals is the new iteration of the original Circle Empires game. For those who don't already know the game, Circle Empires puts us at the control of a circle, basically a small island of terrain with some resources on it, and asks us not only to defend it, but also to expand the number of circles we control. These are, in fact, connected together via bridges, so we'll have to create an army with the limited resources at our disposal and attack the enemies surrounding our empire. What does Rivals introduce? More stuff... and multiplayer!

A lot of everything
While Circle Empires is based on a pretty simple concept and doesn't have an especially deep base building, it does have a lot of content, and it shows from the beginning: there are six different game modes, 26 different leaders (more on these later) and many, many different units. Changing the leader means that also some of the units you can recruit change, making the matches more diverse as you progressively unlock new generals.

The six game modes are all quite unique, even if they rely on the same base mechanics: there are the classic Full Conquest (capture all circles in the map) and Imperial Conflict (basically full conquest with enemy empires), then there's Monster Hunt, where your only goal is to hunt down a boss protected by an army. The roguelike game mode makes every choice count, since resources and enemies do not respawn, leaving you with a tight budget. The stop the army game mode is particularly fun in coop, since it puts the player in the dangers of a giant army roaming the map, with the task to destroy it. The last mode is king hunt: every player has a king and the last king standing wins the game.

The two more coop-friendly game modes even have new unlockable bosses/armies to further customize your games and increase the replayability to really high levels, considering that there are also 6 different difficulty levels.

The Lord of the Rin... Circles
Circle Empires Rivals features quite a number of leaders (26 to be precise) that have to be unlocked by playing. Leaders are not units in the game, but act more as generals of the army and have one or more bonuses plus their special units. Thus, you can play as Wolfam the Warlord, a knight that starts with a lot of food and instantly build 2 watchtowers in every circle he captures, or Smog the Shaman, which gets a war witch at the start of the game and a wolf rider for each captured circle.

While leaders do not radically change the way you play, they adapt to the different strategies players could use: more defensive-styled players will probably pick Barandur the Builder instead of Barg the Barbarian. It also comes down to the special units a leader has, not all are created equal and I really don't like unicorns (or spend 888 gold for them), so I'll never pick Harvey the Horsemaster again.

The Fellowship of the Circle
The main problem that affects Circle Empires Rivals is the easiness of steamrolling through your opponents without using the need for an actual strategy. Don't get me wrong, the clever use of the units the game offers can be a game-changer, but the easy strategy often seems to amass resources and build a huge army before your enemy does the same, then use that army to make a big ball of swords, claws and arrows that conquers circle after circle, especially in singleplayer.

Luckily the game has a lot of different support units but, again, they're not always easy to use against an enemy death ball and can get pretty expensive in some cases. The game also offers the possibility to build defensive turrets, which I found to be pretty underwhelming.

Verdict
Circle Empires Rivals is the most natural evolution of its predecessor. The main aspect the original game was surely missing was multiplayer and, now that this isn't the case anymore, I can safely say that this is a title that you can, and will, play for hours. With a release price of $14.99 / €12.49 / £11.39, I can't help but recommend it.

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Must buy for every RTS fan and people who would like to experience something unique with alot of variety.
You can play this game on easy mode or incredible challenging. There are a lot of game modes and coop makes alot of fun too. The game is also very well made no bugs and a great interface!
Got 32hours on the first one and with this game I expect getting closer to 100+ hours for only 8-12 euro you got great value.
If you want to play this coop, but don´t have someone to play it with, I am always looking for people to play it with, since it just makes even more fun in coop-mode.

Still seems like it has bugs based on difficulty level and map sizing. Playing normal and large map with friends and consistently faced 30k strength circles adjacent to us making it unwinnable even with unlimited Forestry etc enabled.

The UI needs work. Why is there a "Basic" and "Advanced" tab with a basic building (basic tower and forestry) in the advanced tabs? The game should instead change to "Buildings" and "Units" with the third tab being the only one that makes any sense.

Fun concept for sure, but has more than its shortcomings.

If you're afraid to live your life in a glass bubble, how can you earn a victory?

Great gameplay and a lot of content! I was a big fan of the original and it seems to be even more polished now. The original gameplay loop seemed to ask for multiplayer and now finally it's here.

If you are wondering which version of the game to get, buy this one. It has the most units, content and features. It is a lot more fun than the original because of these things.

This game is sort of like Starcraft, if it were in a bunch of circular bases, which are mostly connected. Most of the bases are land, but some are water. There are land and water units (no air units, unlike Starcraft). It feels like Starcraft when you play it, because you can group the units with the number keys 1 through 10. However, unlike Starcraft, you are not limited to how many units can be in each group. Because of this, you can easily have 200 or 300 units in a single group.

Also, like Starcraft and games like it, in this game you have resources. These include wood, food and gold. Using these three things, you purchase units, upgrade them, build buildings and also upgrade those.

A unique feature of this game is how ALL of the units in the game can level up. It is different for each unit. As a unit fights, they gain XP whenever they hit something. After reaching a certain amount of XP, the unit levels up. This process gives the unit more hit points, damage and armor. So, let's take a red dragon for example. They are pretty tough at first, but then they level up into a gold dragon, which is even tougher, then they can level again into a black dragon, which is not only even tougher, but it also regenerates. Most of the units have an "elite" form, which they reach after leveling up two or three times, which is multiple times stronger than the original unit. The buildings can also level up, including defensive towers that shoot fire, ice, acid, boulders, arrows, etc. The leveling up feature is very cool and gives the game a huge bump up in fun factor.

Because of the leveling feature, it is very vital to keep your units alive, rather than just throwing waves of them at the enemy lines, not caring if they live or die. A unit that is a veteran of several battles is much more valuable to you than it was when it was first purchased.

Just to give you an idea at the details that go into this game, you have the option to build a wall around each circle. Then, you can upgrade the wall so it has many times more hit points. You can also upgrade all of your buildings to have more armor.

So, the game seems simple but there is also a lot of complexity. You can build a caravan system that gets you gold, or you can just ignore that and just develop a few circles for income, build an army and start wiping out oponents.

You can also play many different ways. There is both single player and multiplayer. In single player, there are seven different
ways to play the game, such as monster hunt, conquest, etc. Then, you get to choose what leader you are using. Each leader has different perks, like extra gold or certain types of units that you can use. All of these things give the game a HUGE replay value. If you like real time war games at all, you will definitely get your money's worth.

Wow Super fun. I like that i can setup a game that I can play in 10min or choose a longer mission. The 6 game modes are also a good time. We need more RTS games in the world!

Gets quite repetitive rather quickly. There's a fair few units that can be made but they each have different stats so you can't even compare them to decide which ones to make. You can play as many different people but the difference in units they can make is very small.