Oriental Empires

The Basic's are here, building&upgrading cities work's fine but most others things till need work or maybe a rework. Let's look at diplomacy...playing the Zhou i just won several fights against the Han..that where of even streght at the beginning of the war...but while fighting me and losing most battles they declared war to two tribes far away, then a rebellion break out and they lost half of their remaining cities to the rebells. I made a good (for me) peace because i was the defender and had some desasters to deal with too. Two turns later they declared war to my vassals, i took a look they lost more cities and where barly able to defend whats left... I made peace again for some cash, two turn later..they declared war again...:( War itself isn't fun too, the Ki just zergs, they raise what they can and send it to your closest city, expect for situation with a chokepoint their troops arrive one by one, most the time not even full armies. Worse, they even leave citys undefended, sending their army towards the old target again while you just conquered a city 2 days away. I could write much more but to make the long story short, the basics work and are fine but the meta-parts that make a game like this shine are unbalanced and unfinished. I don't know how someone could give the game at this state 4,5 or 5..

Playing my 3rd game... I'm doing great. I have 10 cities and "Authority" to have 12 cities, and my income is about 2,000 per turn. Unrest is zero to manageable in every city. I'm building shrines, and pavillions. Nify. Then one of my two leaders dies and unrest goes way up, and "Authority" goes down a bunch. Very bad, but maybe we can get through this. Then my other one dies, and I have -9 Authority. Nobles rebel and 1/2 of my cities are lost due to the random number generator killing my leaders. The in-game help is better than some, but still doesn't explain much. The "official" faq is not much better, and is mostly just a repeat of the in-game descriptions. Lots of unanswered questions...

It's a mix of Civilization and Total War with some mechanics of its own that set it apart. I'll focus on those. Food production: You have farming and herding, with farming being more productive but also more labor-intensive and requiring more micromanagement. BTW, on your first game, you'll have to play as a farming faction, but the tutorial really is helpful. Recruitment: Units are recruited instantly, within your turn, and the recruited units can move as soon as you end the turn. They can be disbanded at any time and if you disband them in friendly territory, they may return to the recruitment pool within a few turns. And yes, this means the defender has serious advantages when it comes to capturing cities, especially if they don't have to care about farms being pillaged outside (herders ftw!) Combat has sort of am unusual semi-auto-resolve system. You don't manage your troops during combat, but they fight on the world map (no separate tactical maps for combat), in real-time, according to the orders you give them during your turn. Combat is WEGO, so all sides carry out their orders simultaneously. It's probably the part of the game that will create by far the most headaches to a new player, or even an experienced one sometimes. Frankly, it's like herding cats. You can become a better cat-herder with experience but you'll never be fully in control or get all the outcomes you want. Trade is somewhat hands-on, potentially very lucrative, and should occupy a good chunk of your playtime trying to get the most out of it. Especially if you have a large empire and navigable rivers available. In all, I find it to be a satisfying 4X/grand strategy game but the combat system *really* takes some getting used to. I'd have given it a 4 if not for some glaring performance issues in combat, with FPS going down to single-digits. I have a fair amount of tolerance for this in a turn-based game but YMMV.

And its a shame, most game features are not documented or even perform as stated. To boot GOG doesnt get updated that are available on Steam. The game have a lot of good ideas a pitty the way its implemented.