Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients - Kickstarter campaign

[Anguille]

I'm pretty pissed about Hegemony II Rise of Rome. I think it had a really awkward development cycle and was never truly made with love and dedication. I think ultimately, it was just abandoned before it was really completed and left to whither and rot on the vine.

I'm going to need a more significant discount to take the plunge again.

Where do you see the biggest problems in the game?

[sandman2575]

I'm pretty pissed about Hegemony II Rise of Rome. I think it had a really awkward development cycle and was never truly made with love and dedication. I think ultimately, it was just abandoned before it was really completed and left to whither and rot on the vine.

+1  I still don't get what happened with Rise of Rome. It never achieved the polish of the original Hegemony. Does feel like Longbow just kind of washed their hands of this to move on to Hegemony III.  A little similar to what happened with the original StarDrive.

[son_of_montfort]

I'm pretty pissed about Hegemony II Rise of Rome. I think it had a really awkward development cycle and was never truly made with love and dedication. I think ultimately, it was just abandoned before it was really completed and left to whither and rot on the vine.

I'm going to need a more significant discount to take the plunge again.

From what I heard, particularly in regards to the raider spam, this one sounds problematic as well. That is a huge shame, because it looked like a very nice take on the ancient world (I was not a huge fan of Rome II: TW).

[JasonPratt]

But I've also read (on Steam forums) that the devs are squashing bugs fast now that it's out of ahem beta ;) . Maybe they'll fix the raider problem (which is that the raiders auto-scale to the opponent's tech, but the surrounding cultures have a hard time playing the game directly to develop up the way the player is nominally doing.)

[Ian C]

Having not played Hegemony Rome (so I wasn't burned and can walk into this game with an even keel), and having played several hours of Hegemony Gold Greece and ten hours of Hegemony III here are my thoughts.

Is it confirmed that the 'raider spam' is an actual genuine bug? It doesn't break the game but it makes it damn challenging. Damn challenging and at times infuriating. I can deal with raiders if my economy is on the upswing, and doing that is dependent on very careful planning and adjusting to seasonal changes in production as well as creating the bare minimum of trade routes and dissolving them when unnecessary, then rebuilding them again when stockpiles are low. I saw one trade route from a mine became useless during certain times of the year because the marsh it ran through became flooded. As a result, I went into a deficit. These realistic touches are greatly immersive. I rectified this by having it take a shorter route through non-marsh areas, but to do that I had to take out a raider camp so I could build a bridgehead. That alone took me a year. It was a shorter route and my economy grew. With raiders, to make matters worse they can also appear sea-borne on your coastal areas.

There are times when I'm not making enough coin to field forces capable of defending against raiders and so far if I'm honest, it's down to poor economic management. Raiders are not 'conveniently' generated when you are sitting pretty on heaps of coin and can recruit armies in a few turns, like other games. They appear at any time, sometimes in force. It's also worth noting that you must be prepared to lose battles against them. You cannot be everywhere, at once, in the early stages. Unlike other games, it's also uneconomical to maintain a garrison in every city in the early stages. Units are expensive to maintain, and doing things that seem commonplace in other games (like big garrisons or maintaining a tactical or strategic reserve) will eat your economy. You can't do it at first. Again, I can see this as being a source of frustration for many.

Recruitment is slow and takes a long time, so you can't just pop five new units in your training queue and they are done in two turns then have them run off at speed to catch raiders before they strip your mine and burn your farm to the ground. 1 hour of real time is 1 year of in-game time. That's about 6 days every minute. I'm seeing my small community grow and expand despite great odds and for me, it feels realistic and immersive. I can understand others frustration in not being able to field big armies and go on huge campaigns from the get-go. It's not that kind of game. I'd describe it as a 'survivalist empire sim'.

Might not be others cup of tea, but I'm struggling, surviving, sometimes barely and every accomplishment is hard-won. I don't see anything wrong in that. The satisfaction from hard-won small-scale battles is so much greater, when it means not losing your mine and having to go into a deficit or losing a farm that means your food is going to dwindle over winter. Not having enough food means morale suffers. The whole chain of logistics, military effectiveness and population growth is precarious and yes, having raiders take out a single livestock farm in a small empire is a huge deal that can set you back months. It will make you furious.

This game is tough, very tough, and at times it makes me want to shout rude things out loud, but it's giving me a lot of fun. Dare I say it's quite realistic? My advice: start small, think big, balance well, take the losses.

[Ian C]

Double post.

[JasonPratt]

I don't think the raider thing is a bug; it seems clearly designed that way.