Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
Taking A Look At | Forge Of Empires
When it comes to mobile games what I’m usually looking for is some sort of city builder that has option PvP. It’s always nice to find something you can just log in and play at your own speed without feeling like the wrong step and not playing the game 24/7 is going to cost you the game.
Next up I ended up finding Forge of Empires. I noticed right away they were hardly trying to push me to buy anything in the microtransaction store. This seemed to be further related to me the player when I started building buildings and I was not constantly needing to burn boosters just to finish them. Yes, you can watch a video to speed them up by 10% or pay some gems or just what feels like a reasonable amount of time for the building to build.
The next part had to be I ended up joining some random guild. While they are not some top-rated guilds they did not seem to care much if I was an active player or not. They had only a couple of simple rules and it felt at a nice casual pace.
They also were not any pushovers either. They had some quite powerful players in the guild that appear to have been playing for quite some time. It ended up taking me a little while to understand their different systems since it seems people already assume you know what you are doing.
As far as the early building in city builder goes it felt quite like most others. They have a short tutorial that holds your hands walking you through placing down your first couple of buildings. After that, it transitions into completing tasks as the whole game opens to you.
The biggest thing I noticed right away was that my biggest restriction to expanding my own was obtaining the right to build on further tiles in it. You could either advance enough in the technology tree to unlock more city tiles or there was even a campaign map you send units out into combat in PvE. There are even further ways to quire more space to build in with PvP and even spend gems if someone was that desperate for space.
So far, I feel as slowly unlock further space for my town that it’s almost at a rate of progression I feel is natural in a way. Sure, I always wish I just had a couple more spots to place down some buildings. I however don’t feel like I’m not progressing fast enough even after playing this for a couple of weeks.
The tech tree itself is also another part of the game where I feel like I’m making decent enough progress to keep me engaged playing the game. Every hour you gain a single forge point assuming you are not already at a max of ten. You can also earn forge points from tasks, buildings, events, and other means. There have been instances where I had 150 forge points waiting to be spent but I had another bottleneck.
Along with forge points you also need gold, supplies, and the right kind of materials. Materials you can find, produce, or trade with other players. While out on clearing the map you can even earn up to two of reach ages resource boosters. Such as an iron mine that allows you to produce ten irons per building every eight hours instead of just two. Making it quite worthwhile to specialize in the two resources unlocked at random instead of building buildings for all of them.
It’s also been rather fun to look at other people's buildings in my guild or those the game considers to be my neighbors. At the start, I was progressing through the stone, bronze, and iron ages of the game. I was, however, checking out towns of people in some rather strange space ages of the game. Which seems to be quite many of them.
I’ll admit so far, I’ve been a bit lazy when dealing with the campaign PvE side of the game. I don’t care much about managing my units. Thankfully I can just set up my army and hit auto battle. Early on I was also paying a small gold cost to infiltrate the other side causing one heal bar points of damage to each unit beforehand. Much later it started to become far too pricey to keep up with how many battles I was rolling my units out into in a single day.
I even lucked out early on and there was an event. It was quite an easy one, just some gem matching one. You could complete extra tasks to unlock further energy for the day or wait for a new day to be restocked.
The event itself helped advance me through a couple of the first ages of the game quite quickly. Even more so since I kept earning rouge combat units. While they got killed quite quickly, they killed anything that they hit. Making them quite OP in PvE till all the ones I had earned were killed off.
Despite all the resources and powerful units that can get killed, I was getting out of the event. Along with a whole lot of forge points. Once the event was over, I suddenly did not get that feeling you tend to with these sorts of games where it’s like you are just hurrying up to wait some more. I got to advance quickly thanks to the event and then I was still at a decent progression rate I found the game to still be quite enjoyable.
Naturally, I can’t wait for another large event to happen again. Even more so since I can get some rather powerful buildings and even upgrades for those buildings that can boost my day-to-day progression quite nicely.
I don’t feel like if there is not an event going on then there is no point in logging in as many games like these tend to get that way at some point. For now, between PvE on the map, progressing my town along, and doing guild-related activities. It’s enough to keep me logging in a couple of times a day.
Final Thoughts
As I slowly expand out my city southeast. Along with replacing and upgrading many buildings, I had better versions of them as I progressed along through the different ages of the game. I’ve been having enough fun whenever I have a couple of minutes to check in and see how things are progressing so that it’s become a habit.
It has also been nice to find a mobile game that I can somewhat enjoy. Sure, it’s nothing like a good PC game. For now, however, it’s enough to tie me over till I get some better internet and can go back to playing games that are more what I’m looking for in a game.
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Forge Of empires