Great game. Has a steep learning curve, but once everything's understood, the game is very fun to play. IF you're into strategy games and not just looking for stunning 3d graphics, of course.
A gem of a turn based strategy game, although it does have it's rough edges.
You have a choice of 4 factions who while relatively similar have enough significant differences to mean they all play differently to each other. You start by building a deck of cards, and then play a game on a standard 2D hex-based map using these cards, moving units around with battles and other events handled with dice rolls. The entire game revolves around dice rolls so there is a significant element of luck, but there are numerous options to alter these dice rolls in your favour.
There is a decent variety of units and options for defeating enemies, while the use of 5 different resources (4 economic and 1 action based) ensures the game is complex without at any time being unbearably so. There is no campaign or story (other than a very brief bit of background in the manual), or multiplayer, with a sandbox game against the AI featuring randomised maps used instead. Overall the gameplay is good, although having played it through a number of times it does appear that some strategies are more dominant than others.
After playing it a lot one of the problems that starts to come to the fore a bit more is the lack of customisation of the battle settings to make things harder - you can choose the number of (AI) players, their factions, and the map size. However you can't create teams, or change the difficulty of the AI. Having said that the AI seems reasonably competent, and an option does exist to play without saves. The various deck building opportunities and different factions also greatly improves the game's replayability.
While the graphics on the map itself aren't great the artwork on the cards is very well done. There is decent background music, but the sound special effects are very limited.
The other slightly negative point is the game initially isn't very accessible - there is no in-game tutorial, so you'll be reliant partially on figuring things out for yourself and on using the manual. Although the manual is extensive this is also it's problem, with much of the detail that it goes into overwhelming at first where just the basics of how to play are needed. After a couple of games you should have a handle on the basics of playing though and then be able to appreciate the information in the manual better.
Overall this game is a bit like civilization crossed with magic the gathering - if you like turn based strategy games then you should like this, and if you like deck building you should really like it!
Coming in the newest humble bundle, I was positively disposed towards it. A deck building hex game with a posapocaliptic theme that isn't another borderlands rip-off? Count me in.
And at first it was enjoyable. Clear rule set, good backgrounds and art design. I played ~10 hours and ditched it and will never launch again.
The game struggles with performance issues and tends to broke mid-game forcing us to alt+f4 (cursour disappears, game doesn't respond etc.) and later on it's just not fun to play since the AI obviously cheats on the rolls during the combat. Combined with a tiring UI that requires many, many more clicks than it would be necessary it's a game breaker.
I mean, how many times one enemy unit will get a better defensive roll against all my 8 elite cards units? I get it, 1, 2, 3 times in a row. But 30? At 5 defense it always rolls 1 above attack rolls of my 10 attack units, which can't get a roll above 5? It's not how the probability calculus works. Watching random combat against far weaker opponent that takes more than 30 minutes due to the ridiculous AI rolls is just infuriating and time wasting. I think that any other deck builder does better job without making AI cheat. Pity, since the theme was strong.
Above all that the game doesn't has any kind of multi-player mode, even a hot-seats are absent. Ditching the AI would save the game, but unfortunately it's just garbage hidden under a pretty coat of clear rule set, pictures and music.
In a word: FRUSTRATING. Every possible tactics in this game is completely **** up by bogus dice roll. Are you attacking an almost defensless base with your fully crewed army? The odds would be always against the player, no matter what. It is statistically impossible failing the initiative roll TWENTY-FOUR times in a row, spending monstrous amounts of resources, just to watch your enemies winning with 4-5 dice. Or even worst just 3.
And worst of all, I would REALLY love to play this game: the theme and the art is amazing, and the possibilities given by the thematic are countless...
But developing a sturdy AI is a challenging feature for a game. Cheating the player is possibly the worst thing a developer could do.
SummaryArmageddon Empires is a computer turn based strategy game that takes the best elements of collectable card games, board games, and computer games and brings them all together to provide a unique interactive strategy war game experience.
Once the game is underway, you will want to deploy your heroes and units and explore the map. Some h...