StrategyFront Gaming

War of the Ancients

Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients was released by Longbow Games in 2015. The game puts you in charge as the role of the leader of one of the many civilizations vying for domination of the Italian Peninsula.

You take control of either Greeks, Gauls, Romans, or Etruscans in an attempt to conquer Italy and establish your Hegemony over the other tribes. 

Hegemony III’s main attraction is that everything can be played out both on a strategic map and when you zoom-in on the tactical map. Both of these you can switch between seamlessly, just like the previous entries in the series.

What has always set the Hegemony series apart was the granularity of its detailed maps and factions. Since each map is no larger than a country the games can dive into each tribe and each city on the map.

I also always found the strength of the series to lie in its narrative campaigns. I preferred the more freeform campaign of Philip of Macedon in Hegemony Gold to the more directed campaign in Hegemony Rome.

Hegemony III does away with the narrative campaign structure entirely and goes for a sandbox approach, though the campaign comes back in the Eagle King DLC.

Another fact I love about Hegemony is its intense focus on logistics over flashy combat.

Longbow clearly made the deliberate decision to place the core tension of Hegemony III not on combat but on your supply and logistic situation and you’ll be worrying far more about your troops having enough food and reinforcements than about their tactical positions. 

The true beauty of this system is both its simplicity and depth. You simply right-click to connect cities to resource production or other cities to move goods and backup from your core territories to the frontlines. But doing so in an effective and efficient way will require careful planning and preparation.

Background of Hegemony

Hegemony III builds on the successes of its predecessors Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece and Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar, by expanding the number of factions, units, and buildings without losing this core supply management system. 

As I mentioned, both predecessors focused on a historical narrative campaign following the conquests of the period.

In Hegemony Gold the campaign detailed the rise of Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father, as he worked to build Macedon into a power able to take on the Persian Empire. It’s a not often told story since Philip is overshadowed by his son but it’s one of my favorite strategy campaigns ever.

Hegemony Gold also featured two more campaigns detailing the events of the Peloponnesian Wars from the perspectives of Athens and Sparta respectively. 

With Hegemony Rome: Rise of Caesar, as the name suggests, details the rise of Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars. Hegemony Rome introduced the ability to build field camps and set up fortified bridges to secure chokepoints and act as forward bases. Rome focused far more on swift campaigning and big battles which were often a feature of the Gallic Wars.

Both games also had sandbox modes where you could take the role of any faction. 

But in Hegemony III, the Sandbox takes center stage with missions emerging organically as time goes on rather than as part of a set historical narrative. 

What’s New in Hegemony III

There are a whopping 25 factions to choose from, with each representing a tribe or city-state of ancient Italy. 

Each faction belongs to a civilization, which mostly determines which units on the roster you can use and your technology. Etruscans favor axemen while Greeks fight in a hoplite line or as Phalangites(Long pikemen). 

For the Romans and other Italian, you’ll need to pass military reforms before you can use the famous Roman legionnaires. Until then you’re stuck with hoplites much like the Greeks. 

This adds a great bit of variety and encourages you to play with several different factions.

Though the focus on logistics over combat did make the differences feel somewhat moot. Heavy infantry felt like heavy infantry whether it was Roman or Greek. With the biggest difference being the tier of the unit not what faction it comes from.

Resource Management in Hegemony III

To expand your fledgling empire you’ll need to collect resources namely: food, gold, and wood. To get these you’ll capture resource centers, such as vineyards, farms, and logging camps, and garrison them with workers or slaves to begin production. 

Much like the previous entries in the series, Hegemony III does not shy away from depicting ancient slavery. Once enemies are defeated on the battlefield they won’t just all die, they’ll either surrender or try and run away. 

If caught they can be enslaved and forced to work in place of a worker unit. The benefit of using slaves is that they cost no upkeep or manpower compared to workers. 

Slaves are useful when you can get them, and will definitely free your economy up to expand faster but it often feels like a hassle to coordinate the slaves into exact groups of 20 so they can get the most efficiency out of a resource building

You’ll also use gold to pay for units and upkeep buildings, wood to build fortifications and buildings.

You can upgrade resource production centers to house more workers, produce more, or give them fortifications. If you don’t then they’ll constantly be harassed by the enemy. 

Food will feed your towns and armies and is absolutely critical. The rate of food production will change based on the season. With food being at its highest production in Summer and Autumn and the lowest in Winter.

Winter

This requires careful management as winter can be brutal. You’ll barely be producing any food and can only survive if you had the forethought to stock up beforehand. 

I’ve found an increasing number of games use winter as a mechanic to create interesting gameplay scenarios. Northgard and Endless Legend are two examples of winter done well.

What annoys me about winter in Hegemony is that while the stats change, the terrain doesn’t. The map will not be covered in snow signaling that winter has indeed come. Instead, everything will stay as it was, meaning if you’re not paying close attention to that season counter at the top of the screen you’re in for some trouble.

Alternatively, winter is great at giving the feeling of their being campaigning seasons.

Large-scale campaigning is generally ill-advised in the winter. Since your troops eat more food when they aren’t being garrisoned and food will be at a premium.

Hegemony III creates a great ebb and flow to the game. You’ll be frantically pushing in the Spring while hibernating and sending small raids against your enemies during the winter.

Stocking up for the winter is challenging and I’ve nearly starved my empires to death on multiple occasions due to poor planning. 

Units & Raiding

Your cities can produce and hold a potential number of recruits. Allowing you to draw from that pool to create units. Recruits regenerate slowly so you’ll want to choose your engagements carefully or else you may find yourself with means of replacing your army.

When units are defeated they don’t disappear along with all the experience they built up. They’re instead placed back into their home settlement while they draw from the recruit pool to get back to full strength.

This means when you’re building and upgrading troops you’re really building a cadre of experienced officers who will keep that experience even when their men are defeated.

The upgrade mechanic gives you a sense of these units gaining veterancy without the tedious process of losing all that experience every time a unit dies. This encourages you to take risks throughout the game and try out different stratagems.

Fortifications on cities are expensive to maintain so you’ll generally see border cities heavily fortified while the enemy’s interior will be relatively undefended.

This, along with the undefended resource production centers means raiding should play an important factor in gameplay.

I say should because, in reality, it’s often easier just to conquer cities outright, than try and starve enemies out or cripple them economically. 

This is due to the generally incompetent AI, who will generally take the opposite approach with you. They’ll be more than happy to raid your resource buildings and harass your lines of supply but rarely will they coordinate sieges on a city or muster a large enough force to be truly threatening. 

By incompetent AI I mean they fail to challenge you in any meaningful way. They’re happy to raid your farms but they consistently fail to gather armies and try and take your territory. This is perhaps because the logistics in the game are often difficult for a player to manage, never mind the computer.

Warfare in Hegemony III

Moving units generally works intuitively and units moving together will form battle formations with infantry in the center and cavalry on the flanks.

The problem comes from the bugginess of Hegemony III. There can be times when you order units to run but they just stand there as they are being charged down by a squadron of cavalry. It can be frustrating but overall combat is great and is much smoother than the previous games.

One small feature missing from the original was that when units moved they’d march in an actual column which added to a sense of realism. In Hegemony III units will bunch up or overlap as they move. This leads to it looking incredibly silly as your hardened veterans’ march across Italy in clumps of men. 

Campaigning is where Hegemony III really shines, instead of most strategy games where your armies are endless steamrollers that can keep pushing forward forever. Hegemony’s supply and seasonal systems force you to plan your conquests carefully.

Will I be able to take this city before winter sets in or before my troops run out of food? Maybe I should wait for Spring to launch my offensive? These considerations make Hegemony III unique and you’re given enough tools to deal with these problems in a creative way.

Will my troops run out of food before reaching the enemy? Build a supply base to work out of or bring a supply train of oxen carrying food. Or better yet live off the land, raiding and scavenging from enemy supplies. 

Being able to zoom in and out between the tactical and strategic maps adds a great degree of situational control to Hegemony III. Being able to check in on the overall situation before diving in and carefully setting up your unit’s positioning is a great balance. And it skips the load times of a series like Total War. 

Conflicts in Hegemony III are generally smaller scale than in previous entries to the series. I found myself almost never engaging in large clashes with the enemy. Instead, wars would become a running series of sieges, ambushes, and skirmishes.

Hegemony III‘s economy is not set up for maneuvering large armies, you’ll run out of food too quickly. It’s much more effective to simply send small specialized forces to besiege a city then reinforce them if a relief force shows up. 

This makes sense for the more primitive nature of Hegemony III’s factions and is a great change of pace from the standard strategy fare of massive clashes for every battle, which often robs them of every real meaning.

I love how skirmishes turn from two raiding parties running into each other on accident to larger brawls neither side planned for, as both sides feed more and more reinforcements into the fray in a desperate attempt to gain an edge.

Sieges and Forts

Sieges are relatively simplistic with your troops standing outside the walls and slowly chipping down the health bar of a settlement. The siege goes much quicker if there are no defenders inside or if the city is out of food.

This system could be improved in numerous ways like allowing you to build actual siege works to blockade the enemy and protect your own units. 

The fort mechanic can be somewhat frustrating. You can build a fort at predetermined locations on the map and then stock them with food or fortify them.

It’d be much better if you could dynamically build forts anywhere. It’s nice to have forts in the first place but being able to put them where I think the strategic point should go seems like an important part of warfare.

You could argue this would lead to easily exploiting chokepoints but isn’t that the point of forts? They’re meant to block those strategic points after all. I find that force placement is usually just off from where I want it to be. Just too far from that mountain pass or from that city to be really useful.

Diplomacy in Hegemony III

Diplomacy in Hegemony III is simple. You are either at war with a faction or you have a truce. If you have a truce with a faction either they pay you or you pay them based on factors like your overall strength and the hostility they feel toward you. 

Diplomatic relations will be interrupted by ‘missions’ when other tribes request something of you. It could be to change the payment terms of the treaty, to send them warriors, or to raid one of their enemies.

The simplicity of the system is also its downfall. It’s far too easy to pay off everyone around you except for one faction and focus your war on them until they are destroyed, then turn to the next.

Technology

Technology is somewhat lackluster. You advance down three trees: military, economic, and naval. The clear best strategy is to rush the military tree to get the “Military reforms” tech which allows you to use late-game units like Roman Legionnaires. 

The problem with Hegemony III’s system mainly comes from the incredibly slow pace you get technology. Even with buildings in place I only had half the military tree and a bit of the economic tree done. This was by the time that I had conquered half of Italy in my Rome campaign.

Most of the economic technologies give such small incremental boosts that they’re almost worthless, while military technologies are absolutely critical for victory. Getting a stance that allows me to siege quicker, thereby taking more cities, is infinitely more useful than a small percentage bonus to vineyard output.

Ultimate Victory

Winning the scenario is anticlimactic and is done through accruing “Hegemony” points which you gain throughout the game.

I was gaining and losing these points fairly consistently throughout my time with Hegemony III but they never affected my overall conquest or seemed to influence gameplay. 

Graphics & Sound

The graphics of Hegemony III generally look good and the art style lends itself well to the era. All the UI uses the ancient vase-style art which lends a unique feel to the interface. The map itself has some great details and is well laid out.

One gripe I need to bring up is the horrid inaccuracy of the armor of the Roman Hastati, Triarii, and Principes, which looks like something out of a later period and is totally out of place.

Another thing I’m not a fan of is that both the known map and unexplored regions are very dark which makes it visually hard to tell what’s going on when looking from Hegemony III’s strategic map.

Even years after release Hegemony III still has many bugs mostly with combat and movement, while none were game-breaking this is still too bad to see so far after release.

Upcoming DLC for Hegemony III: Isle of Giants

There is an upcoming DLC for Hegemony III which is called the Isle of Giants and will add the Islands of Sardinia and Corsica to Hegemony III’s  map: 

“Centuries before the founding of Rome, the Nuragic tribes of Sardinia were building thousands of monumental fortresses, tombs and statues across their rugged Mediterranean island. In the second official expansion for Hegemony III, play as any of a dozen new factions of the mysterious Nuragic civilization to unite the islands of Sardinia and Corsica and compete for dominance of the ancient world against the Roman, Greek and Gallic factions of the mainland.” -From Longbow Games

-Longbow Games

Conclusion

Hegemony III is a great ancient wargame. Its focus on smaller skirmishes is something missed by most strategy games of this era who only focus on the large set-piece battles.

Hegemony III has only been made better by its first DLC: The Eagle King, which I’ll be talking about in an upcoming piece.

Besides a few bugs and some of the frustrations, Hegemony III is a complex and rewarding experience that can stand up to the likes of Total War.

Hegemony III also supports Mods on the Steam Workshop, and there’s even a great mod that adds the entirety of the ancient Iberian Peninsula in a new map.