A few weeks ago I wrote a preview on the promising new game Medieval Lords - Build, Defend, Expand. Now with the final version plucked freshly off my doorstep and ready to play I take another look at the game and see how it has shaped up.
First and foremost the tutorial I was expecting from the demo is present and ready to give you a brief, interactive introduction to the game. Playing the game without learning a thing or two from this tutorial is quite possible but the subtleties of the game can be quite important to building a successful city - naturally I played through the tutorial as a refreshing course. It is fairly simple to follow and takes you step by step through the basics of the game, ensuring you know how to attack and defend as well as what, when and where to build.
Medieval Lords is, without a shadow of a doubt, a very good-looking game. The overall effect is quaint and pleasing to the eye and the obviously flat graphics noticed on closer inspection are easily forgivable. The game allows you to move into a quazi first person perspective to survey your kingdom - this feature is interesting for watching battles or villagers go about their business or taking a look over your cities from a nearby hill. On high detail my computer showed its age and began to crawl, suffice to say that anyone with a sufficiently powerful computer will get a lot of eye candy out of the game, something that is rapidly becoming a key factor in modern gaming.
Not only good looking, Medieval Lords is party to very rich sound effects - you can zoom in on farms and listen to the sounds of animals as well as the general sounds of villagers working. These days sound effects in games have come to the point where only the most sloppy of developers manage to make a pigs ear of them.
It strikes me that Medieval Lords demonstrates a somewhat "watered down" and subsequently enhanced facsimile of games like Ceasar and Pharaoh, micro management is kept to a minimum without completely removing it from the game. You must build houses and amenities to ensure your population is kept happy and keeps paying taxes, you must build defensive structures so they feel secure and launch attacks on neighbouring territories to expand your own city and, ultimately, reach your goal - be it total domination or a specific objective.
Houses "level up" if their occupants' needs are met and you will see your quaint wooden huts grow into rich stone houses and form the basis for a huge city. There is a sound technology tree based on productive buildings such as carpenters and masons, which open up new building and upgrade possibilities. Like many games of its genre Medieval Lords allows you to upgrade certain buildings so that you can keep your infrastructure in keeping with the buildings, which have become available to you during the course of the game. To keep your buildings connected to your road system Medieval Lords forsakes the fiddly manual construction system and automatically inserts roads to connect each building into your existing road system as you place it - you can still plan your own road systems if necessary, but for much of the time it is one minor annoyance that can be ignored letting you concentrate on keeping your population happy and your city defended.
The terrain both helps and hinders you in the ceaseless task of keeping your population happy - something that did not occur to me whilst playing the demo, in swamps there is a higher risk of disease and so your populations health status decreases, near water their water supplies are met without the need to build wells or fountains and religious ruins dotted around some maps provide natural sources of serenity in your population. Other factors of their satisfaction are left up to you, but can also be helped in some ways by the terrain depending on how you utilise it. Ground can vary from being an excellent place to put crops to completely infertile making you think were to build your houses and farms, in a bid to be myself and finish a campaign as quickly as possible I got away with slapping houses onto the terrain as if I were painting a town and building in the necessary amenities to satisfy my population as an when they complained for them. Playing the game recklessly worked, perhaps because I had chosen easy mode this time, but in order to build a successful city much thought and planning is required. To help you plan and consider your surroundings the game allows you to pause the action and get down to building, to get you past long periods of inactivity you can fast forward - a nice touch I found very useful at the end of a mission where the final objective involved the long, slow repair of a lighthouse.
The invasion of enemy territories and annexed territories is done by moving your forces (represented by groups of units) into the territory you wish to invade. A period called "Gods Truce" then ensues which lets you build defence and offensive structures on enemy territory, which you can then occupy with your troops. The battles are fought automatically but can still be affected quite dramatically by careful placement of forces, siege structures and defensive walls or towers. Once "Gods Truce" has expired your encamped men will charge (if they are invading a main territory) or hold position to stem a defensive push (if they are capturing an annexed territory). Depending on your strategic guile, or ability (like me) to overkill and send in hundreds upon hundreds of troops your men will either die and you will be none the worse but for a few less soldiers and a counter attack, or they will wipe out the enemy forces and another territory will be yours. Counter attacks can be the bane of the careless invader, however, should you move out all your forces to capture a territory and a small group of enemies manage to bypass them you might find your main dungeon (the centre of your city) destroyed before you know what has happened.
Enemy territories are not the only source of opposition, however, units will land by sea and invade your territory so you must plan your defences carefully. Bolster those around your main dungeon too greatly and neglect those in the rest of your city and your subjects will feel insecure and become unhappy - preventing their homes from gaining levels - spread your forces too thinly, however, and you could find your key points being overrun. There is plenty in Medieval Lords for the thinker in you, after all the game is geared toward the strategic player, so even though it is possible to skimp somewhat on the strategy and slap everything down as and when it is needed if you are not the careful type you might not find much in Medieval Lords. If it is huge battles, dramatic warfare and diverse units you want then Medieval Lords is not the game for you, in fact you have it confused with a true RTS. At heart Medieval Lords is an exceptional City builder taking you from humble hovels to townhouses inside great stone walls. The ability to invade neighbouring territories and expand your city is an added bonus and a necessary objective, however the building of great cities is a nice time waster and quite satisfying.
Medieval Lords is a game that tries very hard, and succeeds (which is the important thing) in the effort to make itself very accessible and simple to play whilst offering a degree of underlying complexity and strategy that rewards hardcore gamers for careful playing. Whilst the extreme intricacies of games like Caesar have been avoided there are still plenty of things such as civil unrest, natural disasters and unexpected invasions to keep you on your toes. Although the game on the whole should be reasonably easy to play for anyone (for a game of its ilk anyway) I believe it would be best enjoyed by people who like drawn out, strategic games. Action is scarce and when battles do occur they are usually quite short and graphically unimpressive, if you are after an action RTS/RPG type game then I would suggest the multiplayer Savage (also published by Digital Jesters). PH
