Here's my quick review after I finished my first victory in this game:

This game is basically a modern re-interpretation of Illwinter's awesome Conquest Of Elysium (CoE) series.

For people who don't know those games here's a quick rundown of the main gameplay loop:

In short it's a combat focused 4x.

You start with a capital and a army. With your army you conquer tiles (resolved in auto-battle) which increases your resource generation to let you buy upgrades, better units and sling cool magic spells to get you closer to victory.

Sounds easy, but there's a deep emergent strategic layer that evolves out of this.
Tiles can be protected by neutrals or your opponent's army, and after conquering a tile you can let a part of your army stay there to defend and protect those resources.

Armies are organized by commanders, who are basically hero units who have skills/spells you can activate and who you can equip with items you find by beating neutrals or conquering tiles. So army composition, which commander goes best with which units, which composition counters my closest opponent, and so on is pretty important too and min-maxing your army isn't easy. So even there isn't a real tactical layer since auto-battle, there's plenty of strategic decisions to be made, which I prefer anyway.

You win by taking over all your opponents capitals and you lose by losing you capital.

So how does Godking compare against CoE?

Pretty good for early access I would say:

+ Visual upgrade. Beautiful world map, and awesome battles.
+ Plenty of QoL
+ Plenty of cool stuff to explore (items, skills, spells and so on)

- CoE has way more content. I finished my first game in less than two hours. A CoE game takes up multiple hours. In CoE you have global events, multiple "dimensions" of the world, more variety in tiles, nations and stuff to do.

- AI is currently pretty oblivious. For example, he saw my doom stack of hundred guys bee lining for his capital and did absolutely nothing to prevent this. And another opponent saw how I moved almost all my army out of my capital, but didn't capitalize on it with a big push. Opponents almost never split their army to speed up the early game scouting and the conquering of unprotected tiles, and they almost never keep garrisons on important tiles. For example there's a tile protected by a decent amount of neutrals, you just have to wait for the AI to conquer the tile and move away from it. Now it's undefended and for you to take. AI currently is no challenge at all.

But both content and AI are like a given for every early access title so I'm optimistic those are worked on.

Some issues I found during my game:

- Performance is ass. I'm playing on a 2080 and 4k is unplayable. Have to play @1080p
- If your army has like 15 commanders in a single "division" you can't see all your commanders if you click on your division. That's cumbersome.
- You have to move your units tile-by-tile and can't setup multi turn paths.

Some wishes I have:

- An item courier system like in Age of Wonders 3. Your commander A found an item which would pretty awesome for commander B? Well they can only trade items if they are on the same tile. So if A is at the other edge of the world it's bad luck for B.
- An army reinforcement/rally point option. Basically an already existing army/division can be set up as a rally point for other divisions of yours to join, so I don't have to micro them to move all over the map just to merge two divisions.
- Something that would make Godking truly unique. Be it a focus on dynamic global events, or maybe a diplomatic layer, or having an army formation designer like Dominions or whatever kind of emergent gameplay options you could come up with. But currently the "only" selling point imho are the graphics and the combinations of nations and gods (think main hero commander) compared to CoE in which you only have nations.
Imho that's not enough for an unique twist and for truly standing on its own.


I would rate this game currently an 6/10 and CoE an 8/10. But I see there's plenty of potential to elevate this game even beyond CoE. So please use this potential, and make this game truly unique and awesome!

As stated by many others, it is similar in nature to Conquest of Elysium or Dominions but to me it feels more like a poor copy than a proper advancement or even homage to those titles. Here's why:

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90% of strategy is choosing which units to buy and how to ferry them around. Most of the "passive" abilities on units are fairly ignorable. Figure out which units are "good" and which are "bad" and just stack the good units to win. In example, Alfendor Archers are unilaterally broken so if you are playing Alfendor, stack archers to win.

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In CoE/Dominions you have more control over the strategy of your units or the position on the battlefield, and the combat spellcasting can determine the outcome of the battle. All of that strategic depth seems to be missing here. I can't decide, for instance, to just have 10 necromancers in my army and summon a dumb amount of skeletons as my primary combat strategy. Or stack 100 archers and cast fire arrows to exploit my opponents weakness to fire. No, here you are just buying units and stacking them into armies to meat grind against the enemy armies.

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The same strategic depth issue exists on the overland map. The "tech tree" for each faction is just some rather cheap buildings in their main city. It takes very little time to get through it but it doesn't really change the core gameplay. There is no late game/early game divide in strategy. There are no interesting decisions to be made. Just buy the cheap upgrades and keep stacking units.

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The only seemingly interesting decision is that you can choose a leader from one faction to "lead" a different faction. I guess this is their attempt to copy the pretender creation from Dominions but IMO it does not alleviate the strategic depth issue. You aren't choosing between faction power vs pretender power or defining your core strategy, you are just changing your starting unit.

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I tried playing Chaos first and the early game was a nightmare. 3 failed starts with them so I tried Alfendor and it was a walk in the park from turn 1. I tried the returned and the early game was also a tedious nightmare. I enjoy the variety of gameplay but I dont think the balance is there between factions.

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The enemy seems to snowball very slowly but also INDEPENDENTLY of the amount of income structures they were able to control. Why? This is classic feels-bad 4x design. I cornered an enemy into only owning its home castle on ~turn 15 or 20 and by the time I raised an army big enough to challenge them in their castle and ferry it to them, they had doubled the size of their army. Tim Allen says "HWWHAAA?" In contrast, 100 turns later on the other side of the map the final enemy I killed had almost exactly the same size garrison. So once I generated armies capable of dealing with that first faction on turn 20ish the rest of the game was almost entirely determined to be victory for me but still took me 100+ turns to get there. I don't think the AI is actually "playing" but instead just generating units on a timer up to a limit and making meager attempts at expansion.

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As is the case with many of these games you inevitably end up with dozens of champions running around ferrying units and items to the front lines. There's no tech tree or anything to alleviate this issue. You can pay close attention to the types of units you are recruiting and try to recruit only fast moving units to make the process quicker but it is tedious either way. It is basically 1-2 hexes per turn per army unless you recruit only fast units or scouts.

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In my playthrough a lot of my commanders had rituals they could cast after moving, so for each commander to move I had to click multiple times to confirm that all I wanted them to do was move and nothing else. Also, in the mid game I found a large amount of "Neutral" creatures roaming the map with very low power. I never took a single casualty fighting these creatures but I had to clean them up to prevent them taking my buildings back etc. about 40 completely pointless combat sequences for me. None of these squads were interesting to fight.

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Given the lack of strategic depth the way that this game could differentiate itself positively from Illwinter's games is through a superior level of polish and QOL experience. Sadly, I think this is where Godking is at its weakest. The text, for me, was readable but very uncomfortable to look at in many places. If I didn't have 20/20 vision I think much of the text would be unreadable. Icons in the home city denoting the type of unit you are recruiting (melee, archer, etc) were hard to look at and differentiate. Units which I had set on "autocast" for their abilities occasionally got knocked out of this mode and had to be reset, despite me having plenty of resources to keep casting the ability. Units which I had previously set to go to a far part of the map had to be reminded with 3-4 clicks EVERY TURN to confirm that I wanted them to keep moving. Battle AI produces some nonsensical results in certain circumstances. Neutral resource generators on the map seem to be generated completely randomly which creates some real bad feels in the early game when you are surrounded by too-hard-to siege garrisons and no easy-to-get towns or farms.

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The game isn't all bad, it does have a similar feel to Illwinter's games but I don't think it brings enough to the table to warrant its own entry. If this game looks in any way interesting then you should probably be playing Dominions, Conquest of Elysium, or going to another 4x series entirely.

Godking is essentially Conquest of Elysium with 3D-models. It has enough of it’s own character and ideas that I will call it an homage rather than a ripoff. I think there are currently six factions in the game - Undead, Lizardmen, Goblins, Barbarians, Chaos and the one I played, which is most similar to that Romanesque faction in COE. You can upgrade your initial city and any other cities you find with buildings to provide militia every turn, incrase your gold income, or offer access to better troops and commanders. You can recruit a couple of militia every turn from villages. You can recruit a dozen or so different commanders, but they are based on your cities’ upgrades, not what randomly appears that month.

One neat touch is that your militia commander can upgrade the militia units you get every turn into a Spearman. It cost one more food, but saved you a few gold in comparison to recruiting a spearman. In my game, I had decent gold at first and was low on food, so I didn’t start using it until I unlocked better troops that cost a lot more gold. Then, I did set up a couple commanders in a couple different cities to train my pool of militia into spearmen. You also had commanders with their own summons, but I didn’t get a chance to test them out. Likewise, there were commanders who could craft items (randomly), but I didn’t get to test them either.

The game is generous with items as commanders can wear many, and units can also equip them. Most of the items just seemed to provide +1 this or that. I think those are considered Minor Items, so hopefully there are some more interesting Major Items, but I didn’t notice any.

Towards the end, my Fire Mage Pretender had summoned a Fire Dragon (which is one of the potential Pretenders that can be chosen to lead any faction during game setup). My Dragon commander was in the process of destroying everything when I decided to stop playing until this game has more time to develop.

The UI is pretty clunky, even compared to COE’s less than ideal UI. The AI is totally lacking right now as well (there are no difficulty levels yet). If you are annoyed by COE’s randomness (I’m not), then you’ll appreciate that this game has less. The faction I played had few random situations. The only ones I can really think of was my Fire Mage’s summon Minor Champions (the Fire Dragon was the only non-minor champion) and the item crafting by the other commander. I was autocasting Summon Minor Champion (which is a nice feature that I can’t remember if COE has), and I saw a fire horse thing and a fire wyrm come up before I quit. The horse wasn’t a commander, but the wyrm was.

So, if you wanted a less random COE, with 3d models, you should wishlist this game. It has a ways to go before it can get provide an experience to rival COE, but hopefully it will by the time it leaves EA. The devs are certainly active in the Discussions, and will hopefully incorporate a lot of good ideas. My biggest concern might be their interest in making this multiplayer, and I worry that they’ll not include some of the crazy things to compare with the random things that could happen in COE.

Oh yeah, and while there were some wandering bands of neutrals, but they weren’t constantly taking over my holdings.

WHAT TO EXPECT: Fantasy 4X turn-based strategy. Basic global maps. Command a single capital city. Capture neutral or enemy settlements. Automated turn-based battles. Impressive range of warrior gods. Decent number of factions with good variety. Good-sized champion led armies. Dozens of derivative unit classes. Numerous commander types. Two spells types and artefacts to equip. Basic 4x gameplay. Units can level-up. No diplomacy. No tech research. Missing a load of QoL. Single-player only.
ACHIEVEMENTS: NONE.
STATUS: RELEASED PREMATURELY.
WHEN TO BUY: ONLY IF LOOKING FOR CASUAL OR LITE 4x

More info below....

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2509738053
Godking: Master of Rituals (G:MoR) is a turn-based 4x strategy game with automated battles fought on anonymous battlefields between opposing armies. The game is set in a fantasy land and played on a dynamically generated, hex-tiled world map. Before beginning each game players must set-up the game world; opting for a faction to play and a warrior God to lead them. There are three map sizes to choose from. Eight factions with their own unit classes and nine unique warrior gods to take charge of.

Gameplay follows the basic tenets of 4x games. Protect a capital city, the hub of each empire and vanquish every other faction on the map. Every turn up to four resources are acquired and used in construction of capital upgrades or to recruit more units and commanders. Armies are formed by assigning a commander to lead them. These are sent to explore the immediate vicinity and reveal what lies within the fog of war. Their aim is to discover neutral or enemy settlements, so these can be conquered and to uncover the activities of the enemy. To eventually expand the empire and gain more resources per turn to purchase further capital upgrades, units and commanders. With stronger forces the empire can then exploit these gains, build larger armies and eventually go on to exterminate their rivals.


<REDACTED BY THE OMNIPOTENT DEITY OF YOUR CHOICE>

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2507551805
+ Good replayability with 8x unique playable factions, each with their own set of units, spells and playable strategies.
+ Detailed combat engine with movement by ranks, spell-casting, ranged attack and melee combat.
+ Visually beautiful automated combat engine with colourful 3D models. But minimal battlefield landscapes.
+ Good army composition options. Units types are mounted, ranged, can fly, cast spells, melee, extended melee and others.
+ Soundtrack that adds to the general ambience.

- No combat interaction. None at all.
- Missing feature: No diplomacy.
- Missing feature: No research/research tree.
- Needs alot of QoL: artefact and army distribution, more options on army formation screen, controlling multiple commanders in same army is problematic.
- Poor map movement. Units move one tile at a time. Cannot set movement paths or undo moves on world map.
- Basic enemy AI. Built just to provide an obstacle to victory. Performance issues. PC noticeably slows down when running the game. Core i5 8GB ram.
- GUI suffers from terrible scaling. Need perfect vision to read some of the text.
- No game setup randomiser.

* The beginnings of a good 4x fantasy experience.
* Randomly generated maps with randomly placed holdings, defences?, magical artefacts, treasure chests and wandering monsters.
* Ten unique God-like incarnations. Each with their own passive abilities, combat stats, spells and strategies. Can be used in conjunction with any faction, providing the only real replayability.
* Large selection of magic spells divided into Rituals and Combat. Comparable to techs but not requiring research.
* Ten capitol upgrades. Unlocked sequentially when certain upgrades are built. Also unlock new units and commanders for recruitment.
* Basic army formation screen that separates units into ranks and allows transfer from one group to another.
* Large number of artefacts that drop during combat. Equipped on commanders and warrior-gods to augment stats.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2512278983
G:MoR turned out to be a visually impressive game. One built on a solid concept but a flawed execution. Lacking some of the detailed features associated with the 4x genre. A likely consequence of the devs striving for streamlined gameplay. Though it is difficult to know for sure what the roadmap entailed, had it not left EA so early. Given its current state anyone expecting G:MoR to retain a good level of depth and complexity, may be more than disappointed. Its combat-centric approach eventually becomes very repetitive.

Overall the game painted a mixed picture of the experience that awaited players. An automated combat system looked substantial, but little else did. Ritual spells, combat spells, factions, commanders and artefacts all showed signs of being fleshed out. As was Army management and the unit roster. Game setup was thread-bare. Diplomacy and research were non-existent. Joining a below par GUI requiring a fair amount of additions, particularly scaling to make the text readable. All the missing functionality pointed to an incomplete game, released too early. Likely another case of the developers running out of funds, time or both. Yet on some level there is a playable game here. Just not one that should necessarily be called 4x strategy. Maybe 4x strategy lite would be a better fit!

Game set-up proved to be basic. The amount of starting factions and warrior gods were acceptable out of the box. Distinct in nature and possessing the strengths and weaknesses to have their own particular strategy or play-style. Enough to persuade players to try each of them. Particularly pleasing were how warrior gods could be mixed and matched with whichever faction was preferred. Rather than stay with their own race. Factions also had their own resources to cultivate. Though why other factions did not gather these, so they could be appropriated after a defeat escaped me. A randomising option would have been most welcome.

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Godking: Master of Rituals has a little to offer someone looking for a turn-based, fantasy strategy experience. Unfortunately there does not seem enough for a full game in the 4x genre. With a good deal of features missing it is pretty fair to make the assumption that G:MoR was released to get something playable out of the door. Likely due to time or funding running out.

<REDACTED BY THE OMNIPOTENT DEITY OF YOUR CHOICE>

The full review can be found off-Steam at:
https://turnbasedlovers.com/review/godking-master-of-rituals-review/.

Thank you for reading. | Follow my curator here. | Key provided by Turnbased Lovers[turnbasedlovers.com]

I feel forced to give a negative review to set a better perspective for potential buyers...

I watched the title for a while in the hope to get a discount. But well, today I got bored and thought, ♥♥♥♥ it lets go.

Well, what can I say...
The game itself is a good concept by design. But I still wont recommend it because thats literally it. For the hefty pricetag this just isn't enough for me. It grabs ideas from different outher titles to merge them to a nice new product. Unfortunatly I can get every concept for a much lower pricetag much more fleshed out in multiple other games.
Don't get me wrong, if this conglomerate ever gets polished out and enhanced with dozens QoL additions, this will propably be a nice game.
Right now it just is not. By no means bad, but for what you get the pricetag is way out of proportion. I am happy supporting various EA- and kickstarter titles, but this one requires an immense leap of faith on the customer side.

I think a potential buyer should know about that, therefore the negative review at this point.


Year later Edit:
Well, everything feared happened. They pretty much released it soon after my initial review. One guy tried to contact me to change it. Voila, now it's abandonware. Oh yeah, did I mention that I paid more money in EA than the actual price on releaseday?

If you have played Conquest of Elysium and thought "Man, this game would be better if it sacrificed 75% of it's strategic depth, content, and variability for some better graphics", then I guess you should buy this game. For the rest of us, there are just a lot of better options.

I honestly thought this game would be in early access though mid 2021, and was surprised to hear that it had released in the state it did. I would refund it if I could.

With the right attention and love, it could be a great game. For now, it's an Early Access game with a lot of potential, but that's probably not worth $40 unless you're very interested in supporting "the cause".

Wish they'd come out at a lower price point. Either way, I'll recommend tentatively until I see further.

For 4X and Strategy Game Curation, Look No Further:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6871651/

Came here because I loved CoE 4 and 5 and thought a 3D one would be so cool. Sadly, it has a worse UI than even the earlier CoE games, and it is no longer being worked on, not to mention it is so poorly optimized that it is hard to even play. Save your money and look elsewhere (or play CoE 5)

TL;DR - No. It may look cool, but there's no game here. Bad AI. Bad Faction design. No MP. Buy Conquest of Elysium instead (if you can stand the graphics ;).

I'll keep this review short and simple. Godking is a rip off of Conquest of Elysium with 3D graphics. It was released early, sort of half baked, with imbalanced and flat factions. The designers failed to grasp the key aspects of what makes CoE fun, but other than the lack of interesting faction design, hidden upgrade paths, etc. the two games are pretty similar. They did, instead, add a few alternate features, primarily in the realm of army layout/management, movement, citadel types and resource handling (which one could claim was better or worse by taste). Beyond the half-baked random factions (which number too few as well), overall the AI is *terrible*. Given the lack of MP as well, this game is pretty insulting at the price point, and even if it were free, is more of a prototype than a game (such that you might play each faction once just to see and then never play again). I had some hopes that it would improve during EA, and even at release hoped they would, as they claimed, follow up with future patches and improvements as I'm sure many of these glaring gaps were apparent to the developers as well, but they appear to have abandoned it instead. For a game with a triple-A price, this is rather a travesty.

< - - - The Introduction - - - >

„Victory! We captured the Capital of IMPERATUS!“
„Excellent! Four Factions to go. Those Ratfaction was a Tough Enemy.“
„THE RETURNED! They are coming from the South!“
„Oh no. I should have known that they are near and want a piece of Cake.“
„What shall we do? The Last Battle weakened us.“
„Call for reinforcements! We must defend this Capital. And dont forget. Our God is with us. He send his reincarnation, we will be their doom!“
„They`re attacking!“
„For ALFENDOR! To victory!!!“

A typical Battle Situation that need to be handled.
So, dear Reader welcome to GODKING: MASTER OF RITUALS.

< - - - The Story so far - - - >

GODKING doesn`t really have a story.
Simply said, there are different Fantasy Factions at War and only one can be victorious.
Well, this Game is in early Access, maybe we get some Story one day.
On the other Hand, the Factions are really different from each other and very detailed, that only a look at a Faction can tell a Background, just in your Backhead, when you play them. As i like to say: with a little Fantasy, you can get Fantasy.

< - - - The Gameplay - - - >

GODKING is an amazing take on to many Years of Strategy Games. A very nice Mix of Classic Games like AGE OF WONDERS, LORDS OF MAGIC, EADOR and so many other Games.
At first you have to choose your Faction.
All Factions are very different from each other.
Undead, Lizzards, Rats, Humans, Insects and many more Factions are waiting for your Orders.

After that you have to Choose a God Incarnation, a very Special Powerfull Unit, that represents you, the player. That can be a Powerfull Shaman, a Wraight Lord or also a Dragon.
They all have their special abilities.
After that, enter your Name, choose a faction Colour and choose from 3 Map Sizes.
You begin in your Capitol. This City is really important. If this City will be captured by other Factions, you will instantly loose the Game, no matter how big your Empire is at this moment.
Always have an Army ready to defend it.

The Map is a Hexagon Map like in typical classic Games and is very detailled. Explore the Map with your Armies and conquer. There are many Opportunities for Fighting and getting Loot.
You have 3 Ressources. Gold, Food, Mana. Have always an eye on them, you need them to recruit Units. You can raise them while capturing other places like Farms for example.
You can also get Spells and Upgrades.

When it comes to battle you just have to lay back and watch.
Yes, you read right. All the Battles will be done automatically. That is different from other Games like this. You are able to speed them up, if it is to slow for you, or just end it directly with the War Stats.
The Developer did an amazing Job with all the Units. I`ve rarely seen so many different Units of all kind. Well done.

< - - - The Impressions - - - >

What i mostly like is the automatic Fighting. Don`t get me wrong, i like Games like KINGS BOUNTY, HEROES OF MIGHT AND MAGIC and others and their fighting Systems, but it is also good to have a game without it. Just raise your Army with simple and minimum Micro Management and enjoy the Battles by watching. Explore and conquer the Map in the good old classic way, beat the others.

On the other Hand, i´m missing a Difficulty Setting. There is only one Difficulty. It would be also nice to have more Win options, not only the last One wins. I know there is very much work in this Game, but in my opinion the Price is a little bit too high for what you get.

I know this is early Access and there is more to come. The Developer are working hard on their Game, bringing updates and listen to the Community. I´m sure in the end, all will fit.

I enjoyed GODKING very much and i like to thank the Developer for giving me the Chance to play this Game. Thank you.

< - - - Famous last Words - - - >

If you want to play Fantasy Strategy in the good old classic way, with Fokus on Exploring and Conquering a Map with Automatic Fights and less Micro Management, then this is for you.

Enjoy and thank you for reading.