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Hegemony: Philip of Macedon - a RTS set in ancient Greece (1.1.0 released)
Dírhael
NorwayRegistered User regular
NorwayRegistered User regular
Philip of Macedon?
The second Philip actually. As for the game, it's my new gaming addiction. Indie strategy game, 6 years in the making, by a team of 5 dedicated people.
This is a real-time strategy game about Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and his rise to power as he conquered and united all of Ancient Greece.
Kieron from Rock Paper Shotgun had this to say recently:
The trailer in question, is this one:I was planning on actually diving straight into serious work today, thinking I’ll swiftly lob up a new demo post. However, watching the trailer for the just-released Hegemony: Phillip Of Macedon something caught my eye and I thought I’d give it a quick crack. Looks kinda-Total-War-y with a more robust control system. I better check if it is that. It’s not that! It’s actually something else, which is also kinda nifty and certainly enough to make me recommend anyone interested in novel RTS-games to give a try. Video and further thoughts follow…
You’ll see the bit which caught my eye – a battle-scene with the player sending the cavalry on a sweeping move, before “clicking” a phalanx into position. That’s my main reservation with Total War’s system at the moment, which especially is always at its worst during sieges. As in, it’s all too often just a mess. I think they need to abstract a little to increase the “clarity” of the tactics and reduce how often it turns into a blobby melee, so I’m pleased to see Hegemony try this. That Greece is one of my favourite ancient-themes makes it even more attractive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKstxAygy40&fmt=18
Their website says you should know this about the game
Conquer the ancient Greek world in this real-time strategy wargame following the rise of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.
- Experience every facet of war
Campaign across a continuous satellite-accurate map of ancient Greece encountering the full range of warfare from reconnaissance to raids to field battles to mountain blockades. - Innovative supply system
Siege and starve the enemy by cutting their supply lines or burning their crops, all the while building and protecting your own supply network to support your growing empire. - Steeped in history
In-game pedia and 100+ historical objectives recreate the rise of the Macedonian empire. - Intuitive and precise controls
Drag, rotate, resize and snap together unit formations to precisely control battlefield tactics in paused- or real-time. Preview all movement paths before you issue your orders and quickly plot waypoints for easy flanking and pincer manoeuvres. - Zoom seamlessly
Transition smoothly between the detailed 3D world and the stylized board-game map while maintaining complete control over your empire. - Subjugate your enemy
Chase down and capture routed enemy units to create slave gangs to work your mines or build your forts. But don't leave them unguarded or they could rebel and wreak havoc in your empire's heartland! - Conquer the seas
Build or capture a fleet of triremes to protect your coastlines, raid enemy merchants, or drop an army at your enemy's backdoor.
Some screenshots:
I tried to write my own list on how it plays, but as it turns out I had a hard time explaining the game. A few brief comments though:
- Single-player only.
- Even though it follows the story of Philip, it's very free-form. It's pretty much always up to you when, in what order, or even if you want to complete the many different objectives.
- It's a RTS, but can be played very much like a TBS. Hit space to pause, give orders, unpause. You can enable auto-pause for several different events, such as enemy spotted, under attack, units, cities or forts starving etc. This is very handy, especially later on as your empire grows.
- No loading after starting the game. You're playing in one huge world (the game is massive. I've played for hours, and have probably only explored about 2% of the gameworld).
- You don't build cities, farms, barracks etc., you capture and improve what's already there.
- Tank rushes will very likely get you killed. Leave supply lines insufficiently protected, and your enemies can, and will, cut them. Should this happen, your troops will eventually starve, and their morale will plummet. Units with low morale are easy to beat, and will probably try to run away from enemies instead of fighting.
- Conquered troops can be made slaves or executed. Slaves are a useful resource for mining, extra work labor or food transport.
- Zooming out gives you a board-game representation of the game, while zooming in gives you a more standard RTS look. Both have their uses.
- If you build walls around cities you conquer, don't leave it empty for to long. If you do, the citizens might rebel.
- Starve your enemies. Cut of the food supplies to enemy cities before attempting to conquer them. It makes life a whole lot easier.
- I'd suggest just downloading the demo and see for yourself. This is how I got hooked.
- It costs $29,99 USD. No DRM or download limits. No need to reinstall after registering, just input your key (just a simple offline unlock, no need to be online to install or play) in the launcher and play.
There's a DEMO available (167 MB. It's the full game running in demo mode, Full version unlocked if you purchase a key. Demo should take you about an hour or so), which will give you a very good idea on how it plays. If you don't like the demo, you won't like the full game. If you do like it, you can BUY it directly from their website.
System Requirements
Supported OS: Windows XP or newer
Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium or greater or AMD Athlon equivalent CPU
Memory: 1 GB RAM (XP), 2 GB RAM (Vista)
Graphics: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible hardware accelerated video card with shader version 2.0 support, 256 MB video memory
Display: Minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
Sound: Directx9.0c compatible sound card
Hard Drive: 1 GB free hard disk space
***
Updates:
- 29.05.10: The game is available for purchase from Impulse. 50% ($14.99 USD) discount this weekend!
- 29.05.10: Version 1.1.0 is now available for download here. Updated version will soon be available on Impulse as well, but if you don't want to wait, just download the demo from their website and unlock using the serial from Impulse.
Announcement wrote:Version 1.1.0 has now been released, so go ahead and give it a try. As always, you can download it from the Download Centre, or you can just download the demo on the Hegemony page and your serial code will still work.
If you've purchased Hegemony on Impulse, the new version should appear shortly, but if you can't wait, go ahead and download the demo from our site; the serial code you got from Impulse will work perfectly fine with the installer you get here.
The list of changes has been mentioned a couple times before, but keep reading to see the list again.
* We now have multiple difficulty levels, for those who would like more of a challenge, or if you'd like Hegemony to be a little less stressful.
* The enemy is now less aggressive in 'normal' difficulty. If you liked the difficulty level in version 1.0, set the difficulty to 'expert'.
* A number of problems with objectives have been fixed, including Bardylis disbanding his men, and not being able to complete kill quests.
* Hegemony now supports Unicode file paths, so it works on non-English versions of Windows.
* Issuing orders is now more responsive. This came at a cost: you are now required to double-click faster. This setting is configurable in the 'Gameplay' settings.
* Non-combat units now have a silver base, making it easier to differentiate them from combat units, especially when they're in cities.
* The asset list is now twice as wide, and units in the field report the region they're in. Garrisoned units have a (g) next to their station.
* If you have a wide monitor, you'll be able to open more than two dialogues. - 31.05.10: Hegemony can now be purchased from GamersGate.
Dírhael on
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...and here's my part of the world, hours later. Unless I rethink my strategy, this is gonna take me a while (this is about 10 hours in) :P
My biggest mistake was overextending myself. I lost a rather big part of my empire due to lack of proper border protection, and starvation as a result of bad logistics. Things are going better now though (or so I think), after I just accepted the fact that those cities was beyond hope at this point, and pulling back a little on my eastern front. So much fun!
Can you elaborate on how they work?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I could try at least... The thing is, by far the most important resource in the game is food. To get food, you capture farms (or herds of sheep, very useful during the winter season when there's no growth on your farms). Every time you capture a city or farm, you need to connect them by building roads. Cities can have a few different roads connecting to other cities, villas, farms or mines, but there is always a limit on how many nodes are available. Farms, mines and villas can only have one road connecting them to cities. Food is always transported by roads, using oxcarts (this is handled automatically), and only this way (well, and by water), and takes time.
The only way to transport food without having to think of how the places are connected is to load up a bunch of slaves with food, and send them to the places in need, which takes time and other planning (but that's another topic).
This means you always have to plan ahead when connecting places, because if not you would risk having the enemy taking out a whole bunch of your cities by just attacking a single weak point. You wouldn't even really need to take out a farm or city, you could just block the roads with a company or two. In one of my screenshots, if the enemy were to take out the city where it says Dessa, he could potentially take out food supply to 3-4 places, if not more, and walk all over me after starvation sets in.
Another thing about food is that your units only carry X amount of it with them at any given time, if they run out morale drops and they will suffer an easy defeat (if they fight at all).
My explanation isn't all that good, and there's more to it than this, but it's easy enough to understand once you start playing
Demo, here I come!
Exactly how I ended up with the full version of the game, brilliant way to sell the game
http://www.impulsedriven.com/hegemony
Holy hell is the AI aggressive. Goddamn Illyrians are raiding me nonstop, and the Athenians are landing amphibious assaults every time I try to get an offensive going. Its hard to maintain momentum because your armies need to stop due to casualties or running out of food.
The spearmen are useless for anything other than sitting still. I was heavily using peltasts at first, but when you expand a bit raiding becomes a micro nightmare. The light troops tend to evaporate if anything even looks at them crossly. Phalangites are the only thing worth using population on, I've found. I have 2 scout cavalry, companions and hypaspists of course, and the rest phalangites. I might have one spearman unit for guarding a walled city on an inactive front, but thats it.
There was a patch to reduce how aggressive the AI is, which is kind of nice.
My suggestion: raid a little bit into Illyria to the north. Grab Stobi and possibly the three cities north of it. This will give you access to awesome cavalry and archers. The archers are great because they can shoot peltasts attacking a battleline while staying behind it. The cavalry are great because they're five times larger than native Macedonian cavalry. Both of these are mercenaries, so they use different population numbers but have worse morale, which is a nonissue for both of them (cavalry kill very quickly so don't suffer much morale loss, and archers aren't for being attacked).
Don't go too far into Illyria, because it's hellsa mountainous and sparse. You won't be able to feed your troops or keep a significant garrison in any of the cities until you punch all the way through to the coast, which is a massive breadbasket.
Oh, also: coastal conquests will be a LOT easier when you get Triremes. They can carry 1000 food at a time and are damn fast, so you can easily keep food on the front lines (and the hell out of Pella, no you don't fucking need 20k food you fat bastard). There are some major UI issues with them that make them obnoxious as troop transports, though.
Thanks for that. I didn't know about the patch. So far I haven't really been following the objectives much, I have been taking cities according to my own agenda. Maybe this is making the game harder than it should be. My highest priority was to take the nearest Athenian cities that were launching sea raids against my capital. But holy crap were they hard to take, it took me way too long and my other fronts suffered for it.
I didn't know about the mercenaries. Are they hired in certain cities like the other units? Better cavalry would be majorly helpful.
If you're interested in playing the game with the latest beta updates, the only way to go is purchasing from their website. There have been 2 updates so far since release, and they all change the game for the better. As already mentioned by Garthor, the first one reduces how aggressive the AI is, which is nice. The latest one (1.1.0 beta 1) also introduces the possibility to change difficulty, something that should make the game more accessible (or challenging) for more people
I wonder if it was worth it. Are they making any real money from this?
Let me assure you: you are not about to put a dent in Athens. They control about a third of the ENTIRE map. Athens does have a rather precarious supply chain going on, however, that you can take advantage of, but it goes across the entire map.
As for the mercenaries: nearby cities will be Macedonian, so they give you population for Macedonian units (and never rebel). A bit further away will be foreign cities, which give you population for - and recruit - mercenary units. The units you can get are based on the faction the city belonged to, pretty much, so any Illyrian city that isn't Macedonian will give you awesome archers and cavalry. Similarly, any Spartan city will give you awesome hoplites, though you'll get the also-awesome Thebian hoplites first, probably.
Oh, and the objectives are generally good to try to follow, but really you'll probably complete them as you go along.
Source: http://www.longbowgames.com/forums/topic/?id=1977
EDIT:
EDIT 2:
The updated version is now available from their website. Announcement: http://www.longbowgames.com/forums/topic/?id=1980
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There is some modding going on already.
http://www.longbowgames.com/forums/topic/?id=1958
It's mostly stat tweaks atm, but supposedly there are some more substantial things in the works. I'm not really sure how moddable the engine is, but there are people exploring it.
Has anyone played around with the sandbox campaign? The map is so freaking big, playing without the missions and objectives seems pretty daunting.