Forge of Empires

Forge of Empires is a new free-to-play browser-based strategy game from Innogame behind the Grepolis and Tribal Wars. In it, players will build their own city and developed it from the Stone Age through different historical periods to the Empire epoch. Take command of your city, research techs for advanced units, rare goods and unique buildings, fray into exciting battles in the wild, challenge other players in a duel and grow the city into expansive powerful empire.

Forge of Empires Preview:

The genre of strategy has explained a lot about what you would expect from the game, like resource production, city building, army training, research for boost, wars waged under various names, and so on and so forth. Such shared elements make the genre, not a game. Yes, you will have them all from Forge of Empires, but play in a different way. To generalize a little: the game is played like a Facebook game.

A small city in the primitive age is where we start out with in Forge of Empires. An NPC will show up to guide us through the tutorial. After that, we continue alongside the quest line, which is more or less the same in all strategy games. Yet to start the building, we notice the Facebook-style: structures take up x-amount grids; they can be placed freely only if within the active areas and with enough space (grids); lots of them need to be connected to roads; and they can moved and rearranged later to adjust to the expansive territory.

Building types also show certain similarity. There are the common structures, such as houses for residents, resource-related facilities and barracks to train units, etc.. But it also adds the deco buildings to boost happiness and service. Moreover, it also applies the setup that requires us to regularly click to gather the money or supplies. This design can be good or bad: on one hand, it allows us to always have something to do inside the world; on the other, it can be a little tiresome and calls for more intensive engagement to make the most out of the facilities.

To explore outside, we can just follow the quest line. In the single-player campaign, we send army to clear one sector after another until finally conquering the whole provinces and then move on to the next. More territory gains various bonuses and unlocks more. Besides, the game also offers PvP, which would be further polished and enriched later.

Battles in Forge of Empires take us back to the reminiscent classic strategy style. Battlefields present many different terrains that must be taken into tactical consideration; up to eight units can be sent to battle and controlled separately in movement and attack; units have health meter so they will be damaged or totally destroyed; a complete around of battle can be set on auto pilot or a unit is controlled for a single turn. Simply, battle feels so right.

All in all, Forge of Empires even from an early phase displays quite solid, polished and intriguing gameplay. It has something reminiscent, something typical and something new, and shows up to bring quite a refreshing experience. It really deserves a try.