Oriental Empires

Solves problems of the other 4x. - The turns are efficient - the economic controls and research trees are complex enough to need solutions, but do not distract form the maneuver or diplomacy of the game Has some rough edges. - Could do a better job telling you what the requirements for a military unit are. - One non-fatal error that appears once per game.

This game looks good on paper and plays well the first turns, but it tries to mix many ideas and no coherent way to play it in a fun way. It tries to be Crusader Kings 2 with no intrigue, Total War but with no control over your armies on the battlefield, Civilizations but with no knowledge or input to change possible revolts happening and no much info or benefits coming from the buildings. You have unrest, the game tells you to check how to improve it and when you see it you find there is noting yo can do to reduce it since there is no building during my playthrough that does that, only the leaders the first and the heir do a bit of reduction, the rest is with edicts or by stoping building improvements which takes away from the only fun aspect of the game by liminting your expansion. The battles are decided by stats like crusader kings but the generals don't do much and you can't control the outcome (whoever wrote this is similiar to TW series is wrong), you don't even know a percentage of winninable or losing battle until you go in and the AI shows armored units that can kill an army 5 times bigger than their stack. Technical aspects, the game lags even on low settings in what seems to be a textures popping wehen you move around which can be anoying. Also as a side note for some reason you can't scroll the side of the screen with your mouse a must in RTS I have to get use with WASD or arrows to move the camera around. Overall this game from the pics look to be potential but is and feels imcomplete trying to be take so many ideas from other games but failing to be unique in its own way I got bored by it since it limits you in many areas. If you still want to try it wait for it in a sale

My personal litmus test for games like these is whether diplomacy does anything (or is just the place where the Declare War button lives). This game didn't pass. To be fair, it does add a few ideas of its own -- but only superficial ones.

This game has nice city building, exploration, trade network and what not, but really is good for combat. I like the auto-battle aspect and you still have a lot of control by setting up formations and orders before sending your army out to fight the baddies. When you are in game, zoom in to the cities to see really delightful Asian construction style, especially the nice castle towers. It seems they put some good effort into the graphics. You can also enjoy zooming down close to see the soldiers during combat, or even a peaceful view of peasants working in the fields. There are a lot of soldier and ship types to try out so make sure you experiment with them. I like the late era ships that look like floating shoes.... very badass shoes that can deliver a good whooping. There are even siege engines and artillery. I recommend highly to get the DLCs and try their premade campaigns. They are fairly built-up so you don't have to start from a basic town. Some factions like the powerful Song are fully built-up and some are barely starting like the Genghis Khan Mongol faction. There are even the original Turks, bandits, Buddhists and the popular Romance of the 3 Kingdoms factions made famous in the KOEI games.

good amount of content, without being over complicated a fun game has abit of thinking but not too much, really like the combat a good twist compared to standard hex turn based games, all teams set the moves and then all moves happen at the same time at the end of the turn