"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.

[Horatius Flaccus]

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

[gamegeek2]

Looks like a nice synthesis of TW and Civ 4.

[Klearchos]

That antiquity-style map looks great

[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

[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]

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...

[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!

[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.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
Bought it. It's downloading as we speak.

Will let you folks know what I think about it.
.

[Beskar]

I played a bit, but I am having a serious whack-a-mole problem.

Simply put, I don't have the population to maintain enough separate small forces to protect my border. This gets even more pressuring as the game keeps on saying "Invade this bit, invade this bit!"

I am not too far in the game, but Athens keep using Naval strike forces to keep dropping stuff off and attacking my capital. The country in the south (they are red), keep sending up forces to the North. Then there is teal (surrounding West, and North) who keep sending in units. There there is another in the North East, which keeps harassing my border.

[al Roumi]

I played a bit, but I am having a serious whack-a-mole problem.

Simply put, I don't have the population to maintain enough separate small forces to protect my border. This gets even more pressuring as the game keeps on saying "Invade this bit, invade this bit!"

I am not too far in the game, but Athens keep using Naval strike forces to keep dropping stuff off and attacking my capital. The country in the south (they are red), keep sending up forces to the North. Then there is teal (surrounding West, and North) who keep sending in units. There there is another in the North East, which keeps harassing my border.

What difficulty are you playing on? This was certainly a problem in the early versions of the game but was "fixed" in a patch if you played on normal difficulty. I haven't played the latest patched versiona t all, so my experiences and advice may be a bit dated.

The Athenians will bug you throughout, especially around your starting city, until you clear out their 3 cities (Methone I think is one), immediately to the to the south/South-east of your starting city. The Illyrians keep up the pressure too (on your west flank), although I remember them being green? The states to the East of the Macedonian capital didn't attack me unless I did them. My tactic with the Illyrians and northern tribes was to take their cities in phases, pushing the frontier out and enabling you to keep a pacified (non-walled, non-garrisoned core of cities.

Unless the logisitics/population mechanisms have changed, this allows you to focus your troops -which is what you'll need to do to beat anyone or take a city. It can definitely be a gamble timing the early offensives, but always strike raiding enemies when their morale falters (usually due to supplies), and try to keep your farms! I'd also try to avoid recruiting spearmen, they are not good for anything but supportive flank attacks or garrison duty. I had a bunch in my cities defending against the athenian naval raids and they had pretty bad results each time. Hoplites, or even better phalangites, are much much better at fighting

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Exterminate the Illyrians and/or the Athenian cities immediately to your southeast. For the Illyrians, at least liberate all the Illyrian-held Macedonian cities and then do any missions that changes an Illyrian city to a Macedonian city culture-wise (I think there's just one). That should put the hurt on them, though they will probably occasionally still raid you. It might also be worth subduing the Paeonians (grey guys to the north) because their cavalry units that you can recruit as mercenaries are sick. Use them to garrison borders you want left alone, and occassionally use them to steamroll skirmisher raids.

If you haven't done so already deal with the nearest Athenians then head east to liberate Macedonian cities from the Chalcidean league (but put off finishing them off if you can; going beyond the non-Macedonian cities can quickly bog you down because they have few farms and an Athenian stronghold in the middle).