Era of Empire
by Aethyna
Aug 23, 2016 |
1
Votes |
2
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10
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Genres:
Strategy , MMOGraphics:
3DLabels:
Empire Building , Real Time , Dragons , Fantasy Setting , Player vs Player (PvP)Platforms:
Publishers:
Proficient City While you’re away on war, the black dragon struck your city. After you’ve returned to see the remnants of the dragon’s fury, you’ve set off on a mission to show it your own brand of fury. Rebuild your kingdom, recruit a new army, and to take the fight to the dragon’s lair in this exciting MMORTS game, Era of Empire! Play Now Similar Games Played
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Note: This is a First Impression review of the game, Era of Empire (Currently known as "War and Alliance"). The game's in Closed Beta at the moment and is expected to be globally released early September this year.Summary
In a land filled with almost constant conflict between kingdoms, the additional chaos the black dragon brings is not exactly welcomed. However, after your kingdom was razed by the dragon while you’re away at war, you’re not about to stand aside and leave your people to their ruin. Instead, you’ll rise up from the ashes by rebuilding your city, re-amassing your troops and taking the fight to the dragon’s lair. Of course, your enemies may latch on this opportunity to attack you while you’re still weak. Be sure to build up your city’s defenses and complete research to boost your kingdom’s and troops’ overall efficiency. Make allies along the way and band together to take on any challenges the world might throw at you. In this brilliant MMORTS game, Era of Empire, only the strong will survive... are you among them?
Plotline
It is a time of conflict and strife; a time where nations battle other nations; where an ally could turn into a foe with the blink of an eye. Among the chaos comes the Black Dragon. It has been the scourge of the realm, razing kingdoms left and right at its whim.
Being the ruler of a thriving city, you were away at war when the dragon struck your kingdom, engulfing it in flames. You definitely have a bone to pick with the black dragon and would do whatever it takes to get your revenge!
Now that the nations have a common enemy, it’s time to band together and defeat the dragon in its lair. However, things are not as easy as it sounds... after all, armies are not amassed within a day. First things first, you’ll need to start by extinguishing the raging fire that has engulfed your city.
Gameplay
After an amazing cinematic which lays the foundation for the game’s storyline, Era of Empire starts with a tutorial that’s very easy to follow, allowing players who are completely new to the MMO strategy genre pick things up really quickly. After you’ve gone through the basics, you’ll be free to manage and develop your kingdom as you see fit!
First things first, you might want to change the default appearance and name to something that’s more “You”. To do so, you can easily tap on the portrait of your hero to access the hero profile interface. There are many appearances for both male and female characters that you can choose from, and admittedly, since they all look so likeable, it can be pretty hard to pick only 1. However, be sure to pick the name and the appearance that you really want because once you’ve changed them the first time, you’ll then need to pay some premium coins to change them a second time.
Being a MMO strategy, Era of Empire places quite a lot of importance on the development of your kingdom, and considering that the dragon has practically razed quite a lot of the buildings you once had, you’ll have some rebuilding to do. The building process starts off pretty quick since you are able to speed up building processes that require less than 5 minutes to complete. However, once you reach higher levels, you will need to gradually wait more.
Thankfully, you can earn speed up tokens which you can then use to speed up these construction processes for free. If you ran out of those tokens as well, you can still spend some of the premium gold you’ve obtained to auto-complete these tasks. Since you have 1 building/upgrade slot, you can only have 1 ongoing construction process at any time... unless you’re willing to spend premium cash to recruit an extra worker for 2 days.
If you’re unsure which structure to build or upgrade, Era of Empire has got you covered. There are these city development quests that you can use to guide you. It’ll let you know which building you should emphasize on. Best yet, for every 5/10/15/etc (this number will increase as you level up) quests you complete, you’ll even get to open a free chest filled with valuable resources and other goodies.
Resource management is another important aspect in Era of Empire. There are 4 main resources, namely food, wood, iron and crystal, that you’ll need to keep an eye on, but you’ll begin by managing only the first 2 resources. There are quite a lot of ways for you to earn the resources you need to develop your city. The easiest and most passive way is by building and maintaining (by upgrading these infrastructures) farms and sawmills outside your city gates. Need more plots to build your farms and other resource-generating facilities? At certain level brackets, you’ll be able to unlock new resource territories which will in turn grant you 4 new plots of land for you to build stuff on.
Once you have an army to call your own, you could even send them off on excursions to occupy resource-laden locations, such as the farm for food. Once their bags are filled to the brim, your army will return triumph with the bounty they’ve got. However, if your city is located in a region that’s filled with other players, you’ll run a risk of losing both your loot and your army if they are defeated by another player.
You can bolster your forces by recruiting more troops from their respective troop-producing structures like the barracks or the stables. There are generally 4 types of units – Infantry, cavalry, archers and siege machines. Each type of unit will have certain advantages and disadvantages that you’ll need to take note of when sending them into battle. Aside from numbers, you can also improve the quality of your troops by unlocking better units. To do so, you’ll need to upgrade the respective troop-producing structures or you could spend some resources into researching new technologies at the college.
Researching for new and better tech for economy, defense or battle comes at a pretty high cost in this game. Besides being resource-intensive, researches usually take quite some time to complete. Most researches can be upgraded multiple times, though you don’t need to max out each previous research before moving on to the next one on the tech tree. Due to this, it’s crucial to only research tech that will be beneficial to you. If not, you’ll simply be wasting valuable resources and time.
Furthermore, your hero also plays a pretty vital role in improving the attack power of your army. You can “upgrade” your hero by investing the talent points you’ve obtained from leveling up into War, Develop or Support talents. The talent tree is somewhat similar to the tech tree, but you’ll need max out the previous talent before you will be able to unlock the next talents in line. In addition to talents, you can also equip your hero with powerful weapons that will improve the deadliness of a certain type of troops in combat. Equipments need to be forged at the blacksmith and the material you’ll need can be collected from successful battles with monsters in the world map. You could even evolve existing equipments using lava stones to increase the equipment’s quality.
Now that you have a strong enough army, it’s perhaps time to get into some action! Combat is among one of the best parts in Era of Empire. Although the actual battle is auto-resolved, you’ll get to strategize by deciding on which type of troops to deploy and how many of them you’ll want to use. Once done, simply wait until they arrive at the battlefield and let the battle begin!
The combat animation in this game is pretty amazing as well, particularly the close-up combat animation that you can view once your army is victorious. To view this, you’ll need to tap on the “crossed swords” icon when your troops is returning home from the battlefield. Each battle will consume some of your stamina, and unless you want to spend premium coins, you’ll need to wait for it regenerates once you ran out of stamina. You’ll be able to heal a small portion of your fallen troops at the hospital as well.
Taking the offensive stance if good and all, but you’ll still need to have a kingdom your victorious troops can return to once they are tired and worn down. This is where your defenses come in! There are quite a lot of structures in your city which will contribute to your city’s overall defense and you’ll need to upgrade them dutifully. However, if you really want to fortify your castle, you’ll need to build plenty of traps at the wall and rain them down at your enemies if they are foolish enough to attack you. Of course, having some extra troops at home to hold down the fort isn’t too bad an idea either.
Once your hero reaches level 8, you’ll gain access to a series of PvE dungeons called the Lost Dungeons. Similar to a stage-based campaign, each dungeon you complete will reward you with almost priceless lava stones and alliance honor (that you can then spend at the alliance store). If your castle reach level 6, you’ll get to do daily missions to earn some extra goodies too. There are medals (achievements) that you can attain, log-in rewards and even the lucky draw at the tavern which will shower you with freebies, so be sure to log in at least once per day to grab as many gifts as you can!
Looking to get an “unfair” advantage over your opponents? Well, you can head over to the in-game store to buy some boosts, such as boosts to your army’s attack or defense rating, boosts that lower troop upkeep or increase the maximum capacity of the troops you can send to battle, or even the anti-scout boost which prevents enemies from gauging how many units you’ve kept at home prior to attacking you. There is a Tiered VIP system in Era of Empire as well. You can level up your VIP tier by buying VIP EXPs and gradually make your way through each VIP rank (starting from Bronze). Naturally, higher VIP tiers will grant you more amazing perks, such as unlocking the Blitz option for Lost Dungeons, allowing you to quickly farm these dungeons for loot.
Community
Playing along in an MMORTS game isn’t at all fun. That’s why in Era of Empire you are actually encouraged to sign up for an alliance as soon as you can. After all, you will get a nice 100 premium coins if you do so.
Alliances contain a slew of features that will definitely make the process of finding a suitable alliance worthwhile. By being an alliance member, you’ll be able to participate in exciting alliance-only events such as alliance battles where you can fight other alliances or defend against their attacks or alliance exploration where you can earn blueprints for new equipments. There’s also an alliance help feature where other members can help you reduce the construction time of buildings or healing time of your injured troops.
You’ll also be expected to contribute to the alliance as well by donating resources to level up certain alliance skills like increase max number of players, and improve building speed, or by helping to capture Lost Castles which will then be turned into an alliance city. With every contribution you made, you’ll be given some alliance honor points. These points can then be spent at the alliance store to buy a variety of nice resource packs, speed-ups and boosts.
Graphics/ Sound
One of the most eye-catching part in Era of Empire is most definitely its graphics. I’ve honestly never seen a more beautiful MMORTS game. Your city is in 3D as well, so you can marvel at its buildings’ magnificence by viewing all 360 degrees of it. The characters in the game as well as the combat animation are very nicely designed too.
In terms of music, the background track used in this game is soothing and very nice to listen to. It’s definitely something that won’t get on your nerve or turn out to be annoying after some time. Overall, both graphics and sound manage to increase the immersion and gaming experience Era of Empire provides... and that’s something a surprising number of MMO games can’t manage to get right.
Conclusion
In short, Era of Empire is as fun as it is breathtaking. The gameplay is not only brilliantly designed for midcore MMO gamers, due to its approachable nature, the game’s also suitable for other forms of gamers as well. If you love MMO strategy games and Clash of Clans is starting to get on your nerve, Era of Empire is definitely a game you should check out. In the world of MMO strategy games, this game is as good as it gets!
Era of Empire Blog
New Game Added: Era of Empire
by Aethyna
Aug 23, 2016
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