fantasy empires: a review of a good web game

[nastyman]

have any of you ever played this game? fantasyempires.net (http://fegame.kicks-ass.net/)

its a really fun persistent browser based game where you build up a province inside a larger empire and battle other empires for supremacy. ive been playing it off and on for around 5 years now (its been around for a little more than that) and quite enjoyed every minute.

they just started a new round today and if your interested in trying it now is a really good time to start.

there is a sharp learning curve for new players as experience players are in private empires and new players usually start out in random empires unless you have some friends to start one with.

it has a complex game engine with multiple races, standard alignments, and stat based units. there are something like 10 different units with different abilities. such as some units are flying. some units have faster speed for traveling. and there is even a minor magic system in place. its turn based but everyone takes their turns at the same time. each tick is roughly 30 minutes but if you arent on every tick you arent going to lose anything over someone on every tick. unless they attack you and take your acres that is lol.

anyway its a very fun game and very well coded and long standing.

[BR4life]

sounds kind of like Age of Chaos.

[nastyman]

there are many similar games. im just promoting a good fun one that i play. the best part of fantasy empires is when you get a few multiple empire alliances all attacking each other. just fun to get battle reports involving a couple hundred thousand units:P

[nastyman]

ok after spending like 5 minutes on age of chaos my opinion is that

FE has a much much cleaner interface. generally longer rounds, and a different turn system i think.

[Fleeing Coward]

I'll stick to Utopia, you just can't beat the old classics when it comes to these type of games, new ones pop up every while but most of them don't last that long.

[nastyman]

yea this game is only 7 years being around really. it wont last that long ya know.

[Fleeing Coward]

With only 244 registered users, I for one would be questioning how it lasted this long, seems abit small for games of this type.

[nastyman]

the current admin is afraid of google. he seems to think that if he does anything to make his site more search engine friendly he'll get blocked from the search engines. which makes me laugh.

the main reason there are so few users is that newbies get eaten quickly if they dont learn to band together.

on the upside with only 244 registered users you have more of a chance of winning and getting into top empires. with games like this i find that bigger isnt always better. i can think of several large games like this that dont actually delete unused accounts when rounds end just so they continue to look big.

[Fleeing Coward]

Small might be decent but there is such a thing as too small. For games like this, so few people just reduces the challenge level.
With a game like Utopia, because there's so many people playing, it's never boring since there will always be people your size to attack and plenty of kingdoms to war so that it doesn't get repetitive with you fighting the same people over and over again.
The very fact that you said that new players get killed off quickly if they don't learn fast might be the very reason the game remains so small. You're never going to make players stay by picking on them when they first started just because they are not as familiar with the systems.
Most of the larger more established games of this genre not only deletes inactives at the end of the round but also if they are inactive for a long period of time during a round. The few games that don't delete are usually among those games that have a small population to begin with.

[nastyman]

i agree with you on most of those points. but at the same time ive played many many games such as this and seen numbers that do not reflect actual player base. and try the game before you say it get stale and unchallenging. just get a few friends to try it with, thats the mistake most people make is that its a teamwork game.

[Virus]

With only 244 registered users, I for one would be questioning how it lasted this long, seems abit small for games of this type.

i play fantasy empires and i made this account JUST to reply to your post (feel special, i dont often sign up to forums because i spend too much time on forums as it is :))

FE (fantasy empires) HAS existed for OVER 7 years.. ive played since ORIGINAL FE 1.0

the total rounds have been...

20-30 short beta's? before round 1.0 - i dunno how many players... prolly 500-1000 at most?

round 1.0 to 1.2 - 1000+ players
round 1.3 to 1.7 - 2000-3000+ players
round 2.0+ i stopped playing in 2.0... but you can see how things were going (good ^^)

then in round 2.7 the original admins (the people who CREATED FE) got bored.. stopped running FE... it was offline for a few weeks.. maybe months.... and all that was left was the source files... which the new admin (ftass) is doing a good job as new admin.. HOWEVER... due to the down times... and the change of URL/domain/whatever... we have lost LOTS of players.

nastyman posted this post here in an attempt at getting some people who might enjoy FE as much as all the current players do to play from your community so that we can build up our player count once again.

so please, ignore the low user count.. and give FE a try if team based strategy is your sort of thing :) (even better... bring 9 friends with you and play as a team on there :))


oh and just fyi... FE changed domain less than a year ago which does explain why the user count is still low :P but FE is fun even with this low user count... but i do agree.. it would be MORE fun with more players... that is where all you reading comes in? ^^

[nastyman]

thanks for the further info virus. and also the router problem that had the site down for 1 day got fixed and they are up and running again after 1 day. that shows some dedicated admins for a game that has no charges anywhere!