Recommended for 'Rise and fall of civilizations' lovers?

[pacman]

Hi!
So back in the day I used to love a game called "Rise and Fall: Civilizations at war". Maybe somebody remembers that game? Age of Mythology was also a game I loved.
Anyway, the period of ancient Rome and Greece is among my favorites and I've always been looking for a good game set in that era. However, I never really warmed up to the Total War series. I can't even say why, it just never felt right to me. I felt like this period has been abandoned by developers and whenever I searched for games, Hegemony was never on my list and now I came to realize why: Because I always looked for Multiplayer games. I love playing games with my brother but if a game is really good, I could think about playing it solo. :)
Problem is, from the metacritic reviews, this game seems to be pretty hard for beginners. Together with the absence of multiplayer this makes me hesitant to spend 30 bucks on it. I know I could always try it for less than 2 hours and then get a refund, but I am sure a game like this needs to be experienced for longer than that. So I'm asking you guys here:
Would you recommend this game to me, being a AoM and Rise and Fall player not liking Total War? What do you like/dislike about this game?
How active are the developers in addressing issues and releasing bugfixes (looks like they're very active).
And, very important to me: any information about mulitplayer mode?

Thank you in advance,
-pac

[Wenchbane]

He pacman!

I remember Rise and Fall, it follows Alexander and Achilles for the Greeks and Julius Caesar and Germanicus for the romans right?
Persia and Egypt are the last two factions if I'm not mistaken?

It seems like you enjoy the RTS base building style (which is absent in the hegemony games) You can however build forts and bridges in predetermined spots.

Plenty of players will draw comparisons to Total War games because of the strategy map and the grand campaign, you can literally conquer every city on your path to or from Rome. There's a wide variety of factions to pick from 25+ at last count and 5 cultures that encompass that. Apart from that the similarities stop.

Gameplay is real time but there is a pause feature. Zooming out shows you the grand map and it's seamless transition, the only loading screen is the initial load.

Supply lines are a vital part of gameplay, planning out where they go and how to defend them effectively from both enemy factions and the factionless raiders that pop up from time to time. This factor will be overhauled relatively soon since the Devs are looking at it right now.

Unit tactics come into play, certain units are good against other units in a rock-scissors-paper kind of way, example would be spearmen/hoplites are good against light/heavy cavalry units. You generally rout units and can either execute or enslave retreating enemies. You can't however kill an entire unit unless you capture their home city so they stop recruiting there.

Unir morale plays a key role in combat, you need to keep your units fed and paid. Pulling flanks on enemies melts morale as well as capturing their home city while they are out in the field. Generals and officers also provide morale boosts. Generally the higher your units morale the longer they can fight without routing.

Sieges are also a part of the game, you can choose to directly assault a city OR you can viably starve a city by either capturing or burning all of the enemy farms/fisheries. Any units that come from a starved city will also lack food to march or fight.

There are tech upgrades that unlock more units/ stances for both units and cities, the ability to assimilate enemy cities to your culture, unit/city/resource bonus and proficiency at raiding/sieges/naval combat,etc.

The Devs are very active in pushing out patches and listening to community feeback, just take a look through the older patch notes and some of the stickied threads. They've also done an official mod which has the starting area of the first game (Hegemony Gold) done.

There are occaisonally glitches that pop up from time to time. Examples are over sea supply lines sometimes cut through land (this is prelavent with river cities), sometimes the overmap pawns are in one place but the unit is in another, there are minor graphical glitches in some of the cities and some minor audio glitches in wood camps.

Hope it helps!

[pacman]

Hi Wenchbane!
Thank you very much for your detailed thoughts about this game. I will pick it up once I've played a little bit through my backlog thanks to your recommendation.
-pac

[Wenchbane]

Originally posted by pacman:

Hi Wenchbane!
Thank you very much for your detailed thoughts about this game. I will pick it up once I've played a little bit through my backlog thanks to your recommendation.
-pac

No problem, you can always look at some youtube videos that show off gameplay to see if any of the mechanics interest you, it will also provide a much more informing view of whether or not you'll like it! However I will still recommend it! =D

[TallestDavid]

man I swore really miss Rise and fall of civilizations
was a underrated game by amazing underrated devs! :D
i wonder if the devs came back... since they made great rts games like rise and age of empires.

[pacman]

From what I know so far, rise and fall is probably a hundred times simpler than Hegemony 3. I enjoyed how you could fight alongside your troops in third person, even being able to yell out commands. Also I really enjoyed the multiplayer mode. Speaking of which, does anybody know whether there are plans to implement multiplayer to Hegemony 3?
-pac

[Stabby]

We'd love to be able to do a multiplayer Hegemony. It's something we've talked about a lot. Unfortunatly, we've never had, and continue to not have, the resources to actually make that happen. The engine as it stands just doesn't come close to even having the setup needed to bootstrap even a hacky mulitplayer system. The amount of work required to even get some semblance of multiplayer working far out stretches our already very stretched resources.

[Themistocles]

Originally posted by Stabby <3 haimikki:

We'd love to be able to do a multiplayer Hegemony. It's something we've talked about a lot. Unfortunatly, we've never had, and continue to not have, the resources to actually make that happen. The engine as it stands just doesn't come close to even having the setup needed to bootstrap even a hacky mulitplayer system. The amount of work required to even get some semblance of multiplayer working far out stretches our already very stretched resources.

Hey stabby any news on an update ;)

[Stabby]

I suspect that Rob'll be posting something pretty soon. He's been getting this cool new supply system working that will fix late game supply issues that large empires run into as well as some new city stance mechanics. Once it's a little cleaner I'll bug him to do a twitch of it.

[TallestDavid]

NICE!!!! muxh needed!

[Themistocles]

Originally posted by Stabby <3 haimikki:

I suspect that Rob'll be posting something pretty soon. He's been getting this cool new supply system working that will fix late game supply issues that large empires run into as well as some new city stance mechanics. Once it's a little cleaner I'll bug him to do a twitch of it.

thank you lord Stabby

[rob]

We've been a little quiet recently because we've got a ton of stuff in the works including some major new features and a bunch of new content. We're at the point now where the major changes are in, but we're still dealing with the wave of side effects including changes to the GUI, AI, play-balance, etc. We're still a few weeks from a beta, but I'll try to get some twitch demos up before that so you can see what we've been up to.

[Wenchbane]

Originally posted by rob:

We've been a little quiet recently because we've got a ton of stuff in the works including some major new features and a bunch of new content. We're at the point now where the major changes are in, but we're still dealing with the wave of side effects including changes to the GUI, AI, play-balance, etc. We're still a few weeks from a beta, but I'll try to get some twitch demos up before that so you can see what we've been up to.

Very keen to see this. Are there any hints on what the major new features are? Raider overhaul, Naval overhaul? Anything else?

Can't wait to try out the beta too xD Appreciate the hard work you guys are putting in!