Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim

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3.9/5

( 33 Reviews )

3.9

33 Reviews

English & 8 more

Overall most helpful review

Posted on: January 27, 2023

jfunk825

Verified owner

Games: 424 Reviews: 4

Fun, quick, but abandoned on GOG

Enjoying the game a lot. Nice to have a turn based "conquest" style game that doesn't take hours and hours to complete a map. There is a bit of a learning curve and I'm still not great at it (I have not won a map yet while taking any of the more difficult starting positions), but the quick pace of play makes it easy to try again with different strategies. One thing to keep in mind in general is that it's a race to reach assorted goals to win, not a "conquer every tile" thing, so a slow grind to domination does not work here. You must figure out a way to earn victory points quickl, make sure you review what the various conditions are before you start the map. However, the game appears to have been immediately abandoned on GOG which is super disappointing. Steam version is receiving content updates that have no mention here. It's really frustrating when devs launch games on GOG without disclosing that they have no intention of actually supporting it on the platform.

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Posted on: October 20, 2022

mqstout

Verified owner

Games: 3373 Reviews: 42

Grand strategy, arcade style.

This game does "grand strategy" better than a lot of the big "grand strategy" games do. You'll see the map change hands meaningfully over time, and your abstractions (like technology) are both grounded and comprehensible. A whole match can take an hour or less on lower difficulty settings. The game has great onboarding (tutorial, in-game reference, video tutorials). From there, it's single player skirmishes, or multiplayer. The music is more than serviceable. After playing for about 5 hours, I hadn't yet tired of it. The sound effects are sparse but impactful (notifications). The art is very functional, but also pleasant. As for things that could be improved upon to make the most difference: * The UI could use some improvement. For example, it's hard to discover -- and I learned it only after seeing the options multiplayer has and went looking -- that you can change the single player map settings (number of victory points required and the different values of the various targets). * Also on the UI, it's not always the easiest to tell some of the terrain at boundaries (though you can sometimes click around and get it to pop up that terrain's icon), nor easily compare your power to the opponents in the clearest ways. The info is there, and findable, just not in a very convenient way compared to what could be done. * The game doesn't have "continue after victory", which would be fun. The match will end as soon as victory is reached. * The game really could use hot seat/same computer multiplayer. * A map editor would be great! * Single player replay-ability is a little bit limited due to fewer options than other games, but I'd urge caution in wishing for additional features that might bloat the game beyond its elegant, abstract core. This review does not evaluate multiplayer, other than it looks like it has decent options, and during my quick investigation, I saw a couple matches populate and get started, so people do seem to be playing if that's important to you.

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Posted on: December 23, 2022

_X_X_X_X_

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 16

well made, but limited "Risk' like

Don't read reviews, just try the demo. It contains most of the game. And if you have fun, dont forget to pay the developers. Still reading? Well... - Style: Symbolic, but nicely done so. - Setting: Unused since AoE, but of little importance beyond styling - Scope: Ticely done storytelling the 'campaign', but it is only a 4 level tutorial. The single player maps beyond feature up to 9 types of civs but only a single specific sentence to each. - Gameplay: Turnbased. 10 turns buying all available tiles, then moving armies. Alway balancing your founds for bonus on research, on buying tiles/on growing cities, on military force or on saving for more bonus next turn. - War: Indirect, one type of troops. Attacks require one round to set up, but reinforcing does not and defence neither. As turns are processed simultaneously, your main job is to guess where the enemy will move and whether you have to defend or can attack. - AI: Pretty good. The straightforward game mechanics (full formulas in the manual) make optimised strategies easy, so the computer gives you a hard time. - Balancing: None. Starting positions and types of civ have huge impact. But difficulty is named beforehand and you can give or take bonus to/vs AI. - Victories: It is not about conquer everything, but about reaching milestones first. Often you will be busy fighting small fry while an unbothered AI beyond outpaces you. - Playtime: 0.5-2 h per session. Unchecked exponential growth makes early turns important and anything past 50 turns unchangeable. The developers avoid an endgame by victory conditions met after ~70 turns usually, but you can modify these. - Multiplayer: Did not check. - '4X': No eXploration (you see every detail from the beginning), perhaps 10 turns eXpansion, eXtermination optional and eXplotation automatic? This is no 4X game. Ozymandias is well made, but not for everyone. Think of it as 'Risk' on stereoids. Grand strategy condensed to 1-2 hour casual looking, but rockhard gameplay.

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Posted on: November 6, 2022

ErnestLemingway

Games: 255 Reviews: 20

4x strategy in lite version

The game is pleasent to play - nice graphics, calm ambient music, clean interface and informative tutorial are included. The gameplay itself is about managing food, wealth and science point in proper way so our empire could growth both by size and power. Military aspect is made well, as instead of sending armies to crush opponent in brutal clash, they're used to spread influence and eventually route weaker forces. Overall all of it reminds kind of party board game, which is designed to finish in relative short time. But why 4* then? Well, as of game using history theme, the history itself is just a generic flavor here. You could switch overall theme to eg. North America tribes, Eastern Europe kingdoms or Mars colonisation and the mechanics will fit seamlessly anyway. Also the war mechanics requires to buy "upgrades" for improving capacity on 8 different types of terrain, what with constantly raising costs makes your forces either very strong or pathetic weak, depending on how many various tiles you have around your realm. Apart from that, game is worth trying and I imagine it would be great deal for any quick multiplayer skirmish.

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Posted on: June 25, 2023

xman1

Verified owner

Games: 547 Reviews: 88

Surprisingly fun

I wasn't initially giving it as much credit as it deserves, but if you are looking for that Civilization version of Weird Worlds Return to Infinite Space type play, this is exactly that. You can win in an hour. Great short time killer as that hour will go fast. I see some reviews that say it is a bad Civ clone. This is not what it is. This is something where if you don't want to spend days or weeks beating it, this is that game. What I find most intriguing is you must spend each turn thinking. You know that mid game when you are waiting for something in Civ and clicking turns waiting for it? That doesn't happen here. Every single move must be thought out so that you can maximize return on the resources you have as you know the AI is going to. Something about the short play that gets you to try different strategies that you just don't get in Civ. Love it. Linux users - Works great in Lutris... But you all already knew that. E-Sync messes it up though, so disable that. It is coming to the point that Linux users just expect things to work, and many times on some of these classics, it just works better than Windows. Figured I'd mention it anyway for those that care.

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Ozymandias: Bronze Age Empire Sim

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