XIII Century: Gold Edition

XIII Century is a small but solid RTS which lacks scale, but excels in its attention to detail There's no base bulding or global map - the game focuses on tactical battle gameplay, army vs army, and does so in great depth, implementing many nuances I don't recall seeing in many RTSs. Beside obvious things, such as terrain playing a vital role in troop positioning, and all the troops having their usual strengths and weaknesses, XIII Century goes deeper than that, introducing morale and exhaustion, and making them a vital part of the combat puzzle. Morale here is the key to winning or losing battles: all troops seem to react to pretty much everything happening around them, and this can easily result in armies fleeing or getting out of control. Morale and effectiveness of the troops depends on their formation, their losses, whether they see allies nearby, covering their flanks and rear, and a dozen of other aspects. As overwhelming as it may sound, it actually is nicely balanced and results in quite coherent gameplay: it all makes perfect sense, troops' behavior is quite logical and predictable, and it allows some neat tactical tricks, for example you may use horse archers to lure a strong squad of enemy troops away from the main army, and then surround them with your forces, which will lead to them surrendering and fleeing without fighting. This works both ways however, so it keeps you on your toes and makes every battle feel almost like a puzzle with many variables and multiple solutions. I might remember the game harder than it actually is, but that feel when you win a particularly tough battle with highly uneven odds is immensely satisfying. The visuals might be simple, and the maps not too big, but the atmosphere, the sight of your armies marching into the fight, the galloping cavalry slicing through archers like hot knife through butter, and the dead bodies piling and staying on the ground after the fight somehow also make it all look and feel very immersive.

The gameplay occupies a sweet spot between that of the Mount and Blade series' battles and those of Medieval Total War. There is more opportunity to group units by armament than the former and it skips on the kingdom management of the latter in favour of concentration on implementing better simulation of tactics on the battlefield. The gameplay does a decent job of introducing morale as a deciding element in pre-modern age combat. Though it may be frustrating for a player if panick grips the own troops through careless maneuvers, it is satisfying to pull off a victory by causing the opposing forces to loose heart. This makes for a more historical simulation of battle in the Middle Ages compared to the fight to the last man standing common in many other games. There are a number of battles from both Western and Eastern European medieval history to refight and the possibility to generate new battles extends the lifetime beyond these fixed scenario's. With a decent number of varied force combinations to try out this provides ample opportunity to enjoy the game in Single Player mode.

I enjoy it. Sometimes I just want to command a battle and this game does the trick.

Nice old game, battles are better than the Total War Medieval II ones