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About This Game Civilizations come and go; common men and kings they get covered by the dust of time in the same way. Monuments and wonders crumble under their own weight. But the cultural legacy is not bygone. Stories and tales about ancestors and their deeds pass through generations, the old knowledge is not lost forever. Soon, new societies, new kingdoms, new civilizations rise from the seeds of the ones which predated them. Decadence is not the end.Will your legacy stand the test of time?Field of Glory: Empires is a grand strategy game in which you will have to move in an intricate and living tapestry of nations and tribes, each one with their distinctive culture.Set in Europe and in the Mediterranean Area during the Classical Age, experience what truly means to manage an Empire.Expand your dominion through wars of conquest and make your culture a beacon of light, but be careful though. The risk of Decadence is not trivial. Many civilizations have collapsed for not having seen in time the signs of impending crisis. The older your empire, the more challenges will lurk in the shadows. Just expanding your borders without carefully shaping your form of government and culture won’t be the wisest of strategies.Manage your Empire on a scale that fits you: adjust all the details of an important region, form provinces to oversee your growing realm.Construct buildings to enhance your army, the life of your citizens, and the economy. Establish and grow a trade network of goods and resources.The battle system is not just about who brings the larger force. Army composition and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of you and your enemy are decisive, so is choosing wisely the battlefield and the general to lead your troops.And, if you want even more direct control, Field of Glory: Empires lets you export and load your battles into Field of Glory II and then load the results back into Field of Glory: Empires!War is decided not just by battles though, but also clever manoeuvres. Simultaneous (WEGO) turn resolution means thinking ahead to intercept – or to escape! – enemy armies will be essential. Field of Glory: Empires offers a living world where every decision has an impact on every actor.And once you think you are ready to be challenged, play against real opponents in one of the largest asynchronous multiplayer system ever created. 7aa9394dea Title: Field of Glory: EmpiresGenre: StrategyDeveloper:AgeodPublisher:Slitherine Ltd.Franchise:Field of GloryRelease Date: Coming Soon Field Of Glory: Empires Torrent Download [key Serial Number] field of glory empires gameplay. field of glory empires review. field of glory empires beta. field of glory empires pc. field of glory 2 empires. field of glory empires of the dragon pdf. field of glory empires steam. field of glory empires - ageod. field of glory empires. field of glory empires forum. field of glory eternal empire pdf. field of glory empires wiki. field of glory clash of empires pdf. field of glory empires release date. field of glory empires challenge. field of glory eternal empire. slitherine field of glory empires. field of glory empires dev diary. field of glory empires release. field of glory empires vs imperator rome. field of glory empires download. field of glory empires skidrow Dev Diary #9 Addendum - Playing Empires Battles in FOG2: Playing Empires Battles in Fog2by Richard Bodley ScottFrom an early stage in development it was planned that, in addition to the in-game battle resolution system, Empires would also have the option to fight out battles in FOG2 if the player so chooses.The main objectives were:1)That Empires battles fought out in FOG2 should be varied and fun. (Number one priority!)2)That the armies of each nation should be represented by the correct FOG2 units for their nation.3)That general skill and traits, unit experience, unit effectiveness, hit points etc. from Empires should carry over into the FOG2 battles.4)That terrain should be representative of the terrain in the region where the battle takes place.5)That there should be no adjustments to make the battles more “even”, and no adjustments to take into account the FOG2 difficulty setting. The situation should be as per the campaign situation.6)That the export/import process and switching between the games should be as automated a process as possible.How does the game decide which FOG2 unit type to convert an Empires unit to?Empires has a database specifying which FOG2 unit type each Empires unit type maps to, with a quality adjustment for some. The mapping is different depending on the national archetype. This information is passed in the export file, along with various other factors affecting the conversion.The Empires system potentially gives "Heavy Foot, Warriors, Mercenary Foot, Urban Militia etc." to every nation. The FOG2 conversion system attempts to convert each nation's forces to FOG2 units that are appropriate to their historical prototype. So for example "Warriors" in a Gallic Army will translate to FOG2 Warbands, but those in an Italian army will translate to FOG2 Italian Foot. This means that Empires "Heavy Foot", for example, may translate to FOG2 Medium Foot for some nations, if the nation never actually had any troops that FOG2 would rate as Heavy Foot. Also some units translate to a mixture of FOG2 units, because this leads to more historically realistic armies. Pre-Marian Roman legionary units translate to a mixture of hastati/principes and triarii units, in approximately a 2:1 ratio. Horse archer units, if present in large numbers, translate to a mixture of Light Horse and Cavalry.How does the game decide how many FOG2 units each Empires unit maps to?The Empires : FOG2 unit conversion ratio depends on the unit type, because it is points based. This is because the difference in effectiveness between various Empires units is often significantly greater than the difference between the effectiveness of their FOG2 equivalents. To get the same relative effectiveness as in Empires-resolved battles, the more expensive (and more effective) Empires units translate to more FOG2 units than the cheaper ones. Some of the cheaper Empires units may only map to 1 FOG2 unit, but some of the more expensive ones could potentially map to as many as 4 or 5 (cheap) FOG2 units in armies of nations that historically did not possess powerful units like Pike phalanxes or legions. Most units will have a conversion ratio somewhere between these two extremes.For example, because Italian Foot in FOG2 are cheaper (and less effective) than Warbands, the unit conversion ratio for Empires Warriors > FOG2 Italian Foot will be higher than the unit conversion rate for Empires Warriors > FOG2 Warbands. Also, where different Empires unit types convert to the same FOG2 unit type, the quality of the FOG2 units may be adjusted depending on which Empires unit type they come from. (Thus, for example, Urban Militia in some national archetypes may be extremely low quality versions of the standard units. They will also have a lower unit conversion ratio as they are much lower rated in Empires points).Because the points value ratios do not match up to an exact number of FOG2 units, there is a random element. For example, if the points system means that an Empires unit is equivalent to 1.37 FOG2 units, the system will generate at least one FOG2 unit, with a 37% chance of another one. So usually it will generate 1 unit, but 37% of the time it will generate 2. A damping system on the chances of selecting subsequent "partial" units is used to ensure that the overall strength of the army does not vary excessively (about 3% in tests), and a unique random number generator seed number for each exported battle ensures that if you play the same battle (from the same export file) in FOG2 multiple times, the OOBs (and map) will be the same each time. (Unless you go back to the pre-battle Empires save and re-export it, in which case there will be a different seed number each time).How does the conversion take into account Empires general skill and traits, unit experience, effectiveness and hit points etc.?Unit Experience and Effectiveness affect FOG2 unit Experience and Elan respectively. FOG2 unit Quality is the average of those ratings.Empires Hit Points represent current strength compared with full paper strength, so affects the unit conversion ratio.Generals use their Empires skill rating for attack or defence depending on which side counts as attacking in Empires. General traits applicable in the regional terrain add their modifiers to those skill ratings. If there is an overall difference between the skill ratings of the opposing generals, then usually an adjustment is made to the quality of the opposing units, representing the effects on morale, physical condition and state of preparedness of the troops resulting from the better general's more skilful pre-battle manoeuvres. Sometimes, instead of a quality adjustment, the lower skilled general will have some of his troops arrive late at the battle.Unit traits are not explicitly taken into account in the conversion process, because FOG2 already takes into account the different effectiveness of different troop types in different terrain.FrontageEmpires units convert to an average of 2 to 3 FOG2 units, some more, some less. We decided not to artificially constrain the frontage in FOG2 battles because it would severely restrict the tactical options – which would rather defeat the point of playing the battle in FOG2. We did not think it would be fun.Also, as FOG2 battles take some time to play out, we wanted a decisive result, so wanted all of the troops present to be able to take part.Therefore, the normal FOG2 map generation is used, based on the prevailing terrain in the Empires province. Hence a mountainous, forest or swamp province will result in a mountainous, forested or marshy map, which may result in choke points, but isn’t guaranteed to do so.This does mean that playing Empires with FOG2 battles will have strategic implications, meaning that the game will play out somewhat differently depending on whether you play all the battles in Empires or not. Personally, I resolve very one-sided battles in Empires and play the rest in FOG2.Siege assaults are left to the Empires system and cannot be exported to FOG2. Field of Glory: Empires - The Challenge has been accepted: Field of Glory: Empires is a very ambitious project. It’s perfect combination between empire management and grand-strategy, united to a set of unique mechanics, will set a new standard for strategy games.To better introduce players to this upcoming masterpiece, we have launched a great Challenge series of events, inviting influencers and media members.[www.matrixgames.com]We have gathered in a playlist the main efforts played so far, so you can have a look at first hand how the game unfolds, even in more strict environment.www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQrYLOdjwRhQIL0LAeH4NZc-rh3c__GjxYou can watch some sample below:www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8YRiu73AZE&list=PLQrYLOdjwRhQIL0LAeH4NZc-rh3c__Gjx&index=2&t=2swww.youtube.com/watch?v=OsP7tPJfJ7gwww.youtube.com/watch?v=F6LvluXe0_cStay tuned for further updates!. Dev Diary #6 - Culture and Decadence: One key feature in Empires is how it deals with the progress and decline of nations. This impacts how your empire will evolve in a major way and is a focal point for gameplay.Practically, these mechanics first act as a limit on simply conquering as fast as possible as it is hard to assimilate your new gains without increasing your decadence. Thus your quickly acquired Empire might be impressive but will probably prove to be ephemeral. The new territories will be unruly, and in turn this can cause large issues for your government and ruler. However, decadence is not just a problem for the over-ambitious conqueror, it will affect almost every nation over time, no matter how grand, making long term stability a real challenge. Once you pass into relative decline, citizen loyalty will drop, civil wars and revolts will become more common making the risk of major collapse very real. Of course, even if this does happen, your previous greatness will have generated a lot of legacy (a topic for another diary), ensuring your reputation lasts – and that you have a good chance of winning the game despite your current problems. In Empires, with this ebb and flow, and added difficulty in maintaining stable large nations, nothing is a given.As you all know, the Roman Empire had its times of crisis, some minor, some more serious, to the point that it was, sometimes, on the edge of collapse much earlier than the date it did collapse historically. But it recovered, more or less, several times and the Western part lasted centuries, until 476 CE. All the while, it managed to expand from Scotland to Mesopotamia. And yet, over time it suffered many civil wars, usurpers and rampant inflation.This is what we aim to simulate, albeit in perhaps a gentler, less frustrating way, in Empires! We want you to consider, seriously, that your nation is a complex, fragile construct. If you manage it well through several simple yet subtle mechanisms, then -- most of the time – things will be all right. If you throw caution to the wind, by conquering rabidly and neglecting the welfare of your citizens, then there will be an internal reaction that sends your nation into turmoil and revolts.Ok after this long preamble focusing on the core design principle, let’s get practical! One of the very important measures of the progress of your nation is the Culture of each region. It comes from assigning your population to the Culture task, supplemented by your buildings. As with other types of ‘production’, this can be further modified by traits at the national level, from your ruler, government, etc. At the national level, there can also be events that change how much culture you generate. An artistically minded ruler can lead to benefits across the nation.Culture is pivotal to the game, because it serves many purposes. The most straightforward and direct usage is ‘welfare’, a bonus to loyalty, which you get if you have population assigned to Culture production. Thus you can offset unrest by placing your population in ‘unproductive’ (compared producing food or money) activities. There is a limit to how much bonus to loyalty you can get from welfare, so this tool has its limits, but it works well as a ‘first line of defense’ against discontented and demanding citizens.Because, as you might have guessed, citizens, and population in general, are not always fully happy with their condition. The more numerous the population of a region is, the lower the loyalty will be, due to citizens expecting services, welfare and entertainment. Slaves bring different challenges in this respect compared to citizens. They, oddly enough, want to change their condition by revolting, or at least escaping. This too lowers the overall loyalty in the region. And when loyalty is too low, you can get revolts, either from the slaves, or from the citizens. They might even turn back to their former nation or master, if they are not from your main ethnicity. People are so ungrateful!The second, slightly less direct use of Culture, is to fight off Decadence. Decadence in the game appears under several conditions. First, as your government grows older, some decadence appears over time. Second, when your nation grows and conquers other people, you get extra decadence, coming from the turmoil and instability of having to assimilate new territories. And then you have what your nation is made of, its infrastructure. Some buildings are very nice and will greatly help you, but they come with the cost of generating decadence over time.And so, you have on one side the overall culture of your nation, and on the other side its decadence level, giving you a ratio between them. If the ratio is good, you are a nation that is progressing in terms of civilization.This ratio is compared to all the other nations in the game and will place you into one of three ‘tiers’. At the top, you have momentum and perhaps you might even be qualified as being glorious, like the ‘Glorious Roman Empire’. Then there are other nations that are in the middle of the chart. For them, nothing special. They can go either way. And then there are the ones losing ground, in term of progress. For those in the bottom tier if they do nothing to deal with their problems, bad things will happen.All of these effects are very gradual. You don’t switch from being a young and dynamic empire to a crumbling kingdom made of senile senators and pampered citizens in a few years. You’ll have time to react and adjust, but doing so may demand considerable effort though!All this leads to the status and civilization level of your nation. Your status can be ‘young’, ‘stable’, ‘glorious’, ‘old’ or ‘decadent’. Civilization level gives the tier of your government. For example the Republic is a civilization level II government, as is the Monarchy. And an Empire is a tier III government. Status and Civilization level are combined, depending of your progress in civilization and how decadent you are. It is entirely possible to be the ‘Glorious Roman Republic’ but later on the ‘Decadent Roman Republic’. It will depend on how well you handle the progress and decadence of your nation.There are rewards from being a nation progressing through the civilization levels. As time passes, if you maintain a glorious status long enough, then you might evolve to a new civilization level. And this is how the Republic might transform to an Empire for Rome! And then if you are already at the top civilization level, being again Glorious has its own reward, with the fabled Golden Age!So we talked about how nice it is to have significant culture in your nation. We also spoke of Decadence and how it is gained. Rest assured, you also have some tools to remove decadence, even if they are rarer. First, when you manage to make your nation evolve, moving from young to stable, or even from a civilization level to another, you remove half of the accumulated age of your government, which automatically will remove quite a lot of decadence. Then when you conquer a region, over time turmoil will recede and this will in turn remove some decadence. And then a few buildings will remove decadence over time, like an Academy for example. But for the most part, the more powerful buildings tend to have some drawbacks…This is where we have almost come full circle back to our loyalty issue we talked about initially (as you can see the game features mesh with one another). It won’t be possible, if you want large populous regions, to fight off disloyalty only with the welfare bonus from culture. You’ll need something else. It happens that we have a lot of buildings in the game (400). Several of these (circuses, gambling rings, theaters, noble districts, brothels, monuments, gladiator arenas, etc) will greatly boost loyalty in your region. In a very ‘panem et circus’ way of the Romans (we want bread and games!). The only issue with these buildings is that they generate decadence over time. And so we are back to the problem of fighting off decadence.We said earlier that we did not want to be too punishing and frustrating, it’s a game after all. Depending of your difficulty level and rate of expansion, it will be entirely possible for a player paying some attention to his empire to avoid the more acute crisis that struck the roman empire (civil wars mainly). But you’ll have to make choices and be watchful of your expansion rate and how your citizens feel. Failing that, a usurper is always around the corner!As you can guess the AI nations too are subject to this ebb and flow of progress and decadence. This makes for a rather dynamic map where empires expand, splinter and reform. Some nations can even be reborn because their old master is crumbling in decadence! So there are opportunities to grab desirable regions, if you see that your neighbor is rife with internal problems…. New Screenshots Part II - Ask anything about them!: It's time for another group of screenshots, highlighting some unique features and mechanics. The developer will answer every question about them! Every question!Stay tuned for further updates!Click on the screenshots to see them in full size[www.matrixgames.com][www.matrixgames.com][www.matrixgames.com][www.matrixgames.com]. Dev Diary #10 Units: Abilities and Modifiers: Units in Empires have very diverse profiles and different roles. Some are heavy hitters, like phalanxes, legions and other heavy infantry. These units cost a lot to recruit and maintain, and will use a lot of metal, so can’t be mass produced easily. They have drawbacks too, like being relatively slow and not fit to fight in terrain like forests or mountains.Another category is the medium infantry, which is apparently less powerful, more affordable and has the useful ability of being a besieger, meaning it will provide a bonus when you siege a city. This reflects the value of these formations in being able to construct heavy siege engines on the spot (you did not drag siege towers along your army when you were on the march). Given they are more affordable, you can field a lot of these troops, and this might be necessary since battles have an important concept of ‘frontage’, which is the width of the battle line. Previous players from AGEOD game will be well aware of this feature, as it appeared in 2004 with Birth of America, and it never ceased to play an important and realistic role in all our games. Failure to fill out your available front line will leave you very vulnerable to being outflanked or forced to commit your skirmishers to actual hand to hand combat (not a good idea!).[www.matrixgames.com]The skirmishers are another sort of unit. They are not costly, although the manpower they need is close to the types above (so make a lot demands on your population to fill out their ranks from the pool of conscripts used for units). In melee, they are quite weak, but this is not where they should be used. They are there to help support your main infantry, by providing a combat bonus to them. A medium infantry unit backed by a skirmisher is as strong, if not more so, than a heavy infantry without support. Add to that they will weaken the enemy before melee through their missile attack, and you will quickly come to see that they are not optional to a good army composition.Cavalry is another subset of units and plays an important role on the battlefield and the strategic map. Light cavalry will perform as skirmishers but most types can also flank the enemy. It means that should your opponent don’t fill up the battle line, then they will deal bonus attacks against the enemy. Should you manage to inflict a defeat to your opponent, then their pursuit bonus will deal significant damage during the retreat phase. On the strategic map, they are faster than even skirmishers, so can act as a fire brigade of sort. But they are not ideal if they have to fight on their own as they are rather brittle, except perhaps if they are heavy cavalry or cataphracts. Plus skirmishers help a city resists a siege, while cavalrymen don’t do much but eating the food stockpile in this situation!The important thing to remember is that through quite a lot of fine tuning and testing, we have managed to give each unit a role that defines them well. And also that costlier units are not always better in all circumstances, so if you enjoy tweaking your army composition, then you should have some fun testing out combinations.[www.matrixgames.com]But there is more to it than that, as units also have some custom abilities contextual to some terrain. For example, many Celtic nations have light and medium infantry which are woodmen, so they are better when fighting in the huge forests of Gallia. In the same way, German warriors benefit from this trait too, given how large and continuous, almost overwhelming, was the big Hercynian forest where many lived.You’ll also fight mountainmen, if you have to deal with Celtiberian tribes, or people from Armenia or Colchide. Arabia Felix or the vast expanses of desert bordering Carthage proper will see cameliers with the desertmen traits, etc.But some traits are not a bonus, they are a drawback. For example, elephants dislike cold terrain, and Phalanxes are not fit to assault a city.Other traits are about how units fought on the battlefield. For example, skirmishers, horse-archers and light cavalry can deal damage even when they lose a duel, or to add insult to injury, they can even shave off part of the damages they received by evading the melee! As some of you know, the battle of Carrhae was a major defeat for Rome against Parthia, mostly because the latter had a lot of horse-archers (backed up by supply wagons to replenish their stock of arrows) while the legionnaires were trying (and failing) to reach the enemy line. In Empires too, I would not bet on the mighty legions if they have no support from archers or skirmishers, against a full battle line of Parthian horse archers!Hopefully this will give you an idea about how Empires manages units and the different possible battles you will experiment.But traits, also called modifiers, are everywhere in the game. Rulers have traits, ranging from being a superior administrator to being paranoid. The variations are numerous, and the chance to get the same ruler twice is very small. This in turn will shape your nation and alter your strategy, as a good military ruler will provide a lot of bonus which will be a boon to your army, while someone who despises the idea of expanding his realm will be an issue if you wanted to conquer and gobble your neighbor.Units and rulers have traits (or modifiers) but each government is also different using their own range of abilities. For example, a tribal government will provide a bonus to manpower, and that’s fitting as units filled with warriors will need a lot of men and not that much heavy armor to be recruited. A merchant oligarchy like Carthage will enjoy extra bonuses for commerce but will be heavily penalized on manpower, thus lending to a style of gameplay where you’ll need to recruit a lot of mercenaries (and the ones for Carthage are rather good!). In the end, through the judicious (or so we hope) use of modifiers, you’ll see that all the nations play rather differently from one another. Because their units are different, or perhaps their government. And then there are the custom buildings with special abilities! Here, we are mostly not talking about something like “Get +10% from that or that”, this would be dull… Buildings have specific abilities or behaviors that significantly alter the game and how you will tackle a nation. Judea with the possible, but difficult, task to rebuild the Solomon Temple (coming in no less than 7 levels of upgrades!), Saba with the impressive Ma’rib dam which can be either a boon or a curse (depending if you repair it or not), Dacia with its mountain fortresses, etc. [www.matrixgames.com]. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #4 - Commerce and Trading: Welcome to the fourth installment of the Empires dev diaries. This week, we will talk about trading and commerce, and how buildings are very important in relation to this.As you might remember from our previous diary on buildings, they provide a lot of opportunities and benefits. But many will need trading goods to work to their full capacity. They will still function even if the trading good is not available, but you’ll pay a hefty sum each turn, to simulate the convoluted ways by which you manage to get a trickle of the precious trade good. For some buildings, this is sometimes worthwhile as they might be instrumental in how you have setup your empire, but in other cases you will be better to disable or destroy the building.So … trade goods! There are a lot around, something like 50 or so. Some are naturally produced in regions, and you don’t have to do much to gain access to them, even if by themselves they won’t generate any benefits (you would still need an appropriate building for that). Here, we are talking of wood, stone and the like. Some are manufactured, like pottery, clothes, weapons, sails. And a third category are imported resources, which are produced by another region or country (although as you can guess, these too are either natural or manufactured).Buildings will often need a trade good. Some good examples would be a spinning mill, in need of cotton (or flax). A mint would need gold, and stables would need horses. This will generate trade between your region, where the structure is, and an exporting region. And, depending of how good your nation is at commerce, the exporting nation can be a neighbor, someone on the other side of the sea or one of your own regions (if it has the trade good obviously). The whole process is automated, and you don’t have to worry about who can provide what, as given the scope of the map and the possible size of your empire, this would become daunting to handle, and then, to put it simply, a source of tedium. Now, we did not say it was done randomly. There is a measure of your trading efficiency, named ‘Trade Acumen’, which will be used when there is competition between several potential sources of supply. As you can guess, your internal trade is much favored here, as well as trade with your allies. But sometime, a powerful trading nation, like Carthage, will literally snatch trading opportunities and get richer from doing this. And that’s how you end up with Carthaginian olive oil in Rome while some Sicilian farmers are discontented!Trade Acumen is something you can improve though, either at your national level, with the right decisions and a proficient ruler, or at the local level, by building trade ports, paved roads, trading centers. All in all, trading is a smooth process in which you can gain significant money, while providing your buildings with what they need. Now, sometimes, trade is not a possibility or is too difficult to achieve, so you’ll want to inspect the ledger and see where the nearest source of iron is and then snatch it from the hands of its current owner…You might think that’s all about trading, but definitively no! Because having a good availability of trading goods is much more useful than just having your buildings work without an extra fee. Trading goods also play a very important part in what the buildings will themselves produce. This is done through the mechanism of bonus trade goods. An example will probably be the quickest way to convey how it works.Let’s take a fairly advanced building, the Thermes, in which your citizens will wash, relax and gossip. The Thermes are a healthcare building, and as such give a health bonus in the region, which speeds up population growth while protecting (partially) against diseases. By itself it requires no trading good to work smoothly. But, should you happen to have, either in the region it is in, or an adjoining region, marble or perfume, then you’ll gain extra culture and money from the building, as it operates much more efficiently, being now so beautiful and sophisticated! So playing and optimizing these bonuses, although definitively not mandatory to get a good game and win, is one way of getting the most out of your nation. And this might be mandatory, if you like to play at a high difficulty level or against live opponents. For some, this will be the pleasure of enjoying the ‘mind game’ that this kind of gameplay demands, finding the right supply chain and combining buildings so that one needs a resource that will then be further used by another, etc. A game in a game, for those minded to paying close attention!And so, to sum up, the surface of trading and commerce will feel simple and easy for newcomers, and it is, as everything works by itself. But when you start delving into the numerous buildings, the goods they need and the goods that would provide extra bonuses, you get a quite rich system, strongly tied to the general economy.. Field of Glory: Empires Challenge #2 Ranking and Videos: We have the final list of the participants who completed the Challenge #2 – Amass 7500 money in your treasury while reaching at least 20 regions in less than 50 turns and avoiding to be in the last tier in the progress & decadence chart. Carthage was not an easy faction to play, with scattered regions to protect and surrounded by powerful neighbours. Players had to carefully plan ahead their moves and outsmart their opponents. It was very interesting to see the different strategies employed and the different pay-offs!This is the final ranking, kudos to all the participants![www.matrixgames.com]We will announce soon the Challenge #3, its setting and task. Stay tuned!Here’s below a taste of the videos published so far, including the ones completing the challenge:www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFaw30IFSQMwww.youtube.com/watch?v=hByQfxUzSpo&list=PLGB6RkFB7ZmNZ5snmx5PoqzCw4jrBqEOP&index=7www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LO_6ZkT_k&feature=youtu.bewww.youtube.com/watch?v=YlEyjxMCsWE&list=PLMwqkym59Zruy7LZOC70YRa3gBcPY5gMf&index=1www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkjtgwepvwc&t=17s. Field of Glory: Empires - Challenge 1 with DasTactic: Watch DasTactic playing Challenge #1 of Field of Glory: Empires!www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sSomUSZgrs&t=14sHere are the rules:- Conquer Italy playing as Rome in as few turns as possible-The map is locked to the Italian Peninsula and its closest surroundings.- All mechanics and features are activeWho can join?Influencers and media members. The participation is mainly by invitation, but if you think you qualify to compete, write to us at challenge@slitherine.co.uk, with your name/nickname and your channel/media.If you want more info please visit http://www.slitherine.com/FogE_Challenge. Dev Diary #6 - Culture and Decadence: One key feature in Empires is how it deals with the progress and decline of nations. This impacts how your empire will evolve in a major way and is a focal point for gameplay.Practically, these mechanics first act as a limit on simply conquering as fast as possible as it is hard to assimilate your new gains without increasing your decadence. Thus your quickly acquired Empire might be impressive but will probably prove to be ephemeral. The new territories will be unruly, and in turn this can cause large issues for your government and ruler. However, decadence is not just a problem for the over-ambitious conqueror, it will affect almost every nation over time, no matter how grand, making long term stability a real challenge. Once you pass into relative decline, citizen loyalty will drop, civil wars and revolts will become more common making the risk of major collapse very real. Of course, even if this does happen, your previous greatness will have generated a lot of legacy (a topic for another diary), ensuring your reputation lasts – and that you have a good chance of winning the game despite your current problems. In Empires, with this ebb and flow, and added difficulty in maintaining stable large nations, nothing is a given.As you all know, the Roman Empire had its times of crisis, some minor, some more serious, to the point that it was, sometimes, on the edge of collapse much earlier than the date it did collapse historically. But it recovered, more or less, several times and the Western part lasted centuries, until 476 CE. All the while, it managed to expand from Scotland to Mesopotamia. And yet, over time it suffered many civil wars, usurpers and rampant inflation.This is what we aim to simulate, albeit in perhaps a gentler, less frustrating way, in Empires! We want you to consider, seriously, that your nation is a complex, fragile construct. If you manage it well through several simple yet subtle mechanisms, then -- most of the time – things will be all right. If you throw caution to the wind, by conquering rabidly and neglecting the welfare of your citizens, then there will be an internal reaction that sends your nation into turmoil and revolts.Ok after this long preamble focusing on the core design principle, let’s get practical! One of the very important measures of the progress of your nation is the Culture of each region. It comes from assigning your population to the Culture task, supplemented by your buildings. As with other types of ‘production’, this can be further modified by traits at the national level, from your ruler, government, etc. At the national level, there can also be events that change how much culture you generate. An artistically minded ruler can lead to benefits across the nation.Culture is pivotal to the game, because it serves many purposes. The most straightforward and direct usage is ‘welfare’, a bonus to loyalty, which you get if you have population assigned to Culture production. Thus you can offset unrest by placing your population in ‘unproductive’ (compared producing food or money) activities. There is a limit to how much bonus to loyalty you can get from welfare, so this tool has its limits, but it works well as a ‘first line of defense’ against discontented and demanding citizens.Because, as you might have guessed, citizens, and population in general, are not always fully happy with their condition. The more numerous the population of a region is, the lower the loyalty will be, due to citizens expecting services, welfare and entertainment. Slaves bring different challenges in this respect compared to citizens. They, oddly enough, want to change their condition by revolting, or at least escaping. This too lowers the overall loyalty in the region. And when loyalty is too low, you can get revolts, either from the slaves, or from the citizens. They might even turn back to their former nation or master, if they are not from your main ethnicity. People are so ungrateful!The second, slightly less direct use of Culture, is to fight off Decadence. Decadence in the game appears under several conditions. First, as your government grows older, some decadence appears over time. Second, when your nation grows and conquers other people, you get extra decadence, coming from the turmoil and instability of having to assimilate new territories. And then you have what your nation is made of, its infrastructure. Some buildings are very nice and will greatly help you, but they come with the cost of generating decadence over time.And so, you have on one side the overall culture of your nation, and on the other side its decadence level, giving you a ratio between them. If the ratio is good, you are a nation that is progressing in terms of civilization.This ratio is compared to all the other nations in the game and will place you into one of three ‘tiers’. At the top, you have momentum and perhaps you might even be qualified as being glorious, like the ‘Glorious Roman Empire’. Then there are other nations that are in the middle of the chart. For them, nothing special. They can go either way. And then there are the ones losing ground, in term of progress. For those in the bottom tier if they do nothing to deal with their problems, bad things will happen.All of these effects are very gradual. You don’t switch from being a young and dynamic empire to a crumbling kingdom made of senile senators and pampered citizens in a few years. You’ll have time to react and adjust, but doing so may demand considerable effort though!All this leads to the status and civilization level of your nation. Your status can be ‘young’, ‘stable’, ‘glorious’, ‘old’ or ‘decadent’. Civilization level gives the tier of your government. For example the Republic is a civilization level II government, as is the Monarchy. And an Empire is a tier III government. Status and Civilization level are combined, depending of your progress in civilization and how decadent you are. It is entirely possible to be the ‘Glorious Roman Republic’ but later on the ‘Decadent Roman Republic’. It will depend on how well you handle the progress and decadence of your nation.There are rewards from being a nation progressing through the civilization levels. As time passes, if you maintain a glorious status long enough, then you might evolve to a new civilization level. And this is how the Republic might transform to an Empire for Rome! And then if you are already at the top civilization level, being again Glorious has its own reward, with the fabled Golden Age!So we talked about how nice it is to have significant culture in your nation. We also spoke of Decadence and how it is gained. Rest assured, you also have some tools to remove decadence, even if they are rarer. First, when you manage to make your nation evolve, moving from young to stable, or even from a civilization level to another, you remove half of the accumulated age of your government, which automatically will remove quite a lot of decadence. Then when you conquer a region, over time turmoil will recede and this will in turn remove some decadence. And then a few buildings will remove decadence over time, like an Academy for example. But for the most part, the more powerful buildings tend to have some drawbacks…This is where we have almost come full circle back to our loyalty issue we talked about initially (as you can see the game features mesh with one another). It won’t be possible, if you want large populous regions, to fight off disloyalty only with the welfare bonus from culture. You’ll need something else. It happens that we have a lot of buildings in the game (400). Several of these (circuses, gambling rings, theaters, noble districts, brothels, monuments, gladiator arenas, etc) will greatly boost loyalty in your region. In a very ‘panem et circus’ way of the Romans (we want bread and games!). The only issue with these buildings is that they generate decadence over time. And so we are back to the problem of fighting off decadence.We said earlier that we did not want to be too punishing and frustrating, it’s a game after all. Depending of your difficulty level and rate of expansion, it will be entirely possible for a player paying some attention to his empire to avoid the more acute crisis that struck the roman empire (civil wars mainly). But you’ll have to make choices and be watchful of your expansion rate and how your citizens feel. Failing that, a usurper is always around the corner!As you can guess the AI nations too are subject to this ebb and flow of progress and decadence. This makes for a rather dynamic map where empires expand, splinter and reform. Some nations can even be reborn because their old master is crumbling in decadence! So there are opportunities to grab desirable regions, if you see that your neighbor is rife with internal problems…