Field Of Glory: Empires Torrent Download [portable Edition]

Field Of Glory: Empires Torrent Download [portable Edition] http://ssurll.com/105k8x

About This Game Civilizations come and go; common men and kings they get covered by the dust of time in the same way. Monuments and wonders crumble under their own weight. But the cultural legacy is not bygone. Stories and tales about ancestors and their deeds pass through generations, the old knowledge is not lost forever. Soon, new societies, new kingdoms, new civilizations rise from the seeds of the ones which predated them. Decadence is not the end.Will your legacy stand the test of time?Field of Glory: Empires is a grand strategy game in which you will have to move in an intricate and living tapestry of nations and tribes, each one with their distinctive culture.Set in Europe and in the Mediterranean Area during the Classical Age, experience what truly means to manage an Empire.Expand your dominion through wars of conquest and make your culture a beacon of light, but be careful though. The risk of Decadence is not trivial. Many civilizations have collapsed for not having seen in time the signs of impending crisis. The older your empire, the more challenges will lurk in the shadows. Just expanding your borders without carefully shaping your form of government and culture won’t be the wisest of strategies.Manage your Empire on a scale that fits you: adjust all the details of an important region, form provinces to oversee your growing realm.Construct buildings to enhance your army, the life of your citizens, and the economy. Establish and grow a trade network of goods and resources.The battle system is not just about who brings the larger force. Army composition and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of you and your enemy are decisive, so is choosing wisely the battlefield and the general to lead your troops.And, if you want even more direct control, Field of Glory: Empires lets you export and load your battles into Field of Glory II and then load the results back into Field of Glory: Empires!War is decided not just by battles though, but also clever manoeuvres. Simultaneous (WEGO) turn resolution means thinking ahead to intercept – or to escape! – enemy armies will be essential. Field of Glory: Empires offers a living world where every decision has an impact on every actor.And once you think you are ready to be challenged, play against real opponents in one of the largest asynchronous multiplayer system ever created. 7aa9394dea Title: Field of Glory: EmpiresGenre: StrategyDeveloper:AgeodPublisher:Slitherine Ltd.Franchise:Field of GloryRelease Date: Coming Soon Field Of Glory: Empires Torrent Download [portable Edition] field of glory empires release. field of glory empires - ageod. field of glory empires dev diary. field of glory empires steam. field of glory 2 empires. field of glory empires skidrow. field of glory empires release date. field of glory eternal empire pdf. field of glory empires forum. field of glory empires challenge. field of glory empires of the dragon pdf. field of glory eternal empire. field of glory empires gameplay. field of glory empires download. field of glory empires beta. field of glory empires review. field of glory empires pc. field of glory empires. field of glory empires vs imperator rome. slitherine field of glory empires. field of glory clash of empires pdf. field of glory empires wiki Field of Glory: Empires - The Challenge has been accepted: Field of Glory: Empires is a very ambitious project. It’s perfect combination between empire management and grand-strategy, united to a set of unique mechanics, will set a new standard for strategy games.To better introduce players to this upcoming masterpiece, we have launched a great Challenge series of events, inviting influencers and media members.[www.matrixgames.com]We have gathered in a playlist the main efforts played so far, so you can have a look at first hand how the game unfolds, even in more strict environment.www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQrYLOdjwRhQIL0LAeH4NZc-rh3c__GjxYou can watch some sample below:www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8YRiu73AZE&list=PLQrYLOdjwRhQIL0LAeH4NZc-rh3c__Gjx&index=2&t=2swww.youtube.com/watch?v=OsP7tPJfJ7gwww.youtube.com/watch?v=F6LvluXe0_cStay tuned for further updates!. Dev Diary #7 Provinces: Scaling up your Empire: ProvincesOne of the common issues for strategy games is moving from a small nation with a handful of things to do per turn to a bigger one with dozens of decisions to make. What was fun and thrilling in the early game, like deciding if you want to build a cattle ranch or a sawmill becomes more mundane. And yet, sometimes for specific reasons, you still want to check, as the wise ruler you are, what’s going on in a precise location.Many games try to create tools for this reduction in micro-management. But most if not all adopt a ‘forced approach’, where at some point the game tries very hard to make you do things in a very specific way. In Empires we decided that you can eat your cake and sell it too … with Provinces!Provinces are a grouping of regions, the basic geographical unit in the game. You can create a province when you have at least 51% of the regions belonging to the same provincial area. These are fixed on purpose, because they are grouped logically and historically. Plus, there are a few perks attached to them, like a regional unit. For example, the Sicilia province is made of 5 regions, the ones making up Sicily plus Melita (Malta). In our case, having 3 of these 5 regions allows you to create the province.[www.matrixgames.com]At this point many of you will think: “I don’t want to create a province and have my precious regions handled by the AI”. And some might add say, “by the stupid AI”So let’s talk about eating your cake, and selling it. Twice! First, we adopted a reverse approach to how other games try to reduce micro-management. Creating a province provides bonuses. Not creating provinces mean you don’t get bonuses, but you don’t suffer any penalty. If you don’t want to create any province, then that’s fine, have it your way. But you’ll want to create them, believe us.One of the reasons is that when regions are handled at the province level there is no mandatory automation. A region, as part of a province, can still be accessed and have all his population reshuffled to your liking, and you can order the buildings it should construct as before. But should you don’t want to do that, then you can use the Province panel to decide what the governor AI should do. For population and for buildings (one set of options for each), you can decide that the focus should be on a job (like producing more money, or constructing extra agriculture buildings). You can also decide to have the governor try to balance production with the needs. Here, the not-that-stupid AI will take into consideration the need at the region level, for each region, and at the national level. So for example if you have a severe lack of money, then clicking on balancing will result in more population than usual put into the money-making job.[www.matrixgames.com]The AI will also check your upkeep, so as not to overbuild structures that you would have trouble maintaining. It is even capable of checking which of the regions have particular bonuses and have them focus on something specifically. If you look at this screenshot, I have requested a balancing of production for Sicilia. And yet you see we are far from having the population split evenly within each region. For example, Melita has a lot of people in infrastructure. If you checked Melita specifically, you would see that the region is the one with the biggest Infrastructure bonus within the whole province!So all in all, we believe these AI governors do quite a decent job. We will be honest (sometime it pays off ), the AI is not equal to a veteran player who can fine tune everything each turn. But it plays like a competent opponent…As you see, Province management has never been so easy. You can automate in different ways, including handling everything manually. But there is more. There are province-specific bonuses.A Province pools some of its resources and then redistributes them either equally (for food), or where it is needed (for infrastructure). So for food, it means that regions with poor land (like a mountain or an underdeveloped forest region) will benefit from the food sent by other regions, within the province, helping them grow. Also, if you have large body of troops, it might be difficult sometimes to sustain them from a single region. With a province, supply will arrive from several regions, easing the logistic challenge of feeding your army.As for infrastructure, all regions can help the process of creating new buildings, so you end up with your structures built much faster, in a more focused way. And again, you might use this trick to funnel infrastructure from powerful regions to a poor one, helping it develop much faster.[www.matrixgames.com]Recruitment is also handled at the provincial level. Each province has a provincial palace, and this is the place where all units are recruited. And each province has its own special ‘provincial unit’ that you would not have access too otherwise. For example the Africa province (centered around Carthago) would provide African War Elephants, to any nation holding it. Or Crete will allow the famous Cretan slingers…All in all, we have tried with provinces to provide you the tools so that your games scale up well when your empire grows, while staying as discreet and unobtrusive as possible, for people who like to micro-manage. We hope that you’ll come to appreciate our Province system as much as we do![www.matrixgames.com]. Field of Glory: Empires Challenge #2 Ranking and Videos: We have the final list of the participants who completed the Challenge #2 – Amass 7500 money in your treasury while reaching at least 20 regions in less than 50 turns and avoiding to be in the last tier in the progress & decadence chart. Carthage was not an easy faction to play, with scattered regions to protect and surrounded by powerful neighbours. Players had to carefully plan ahead their moves and outsmart their opponents. It was very interesting to see the different strategies employed and the different pay-offs!This is the final ranking, kudos to all the participants![www.matrixgames.com]We will announce soon the Challenge #3, its setting and task. Stay tuned!Here’s below a taste of the videos published so far, including the ones completing the challenge:www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFaw30IFSQMwww.youtube.com/watch?v=hByQfxUzSpo&list=PLGB6RkFB7ZmNZ5snmx5PoqzCw4jrBqEOP&index=7www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LO_6ZkT_k&feature=youtu.bewww.youtube.com/watch?v=YlEyjxMCsWE&list=PLMwqkym59Zruy7LZOC70YRa3gBcPY5gMf&index=1www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkjtgwepvwc&t=17s. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #3 - Buildings: One of the pillars of Empires is how regions, the basic geographical unit are handled. Regions are at the heart of the game and managing them properly will make or undo whole nations.We have already mentioned that regions have a population, split into different ‘population units’ and the buildings constructed in the region. Today we will speak of buildings, as they are every bit as important as the citizens and slaves of your regions, if not more even!Buildings are both a complementing to population, as they too can produce resources (money, manpower, metal, etc.) and have unique properties and aspects which complement each other and affects every sector of the game. Indeed, you can bet that with around 400 different buildings, there is one for each situation, from a mundane cattle ranch, to a more impressive trade emporium, to the complicated (in its usage, not its understanding) Black Market with its variety of intriguing effects.But before digging into some of the benefits they offer (and we won’t give a comprehensive list there, because of the sheer magnitude of possibilities), lets talk of how they are built, as this is a gameplay mechanism that diverges from what you usually encounter in most strategy games since the beginning of the (computer-gaming) world and Sid Meier’s Civilization I appeared at the dawn of it.Upon selecting a region and clicking on the build structure button, you will get the construction panel to pop-up, that might look like this one: like this one:As you can see, there are 6 buildings categories: Agriculture, Health, Infrastructure, Military, Commerce, Culture. For each of these categories, a choice is offered to you, in the form of a specific building. The list is far from being random though, although there is a random element as to what choices are available. What you are shown heavily depends of what you have already built in the region (including whether you opted to specialize the region or not?). What is the current population. If the region is a plain, in forest, bordering a sea. What is your government, your ethnicity. And so on.As you know, having meaningful choices is at the core of a good strategy game. Here too, you’ll have to weigh and decide which building you want the most from the 6 you have available. Will you want a wall to be built, because those pesky tribal raiders find your land such a pleasant place to be? Do you prefer to prioritize a ranch, to increase your food production while producing cattle you want to export? Choices … And they will be at times very difficult to make because intrinsically, all buildings provide benefits!And as soon as you have finished your current buildings, all choices are reshuffled. So the improved walls you wanted, and the less desired commercial harbor might not reappear the next time (rest assured, they are still there and the option is not lost for ever!). To help you decide and handle your construction plans, you have a few tools at your disposal though. First, you always see the complete list of possible buildings, for each category. This helps you to decide and plan ahead. Second, there is a reshuffle button, for the time where none of the buildings are what you want. The Reshuffle action don’t cost a lot and will probably be done in 1 to 2 turns in your region (and the code is smart enough to not propose again the same buildings as the previous list). Finally, you get another tool through a National Decision (more on that later) that will force the focus of your nation to particular types of buildings among several categories.So in the end, you have substantial control over what your regions will be made of, but this control is not complete. Hopefully you’ll come to appreciate this system, as it prevents players from being stuck doing always the same things in most of their regions (and that’s also why you get so many different buildings).To help you picture how diverse the buildings are, we will provide a few examples.The Vineyard is an agricultural building generating some income, plus the Wine trade good, that can be used by your own taverns and palaces or exported for profit to your neighbors. It is restricted to warm climates though.The Sanitation system is a Health building. As such, it will speed up population growth and prevent (most of the time) bad events like disease and plague in the region. It can be upgraded to a Sewer network.The Shrine to Epona is a military building, a building only available to Celtic nations. It will improve slightly the cavalry units recruited in the region, and should you manage to build the 4 different Celtic shrines in a region, then you are in for a nice surprise (some games would name that a ‘finisher bonus’).The Gambling Ring is a culture building (yes, it’s culture, as in ‘entertainment’!). In addition to providing some income, it will raise the loyalty in the region. Alas it has a drawback, one shared with many loyalty-boosting buildings: turn after turn it will add a bit of decadence to your nation. But rest assured, not too much, nothing to worry about, really…The Land Expansion is a rather special building that provides more room for even more buildings in the region (because you have a limit on the number of structures based on your population amount, this one increases it nicely).The Satrape Palace is a provincial palace. We will talk about Provinces in another diary, and each has a palace acting as the provincial capital. But the Satrape Palace, a building unique to the Seleucids does a few other things. As a drawback, it costs a lot (and really a lot!) to maintain, to represent how easily the appointed governors (former generals of Alexander the Great for many) adopted the extravagant life style of the Persian empire. But it has benefits too: It allows the levying of powerful local militias, should the region be under attack. If not, then it provides free units to the national army of the King of Kings.We will end up there, with this Seleucid Palace. That’s a tier II building, i.e. a building that is a bit more complex and involved than tier I buildings, like the vineyard, the cattle ranch and so on. We will let you discover the variety of effects of tier III buildings in-game, including the national unique and world wonders we have for you. In the meantime, stay tuned!. Dev Diary #7 Provinces: Scaling up your Empire: ProvincesOne of the common issues for strategy games is moving from a small nation with a handful of things to do per turn to a bigger one with dozens of decisions to make. What was fun and thrilling in the early game, like deciding if you want to build a cattle ranch or a sawmill becomes more mundane. And yet, sometimes for specific reasons, you still want to check, as the wise ruler you are, what’s going on in a precise location.Many games try to create tools for this reduction in micro-management. But most if not all adopt a ‘forced approach’, where at some point the game tries very hard to make you do things in a very specific way. In Empires we decided that you can eat your cake and sell it too … with Provinces!Provinces are a grouping of regions, the basic geographical unit in the game. You can create a province when you have at least 51% of the regions belonging to the same provincial area. These are fixed on purpose, because they are grouped logically and historically. Plus, there are a few perks attached to them, like a regional unit. For example, the Sicilia province is made of 5 regions, the ones making up Sicily plus Melita (Malta). In our case, having 3 of these 5 regions allows you to create the province.[www.matrixgames.com]At this point many of you will think: “I don’t want to create a province and have my precious regions handled by the AI”. And some might add say, “by the stupid AI”So let’s talk about eating your cake, and selling it. Twice! First, we adopted a reverse approach to how other games try to reduce micro-management. Creating a province provides bonuses. Not creating provinces mean you don’t get bonuses, but you don’t suffer any penalty. If you don’t want to create any province, then that’s fine, have it your way. But you’ll want to create them, believe us.One of the reasons is that when regions are handled at the province level there is no mandatory automation. A region, as part of a province, can still be accessed and have all his population reshuffled to your liking, and you can order the buildings it should construct as before. But should you don’t want to do that, then you can use the Province panel to decide what the governor AI should do. For population and for buildings (one set of options for each), you can decide that the focus should be on a job (like producing more money, or constructing extra agriculture buildings). You can also decide to have the governor try to balance production with the needs. Here, the not-that-stupid AI will take into consideration the need at the region level, for each region, and at the national level. So for example if you have a severe lack of money, then clicking on balancing will result in more population than usual put into the money-making job.[www.matrixgames.com]The AI will also check your upkeep, so as not to overbuild structures that you would have trouble maintaining. It is even capable of checking which of the regions have particular bonuses and have them focus on something specifically. If you look at this screenshot, I have requested a balancing of production for Sicilia. And yet you see we are far from having the population split evenly within each region. For example, Melita has a lot of people in infrastructure. If you checked Melita specifically, you would see that the region is the one with the biggest Infrastructure bonus within the whole province!So all in all, we believe these AI governors do quite a decent job. We will be honest (sometime it pays off ), the AI is not equal to a veteran player who can fine tune everything each turn. But it plays like a competent opponent…As you see, Province management has never been so easy. You can automate in different ways, including handling everything manually. But there is more. There are province-specific bonuses.A Province pools some of its resources and then redistributes them either equally (for food), or where it is needed (for infrastructure). So for food, it means that regions with poor land (like a mountain or an underdeveloped forest region) will benefit from the food sent by other regions, within the province, helping them grow. Also, if you have large body of troops, it might be difficult sometimes to sustain them from a single region. With a province, supply will arrive from several regions, easing the logistic challenge of feeding your army.As for infrastructure, all regions can help the process of creating new buildings, so you end up with your structures built much faster, in a more focused way. And again, you might use this trick to funnel infrastructure from powerful regions to a poor one, helping it develop much faster.[www.matrixgames.com]Recruitment is also handled at the provincial level. Each province has a provincial palace, and this is the place where all units are recruited. And each province has its own special ‘provincial unit’ that you would not have access too otherwise. For example the Africa province (centered around Carthago) would provide African War Elephants, to any nation holding it. Or Crete will allow the famous Cretan slingers…All in all, we have tried with provinces to provide you the tools so that your games scale up well when your empire grows, while staying as discreet and unobtrusive as possible, for people who like to micro-manage. We hope that you’ll come to appreciate our Province system as much as we do![www.matrixgames.com]. Dev Diary #10 Units: Abilities and Modifiers: Units in Empires have very diverse profiles and different roles. Some are heavy hitters, like phalanxes, legions and other heavy infantry. These units cost a lot to recruit and maintain, and will use a lot of metal, so can’t be mass produced easily. They have drawbacks too, like being relatively slow and not fit to fight in terrain like forests or mountains.Another category is the medium infantry, which is apparently less powerful, more affordable and has the useful ability of being a besieger, meaning it will provide a bonus when you siege a city. This reflects the value of these formations in being able to construct heavy siege engines on the spot (you did not drag siege towers along your army when you were on the march). Given they are more affordable, you can field a lot of these troops, and this might be necessary since battles have an important concept of ‘frontage’, which is the width of the battle line. Previous players from AGEOD game will be well aware of this feature, as it appeared in 2004 with Birth of America, and it never ceased to play an important and realistic role in all our games. Failure to fill out your available front line will leave you very vulnerable to being outflanked or forced to commit your skirmishers to actual hand to hand combat (not a good idea!).[www.matrixgames.com]The skirmishers are another sort of unit. They are not costly, although the manpower they need is close to the types above (so make a lot demands on your population to fill out their ranks from the pool of conscripts used for units). In melee, they are quite weak, but this is not where they should be used. They are there to help support your main infantry, by providing a combat bonus to them. A medium infantry unit backed by a skirmisher is as strong, if not more so, than a heavy infantry without support. Add to that they will weaken the enemy before melee through their missile attack, and you will quickly come to see that they are not optional to a good army composition.Cavalry is another subset of units and plays an important role on the battlefield and the strategic map. Light cavalry will perform as skirmishers but most types can also flank the enemy. It means that should your opponent don’t fill up the battle line, then they will deal bonus attacks against the enemy. Should you manage to inflict a defeat to your opponent, then their pursuit bonus will deal significant damage during the retreat phase. On the strategic map, they are faster than even skirmishers, so can act as a fire brigade of sort. But they are not ideal if they have to fight on their own as they are rather brittle, except perhaps if they are heavy cavalry or cataphracts. Plus skirmishers help a city resists a siege, while cavalrymen don’t do much but eating the food stockpile in this situation!The important thing to remember is that through quite a lot of fine tuning and testing, we have managed to give each unit a role that defines them well. And also that costlier units are not always better in all circumstances, so if you enjoy tweaking your army composition, then you should have some fun testing out combinations.[www.matrixgames.com]But there is more to it than that, as units also have some custom abilities contextual to some terrain. For example, many Celtic nations have light and medium infantry which are woodmen, so they are better when fighting in the huge forests of Gallia. In the same way, German warriors benefit from this trait too, given how large and continuous, almost overwhelming, was the big Hercynian forest where many lived.You’ll also fight mountainmen, if you have to deal with Celtiberian tribes, or people from Armenia or Colchide. Arabia Felix or the vast expanses of desert bordering Carthage proper will see cameliers with the desertmen traits, etc.But some traits are not a bonus, they are a drawback. For example, elephants dislike cold terrain, and Phalanxes are not fit to assault a city.Other traits are about how units fought on the battlefield. For example, skirmishers, horse-archers and light cavalry can deal damage even when they lose a duel, or to add insult to injury, they can even shave off part of the damages they received by evading the melee! As some of you know, the battle of Carrhae was a major defeat for Rome against Parthia, mostly because the latter had a lot of horse-archers (backed up by supply wagons to replenish their stock of arrows) while the legionnaires were trying (and failing) to reach the enemy line. In Empires too, I would not bet on the mighty legions if they have no support from archers or skirmishers, against a full battle line of Parthian horse archers!Hopefully this will give you an idea about how Empires manages units and the different possible battles you will experiment.But traits, also called modifiers, are everywhere in the game. Rulers have traits, ranging from being a superior administrator to being paranoid. The variations are numerous, and the chance to get the same ruler twice is very small. This in turn will shape your nation and alter your strategy, as a good military ruler will provide a lot of bonus which will be a boon to your army, while someone who despises the idea of expanding his realm will be an issue if you wanted to conquer and gobble your neighbor.Units and rulers have traits (or modifiers) but each government is also different using their own range of abilities. For example, a tribal government will provide a bonus to manpower, and that’s fitting as units filled with warriors will need a lot of men and not that much heavy armor to be recruited. A merchant oligarchy like Carthage will enjoy extra bonuses for commerce but will be heavily penalized on manpower, thus lending to a style of gameplay where you’ll need to recruit a lot of mercenaries (and the ones for Carthage are rather good!). In the end, through the judicious (or so we hope) use of modifiers, you’ll see that all the nations play rather differently from one another. Because their units are different, or perhaps their government. And then there are the custom buildings with special abilities! Here, we are mostly not talking about something like “Get +10% from that or that”, this would be dull… Buildings have specific abilities or behaviors that significantly alter the game and how you will tackle a nation. Judea with the possible, but difficult, task to rebuild the Solomon Temple (coming in no less than 7 levels of upgrades!), Saba with the impressive Ma’rib dam which can be either a boon or a curse (depending if you repair it or not), Dacia with its mountain fortresses, etc. [www.matrixgames.com]. Field of Glory: Empires Dev Diary #1 - A Brief Overview: Welcome to the first Field of Glory: Empires developer diary! We felt we ought to start off with a summary of what the game is, and what you can expect. We will be following on with detailed explanations in subsequent diaries.FoG: Empires is a strategy game set in the Ancient World roughly from the fall of Alexander the Great’s empire. It seeks to provide strategic empire management together with the AGEOD staple of turn-based play and historical detail. We believe we have unique features to deliver these, while also remaining familiar and easy to understand for the fans of the genre.Speaking of the features themselves, we certainly have plenty of them in Empires, closely interconnected with one another as it should be in a grand strategy game.[www.matrixgames.com]Region and population management. In Empires, the map is divided into Regions. Each region has its own population, represented by abstracted units. Each population unit has a culture (which can change) and a status – citizen or slave.The regions can host a number of buildings depending on the level of population. We have a lot of different buildings in the game, both generic and nation-specific. There are a lot of possible synergies in building up your empire-wide infrastructure, but you do not have total control over what is available to build in a certain region at a given time. You will need to adapt to circumstances and make the best of it.Every region also shows its major city/settlement on the map, which can be fortified via building choices to resist siege attempts by the enemy.Finally, trade happens between regions. While it is automated, you will have a lot of influence over it via buildings and other choices.We will talk about all this in detail in the next diary!Battle system. Our battles are much more than just trying to pile up the most number of units in the same place. Unit abilities, quality, and leadership are decisive and will influence your approach to battles and how to conduct your wars. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your own forces and those of the enemy will decide the winner.Progress and Decadence. This mechanic simulates the dynamics behind the rise and fall of empires. It has been tried in a few games before, but we believe our approach should please you, as it captures particularly well the momentum some countries can get, and the ebb and flow of successful empires trying to deal with their own success and with new challenges.The details will be the topic of a separate developer diary. The gist of it is, that you will feel pressed to move your nation upward on the "ladder" of nations, but with moving ahead you are sowing the seeds for an eventual decline and possible collapse. A collapse that in turn can lead to a rebirth and restoration, or the start of something new. A fall is not inevitable, but it does not mean game over, either.There are a lot more we want to cover (provinces, decisions, types of nations, etc), but we hope to have given you a general idea on what we are aiming for with the game.Stay tuned for the next Diary!Follow us on Facebook[www.facebook.com][www.matrixgames.com]. Dev Diary #2 - Region Management, Population, Loyalty: During the next few weeks, we will aim to show how you manage a country in Field of Glory: Empires. So let’s get stuck in!The map of FoG Empires is divided into Regions. Although as your realm grows you will be able to organise these into Provinces, Regions are where the game “happens” – your armies move from Region to Region, and your population, buildings, and trade are all linked to individual Regions.[www.matrixgames.com]As you can see, the population part dominates the whole panel and it is in the middle while doing so, and for good reason. Their production determines what you get out of a region (although buildings affect this as well), and their loyalty determines if the region is in unrest. Their loyalty in turn is determined by their status and ethnicity. But more on that later!The four rows of population show which production category they are assigned to. These are (as is also written to their right where total output is shown): Food, Infrastructure, Money, and Culture. Let’s look at these for a moment:Food has three uses: feeding the existing population, population growth (when you have a surplus) and feeding armies in or adjacent to the region.Infrastructure is used to construct buildings, and to maintain existing ones. As such, the more buildings you have, the more population units you will need to keep them up and running. You can also gain extra Infrastructure points from several buildings, but beware: a region can only have as many buildings as it has population units, so you need to make choices. Buildings themselves are a long and interesting subject so we will cover them separately.Money might not buy you happiness, but it is useful for a great number of things. It is mainly used to recruit and maintain military units (especially mercenaries), but also a great deal of it may be needed to push through some of the Decisions available to your nation. Money, unlike the previous two, goes into your national stockpile, not the region’s.Culture is probably the most abstract of the four. It represents an aggregate of cultural life, works of art, luxuries etc. While it does add to your national total Culture, it has both national and regional uses.On the regional level, Culture reduces Unrest and helps keeping the local population content with your rule. There is a limit to that though, and for populous regions, you’ll need to boost loyalty with dedicated buildings.Nationally, your overall Culture production drives your progress in the Progress & Decadence mechanics defining your nation’s age and status. This is a key and fairly unique system that we will be covering in a separate diary.On the left of the population units, you can see the buildings in the region. These are organised into the same rows as the population are and they largely relate to the production row they are in, although not entirely. We have six building categories: the four outlined above plus Health and Military buildings. To the right of population you see the aggregate of the region’s outputs. The four main ones we have just summarised. The other three resources are derived from your overall population level and your buildings. They concern military units:Manpower and Metals are national resources that are required for the recruitment and maintenance of units. How much, depends on the unit type. As you might expect, armoured units require a lot of metal, whereas almost naked tribal warriors will not use that much.Equipment is a regional resource and represents the region’s ability to equip and field new military units. It can be stockpiled (within limits) so you can gather up a reserve that will let you react to unforeseen challenges relatively quickly. To finish summarising the general overview of the region panel, we should also mention the top row of the panel, which contains some general information (such as terrain, defence value, Loyalty) and icons of any good or ill conditions that apply to the region.We have mentioned earlier how important a region’s population is, so let’s take a closer look at it.[www.matrixgames.com]A population unit in FoG Empires has three attributes: its Status, Ethnicity, and Unrest.Status can be either Citizen or Slave. Citizens are your free population. They grow based on your Food production. Slaves are obtained via major battles, or events and Decisions. Citizens perform better when assigned to Money or Culture production. Slaves are very inefficient at those tasks, but they are more efficient than Citizens when it comes to Food or Infrastructure production.Ethnicityis the cultural identity of the population unit. Each nation has a primary Ethnicity, and if the pop unit’s is different to this it affects its Unrest negatively, especially if the nation in question is at war with the pop unit’s perceived brethren (i.e. a country with a primary Ethnicity matching the population’s). Population units can, in time, convert to their region’s majority Ethnicity (only true for citizens).Unrest shows how dissatisfied the population unit is with their lot in life. As mentioned, this is affected by Ethnicity but also by the region’s overall Loyalty rating, which is derived from a number of national and regional factors. In fact, let’s have a closer look at it![www.matrixgames.com]Regional Loyalty is one of the cornerstones of the game, because it meshes with others major features, like progress and decadence, army recruitment, supply, and productivity. Usually at start, loyalty is not a major issue (except for the Seleucids and a few other nations). That’s because your starting regions are of the same ethnicity as your nation’s government, plus the population is not so high that the bored citizens demand too much from the state.As you expand, and as time passes, you’ll probably conquer new regions, and they might be populated by citizens from another ethnicity group than yours. Say you are Rome and past Italy, you start conquering Gaul. Gaul is made of Celts, and Rome ethnicity is Italic. This alone will make the subdued population much more restless. With some effort and the passing of time, you might convert them (shall we say Romanize?) to your ethnicity, but it won’t happen quickly. Slaves too have an ethnicity, and they are never converted, so expect troubles from a massive influx of German slaves for example.In addition to that, each of your national citizens, when your main cities grow bigger, will demand more and more from the state, and this translates to an increase in their unrest, which in turn can lead to revolts. As you can guess though, you have several possibilities to fight off unrest. A major one is to build loyalty-boosting buildings. Some are rather virtuous in their use, like the line of religious buildings, which provide a moderate loyalty boost and an increased chance of converting the local population to your ethnicity. But for larger effects, it will be required to build structures like an arena, a gambling ring, a pleasure house, a noble district, and many more. And in the short term, they are doing exactly what you need, they will up the regional loyalty quite a lot. All is well, right?Not so. In the long run they distil their poison… They will produce a bit of decadence over time. Which in turn will perhaps make your nation regress and have larger issues, like a civil war! But we will talk more about Progress & Decadence in another diary, as this is a major feature of our game, with a quite original approach.Thanks for your time, we will continue explaining the game’s regional-level features next week!Follow us on Facebook![www.facebook.com]