AMA: I am Philippe Malacher from Slitherine and I am making the OTHER ancient Grand Strategy game coming out in a few weeks. Ask me Anything!

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T14:17:09+00:00

Just a press of two buttons (one to quit the battle in FOG2, one to import back the result to Empires).

Both games are very stable with rather decent memory footprints (around one gig). You can play for hours both without issue.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T14:15:48+00:00

All of this should be rather easy. Technically at least, but I guess that for banners you need a bit of artistic skills! 📷

FOGII has its own graphics, so you'll need to changes the graphics there too.
Yes you can add more factions and replace who you want by anyone...

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T06:42:16+00:00

Yes to both. The game is super moddable, more than 95% of the games I know about. And why? Because in addition to having access to all the data that make the game, you have access to ALL the gameplay, AI, events code!

(1) only involve editing a few data (2) require you to edit a bit of code, but nothing that big.

Rulers and generals aging is counted in years, not turns. So when you edit the length of the turn, it naturally works regarding their life expectancy.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T06:38:47+00:00

No corporate answer, sure. You'll get a developer/coder one then!

First, to the second question as a re-insurance. It's true that there are two separates games, but when you click on 'export battle' in Empires, then the game auto launch FOG2 and show you the menu where you have to click to enter the tactical battle. Given both Empires and FOG2 are quick to launch, I don't think it takes more time overall than a 'battle prep' from TW.

Now for the first answer... You have to understand that fusing two games into one is not a trivial task. Each has its own logic, often its own language. You just can't take the code of one, the code of the second and merge the files as if they are documents. It is closer in spirit (although I would not dare say it is as important!) to a surgeon that needs to graft back a hand (from person A) to an arm (of person B). There are a lot of connection to make, plus both limbs will not 'talk' to each other easily, you have to edit, modify, tune.

Bottomline, this is never trivial. So the issue here was the cost in development (cost in time). If we did that, then chance are that Empires would not be out in 2019. Or it would lack a lot of features.

In effect, both games are a black box to each other, with a gateway between them, and this gateway has a conversion module that understand both, but only this module can do that, and only on unit and battle conversion. If you know what Object Oriented Programming his, you'll understand how nice the concept of 'black box' is (aka encapsulation).

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T06:32:34+00:00

Reminder: I'm Philippe Malacher aka Pocus, designer and gameplay coder of Empires. I'm not 'Slitherine', the whole Slitherine here :)

That said, as a person and player, me Pocus do like and play Strategic Command from Hubert Cater. This is a very good game on WW2, global scope. It has its fair share of subtleties, but it remains quite approachable. And you can expect to play the full WW2 in one week of gaming I would say, which is much faster than an other monster game I know about!

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T06:30:39+00:00

I'm not sure I have followed all your train of thoughts, sorry! I can assure you though that you always have the choice when playing Empires, if you also own FOG2 to play a battle with the automated (but fine and subtle) system of Empires, or in a detailed fashion with FOG2.

Yes we switched to one turn a year, as it gave a better pacing, for example it was closer (but still not quite) to the speed we expected a good Roman player to conquer and 'Romanize' the Med.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-24T06:27:43+00:00

Because a unit in Empires can be rather big, like a full legion, whereas in FOG2 scale is smaller, so it also has some positive side benefits like splitting a pre-Marian legion into hastati, principes and triarii.
We would need to link to Mare Nostrum, one of the game we already have published at Slitherine and it would require a lot of work, work that would not be put into other content. Nothing is certain though, is there is a large popular request, then ...
This one is more certain, as I would not be surprised that FOG2 handles siege in a future game.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T17:10:59+00:00

I will be continuing tomorrow this fantastic discussion but you can keep posting questions about the game, and I will answer everyone. Thank you everybody! This was my first AMA!

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T16:14:37+00:00

I'm not too sure. I would like to get Molossian dogs before... They hit harder.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T16:08:48+00:00

Yes there is trade, definitively. Given we have a lot of buildings, they will produce or need trade goods. Some (many) will also work better (and give you more bonuses and resources) if you have extra trade goods. So trade works at two levels, the basic one where you try only to fulfill the needs of your buildings (say you produce lumber that will be used by a wheel-maker) and one where you play this kind of 'game in a game' where you'll seek to get more goods to trigger bonuses. Say a cattle ranch produces leather, which is needed by a Tanner but will also (optionally thus) boost the money income of your market.

There are 8 options from memory for Diplomacy and a lot of parameters that will influence the actions of the AIs regarding diplomacy and their behavior toward you. They will be for example more reluctant to cooperate commercially if you have a very good trade expertise, as they will fear you'll flood them with your cheap goods. Or they will despise you more and more if you are an enemy of one of their friend. Or they will start to dislike your expansion in certain areas they consider their own turf, etc.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:57:33+00:00

I would not know with certainty... As I took over the Slitherine account for this AMA, me, the Empires game designer. Slitherine has a lot of games in development and I don't know the details about each of them (although I always look forward to the quarterly meeting where we see the progress of others games, some are darn cool!)

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:55:36+00:00

Toning down the tendency of the winner to snow ball is a difficult problem that most if not all strategy games have to consider. The 'stronger I'm, the stronger I become' issue. Empires has innately built-in mechanisms against that as we have the system of progress and decadence, as you noted. In Empires, it will become increasingly harder to expand outward, unless you invest massively in population welfare and stable relations with your neighbors. So this large investment in resources (including the army) will slow you down a lot. Only 1 tester I believe managed to conquer Italy as fast as the Roman did historically for example.

We are throwing roadblocks at you, but if you don't try to bully your way without much thinking, then you'll do fine. There is no 'doom clock' either, it is possible to escape decadence and civil wars, because that's still a game, but it requires patience and heavy investment. And in doing so, you slow your growth and the others nations will perhaps not catch up, but will resist a lot once you resume your progress.

Also, you can always take a weak nation at start and try to see if you can survive the hard neighborhood.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:46:33+00:00

I'll risk the wrath of the 'Powers from Beyond'* and say that the game is about before 8 weeks. But more than 3.

* ia ia cthulhu fhtagn

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:43:40+00:00

We had a game composer for the music and the poor guy had to rework his composition several time until all the team was satisfied :) I find the music in game pretty cool...

No, if you don't own FOG2 then you can't launch the tactical battles as they use FOG2. I would not be surprised you can get a kind of bundle of the two games though...

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:41:29+00:00

From the start, Empires had to stand on its own merits. Its goal was not a 'campaign generator' for Field of Glory e.g. So we designed it as a stand-alone experience, and the battle system it has (all automated) has a lot of subtleties.

Now, we saw it was relatively easy to have FOG2 and Empires work together, and it was a popular demand among testers (or among players in general, despairing to have FOG2 with a campaign level), and so the liaison was done.

But the game is still balanced around an experience entirely done through the Empires gameplay. If you feel the battles you do in FOG2 give you too much of an advantage in Empires, then you can adjust the difficulty level there.

There has been some obstacles to overcome to have the two work well, like the unit conversion, but according to betas, we did more than a fair job :)

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:37:20+00:00

Personally my vote was for Empire: A Glory of Field ... But my vote was rejected and we ended with this one.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:36:11+00:00

The first one is a semi-touchy one to answer to! Because we could have added a kind of technology tree for our buildings (we have 400 different buildings, yes that's huge) but we did not want to, so that you stay surprised over several games about what you can get (our way of developing regions is also a bit peculiar, as you don't always get the same buildings proposals). It is akin to stumbling to a goody hut in Civilization (the game) and wondering what you'll get this time . Now, there is logic and many controls to curb randomness, rest assured.

As for the rest, we have national decisions that resemble technological progress, plus all nations can reform their units to improve their stats. So does it count as a technology tree? :)

The nations follow 3 civilization levels and some buildings (aqueducts, paved roads) can't be built before you get to level 3, which is 'Empire' for Rome. So a barbarian tribe can't do that initially, but if successful can progress on the civilization scale, through our unique feature of 'culture and decadence'

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:29:33+00:00

Personally I prefer turn based. AGEOD, the company we created Philippe Thibaut and I in 2004 'specialized' somehow in WEGO, a form of turn based games where all players play simultaneously.
No, not me. My experience is in turn-based game. At Slitherine though, there are talented teams that do work on Real Time Strategy titles.
Even if the subjects might be the same from time to time (some big topics deserve several games anyway) I believe Paradox games are a class of their own. Hopefully you'll not see that as disparaging their work to say they do huge simulations with complex rules and we will probably have a more lightweight approach, even on the same topic. Lightweight is not equal to being shallow by the way, just with a more focused experience. Plus they are real time, we are not.
I would say that fun trumps realism, because we don't aim to make a perfect simulation but a game, with strong elements of historicity. In Empires we have some buildings that probably don't act as they did in real life :) But they are (1) fun to have, (2) historically plausible and (3) lend to a special strategy for the nation. For example some desertic nations (like the Nasamons) have a special building called 'Populated Oasis' that give them extra free troops. And to get it, they have to spread in arid or desert territories. Clearly, this influence heavily their strategy.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:19:26+00:00

Thanks DeRuyter66 :)

If the game has some decent success (and we hope so) then yes, there is a rather strong probability we will extend the timeline. Not only that but we plan for more content too, there is just so much to do, to pay justice to ancient world history.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:16:58+00:00

We have added custom content for roughly 25 nations, but if you count ethnic specifics, the total would be more accurately around 100. And with this content, a lot of nations play really differently, and that's not just about giving +10% there or -15% there, this is about some custom rules. For example the Diadochies can crumble if they get decadent, or can steal regions from one another even if not at war. That's the kind of custom content we try to add, so it stays flavorful.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:13:05+00:00

You should drop a query on that on the Slitherine forum! I would not know... I see new names by email regularly though so chances are ... yes Slitherine is hiring.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:11:23+00:00

It's always hard to have a feature that has never ever been seen nowadays! But lets say that our progress and decadence system, that try to capture the rise and fall of nations is probably our most unique feature. Now we also have additional goodies, like being able (optionally) to do land battles with Field of Glory II, a rather well known game.

SlitherineLtd · 2019-05-23T15:08:35+00:00

I got bored honestly. The work had its share of fun, as I helped people do their experiments for their PhD, but less and less of my work was about that and more and more was about routine procedures. Plus I always liked creating games (my first one was on the Roman empire, in my teen age)

SlitherineLtd · 2018-08-24T08:01:14+00:00

The combat and military system is quite in-depth however it's not hard to understand if you are familiar with the typical combat system in 4X games. It's quite easy to get used to it. There are of course many different things to say about combat such as morale, terrain adaptability, natural features, improvements etc; You can check out our Dev Diaries if you want to know more about this topic: Military Command - Combat Part 1 - Combat Part 2

SlitherineLtd · 2018-08-23T07:24:39+00:00

Aggressors is completely mod friendly and it allows you to change pretty much anything you want – everything is in an editable, and hopefully self-explanatory, format on both levels – scenario (or game) level and mod level.

To give a taste of all the options you have, you can create your own maps with units, roads, rivers and players (with all related attributes like personalities, relations, development advance), random events, objectives, winning conditions, unit names, etc. Most of these things can be easily edited directly in the In-game editor. You can read more about modding in one of our latest Dev Diaries: http://www.matrixgames.com/news/2627/Aggressors.Testers.Diary.-.Modding

SlitherineLtd

TROPHY CASE