Grand Ages: Medieval rewards strategists, people who like to plan ahead and like to take time to sit back and oversee the big picture before deciding what to do next. Micromanagement is not required, just encouraged, and optimizing town wealth, output and growth through trade can be a fun challenge all by itself.
I liked my time with Grand Age: Medieval, but after spending a lot of time in the Balkans in my first campaign, I want to see whether there's variety in switching to another region for the start town.
This game is a new kind of mix of expansion, economy and exploration. In the beginning you start with a small town and you have to found new towns and stabilize your small realm with production and trade routes. Later you take over or capture towns, you start war and fight your opponents to expand into their realm. Your goal is to have more towns and citizens than all the other emperors. However, troops are expensive and their upkeep is high as well. You need to make lots of money before raising up a huge army and you cannot afford a huge army for a long time. The steps are: make money, create army, defeat an enemy (or capture some towns) and then reduce you army until you have enough money for the next rush.
Yes, this game has issues. But it's also a fascinating mix of economy and military. Don't expect too much of military tactics. And don't buy the game because of its title and then boohoo because it has nothing to do which "Grand Ages: Rome"...
Also: many new features after release - all for free. No expensive DLC's at all as many bad reviews predicted.
A calm and strategic experience that may bore those who seek some action, but will delight those who just want to rule the (medieval) world through politics and economics.
Simplistic combat and a lack of variety mean that it begins to run out of steam by the end-game, but if you’re looking for a more relaxed approach to world domination, Grand Ages: Medieval is a perfectly solid option.
Grand Ages: Medieval is an ambitious trade/military/leadership simulator of medieval Europe. After the first few hours of entertainment you will be probably caught - either by bears or more likely by boredom.
This game shows a lot of promise and its addictive a lot, but also it has a lot of problems.
In my opinion this was supposed to be a mix between Crusader Kings and Total War to put it roughly. But it turned out to be a "Strategy" game, it has no tactics what so ever in combat, its little more then browser games combat, why in the 7 hells didn't you make a combat like for example Hegemony series, it looks like it anyway.
Another problem I found is AI for, well everything, but the trade when u set a route, they can do a good job, but they can **** you up, I was starting to think that whole AI was working against me.
The merchant kept hoarding the goods, or just buying it back after they sell it, I have no idea why there was no detailed system for trades:
For Example- On each rout I can set how much barrels of "something" I am willing to buy at one town, and then to sell at next one.. etc etc.. you got the point.
Animals are a bit stronger then they should be, and battles last far too long by games timeline, 100vs100 fighting for 3 weeks... gr8..
And my biggest problem: Who ever did artwork of St. Sophia(Hagia Sophia) is either some1 who hates Orthodox Christians or a total idiot, coz Orthodox version of it did not have those god damn pointy towers, and it had cross on it.
Still I like the game, and I like it a lot, just if some1 were to fix the battles and the god damn trade AI.
Well trade can be worked out, but still it can be **** from time to time.
I was hoping for the sequel to Grand Ages: Rome. Instead, I got the sequel to Rise of Venice only with a giant map, land-based trade routes, and 4x elements thrown in like automated combat, research trees, and the ability to found your own cities. What really bummed me out was the lazy building system which appeared to be copied straight over from Rise of Venice. That mediocre handful of building icons was lazily carried over from a mediocre game when it should have been done away with. It is not a bad game by any means, but when playing it I can't help but feel like the developers cut too many corners and copied too many aspects from games.
Interesting one this. I have put off writing a review for ages to try and be fair to it mainly because I couldnt make up my mind.
In summary. A lost opportunity. A great framework was created here but it wasn't carried through with any depth. It is lightweight. It could have been a really accessible version of the more inscrutable strategy games which people like me just don't have time to learn.
It could have combined the best of a couple of genre's to provide depth and win on the basis of being that much more accessible.
But it it just feels unfinished. It feels good to begin with. Then you start to notice the really strange and annoying way you have to access what your looking for in the UI.
For example, a trader is in a city loaded up with goods for sale. So, click the market or the town right? NO. First you must zoom out a fair way so you can see the city name, then you click your little trader icon under it. Then you click the town. 4 clicks for the price of one and a bit of unzooming. This is a very typical example of the design mistakes in this game. Rather than add depth by giving you diversity and options and while not making the combat total war (which personally I didnt want or expect anyway) it handles it in such an unengaging simplistic way it is really not interesting. The trading and commerce is also simplistic in a similar way. What could have been fun has been dumbed down.
It could have been a good game as it is beautiful, the sound is ok and it has a nice feel to it but it is like they never got to make any of it work properly and just stopped development. Hard to understand the vision here, it reminds me a bit of settlers more than any war type game but it nothings is happening. Way too little content and diversity.
Diplomacy is so pathetic it is hard to see why they bothered to add it in at all. Very lame. Poorly designed and too lightweight even for casual strategy.
At over 60 hours of gameplay I can see the potential for this game to be greatly enjoyable in about 3 to 6 months when the developers reboot/re-imagine UI information transparency and economy/trade route management interface and automation tools. I'm also already at the frustration point of putting the game on the shelf for at least 3 months hoping that happens.
I'm sure when the developers were playtesting it all seemed to be 'functioning as intended' in an old school Verant-ish sense - that's because the behind the scenes economic mechanics were precisely known to them like the back of their hands that type the code. The game itself and the in game knowledge base do a poor job of communicating that information making early gameplay a very painful trial and error, go broke and restart experience. Contrary to many avid empire gamers instincts glacially slow growth, fastidious repetitive micromanagement and frequently tweaking logistics are seemingly required.
Aggressively building, over-investing in military technologies or attempting warfare conquest too early in the game breaks the economy as well - in addition to warfare being innately simplistic, slow, and tedious.
This game is an a.r. economy micromanager's dream in it's current state. Most other gamers may want to wait for it to get more time in the oven or pick it up on a discount site sale.
SummaryGrand Ages: Medieval is a real-time strategy game from Gaming Minds. Lead your people and advance through the decades by utilising construction, research, expansion and conquest in an area extending from Scandinavia and North Africa; to Portugal, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Rise from the humble role of a simple mayor governing a sm...