"Hegemony - Philip of Macedon" Game

[Jolt]

Hegemony- Philip of Macedon site

I just learned about this new game, centered on the Philippean rise to power and unification of the Greek States under the League of Corinth. This game was developed by a very small team over the last 6 years and has just been released. It has no DRM and a demo is available to see if it suits your tastes. I must say I've only tried the demo, and found it refreshingly similar to Rome: Total War (Albeit understandably, its Battle System is nowhere as complex as RTW). The graphics are pretty good and the strategy aspect behind the game is pretty awesome as well. You can only play as Macedon but as you conquer Greek-States you can recruit their units to form part of your army.

It costs 29,99 $ and there still aren't hardcase copies as this has just been released, but the team said that in a couple of months hardcase copies would begin to be made.

Though not exactly of the EB period, I decided to post here the game to publicitize it with an audience that is very fond of the classical period (& for the Philmacedonians like myself :P), as well as to showcase it to the EB team where someone might pick it up (Even the demo at least), and get a few ideas from the game to be implemented on the mod. The publicitation of the game is rather important as this is a small indie company which happened to produce a good game and it would be rather sad to see it fail due to lack of information and knowledge.

A review on the game.


Release trailer:


Some screenshots:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Siege of Athens:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Random battle between Hoplites and Macedonian auxiliaries:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Peltast skirmish:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Overview of the strategy map centered on the Peleponese:

I hope you guys try the demo and if you enjoy it, tell your buddies about it! :D Other people can weigh in their opinions on the game as well.

[antisocialmunky]

Looks like some sort of AOE + TW clone. :)

I assume it'll pop up on steam eventually.

[Mediolanicus]

I tried it for an hour. It's very good. Thank you for posting it, Jolt.

It is however a bit too much history on rails for my tastes.

[al Roumi]

New (?) Indie RTS game based on Phillip of macedon's conquest of Greece. Looks a bit like RTW but zoomed in a couple of degrees closer to the ground. Includes supply considerations and what looks like a real time map -so maybe a bit like RTW without the dual game mode (battle/campaign) we know from TW games...

Encouraging review on RPS, developer's website.

Might give the demo a whirl this weekend...

[Horatius Flaccus]

Looks good, I'm going to try the demo.

[Jolt]

I was gonna post the thread also here, but it appears I was beaten to it. I'm about to go back home (I'm sick), gonna give the demo another try and I'll try to write a short review after that (But not before playing some Quake Live, which I'm itching to as I haven't played it in a month.)

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I haven't tried the demo yet(downloading it at the moment) but so far what I've seen have been quite amazing! One thing I really really like is their zoom option. I know that many wanted to zoom to the battlefield from the campaign map in TW series but it was not possible. This kind of gives us that and much more. Battles look like tabletop style ones but I need to check the demo before I can say something about that.

Nice find alh_p and Jolt!

[gamegeek2]

Looks like a nice synthesis of TW and Civ 4.

[al Roumi]

Cool, I'll be interested to see how you both find it.

[A Nerd]

I'd like to know how it is! Though I've always been fond of the risk style conquring of the map that has been common to all the TW titles.

[Klearchos]

That antiquity-style map looks great

[Megas Methuselah]

I'll probably eventually get it, but I hope it's moddable.

[vartan]

Looks like some sort of AOE + TW clone. :)

I assume it'll pop up on steam eventually.

You must not know of Seumas McNally (R.I.P.). If his memory means anything, it means this game ain't going down the toilet drain via Steam...

[Skullheadhq]

Played it, very nice game!

[vartan]

Played it, very nice game!

Did you end up finding what you were looking for? ;) bad bad

[Martok]

I've had my eye on this one for a while now. I don't like that it's RTS, that you're apparently limited to just playing as Macedonia, and that there is no diplomacy....yet I'm intrigued just the same. Haven't had time to check out the demo yet, so I'll be very curious to hear what the rest of you guys' & gals' reactions are.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I bought it on an impulse (not the platform lol) yesterday after completing the demo. I encourage you to try the demo, but some of my off-the-cuff observations are...

The good:

You can pause the game whenever you like, and issue orders while paused. This can be really important when you've gotten the "enemy sighted" alert but you're not sure where. Just pause the game and hit "v" to scroll through sighted enemies.

The sense of scope with the zooming feature is really cool. The demo according to the devs is only 1% of the map, and it certainly feels that way. It's also cool to discover more parts of the map and go "oh hey I've hit a new neighbor on this border."

I like that every unit is named after whatever town it was recruited at. So you have your "1st Aegae Phalagite Brigade" (or whatever) or your "2nd Pella Company of Peltasts".

The game has a (very critical) logistics thing. Your cities need food to defend themselves, and your units need food or their morale drops and they'll run in a fight. This makes the (gently paced) seasons very important; good luck getting a ton of food from your enemy's farm in the dead of winter! On the plus side, stumble upon a roving flock of sheep and you'll eat for a long time.

Even though the game only lets you play as Macedon, there is a ton of stuff for you to do. There are core objectives that you need to accomplish to win the campaign, but there are also "side missions" with multiple submissions. The rewards are usually cool, too, like giving you some of Alexander's historical companions so you can make them into powerful unit commanders. One side mission got me an Illyrian city that I had captured and made it a Macedonian city so that it stopped being angry about being occupied and it also contributes to the manpower pool for Macedonian instead of barbarian troops.

What I don't like:

Whack a mole. Your surrounding enemies will routinely send units to harass you. This is annoying because there isn't any AI for your units. So your units will sit there getting arrow'd if you don't tell them to attack or run away. And if you don't stop the raiders, they'll burn or capture your farms. Very frustrating, and the only solution seems to be capture the city their raiding from. But then they'll raid from another city next to the one you capped. The Athenians (from where I am now) are the dumbest; they stage regular naval invasions from the next city over. They always land in the same place, so I put one of my phalanxes on the beach every time I see them coming. They always die in droves (think Omaha Beach but spears instead of machine guns) but they keep coming back. And I have to move my phalanx from the beach back to a city for food then back to the beach every time they drive by again.

The scroll and zoom and camera are weird. It's not quite choppy, but it moves strangely and sort of laggy. There's also a bit of a pause when issuing orders to units, especially attack orders. I usually issue attack orders from pause where I can correct screw ups easily.

Part of the game involves "connecting" cities and towns and farms and forts via road. Doing so generates more money and connecting farms to cities means the all-important food gets stockpiled safely in a city. It's simple, just select one and right click where you want to connect it. However, there are non-obvious rules about what you can connect what to. So some cities just can't connect to each other, and there's no explanation given other than there aren't open "nodes" - even when neither city seems to have too many things connected to it. I just don't get it.

I don't know if the game is worth $30. I'm hoping Longbow Games releases some patches, because the potential is definitely there. Play the demo - you'll either see through the flaws or you won't.

[antisocialmunky]

After seeing this, I was looking for other TW-genre games and I was wondering if anyone has anyone else played games that are TWish like XII Century by 1C by more in this period?

[al Roumi]

Thanks AtPG, I've just played through the demo twice and although i enjoyed it (both times), I am not convinced there would be much more to the game except "more of the same" and am therefore really unsure about paying $30 for the full experience.

I appreciate the supply considerations, combat mechanics, story telling and setting; but I couldn't agree more on the tiresome "whack a mole" defense the game forces you to play.

The trade/supply system for cities is interesting but it has a few faults:
1) you can't "unlink" a farm, villa or town once you have linked it up -this means that it can be hard to is properly absorb new cities etc if you cluster trade too much in earlier phases of expansion;
2) its not clear how economic or beneficial a given link is over another, this is a problem when you have strategic considerations (e.g. supplying a fort from a town) as well as when seeking the best balance of food to feed a city or city/city trade for economic benefit.

I would buy the game immediately if it was on sale for $10-15, I would have a hard time deciding if it was $20, but $30 is just too much for this IMO. I hate to say that as I think the developer is on to something interesting and that it will only be improved on, and I'd like to support Indie games with innovative ideas. They've just set the bar too high for me.

[Ca Putt]

I tested the demo, the Artwork is a bit odd and sometimes the unit design sometimes is aswell. but I really like the gameplay a lot much like Civilisation and rise of nations combined and supplied with a neat zoom feature for the map :DD

now the question arises if I buy This or Mount and blade :D

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

You can unlink stuff - select the road and there's a menu button that lets you delete it. I agree that there needs to be more information available on how links work/which ones you should link.

[Hannibal Khan the Great]

I tested the demo, the Artwork is a bit odd and sometimes the unit design sometimes is aswell. but I really like the gameplay a lot much like Civilisation and rise of nations combined and supplied with a neat zoom feature for the map :DD

now the question arises if I buy This or Mount and blade :D

Mount and Blade any day. The mods alone make it a god among games.

I found the demo to be interesting, even if it took a bit to get used to.

[Allhopeforhumanity]

now the question arises if I buy This or Mount and blade :D

Id say Mount and blade, especially with the 268 BC mod on the horizon. You should check it out if you haven't already.

[antisocialmunky]

Well I bought it and kinda regret it because its still a bit buggy right now but I guess all TW fans should be used to that sort of thing :).

[al Roumi]

For any interested, Hegemony: Philip of Macedon is in an Impulse sale this weekend!

For £9.99, I am definitley getting it!

http://www.impulsedriven.com/hegemony

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Though I haven't played it in a while, I'd like to comment that Longbow games seems to have excellent support for a small team of developers. They're beta testing their patches (which has actually made me hesitant to try it, I'd rather wait for the full patch) and if you post a problem on their forum they'll try their best to fix it. They've made repeated offers to people having problems to take the player's savegames and try and assess and even fix the problem from there.

That kind of support, coupled with the game's potential, makes it a pretty good buy at $15 USD. Obviously check out the demo first.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

And everyone's favorite Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an interview with the president of Longbow games (I assume he's also essentially lead dev for Hegemony). Not much new information if you've played the demo/full game, but probably a better picture of the game than my scatter-shot impressions.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Triple post time:

Longbow released the 1.1.0 patch (not the beta) and the game's seems to have a lot less whack-a-mole. Basically they made it easier :P - the AI is more respectful of your garrisons (but still raids to get back territory you took from them to keep you on your toes). I'm having a lot more fun despite having to deal with a memory-related crash that keeps popping up. I'm also being much smarter about who I attack, minimizing the number of fronts I have with the Athenians while completely subjugating annoying factions like the Illyrians and Thracians, who won't let you be if you've taken some of their cities but haven't crippled them. I think with this patch (and hopefully with a fix for my memory problem) I could recommend this game at the $30 price. Anything less than that is a definite buy, though.

Changelog:

* 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.

[al Roumi]

I got the full game last Friday (as I mentioned above), I have enjoyed it more than just "more of the same" from the Demo.

I'm not sure which version of the game I'm playing, but it is quite challenging. At worst it feels like MTW2 on Very Hard where all the AI factions are out to get you.

Maybe I'm missing a large chunk of knowledge of Hellenic history but there doesn't seem to be much reason behind the AI raids other than "we are neighbours and don't get on". E.g. why is it that since the beginning of the game the Athenians have annualy landed a raiding fleet south of my capital?

Well, there is no diplomacy in the game but that should not deter from the main game-mechanic of the player managing resources to conquer lands -which is challenging and fun. I've not played a game where you have to consider logisitics so much (food!), but this is a refreshing burst of "realism" which affects how you go about conquering your enemies, e.g. sending scout parties to capture enemy farms and sheep while your main hoplite force moves (slower) into position. Without food and alone, your troops don't last long -and neither do enemy beseigers, so it's often wise to wait out a siege until the enmy morale wavers (unless they properly supply their troops).

[Longjohn4]

I'm loving this game, haven't been so adicted to a game for ages. The research and historical detail in this game are absolutely top class, and the map is beautiful. I'm a big fan of greek history, and it's great to see all small towns and mountain passes brought to life. This game has clearly had a lot of loving. There are great historical touches such as flocks of sheep you can capture, and the biographies of all the companions (generals).

The combat system isn't super realistic in that you have an infinite supply of troops, but the sense of progression is good. It took about a year to conquer the Chalkidike, and another for Thessaly. (1 yr = 1 hour game time = about 6 hours realtime as you have to pause a lot). It's also great to see supply depicted in the game so well, without it becoming at all dry or tedious.

It shows another way to do a realistic ancient historical computer game, and is well worth the rather modest price.