itch.io

This looks quite fun. The whole "Loser describes their own comical failure" bit feels like it adds a lot to the game's comical or almost mythological tone. 

Really fun game, have been playing with my brother a bit. We played our first default game while learning the rules, and immediately started an Epic length game after we finished. Some complaints though:

1) The deities don't actually do anything. Even dedicating a new religious site to a particular deity has to be house-ruled in. In my opinion, religions should almost work as a separate faction system, generating hostilities between those of differing faiths.

2) On the topic of generating hostilities, it is entirely possible to wipe out a hostile minor faction faction , not to mention a tribe, very early in the age of empires. This might not seem to be a problem, and it isn't... up until you roll a hostile attack, and don't have any faction that is hostile to you. Given the random nature of the game, and how some players will focus on defeating their enemies, this is probably going to be a difficult problem to solve. My workaround would be  to add a system or two: one to allow non-hostile factions to become hostile, and one to allow defeated factions to resurface (either through rebellion, in which case they are hostile, or through the granting of independence).

This leads me to another idea, not necessarily a complaint. Diplomacy is not acknowledged by the rules at all. While one could decide to have it happen on the story level, it would be nice to have, for instance, international incidents during the age of Rise and Fall. A system for alliances (say, they might support you in war), neutrality, betrayal, and grudges could be really fun.

3) This one is a complaint. There is no support in the rules for two empires on the same continent. While this does help with making the maps, especially when everyone is on a separate sheet, it isn't very realistic. As far as I know, there were multiple empires in Eurasia contemporary with Rome, Not to mention Africa, which technically is the same landmass.

Not at all sure how this could be solved, but it would be nice.

4) There doesn't seem to be anything one can do about options 1,4,5 and 6 on the hostile table. I mean, if one rolls a hero, they can take care of them, but then we run back into the first problem. They don't seem to count as factions, so they don't expand, they don't have settlements, so they can't be attacked, they just sit there, and destroy some of your stuff every so often. I doubt that the empires would wait for seventy years (the age of exploration) of semi-constant attacks before even considering the building of fortifications in the areas under threat.

5) I would also like to say that the duplicate rolls are far to common. Perhaps some rules on allowing a certain number of rerolls every age (maybe not complete, maybe just one die at a time) would help.

6) While the race table helps to add flavour to the world, it also sort of locks it into a D&D-equivalent medieval fantasy world. The provided resource table doesn't help. I don't really know how this could be solved properly, but it did rub me the wrong way: initially I wanted a no-magic world, but I'd have to cripple the engine to do that.

A thought: Perhaps as an expansion, a sci-fi colonisation/terraforming flavoured set of tables could be written. Or even the colonisation of a solar system (each map being of a planet and its moons). Might a license that allows such expansions be added (perhaps CC-BY-NC-SA or similar)?

Sorry if this comment is too negative, I really do enjoy this game, but I felt like a lot of things could be improved.

I am also aware that a few of my suggestions would add constraints where some people don't want constraints. Perhaps these could be added at the end as a set of optional rules?

🄯 Copyleft haivets. Any ideas may be freely reused. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.