Shogun Total War’s strength is in its perfect blend of the more historically accurate nature of wargaming with the arcadey-but-exciting elements of RTS games. And it was a combination that clearly worked at release. While old-guard wargamers might turn their noses at Shogun’s fast-paced battles and hardcore RTS fans may have been bored by the campaign there was clearly a huge audience who was looking for something that mixed these two genres.

First and foremost is the setting. Eschewing the usual European setting of most medieval strategy games, Shogun went straight for the exotic setting of Sengoku Jidai Japan. This was a brilliant move that instantly set the game apart from its competitors, and allowed for the team to make a smaller first title before expanding in Medieval Total War.

While Shogun’s gameplay is split between turn-based campaign mode and real-time battles, Shogun’s focus is clearly on the battles. With semi-historically accurate engagements consisting of thousands of men on the field at the time, it’s something that set itself far apart from its contemporaries.

The battle system is truly the pumping heart of Total War with the goal of being to give you the sense of actually being a commander with the battle developing right in front of your eyes.

While these were meant to be spectacles they were also deeper than most RTS battles at the time. Units are affected by morale, flanking, and their commander’s proximity to them. Factors not seen in your average Age of Empires or Starcraft. This created the sense that these units were real soldiers, not just emotionless automatons willing to charge into a meat grinder again and again.

That being said, you can see the dedication to having a fleshed-out campaign already in Shogun. While most RTS-focused games would relegate their strategic campaigns to be little more than sideshows, Shogun wanted it to be a competent companion to its battles since those battles are relatively short.

Shogun’s battles allow for over 1,000 soldiers to be on the screen at one time, which for 2000 was an incredibly impressive technical feat, and was heavily promoted in the marketing materials for the game. Shogun was also unique in its use of Agents, having multiple types of each with their own role. While fairly simple in this title it began a mechanic that became a staple in most later Total War games.

Background & Development

Before Shogun Total War, Creative Assembly mostly worked on porting sports games to different PC systems. They began to work with EA in the 1990s when they ported FIFA and several other sports games. After Michael Simpson joined CA they began to work on a side project which they envisioned as a low-risk “B-title RTS game” to compete with the likes of Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, and Starcraft. This would eventually become Shogun Total War.

The most important factor in Shogun’s development was the upgrade to 3D graphics for the real-time battles. This gave CA much more flexibility in how they could portray the battles and it was at this point that they decided on a more historically accurate approach to designing the game’s units and gameplay.

The problem they had was without the base building mechanics present in most other RTS games the “battles themselves were very short, and we needed something to tie it together and make people care about the battles.” The solution was the strategic campaign which was designed mostly to provide context to the battles.

Creative Assembly chose Medieval Japan due to their interest in Samurai, and the fact that they could introduce gunpowder into the game quickly without having to worry about the player needing to develop it.

They went so far in their quest for historical accuracy that they hired a historian who studies Samurai warfare, Stephen Turnbull, to consult on the game. This led to a much higher level of historical accuracy overall than many of its competitors in the same space.

Campaign

The early Total War campaign maps have often been described as similar to RISK, and that comparison is generally apt here. Your armies are placed in a province and can only move to directly adjacent provinces unless there is a port.

When setting up a campaign you’ll choose a time period that determines how big each clan’s starting territory will be with the later dates featuring each clan holding more land. The choice you make will be an indication of how much campaign management you will want to do, as later start dates have more built-up provinces, and be able to get into combat faster.

You’ll then choose from one of seven historical clans, which determine your starting position and some starting buffs. I was surprised to see each clan already being differentiated here in Shogun. The Takeda gain bonuses to their cavalry, Imagawa to their spies, and Shimazu can recruit higher level No-Dachi Samurai for a lower cost. This idea of faction traits being the major differentiator between different clans is mirrored in Shogun’s sequel and works well for a game that necessarily has the same units for each faction.

You can manage your provinces by constructing buildings and maintaining public order. Certain provinces will have special resources that can be exploited with mines. It’s all fairly simple compared to later games but there is a good amount of depth here, despite often wrestling with the UI.

Army and province management are both done through the simple but unwieldy UI. I would argue that more than the art style or the gameplay the UI and controls are what is going to date the game for many people.

You’ll also be using your castles buildings to upgrade units and gain more koku. The more advanced dojos and barracks you build the more specialized units you can produce. What shocked me here was that each castle can only support a certain number of these buildings which was a feature I had thought Creative Assembly had only introduced in Empire.

It was often a hot button issue for fans who accused the series of simplifying its mechanics compared to Rome Total War and Medieval Total War 2. The feature works well here and forces players to specialize in each region to produce specific units, making the different provinces of your empire feel valuable.

Playing the campaign itself is different from the later Total Wars. The RISK-style province system means that if an enemy gets behind your lines, they can capture your undefended heartlands easily. This makes it important to build and garrison castles throughout all provinces, Defense in depth is key here.

This is especially true since many of the rebel armies will start out larger than your own faction’s forces, and you’ll have to carefully think about where you will push out in the beginning so you aren’t cut off from your home provinces.

Campaign AI

Shogun’s campaign AI is fairly competent compared to later Total War games. Obviously, with the RISK-like province system, the AI has far fewer variables to contend with but it will do intelligent things like pull back its forces from a province when it’s outnumbered before counter-attacking with a larger force.

It doesn’t always succeed but it’s a challenging opponent but on the higher difficulties it can be difficult to deal with. This is especially true since the AI is ruthless about exploiting any gaps in your frontlines, and will quickly take advantage of any situation they see fit or retreat when the situation calls for it.

The campaign is heavily-influenced by board game design, even down to the fact that the units have bases like a miniature model would. This evokes the image of a Daimyo standing over a map shuffling his armies around as he plans his conquest of Japan. It’s an excellent visual design that belies the simple map.

Characters and Agents

Generals in Shogun do not possess any traits as they do in later titles. Instead, they possess an Honor rating that can change based on their actions. For example, let’s say that your general has just lost a string of battles, their Honor rating will then suffer which can eventually lead them to commit seppuku if it goes on too long.

Every faction also has a range of agents to work with. You have emissaries that act as simple diplomats. Then you have the Ninjas and Shinobis which act as spies and assassins. Finally, you have the all-powerful Geisha who act both to stop assassins from infiltrating your castle and as assassins themselves. They also cannot be killed in a failed assassination attempt which makes them the most powerful agent in the game.

Each agent has their own cutscenes that play when they undertake a mission. These are all excellent and some are extremely over the top:

Technology

Shogun attempts to emulate several of the critical historical episodes of the period, such as the arrival of Europeans and the spread of the Ikko Ikki, through events. Once the Europeans arrive the player must make the critical strategic decision of whether or not to cozy up to them in order to obtain their valuable gunpowder technology.

Doing this was a double-edged sword. Seeming too close to the Europeans could cause other daimyos to start to resent you while your own people will grow more rebellious. So the player has to maintain a careful balance.

Battles

The real-time battles are Shogun’s most impressive feature. In a game like Age of Empires tactics like flanking can be useful but are hardly necessary for victory. Most RTS games of that vein prioritize unit composition over tactics. Shogun does the opposite: the game insists you need to use a clever variety of tactics to win the day.

The fact that the battle AI was said to have been programmed with Sun Tzu’s philosophy in The Art of War is interesting but the game doesn’t bear this out in any meaningful way besides the most basic tactics. While I see this was heavily pushed in the marketing of the game, the AI in Shogun’s battles simply doesn’t hold up to this ideal.

The best thing about the AI here is that it doesn’t just rush into your lines as it would often do in later Total War games. Instead, it will often try to maneuver for a better position before the main clash. Once the battle begins though, all bets are off, as the AI cannot keep a formation together to save its life.

It will be happy enough to sit on a hill and pepper you with arrows but it cannot assist its units once attacked, and will often try and reposition its forces while being attacked.

Shogun relies on a rock-paper-scissors relationship between cavalry, infantry, and archers. This means that for the AI to be successful they’ll have to successfully take certain encounters while avoiding others, which is something even modern Total War’s battle AI struggles with. The AI will struggle to keep its formations while moving so they can easily be caught out and destroyed.

The battles do suffer from awkward controls and the finicky camera. This makes the game a chore to handle but not having to pinpoint accuracy over where exactly your troops go added a sense of weight to your orders since it’d be difficult to rescind them and more realism to troop movements. It all adds a degree of chaos to controlling battlefields missing from some later titles. 

Sieges in Shogun are definitely its weakest element. The fortifications will mostly be there to provide choke points since they have wide openings instead of a closed circuit of walls. This is due to engine limitations.

DLC

In 2001, Shogun Total War received its first and only expansion pack: The Mongol Invasion. This expansion features a new campaign and a new faction, the Mongols. In the campaign, you can now either play as the Mongol invaders led by Kublai Khan or the Japanese defenders of the Hojo.

This adds some much-needed variety to the campaign and battles but considering that the Mongol Invasion campaign takes place almost 300 years before the Sengoku Jidai period, it’s a little disappointing that the Japanese still have almost all the same units they did in the main game.

The campaign pits a united Japan against two massive stacks of incredibly strong Mongol troops, essentially asking the question, what if the storm hadn’t destroyed the Mongol fleet. The Mongols will be able to easily push out of their early holdings in Kyushu but will have to carefully preserve their forces. The Japanese will need to marshall their far larger but inferior forces to stop the Mongols from gaining too large a foothold on the island.

Multiplayer

Shogun Total War also had an interesting multiplayer system. Multiplayer rank was determined by “Honor” which was a set of points that were gained and lost by winning and losing matches. Each player started with 100 Honor and based on that were ranked accordingly.

The system was balanced so that if a player had too much more Honor than their opponent they would actually lose Honor even if they won the match. Which heavily discouraged experienced players from beating up on beginners. You could also play unranked matches against other players so that experienced players could still show beginners the ropes if they would like.

Multiplayer battles shone since, without the incompetent battle AI, the full measure of the tactics engine could be exploited. The battles were fast and short with formations and positioning being the top priority.

The game’s wiki notes:

“In Shogun, any army could win over another using clever, fast, and precise strategies. In later Total War games, army selection was given more importance. This is the reason why many fans still refer to Shogun as the purest and most skillful of the Total War games.”

When the game first came out, the multiplayer was extremely popular with many players taking up role-playing as Japanese generals.

Conclusion

Shogun Total War was a strong foundation to build one of the most popular strategy franchises on. In researching and playing the game for this article I was shocked by how many features were laid down here that Total War would still be using or reintroduce in later titles.

While the game is now old, the concept of having 1,000 units on-screen is extremely compelling and the historical flavor is superbly done. For a series that has mainly focused on Europe since this game(except for of course Shogun 2), it’s important to recognize where the series started.

Unlike the first Medieval total war, I wouldn’t say it’s a game you should necessarily play today. But it is hugely historically significant for the total war series and served as a strong foundation for Creative Assembly to further explore this concept.

Above all, it demonstrated there was a market for a hybrid approach to war games and turn-based strategy and that Creative Assembly could successfully blend those two systems.

The post The First Total War: Shogun Total War Retrospective appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

Dune is one of the greatest Sci-Fi series ever written. It contains noble houses, giant sandworms, and lots of plotting. It’s the sort of setting just begging for a game series to give it the proper treatment that it deserves. Let’s see if Dune II lives up to the franchise name.

In 1984, the David Lynch film, Dune, was released. The movie itself was well… not remembered fondly. If you hadn’t read the book, then the movie was almost incomprehensible.

Audiences going to theatres were even given a cheat sheet to try and decipher all the strange names and futuristic jargon. 

Then in 1992, a game of the same name was released as an adaptation of the movie. This game, also called Dune, developed by Cryo Interactive. Dune mixed classic adventure game elements with strategy mechanics. 

You’d fly around the planet going to different locations and talking to characters. Then move around your Fremen desert warriors to battle the evil Harkonnen.

The game was generally liked for mixing up the plot of the books with player involvement and initiative. As well as its unique blend of adventure and strategy. 

But while the Dune adventure game was being made, so was another Dune game…

The Beginning of Dune II

In December of 1992, Westwood Studios released Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. Unlike the first Dune, this game was a real-time strategy game.

While Dune II wasn’t the first real-time strategy game ever made, that was Herzog Zwei, but it was the most influential early contender. The foundation that Dune II set down would influence almost every RTS to come. 

Dune II eestablished many of the tropes that are now commonplace in the RTS space. 

Through its controls, it was the first real-time strategy game where you could use your mouse to control the game and move units. It pioneered the standard base building approach as well as collecting resoruces with worker units, and using buildings to unlock new technology and units.

Warcraft, Starcraft, and especially Command & Conquer would all take the ideas presented here and run with them.

Dune II is incredibly historically significant to the RTS space but its age shows in its gameplay and controls, which is why it’s left mostly unplayed and forgotten today.

“What became Dune II started out as a challenge I made for myself. The challenge was that strategy games would be out-of-control fun if the real-time aspect of Eye of the Beholder could be combined with resource management and a dynamic… But how? Long before I decided to experiment with actually building this new game in a Dune setting, I kept toying with the answer.”

Brett Sperry, from a 2009 interview with Gamespot

While Dune II wasn’t the first RTS. Brett Sperry, the designer of Dune II, was the one who coined the phrase “real-time strategy” as a more marketable take to distinguish it from the older turn-based wargames of the previous generation. 

Westwood would go one to design the Command & Conquer series but at the release of Dune II the game was already being billed as existing on “Westwood’s Command & Conquer Engine”.

Plot of Dune II

Dune II kicks off when Emperor Frederick IV of the Imperial House Corrino challenges Three of the Great Houses to mine Spice on the planet Arrakis. 

Whoever can deliver the most Spice to the emperor will be given control of the planet, an incredibly lucrative offer. 

The three factions at play are the: Atreides, Harkonnen, and the Ordos. The Atreides and Harkonnen both play a major role in the book series. 

While the Ordos are technically non-canon, only being mentioned in the unofficial Dune Encyclopedia. 

The game doesn’t do you any favors if you don’t know anything about the Dune Universe already. This is pretty much the whole set up you get and most of it will sound like gobbledygook until you actually start playing.

The player takes the role of the General of one of the Great Houses and must successfully destroy the other Houses while harvesting spice. 

As the missions go on and you take more territory, you’ll be given access to new technology. Technology as a whole is a premium in the Dune Universe. 

This is due to a pesky AI rebellion that nearly wiped out humanity, all computers are banned. Instead, humans use drug-enhanced advisors called Mentats who function as trusted advisors to the great houses.

As you begin to come out as the clear winner in the contest for Arrakis, the other two Houses will band together in an alliance to oppose you. 

The final battle will take place between yourself and the Emperor’s elite Sardaukar army. Dune II features separate cutscenes for each faction, adding a layer of depth to each faction. 

These cutscenes would later morph into the famous live-action cutscenes of the Command & Conquer series. 

Gameplay of Dune II

You begin by building your base. 

This concept, that you can place buildings anywhere and slowly expand your area of operation seems standard now, but for 1992 this was innovation. 

You could also build which buildings you liked in whatever order. Though to manage this freedom Westwood introduced the concept that some buildings would be dependent on others before they could be built. 

Again, this all seems quaint now, but for 1992 these were huge steps forward. It became almost ubiquitous in RTS titles after this.

Dune II only has one resource for you to collect, the Spice, which is central to the plot of the Dune novels. This substance can be mined by Spice Harvesters. This single and exhaustible resource which both sides were fighting over was a core part of Dune II’s design. 

Having to go out and expose yourself when collecting Spice meant that conflict was inevitable. Players couldn’t just sit inside their own base and wait for the enemy to come to them, they’d actually have to go out and defend their resources. 

This innovation would be mirrored in later titles like Command & Conquer’s, Tiberium Crystals. Command & Conquer was Westwood’s next project after Dune. The studio took what they learned from Dune II and improved on it for those games, spawning one of the most wildly popular RTS franchises.

Other games like Starcraft and Age of Empires, would also introduce multiple resources the player would need to keep track of. Further deepening the need for careful planning and resources management which Dune II introduced. 

Combat in Dune II

Each House also has its own units, an innovation that would perhaps be most purely realized in Starcrafts three separate factions all with their own unique units, buildings, etc.

The Atreides can build a Sonic Tank, the Harkonnen can build Devastator Tanks, and the Ordos can build the Deviator Tank (which shoots a mind-control substance which turns other units to your side).

Dune II plays much slower than most modern RTS games, which can be a blessing due to its clunky controls. Units have large health pools and take a while to be killed, so if you make a mistake you can usually get your troops out of it.

The game was also innovative in its use of fog of war which covered the entire map but for the areas, the player has troops in.

Unlike in later games, once the fog of war was lifted it stayed lifted. 

Throughout the game, you’ll find that infantry is next to useless at attacking enemy bases due to their painfully slow speed and low damage rate. They can also be run over by Spice harvesters which is hilarious but also deeply frustrating since spice harvesters aren’t combat units.

Instead, you’ll want to use your infantry to protect your more beefy tanks which are the real meat of your army. You’ll also have trikes and quad vehicles that are useful for maneuverability but mostly too weak to take head-on fights.

Combat definitely suffers from unit imbalance. Spamming tanks is usually a surefire way to win since their durability and range make them superior to almost every other unit.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the AI in Dune II is extremely basic. The AI will only attack the side of your base closest to theirs meaning you know exactly where you need to defend and will never have to worry about being flanked. They will also only send a few units at you at a time allowing you to pick them off easily.

These are just the things I noticed. According to others the AI will also: attack its own buildings if your units are behind them. Never build new defenses after its initial base is build, only repair the ones that are destroyed. Also if an AI spice harvester runs over your infantry it will just bug out and not produce any more spice.

Towards the later stages of the game players will unlock their Houses superweapon to overwhelm their enemies. The Harkonnen unleash a barrage of cruise missiles know as Death Hand. The Ordos unleash sneaky saboteurs who destroy buildings. The Atreides get access to the native Fremen warriors to join their ranks.

Of all of these, I found the Ordos superweapon to be the most underwhelming. The Harkonnen missiles were too inaccurate to be useful all that often. While the Fremen were on par with the Sardukar(much like the books) and were the most useful. Still, none of these were as useful as spamming tanks at the enemy.

Combat is slow but can be hectic, some of this is caused by only selecting one unit at a time. I can only imagine how groundbreaking this sort of approach was in 1992. 

Controls of Dune II

Controls were innovative in that they focused fully on using your mouse to control D, instead of the keyboard-centric controls of earlier games. 

What you can’t do however is select multiple units at once. Each trooper or tank has to be selected on their own. Multiple unit selection would be an innovation initiated by successors to the genre like Starcraft. 

Dune II’s age shows in how you direct units around. You have to manually select whether you want to attack, move, retreat, or guard. 

This is a far cry from later context-based systems where simply clicking on an enemy unit will initiate an attack. Though the later Mega Drive/Genesis version of Dune II included this feature. 

Graphics & Sound

Even today, the Graphics still work with the pixel aesthetic. The overall design is clean with buildings and troops being easy to distinguish.

This clear visual language is something Westwood would carry with them into the Command & Conquer series, and helped new players immensely when first learning the game.

The overall sound design is excellent. Taking inspiration from both the original Dune game and the David Lynch movie. 

Impact

Dune II laid the foundations for all RTS games that came after it.

It’s a world map where players can choose which regions to conquer prefaced the later strategic meta-campaigns which would provide context for the real-time strategy battles.

Having resource collection units became ubiquitous in most RTS games. As well as base construction and unit production. Each of these gave RTS games their distinctive flow, with players building up their infrastructure before launching attacks, turtling, or rushing.

This also allows you to choose your own army composition giving a huge degree of variety to each game. It allows players to comee up with their own strategies and test them against other builds.

Conclusions

Soon after Dune II’s release, Westwood sought to develop a game not tied to any existing IP, as so began to work on the Command & Conquer series. 

While much of Dune II’s mechanics had been done individually elsewhere their combination here along with the real-time combat and base building was a formula for success. 

Dune II would eventually spawn two sequels of its own, Dune 2000, which was a partial remake of the original that brought many of the mechanics up to speed with the times, and Emperor: Battle for Dune, which brought the Dune franchise into 3D and kept many of the mechanics of its predecessors. 

Dune II is now abandonware, if you’d like to download it you can do so here.

More Dune:

If you’re interested in more Dune Games check out our article on the failed Dune MMORTS: Dune Generations.

If you enjoyed our article on Dune II and wanted to purchase another game, please consider doing so through our Affiliate Link on G2A.com. When using this link we receive a commission that helps us keep writing strategy game content! Thank you for your support!

The post The First RTS: Dune II -Retrospective appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

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. 

The post Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients – Retrospective Analysis appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

Little about Northgard is as it seems, the cute Viking settlement you build is actually a complex economic engine, one that is always on the brink of collapse. Your fierce warriors are one bad move away from death, losing out on all those resources you spent on them. And your enemies, who seem so strong from the outside, are just as fragile as you are.

Northgard takes place in a fantasy Viking world, where you’ll be trading with Kobolds, fighting off Draugrs, and trying to piece together bits of ancient lore to research new technology. 

The game first and foremost is about survival. At first glance, Northgard takes a board game-like approach to its design. But the simplicity of its appearance obscures the strategic depth and the brutal survival elements at play here.

It does this through intuitive but intricate resource management systems, that use scarcity to produce tension and forces you to make impactful decisions. 

Gameplay in Northgard 

A Northgard game starts out simply, like almost any other RTS. You begin with a few villagers, a collection of buildings, and resource nodes.

First, though, you’ll have to choose one of the many Viking clans to play as. Each of which has their own bonuses and abilities. 

What immediately is different about Northgard from other real-time strategy games is its tile system. Having tiles in a real-time game like this seems odd at first but their implementation is well done.

Tiles act like small regions where you can only build a certain amount of buildings. You’ll constantly need to expand if you want to develop more buildings. 

But any expansion will be expensive. Your scouts first need to explore a tile before you can then colonize it which will cost food, a precious commodity in Northgard. 

This brings up the games most compelling system, economic resource management. 

It may seem odd that in a game about warlike Vikings, most of your time will be spent managing economic concerns rather than fighting your enemies. 

Part of the reason it works so well is that you’ll always be on the brink of collapse, always having to balance multiple factors all the while racing towards victory against AI opponents. 

Resource Management

There are several main resources you’ll have to manage in Northgard.

The first is food, which you’ll need to bring more Vikings to your settlement. The more Vikings you have, however, the more food they will consume. 

You’ll also use food to colonize new territory. Each new tile cost exponentially more than the last. So instead of Northgard being a mad land rush for territory, you’ll have to think carefully about where you extend and what resources you want to take.

Wood is another major resource. Wood is key to building new buildings and heating Viking homes during the winter. It’s less scarce than other resources but critical to expanding your settlement.

Stone will let you upgrade your buildings. For example, a farm that may have allowed for two workers can be upgraded to contain three. Once upgraded it will now give you a bonus to food production. 

This makes stone extremely valuable but it’s also incredibly rare and when you find a deposit it’ll only be enough for a few upgrades. This makes every building upgrade you choose count enormously in how your game will play out.

Alternatively, you may want to focus on mining iron instead of stone. This allows you to upgrade your miners themselves or your precious warriors. 

Kröwns act as gold or coins. You’ll use them to pay upkeep for buildings and your warriors. Getting them in the early game is difficult and will require setting up a marketplace to trade with your neighbors. 

Fame allows your clan to access their specific bonuses which can be a huge boon in every game. These bonuses and abilities are critical to get you out of an economic death spiral. Or allowing you to get more of that critical resource you need. 

You’ll obtain fame by completing great deeds like slaying monsters, exploring, or defeating other Viking clans. This forces you to go out into the world and not just stay turtled inside your base. 

The final resource is Lore, which acts as research points. Researching new technologies with lore can grant some pretty hefty bonuses to your settlement. Like having your farms produce more food or giving your warriors the ability to fight better in winter. 

These sound like small things but in Northgard every little thing counts as you’re constantly on the verge of ruin.

You can also build Longboat harbors which will send boats to go off map to raid for either Lore or Fame. This can really help your early game deficits before you get your army up to snuff. You don’t control these raids directly that’s handled off-screen. 

On top of all of this you’ll also have to keep your vikings happy. 

When your population’s happiness gets too low, they’ll stop growing and production will be lowered. So you’ll have to further balance your workers between production and working on happiness by building a Skald. 

Every building you build will need workers to operate it meaning that those workers will need to be fed. This only really becomes a problem when winter comes. 

Winter is Coming

Winter is bad, real bad. You’ll take massive debuffs to your food and wood production as people can no longer grow crops and will need to heat their homes with wood. This means the other seasons are about stockpiling resources to survive the winter months. 

It is a huge challenge and any mistake in overextending yourself during the earlier seasons can have massive repercussions during winter. 

It forces you to consider every move you make. If you want to build a house in spring you have to think, should you be saving that wood for winter, or can you even afford to feed the new workers who will live there. 

It all ties back to Northgard’s main theme of scarcity. Resources are scarce, warriors are scarce, and time is also scarce as winter will always be coming. 

In a game like Endless Legend, which is turn-based, Winter works in a similar way. But in that game, you have all the time in the world to figure it out before you click end turn and winter comes. Since Northgard is real-time, winter adds a whole other level of tension to the experience. 

Exploration in Northgard

When it isn’t Winter you’ll also be exploring neighboring territory. 

Stepping out into this world filled with wolves and Draugr is dangerous but can also be extremely rewarding as you’ll need to send scouts out to find new resources and discover treasures. 

You’ll find special tiles which can give you important buffs, like the Hot Springs or ancient monuments. Most of these will be protected by hostile creatures that need to be defeated before the resources can be exploited. 

Wolves and Draugr are two of the most common neutral enemies you’ll face but there are also fearsome Valkyries, who often gave me a lot of trouble in my games. 

Besides the creatures there will be non-Viking villages of Kobolds and Jötunn(Giants) which you can either trade with or raid. 

Kobolds look weak but can be incredibly tough in a fight. It’s often a good idea just to trade with them and let the other Vikings attack them and waste their own troops rather than yours.

You can also trade with the other Viking clans on the island which creates an interesting dynamic. You’ll both be trying to claim victory over each other but the economic concerns of Northgard mean that often you’ll need each other’s trade just to survive the winter. 

As you explore you’ll be able to settle these new regions. As I mentioned before each tile you claim will be exponentially more expensive so you’ll not be able to take every single territory you’d like to. 

Occasionally as you’re managing all this you’ll be hit with random events like rats eating all of your unstored food, earthquakes, or a Draugr Invasion. These break up the careful management you’ve been cultivating and force you to adapt your strategy. 

When multiple of these crises hit at once it will be a real struggle to right things. 

Northgard isn’t about the actions you’re taking per minute, it’s all about the long-term planning you’re doing. 

The core game is easy to learn but you’ll have to put in the work to gain victory, and you’re always one mistake away from everything spinning out of control.

Campaign of Northgard

Northgard’s campaign is short and sweet. It serves as an introduction to Northgard’s game concepts but has a forgettable story. It helps you get on your feet and understand what you have to do to survive in a multiplayer or skirmish game. 

One thing to note about the campaign is how much easier it is then the skirmish mode due to starting with a Hero unit.

This helps a ton in the early stages. In skirmish games, you’ll otherwise be struggling just to fight off a few wolves with your warriors. 

Combat in Northgard

Northgard’s combat is far less frequent than many other RTS games like Age of Empires or Starcraft. Still, there’s a surprising amount of depth to be found here. 

The first thing to know is that each warrior in Northgard is precious. Like claiming new tiles each warrior you recruit costs exponentially more, even when they die. This means that for every man you lose they can’t just easily be replaced, you’ll have to build a new even more expensive version. 

Due to the economic limitations on your army, there aren’t many early rush strategies to be found in Northgard. 

In the beginning, you’ll mostly be fighting wolves and draugr. These hostile creatures will spawn from their Dens and Tombs which you will have to destroy to clear the area.

It’s sometimes a good idea not to destroy these if they’re on your border with another Viking clan to provide a buffer with them. Forcing your enemy to deal with the problem before attacking you. 

You’ll also have to micromanage your units, keeping them alive by pulling them back behind the fight to heal them or keeping reserves in case things go badly. 

One interesting concept is that units cannot advance into tiles until enemies on the current tile have been cleared. Meaning that if you want to raid a clan across the map, by the time you’ll have gotten there your troops will already be weakened by fighting their way through neutral areas filled with monsters. 

Units will also be less effective fighting outside their home terrain in winter. This creates a realistic sense of campaigning seasons where you generally want to conduct your fighting in the warm seasons while hunkering down during winter. 

Warfare is about attrition more than any clever tactical maneuvers. You’ll be trying to destroy your opponent’s economy far more than their army. 

This creates interesting strategies where you’ll try to kill or maim other Vikings workers. It’s a good idea to only maim them because for every wounded unit their clan’s happiness decreases meaning production and growth will ground to a halt.

It’s the sort of devious strategy which makes Northgard so great. All the interlocking systems can be exploited by clever players looking to get an edge on their competition without risking their own units. 

My biggest complaint about the combat is that the higher tier units often feel like a waste. They don’t perform overly much better than the basic warriors for their costs. Defensive towers are also far too powerful, often they would stop attacks dead in their tracks and could wipe out armies. 

While Northgard is not about building a military engine to field massive armies it does have a combat system that provides a surprising level of strategic and tactical management. 

Victory

All of this leads to how you actually win a Northgard game. Like a Civilization game, there are multiple paths to victory: Trade, Domination, Fame, or Lore. 

What’s interesting about these is that you can see what victories you enemies are going for and know where to hit them where it hurts the most. 

Perhaps you know your enemy is going for a Lore victory and that they’ve neglected their army. You can exploit that to your advantage applying military pressure on them so they have to divert effort from that victory to counter you.

What’s also great about this is that it keeps the tension going until the last minute of the game. You could lose your entire army in the last push for a conquest victory, dashing all your hopes. Or you could have another player raid you and disrupt your carefully laid path to victory just before you achieve it. 

The whole system keeps you on your toes while also giving you multiple options to focus on when trying to win. 

DLC

Since release, the developers have created five new playable clans for purchase in the form of DLC.

While these don’t fundamentally alter the core gameplay experience they do add nice variety especially when playing multiplayer.

If you’re a huge fan of the game I’d recommend buying them but again, they’re not necessary to play the game.

Conclusion

Northgard is a game that knows what it is. Every system is carefully designed to feed into the next and create an extremely interesting experience. You often won’t be doing too much because you’ll be planning and biding your time. Not frantically clicking like in some RTS games. 

It also helps that matches never take more than two hours meaning you can play all of this out in a relatively short amount of time. Getting you back into the next game quickly.

Economics being the focus is also an advantage. It means you’ll be able to come up with strategies to cripple your opponents economically or destroy their population, not just defeat their armies. 

Additionally, having to plan for both known factors like the harsh winter, and unforeseen events like earthquakes mean there is always the tension of the unknown.

You can never come up with a plan so good you’ll never have to scramble sometimes. But also having a plan means your people won’t be starving come winter. 

Northgard is stressful but it never feels overly hectic or unfair. Its stress comes from the knowledge that any wrong move could put your economy into a death spiral or wipe out your army.

Scarcity and disaster are how Northgard keeps things interesting and in that it succeeds in spades. 

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With the new Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movie coming out this year it’s a great time to reflect on how Dune changed the face of strategy gaming. The game I’ll be looking at today though, Dune Generations, is not coming out anytime soon though.

Dune’s RTS history starts with Dune II, one of the first real-time strategy games to come out, to the Emperor: Battle for Dune. Another RTS which came out in 2001, Dune has greatly impacted the strategy game landscape.

But the Dune universe could be more than just the dusty plains of Dune itself. Where the games and most of the books were set. Dune Generations billed itself as expanding the universe in the grandest way possible. 

Dune Generations sought to be a real-time massive multiplayer strategy game. Players would control one of the Great Houses of the Imperium, ruling their worlds in a massive persistent galaxy. 

The game would feature both ground and space combat and would have allowed for battles of nearly 500 units. Which for a 2001 MMO would have been impressive. You would have been tasked with building up your military forces and increasing your House Prestige in the eyes of the Emperor. 

Dune Generations would have featured diplomacy with other players and NPC factions, like The Guild. You could also seek the protection of stronger houses or engage in mutually beneficial trade. 

A Player’s ultimate goal would have been to seize control of the most valuable planet in the galaxy, Dune, where all the Spice in the Imperium is mined. 

Previous Dune Games

Dune Generations sounded like a truly engaging experience. Being able to persistently build the fortunes of your house while engaging in RTS battles on both land and space sounds incredible and extremely ambitious. 

Players would have to manage dynastic politics, espionage, trading, alliances, and warfare. It all sounds too good to be true. 

From an interview with Gamespot, the developers stated:

“A player’s house can be challenged when he’s not connected. However, we favored the player’s protection when they’re not online. Guilds and mercenaries are also present to protect disconnected houses.”

The team sounded proud of their accomplishments with the AI factions noting that:

“We can promise one thing: Players who are already thinking of tactical battles against NPCs (nonplayer characters) as a simple formality are in for a surprise.”

They drew their inspirations from both the novels and Dune II. Though they considered that the game had strayed too far from the themes and atmosphere of the books. Which were often more about espionage and politics than outright warfare. 

The inclusion of engaging non-warfare elements is something notoriously difficult to pull off in Strategy games. But their inclusion meant that this could be a game that could finally mirror the novels. And this would put you in charge of a true House, instead of just another warring faction. 

The developers said:

“We decided to use our unique storyline based on Frank Herbert’s universe. Players will see references to the characters (the Fremen, the emperor, and so on–but won’t be able to play them, as they are NPCs) and to the same general intriguing storyline. As players enter the game, they will discover new missions, as we wanted to add a new dimension to the game.”

In terms of warfare, the game would have had almost 40 different units including infantry, spaceships, and vehicles but planned to add more after the game launched. 

You could also choose a focus for your house, which would impact the type of structures and units you could produce. The three concepts that you could choose between were: military, commercial, or mercenary. 

The developers elaborated on the differences: 

“The trader family offers a game more oriented toward commercial strategy and resource management.  The warrior family will focus more on military power. As for the third family, the mercenaries, it is mainly based on action and battles. One of the great innovations of Dune is the way the talents of the player’s followers are used.”

Dune Generations would have featured a variety of characters within each house. Your leader, family, and advisors would all be able to gain experience and leverage their skills for the overall benefit of the family.

“Intelligent use and management of these human resources benefit the progress of the house and create a broad range of potential strategies for playing the game.”

The developers wanted to focus on three main areas players would have control over military and economic development, resource management, and dynastic politics. 

This sounds like the making of a great game. Although how they would have pulled all this off in just a single-player game would have been impressive. Nevermind the fact they were trying to have thousands of players doing this simultaneously.

The early game would have consisted of mastering your own homeworld. Exploiting its minerals and setting up a viable base to go out and dominate the universe.

There would have been vastly different types of planets that would have leaned toward different types of outputs.

You would have been able to sell these raw resources for other goods your planet lacked such as food, technology, chemicals, and weapons.

The player’s first mission is to master the natural resources of his very own homeworld. The mineral or agricultural assets at the player’s disposal will vary according to what type of planet it is. The output from exploitation projects would have been determined by the amount of energy and labor put into them.

The resulting yield can then be sold or used in the production of finished goods such as food, technology, chemicals, and weapons.

How would the game have handled the planet Dune?

“When players’ houses attain a certain level of power and command a favorable reputation in the eyes of the Imperium, they can then bid for control of the sand world and thus acquire the mining rights to the spice. The house that wins this commission gains a considerable advantage.” 

Seems simple enough powerful houses would bid for control of Arrakis to the emperor. The player who gains control of the planet is granted its benefits.

The developers didn’t go into if alliances could jointly hold the planet, or if they would be able to pool their resources to gain it.  

“Arrakis is a hostile planet, inhabited by a strange race, the Fremen. Exploitation of the spice is managed in a particular way: An alliance with the Fremen clans is necessary if the player wishes to avoid the pitfalls of Dune and mine the spice profitably. Thus, how long the house retains control of this planet depends entirely upon the player’s ability to meet the emperor’s expectations.”

It sounds like owning Arrakis would have made it a whole other game. And I wonder how much development time went into designing systems for a planet only a few players would ever see. 

Having Fremen clans on the planet would have been awesome, especially if players could recruit them for military purposes.

But again, it sounds like hugely complex systems for one planet in a game where only a few players would get to see it. 

I also wonder about how Spice production would be balanced. Would the player in control of Arrakis be constantly harassed by other players seeking to bring them down? Would it have been even worth it to own the planet? 

Or would a significantly powerful faction be able to lockdown the planet and use its resources to continue to keep the planet on lockdown, effectively sealing it off from other players?

Why didn’t Dune Generations succeed?

Cryonetworks announced the game in 2001 with a release trailer that looks promising, it looked like assets were already in place, and development was proceeding smoothly. By February of 2002, the game entered alpha testing but by July Cryonetworks had filed for bankruptcy. 

With the closure of Cryo later in 2002, the game was officially dead. Cryonetworks ultimately was forced to close due to a failure to reach an agreement with their creditors.

The End of Dune Generations

While it’s sad to see a clearly ambitious Dune game brought down by financial concerns, I have my doubts about how this particular Dune game would have worked in practice. That being said, I find myself enthralled with the concept behind the game. 

Managing economic, military, and political concerns in the vibrant Dune universe would have been amazing. If they were able to make it work it would have been truly an accomplishment in game design.

I look forward to seeing what new Dune games will come out with the release of the new movie in 2020.

I was able to find other games that took a similar approach but were able to launch like Mankind, Shattered Galaxy, and Sovereign. Which were all Sci-Fi MMORTS games which were successfully launched in the early-2000’s and had varying levels of success.  

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The post The Dune Game that Never Was: Dune Generations appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

What Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak lacks in the 3D movement of the original Homeworld it makes up for with tight combat and unit design, and stunning desert vistas.

Background for Homeworld

Released in 1999, the original Homeworld was innovative from the start, with the biggest feature being its 3D plane of movement.

Pervading throughout the whole experience was a level of extreme polish. The voice acting for your ships, the visuals, and the story were all well-executed and showed a degree of restraint, not found in other RTS games at the time. 

The story of Homeworld was that you were the last survivors of a race whose planet was just destroyed.

Why? Well for violating an intergalactic treaty banning your people from space travel. It was also all your fault but to be fair you didn’t know you weren’t allowed to go into space.

You then proceed in an odyssey across the stars to reclaim your ancient homeworld. Rumored to be a lush paradise compared to the deserts of Kharak, the planet your people were banished to. 

Unlike most RTS games, in Homeworld, you’d carry your entire fleet from mission to mission. Meaning that preserving your fleet was paramount to success in the campaign. 

It also meant that if you didn’t know what you were doing the game was incredibly hard. You had no idea how to prepare for the next mission so you couldn’t prepare.

Alternatively, Homeworld could become easily exploitable if you knew what you were doing. 

Homeworld made space feel vast and mostly empty. Your ships were tiny specs in the vast ocean that was the universe. How could they translate that feeling of vast emptiness onto a planet?

It’s also important to recognize another reason why Homeworld is so beloved: there was nothing else like it. Few even came close. To this day most Space RTS games take place on a flat plane instead of a 3D grid. 

In the RTS space, Homeworld was an anomaly. Generally, RTS games were either base-builders like Starcraft and Age of Empires. Or war-focused games like Company of Heroes and Men of War.

Homeworld’s weird 3D design didn’t fit either category.

The original Homeworld also spawned two sequels: Homeworld: Cataclysm, and Homeworld 2. Each followed the same basic 3D gameplay structure as the original.

What is Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak?

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a prequel to the original Homeworld, taking place over 100 years before the first game. Instead of the vast emptiness of space, you’ll be traveling through less empty regions of a desert world. 

Whereas in the original you were searching for your lost home planet. In Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak you’ll be searching for a mysterious object identified in the desert, which will be the key you your survival.

Opposing you will be the fanatic Gaalsien, who wants to stop you from finding the artifact in the desert. 

Anyone who’s played the original Homeworld can probably guess what the artifact is and what it means for the Kushan people. 

Gameplay

The addition of actual terrain is probably the biggest difference, in terms of gameplay. It adds important elements like line-of-sight. Now that the game no longer takes place in a 3D space. 

Instead of your massive mothership, you’ll be controlling mobile carriers that glide across the desert and act both as your home base and a mobile war platform. 

The first thing that strikes you about playing Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is how easy it is to figure out how to play and what’s going on in the game.

The game features both the normal tactical RTS view and a zoomed-out strategic view which lets you see the entire map.

The Strategic overview is an amazing feature that makes the normal chaos of RTS games more manageable. You can quickly see how battles are going at multiple points on the map, and take action. 

The UI overall is spartan, like the original, your view is not cluttered by needless information. Instead, you’ll have everything you need readily accessed by keyboard shortcuts or clicking on the icon.

When attacked the side of your screen will flash red in the direction your units are being attacked, like a first-person shooter when you’re shot. This makes it easy to quickly react to attacks and coordinate your units.

Both the minimalist UI and reactive HUD exemplify the subtle ways Deserts of Kharak clues you into to whats going on off screen. These may seem like little touches but they truly contribute to your overall battlefield awareness. Something especially critical in multiplayer.

The UI also allows you to see elevation differences. Showing you where your units can hide behind hills, or use a height advantage to rain fire down on the enemy. 

All of this is exactly what I want from a UI. It gives you clear information and helps you determine the best tactics to use, without overloading you with information.

This is a massive difference from the original series, now you can hide behind large rock formations to spring ambushes, or use smoke screens to cover your approach. It’s a huge difference and Deserts of Kharak executes it well.

This also means that spotting is hugely important to victory. Some units, like Railguns and artillery, have a range farther than their line of sight. So sending recon units forward is the best way to get the most out of these units.

To build units you’ll have to collect resources from resource nodes using scavenger units, this is all pretty standard.

Where it gets interesting is when you factor in your carrier. This giant vehicle can move around the map freely. So your base never needs to stay in one place, and the enemy has the same advantage.  

From your carrier, you will launch fighters and vehicles as well as upgrade them. Your carrier also has its own power upgrades which can be diverted into different systems. This allows the carrier to be flexible. Do you want it to dish out tons of damage? Be an unkillable tank? Or perhaps heal nearby units?

The carriers are an amazing change from normal RTS base building mechanics. They add a sense of weight to the fighting, and committing your carrier to battle is an intense and highly-risky decision.

Losing your carrier in battle means losing the game. Although each carrier in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a powerful war platform they are by no means invincible. 

Units in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Due to the effective UI, it’s easy to tell which unit is which. A problem all too common in RTS games is that units often counter each other but when you can’t tell them apart that becomes a problem.

Like many RTS games, Units have other counter units in Deserts of Kharak but they won’t instantly die if they meet their counters.

Instead, the game gives enough time for a battle to play out. You have strategic options to either reinforce, try, and retreat, or leave them to their fate.

This is very much unlike something like Starcraft II. Where if your units are caught up in a bad engagement they’re pretty much dead.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak also has just the right amount of units. There aren’t too many where you aren’t sure what each one does. Each has a clear role and is used to its greatest effect in certain situations. 

This also means that each unit can be carefully balanced, and there aren’t any overly powered units. Well, there are but generally, each faction has its own overly powerful units and abilities that counter each other.

The upgrade system allows you to customize your units to play into certain strategies. These will make them more heavily armored, faster, or grant special abilities. 

Units can also use abilities like the AAV deploying a smokescreen to break the enemy’s line of sight. 

I often feel that too many RTS games become “clickfests” where the number of clicks you make per minute is more than your strategy or tactics. 

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak doesn’t fall into this trap. The game is fast-paced enough to be exciting but units are sturdy enough and engage at enough of a distance where proper tactics are critical. If you don’t crush the enemy then they can usually pull back to regroup. 

Strategic Concerns

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, is far less about finding the exactly right army composition to counter your enemies and much more about the strategy you employ to engage them. 

The line of sight mechanic means that often getting the first shot on the enemy is the key to victory. This means you’ll have to be careful with how you maneuver around the battlefield. 

Whereas the original Homeworld was directly snubbing the conventions of naval warfare that dominate the Space RTS genre. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak embraces it masterfully. 

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak also features air warfare, as you can deploy fighters and bombers from your carrier. Seeing these take off and return to your carrier is awesome. Unlike in many RTS games, they actually feel like fast-moving jets, not just tanks in the sky. 

Often I’ll think if I rush that ridgeline will there be an enemy behind it? What if I deploy a smokescreen, or send my light vehicles forward as bait? 

There are plenty of solutions to any strategic problem, and few of them involve simply more micromanagement. 

Units in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak are constantly in motion, swirling and dancing around each other in a fight. This harkens back to the elegant fighter battles of the original game. 

They’ll also create sensible formations when you group them together but you’ll need to use command groups to really get the most out of them.

Although Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak look more like Supreme Commander or Ashes of the Singularity on the surface. But it’s constantly adapting what made the original Homeworld such a classic. 

Factions in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak launched with two factions: The Coalition and the Gaalsien. Later they two others in DLC, the Soban, and the Khaaneph.

The differences between these factions seem minor on the surface but play out as significant differences when brought on the battlefield.

The Homeworld series has a surprising amount of lore especially for the politics of Kharak. Most of this was laid out in the Homeworld manual. It detailed the different clans, or Kiithid, of Kharak, their history, and religion. 

The Manual is amazing and really adds a huge amount of flavor to the Homeworld universe. It’s especially surprising since none of those Kiithid given detailed histories even appeared in the original game. So it’s great to see some of them detailed here. 

The Coalition, or the Coalition of the Northern Kiithid, are the main protagonists of the campaign. Their units stress all-in attacks where they can bring their superior firepower to bear. 

The developers said that their tactics are supposed to represent a Greek Phalanx or all-in Tank warfare. This makes sense as their units, and their carrier especially, can take a beating but require you to focus your efforts to break through the enemy. 

The major antagonists of the campaign are the Gaalsien, who’s vehicles use hover-technology. They focus much more on hit-and-run attacks, and swift strikes to weaken the enemy. 

The developers wanted their tactics to be more like nomadic warriors using speed and maneuverability to wear down their foes. Their carrier is much weaker than the coalition’s in a one-on-one fight.

DLC Factions

The Soban share much of the same unit roster as The Coalition, but with an increased focus on railguns. They’re considered the elite military clan of The Coalition and many of their units are quite strong. Their focus on railguns makes them more defensively focused than their Coalition counterparts.  

The Soban will want to keep the enemy at bay using their logistics modules while picking them off with their long-range railguns.

The Khaaneph are clanless scavengers and pirates. Much of their technology is salvaged with extra armor welded on. They emphasize using missiles, high explosives, and artillery to barrage their enemies. 

Even though they share similar unit types, the differences between the faction’s playstyles are significant. Tactically their units are almost identical but how they produce those units and how that affects the flow of the game makes them feel incredibly distinct. 

For example, the Coalition can spread across the map and hold resource points more quickly than the Gaalsien. But the Gaalsien can then use their maneuverability to strike at the overextended Coalition or flank them with Production Cruisers. 

In the original game, mothership was a massive base but it really had little use outside of unit production. In Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak the carriers are the stars of the show. Each Faction carrier has their own unique special ability. The Coalition can deploy a powerful one-hit cruise missile, while the Gaalsien can deliver a sustained missile barrage.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak’s Campaign

While I think multiplayer is where the game really shines, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak’s campaign adds a lot to the experience. The campaign teaches the players tactics necessary to dominate in the other modes.

Thankfully for an RTS campaign, each mission does something different to change up the gameplay. In one mission you’ll be going blindly through a sandstorm. While in others you’ll be assaulting bases, or playing more traditional battles against the Gaalsien.

The story suffers from what most prequels do, you know how it ends. It’s not the mysterious odyssey through a strange galaxy that the original was. 

The characters aren’t all that interesting either, with much of the dialogue given to you by “Intel Officer” or “Captain” instead of an actual named character.

While the mission design was great. The missions themselves never fully pushed me with their difficulty. I found myself falling back on the same old tactics to get through each one.

It would have been nice to find a bit more balance between the campaign serving as an introduction to new players and as a challenging experience, which tests the player. 

Skirmish Mode and multiplayer

Skirmish mode has the traditional deathmatch where you face off against other carriers but much more interesting is Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak’s other mode: Artifact Drop.

In this mode, you’ll have to move across the map collecting artifacts and bringing them back to a point on the edge of the map. This allows for some creative strategies as you also have to stop your opponent from doing the same.

You can block your opponent’s exit or try and beat them to the artifacts while not getting tied down yourself. 

Even today, the game has a dedicated multiplayer scene. Caster’s like Dreamlands on Youtube commentate intense multiplayer matches which showcase high-level play.

Graphics

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is beautiful. The sweeping desert landscapes slowly become pockmarked by craters and burning vehicles as the battle progresses. 

The vehicle designs are also evocative of each faction’s focus, but they are simple enough to tell what the unit is at a glance.

Zooming-in shows some rough textures in the environment but overall watching these sweeping desert tank battles play out is gorgeous. 

Conclusion

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a worthy successor of the Homeworld series that changes up the formula without sacrificing what made the original great. 

The deserts evoke the same loneliness and desolation as the vastness of space. 

The game also keeps the pace of the originals, this is no Starcraft, you won’t lose if your composition is off. 

What Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is, however, is a very focused experience. Which gives you enough time to think, plan, and adapt your strategy as the battle progresses.

While the campaign had some difficulty and pacing issues, overall this is a great RTS, especially when going head-to-head with other players.

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Wargame: Red Dragon is the third game in the Wargame series developed by Eugen Systems and published by Focus Home Interactive. First off, I’m not sure how to label this game, is it a real-time strategy game or a wargame? Is there even a difference?

Unlike other RTS games, there’s no base building here. Instead, the game uses a deck-building card game system where you can choose from over 1,900 different units and 17 separate factions.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Each of the astounding 1,900 is given a massive amount of detail. It’s painfully clear how much the developers love their tanks, guns, and choppers. 

Having 1,900 units pretty much kills any attempt to fact check them on accuracy. But from what I’ve seen they’ve done well and clearly care deeply about the subject matter.

The game follows up on the previous Wargame entries: AirLand Battle and European Escalation. Other Eugen titles follow with similar mechanics such as R.U.S.E., and the Steel Division series, both set during World War II.

Wargame: Red Dragon acts more as an expansion to Wargame: AirLand Battle even though it’s being sold as a stand-alone game. The main draw of Wargame: Red Dragon is the inclusion of naval combat. 

Setting of Wargame: Red Dragon

Wargame: Red Dragon is set during an alternate history of the Cold War when the superpowers of the world decided to go to war in the 1980s.

Red Dragon specifically focuses on the Asian theatre with China, Japan, and Korea being notable inclusions since AirLand battle. 

The setting isn’t really explored further than that in the game. It’s really there to act as a stage for all the “what if” scenarios of modern war. What would an American-Chinese conflict look like in the 1980s as opposed to the 1950s.

While the lack of any sort of flavor is definitely disappointing is understandable as we dive deeper into the focus of the game.

Tutorial, or lack thereof

For players familiar with the series, Wargame: Red Dragon will act more as an expansion to AirLand battle than a truly new game. All the controls, unit functions, and mechanics are mostly the same.

The problem arises for players new to the series trying to learn the game. Anyone trying to figure out how everything works are in for a rude surprise.

Wargame: Red Dragon has the distinction of having the worst tutorial for an extremely intricate strategy game.

It amounts to just a few pages of text with some images tacked on for reference. Just to reiterate this game has 1900 units, that’s by any definition, quite a lot. 

Not having some system to teach new players the complicated balance of gameplay before throwing them in is disastrous for the game. Especially since this game focuses heavily on its multiplayer component. 

This is especially annoying since the previous entry, AirLand Battle, had a tutorial. Note that it wasn’t a very good tutorial but it taught you the basics of the game. 

Campaign in Wargame: Red Dragon

Wargame: Red Dragon’s campaign scenarios are also somewhat lackluster. 

The campaigns take place on a strategic meta-map where you’ll move units around, fighting the AI and conquering territory. 

The campaign is akin to a risk map where you can either play battles out on the tactical maps or auto-resolve them.

This is definitely no Total War campaign and feels more like an afterthought. The campaigns take place around several scenarios in the “Cold War gone Hot” setting of the 1980s.

Scenarios seem stripped straight out of previous conflicts in the region. The Korean scenario starts with the Western forces in the Pusan Pocket waiting for American assistance… in 1984. There’s even another Inchon Landing and everything. 

The Hong Kong scenario sees UK/European forces defending the city from a Chinese assault. In a similar manner to the Imperial Japanese invasion during World War II.

Of course, these are just vehicles to allow you to play out these conflicts with modern weapons systems. But not even trying to come up with something new is a bit shallow.

Also disappointing is the removal of the RUSE cards from AirLand battles campaign. These would be special cards that could change the balance of the campaign map. Such as paralyzing all the units in a certain region.

These are gone in Wargame: Red Dragon and I can’t figure out why. 

Now you have no reason to ever hold troops back, you’ll want to deploy them immediately. Unlike in AirLand Battle where you want to keep some in reserve in case of an unexpected card. 

The campaign AI struggles with the endlessly complex warfare system. The AI’s main strategy is a mad rush towards any of your units that are not concealed. 

This allows you to bait with some cheap units out in the open then crush the AI. Even without these cheap tactics, the AI is a pushover. 

Wargame: Red Dragon requires careful handling of combined armies where the slightest unit out of position can unravel your whole strategy. It’s difficult for me to keep everything together so I don’t bash the AI too much.

Further, you can’t fight multiplayer campaigns against other players. This seems like a huge missed opportunity since the campaign is already present in the game.

Not having to deal with the incompetent AI and actually playing these scenarios against other players would have gone a long way towards making the campaigns better. 

You might say that the campaigns act as a tutorial for the player. Which is partially true as it’s really just there to prepare you for where the heart of the game lies: multiplayer. 

Combat

Wargame: Red Dragon’s tutorial and campaigns are disappointments so what’s good? Well, in short: war.

Where Wargame: Red Dragon succeeds is in its core tactical combat. With all the units to choose from, multiple factions and sub-factions. There’s a huge amount of variety in how you customize your army. 

You can choose to be either the Western-aligned Powers or Communist-aligned and have access to all the units from the countries in them. This gives you a huge variety to choose from when customizing your loadout.

Or you can narrow your focus down and specialize your army to one country and perhaps a specific style of play. This will grant you some bonuses for your narrower focus and make your army a more cohesive force. 

It also rewards experimentation with new armies, forcing players outside their comfort zone as they try to adapt to both their enemies’ setup and the terrain. 

It adds a great level of depth to the deck-building side of the game and makes your unit choices feel significant. 

Combat itself is incredibly complex. By getting rid of all base-building and economic aspects of most RTS games Wargame: Red Dragon can focus on doing war well.

This is critical since in a lot of RTS games like Age of Empires or Starcraft, whoever wins the economic and technological race will end up winning the military victory.

In Wargame: Red Dragon it’s all about your tactics and skill at maneuver warfare. It’s less about units finding their hard counters and more about careful positioning and recon spotting for your longer-range projectiles.

It’s a game of intelligence more than brute-forcing your opponents with recon units being especially important to spot for artillery. Although artillery seems to have been somewhat nerfed from AirLand battle which is great since artillery barrages were too effective in that title.

Often whoever will see the enemy first and acts on it will win the engagement. With a variety of units, there are unlimited potential strategies that you can employ.

The developers have continued to support the game throughout the years by adding free DLC with new factions and their appropriate units.

One example is the addition of the Nordic countries to the game. This continued to bring the astonishing number of units to even greater heights.

The main factions feel appropriately unique. For example, China has cheap and effective infantry to overwhelm the enemy, while the United Kingdom focuses far more on highly effective special operations units. 

The US has powerful air and naval capabilities while the USSR sports incredibly effective helicopter units.

This just adds more to the depth of army composition and how you can specialize in your force. But it’s good to know that even with these specializations there are no super units. Any units can be destroyed if caught out of position. 

Specialization can be especially important in multiplayer as the hectic 10 v. 10 matches require teammates to work together to achieve victory. These matches can be insane as you’re both trying to coordinate with 9 other players and effectively direct your own forces.

Multiplayer is still mostly active although it’s sometimes hard to find 1 v. 1 matches, which are good for new players. Once you get more experienced with the game I recommend jumping into a 10 v. 10 and seeing what beautiful chaos ensues. 

Multiplayer is where the game really shines. 

Naval Combat

What about the newest addition to Wargame: Red Dragon, the naval combat? Well, it’s not great.

To be fair, most games don’t handle modern naval combat well, especially ones that also include land combat. 

The main problem is scale. Land combat takes place at a range of miles apart, while naval combat takes place at hundreds of miles apart. Translating between these two is often disastrous. 

The way Wargame: Red Dragon deals with this is by making the naval combat range comically close. Instead of guided missiles cruising hundreds of miles to their destination, they’ll be cruising barely a few hundred feet.

It often feels like my ships should be delivering broadsides to the enemy from tall-masted ships. This makes the battles which are open sea battles terrible, as you’ll need to get so close to the enemy that all tactics are out the window. 

The naval combat works much better when paired with land combat. Sending gunboats up a river to flank the enemy or using ships to support a coastal assault all work well and feel like naval combat should. 

Another thing to note is that naval units seem to shred air units to pieces meaning it’s difficult to deal with them besides bringing your own naval forces to bear.  

None of this means naval combat in Red Dragon can’t be fun, it often still is, as the naval units generally look amazing. It non-realistic portrayal of warfare on the high seas is just at odds with its relatively realistic portrayal of land combat.

Conclusion

Wargame: Red Dragon is a great wargame but its selling point, naval warfare, falls flat, and anything outside of multiplayer is a bust. I wouldn’t recommend this game to new players without a tutorial although there are greatly detailed Youtube video guides and Steam Guides. 

Wargame: Red Dragon is still a great modern wargame but it doesn’t deliver on everything it sets out to and stumbles where it’s previous entry didn’t. 

The game looks beautiful even zoomed in. Seeing your units torn apart by highly-detailed explosions is something to behold. 

The detailed and expansive list of modern combat units is going to be a huge draw for some people.

Although I sometimes felt that in practice the difference between two units of the same type wasn’t all that great. And the learning curve from having to choose between all these units could turn some new players off.  

Still, I can’t recommend multiplayer enough, if you’re looking for deep strategic combat with modern arms then this is the game for you.

There’s nothing like seeing your units annihilate an enemy out of position or the feeling of the massive tank battles which ensue on open maps. 

If you enjoyed our article on Wargame: Red Dragon and wanted to purchase the game, please consider doing so through our Affiliate Link on G2A.com. When using this link we receive a commission that helps us keep writing strategy game content! Thank you for your support!

If you’d like to purchase: Wargame: Red Dragon on G2A.com

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