Forge of Empires: Build a City 1.280.20

This article's title is shamelessly referencing Matt Leacock's "Roll through the Ages" dice game. However, Forge of Empires is anything but a well designed and fast-paced Yahtzee implementation. FoE is a village decorating freemium by all standards of the "trade." As you all know, what differentiates one such game from the other is usually skin deep.

Well, Forge of Empires has several of those. Starting from the brief stone age, the player will spend "forge points" to unlock buildings that are marginally more efficient at producing the game's basic trio of resources (people, gold, and tools.) Incidentally, better structures also mirror the technological age to which you have progressed.

Forge of Empires features tried and true interaction venues, such as visiting each other's villages and joining a guild. As soon as you unlock the Tavern, you will be able to spend resources decorating it to generate more income from your visiting friends.

The game also features an abstracted form of world conquest. Unlike games in which you have samey looking multiplayer maps, In FoE, you get to expand on a nice-looking custom map slowly. Growing is not necessary but lucrative. Every province will yield some bonus, be it in the form of a building, or trade items. You always have the option of bribing the local ruler with trade, but a quicker way would be to invade using your military units.

The military scale is significantly reduced to a handful of individuals, which are built and maintained by the dedicated buildings in your city. When attacking, you get to choose which units to have in the battle. The combat itself is designed as a tactical minigame, which draws inspiration from pure-bred tactical titles, but doesn't get too complicated.

Combat units get to move and attack the enemy on a hexagonal map. Terrain elements provide more or less cover, depending on the type of unit that occupies them. This system makes for relatively interesting combat scenarios. Armies act in a fixed sequence, but fortunately, there's a good representation of who goes when, so veterans of HoMM3 can throw their snide remarks as they see fit, although I can't imagine one playing a freemium.

Final Thoughts

Build as much as you can, and if you run out of space, remember that through conquest and technological advancements you receive permits to expand your city's borders and build even more stuff. For the idle gamer that likes checking up on his "baby" once a day, I find playing Forge of Empires to be quite the decent activity. The prospect of advancing through history and into new forms of architecture and design proves to be the right hook.