Illyriad - Grand Strategy MMO
Before going into why I cannot recommend this game, let me point out that there are a couple of positive aspects to Illyriad. First, for a MMO, the game’s community is exceedingly welcoming to newcomers. Many of the established players are willing to answer basic questions in the chat, and even provide early game resource donations. The game world is suitably large and there is a strategic depth to the game that requires classic “guns vs. butter” decision making.
Those things said, there are two components of the game that prevent a recommendation.
– Real player with 4248.6 hrs in game
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For starters, this game is free-to-play, with a good premium currency model that isn’t pay-to-win (and you can even win free currency on Trivia Tuesdays). The community is great and very helpful to new players, and due to game design, big players aren’t rewarded for griefing new players, and there are apparently big players who will punish those who try.
The game itself is for those who like long-term worlds that change slowly, which I like, but ultimately, I ran into a series of disappointments that convinced me this game wasn’t for me.
– Real player with 460.5 hrs in game
CONFLICT OF NATIONS: WORLD WAR 3
BUT - Alright another 300 hours down the tube and I have to amend nearly all of the below. There are mechanics in the game that allow for players that are in your coalition (Alliance) to move freely through your territory. Which is great in theory; until it cannot be revoked. There is a leave timer for your alliance set at 24 hours; the player leaving can start and stop this timer as many times as they please to get just the right amount of time to land in your homeland cities effectively removing you from the round. You will find a great many people hanging around trolling with this mechanic. So much so that any alliance made in a round is more dangerous to you than helpful. In speaking with staff, I’ve been told the same rules apply here for people legitimately playing as those whom are trolling. So; what this boils down to is if you want to invest upwards of 40 days in a round where someone will gleefully destroy themselves and you for the joy harassing another on the internet; or not. If you want to pay for this experience or not.
– Real player with 2675.0 hrs in game
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I like to play the game but it has a option for total paytowin. It destroys most rounds if someone spent alot gold to repair units, sabotage your city you cant counter. I understand that deployers need money but like in most games pay to win is the wrong way. Shame since it is a grat game.
Play Example:
I played Japan it is round 18 on a 24 hour cycle so i spent around 2 1/2 weeks in this round allready.
I managed get a coalition going with surrounding neighbors.
A few Ships are defending the Coasts and Industry is looking good.
– Real player with 612.5 hrs in game
Generals & Rulers
I haven’t spent much time in the game. However, I found it really engaging. It’s a really good stratery game about global wars and conquests. What I liked in it is that there are different ways of achieving a goal: you can use diplomacy, hidden war, and the good old assault. History lovers will really like this game, as you can play for any country from a list of more that a hundred ones. The gameplay is dynamic, although you can choose the speed of it yourself. It’s a plus that it’s turn-based. The AI is clever and it can cause you to think a lot when you progress further in the game. It’s easy to defeat the first countries but then it becomes more difficult to do so. You have to use all types of attacks and influence to defeat the enemy. I tried the multiplayer mode with one of my friends. It was fun to divide Asia and then have a final battle. It’s a fun game for two players, but you can also invide up to 10 players. We plan to gather a lot of people in the evening today and start battling. The game is great! I recommend buying it.
– Real player with 18.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grand Strategy Casual Games.
Can’t recommend. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not good and there are plenty of good games out there.
It’s very glitchy, although only occasionally game-breaking. I cannot finish the World Map because the game freezes even after reloading and I don’t want to restart it to find out if that happens every time.
The late game is grindy, and there are no meaningful choices, just turn after turn of dragging a slider and hiring all the soldiers, then scrolling to “90%” and hitting “send reinforcements”. Or if you’re attacking by sea because they’re on islands, sending 18% of your army, then sending 18% of your remaining forces, then 18% of those remaining forces, and after doing this 12 times each turn you’ll have sent 90+% of your army. Why can’t you send all of your army? Who knows.
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Imperia Online
Okay, let’s go… For all those who are considering this game need to know some facts.
First thing first. It’s pure pay to win game. Meaning if you want to win era/season you need to buy: Premium, Subscription, take daily offers and so on… Or if you have luck to join some rich players alliances and they carry you all the way up.
Second thing; There are cheaters/scripters in game. There are 3rd party people who sell those stuff and when some rich player who spent so much money on the game use those stuff (scripts) IO admins will look otherway. So, as long as you’re spending money you can use cheats do frauds; you are protected.
– Real player with 7366.2 hrs in game
As far as I can tell this is the best empire builder mmo I’ve come across so far. I’ve been overlooking this game for a long time. Right now I’m pretty happy I finally decided to give it a shot. It caught me by surprise to be honest. I started off playing these types of games with Evony. Later on I tried Forge Of Empires, Ikariam, O Game. I played Stronghold Empires Online for a good time, and that’s not a bad empire builder game. But, as of now, I don’t think I’ve found a better one than Imperia Online. I’m pretty surprised to be honest. If you’ve ever played any of the games I’ve played then you most definitely want to give this one a shot. I especially like the aspect of managing a court of nobles which you appoint as generals and governors. I’ve never seen this aspect to an Empire Builder before. Pretty fun.
– Real player with 226.4 hrs in game
Romans: Age of Caesar
A co-op MMORTS from a team of veteran city builder developers, Romans: Age of Caesar is the latest historical strategy game from Stronghold developers Firefly Studios. In Romans players must rebuild the empire as they gather resources, re-establish trade routes and protect shared city states from barbarian invasion!
Build Rome Together
Experience classic city builder gameplay online as you build, trade and fight alongside fellow players in a shared open world. With up to 16 players per city, governors must cooperate to grow and begin rebuilding the empire.
Grow Your Economy
Beyond your district lies an expansive empire map filled with new settlements, unique resources and growing threats. Forge alliances with otherwise rival city states, revive the republic and restore the Roman Empire to its former glory!
Reforge an Empire
Engage in tactical combat to push back barbarian frontiers in PvE or engage in political warfare, forging alliances to claim glory in epic PvP battles. Draw blood or work alongside fellow governors, defeating common threats and building the prosperity of your shared city states.
Become Caesar
With the ultimate goal to be crowned Caesar, players must carefully work their way into the senate. Earn the confidence of your political partners and either rise with them through the lower chambers or betray former allies when it suits you best. Manoeuvre between different loyalties, positions and even gods, to remain politically nimble and succeed in your final quest for power.
Key Features
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🏛️BUILD Rome Together - Rebuild Rome’s once great cities with up to 16 players and ally with thousands more across the empire.
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💰GROW Your Economy - Specialise your city district to serve the needs of your fellow governors, cooperating to prosper and expand.
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🗺️REFORGE an Empire - Resist barbarians and threats from traitorous politicians as you establish new settlements and trade routes.
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🗡️BECOME Caesar - Negotiate your way through the lower levels of the Senate, sights firmly set on the title and power of Caesar.
Minds of Nations
This somehow has wormed it’s way into one of my favorite games. It’s underrated for being a free game, and bashed for being difficult to get into. It’s true in it’s current state it has a learning curve, but in my opinion the learning experience has been great. There are bad times, where your nation gets clapped right off that bat, you get a bad spawn and have no chance. Fans of strategy can really excel here with this game, though. The depth of control over the nation is really getting beefy with the trade update, and really fleshed out the nation interactions. The developer is awesome, you can talk with them often on the INGAME forums about whatever.
– Real player with 241.0 hrs in game
THIS IS BOTH A REVIEW AND A NOTE TO THE DEVS!
Honestly, on a scale of 0/10 the game would probably be around a 7. This is due to several reasons:
1: The Tutorial sucks. It does. I know that you tried your hardest Dev, but with the amount of information given to the player, it is to much in one period of time. I would recommend you add a Single-Player tutorial map with AI Bots (They don’t have to be advanced, it is just a tutorial, it does not have to play as a real single-player game) but creating a map where the player can test a few things before diving in would be good.
– Real player with 73.6 hrs in game
AMG
Does have some heavy p2w with cash shop but the majority of people look to be spending only a little or none at all. Do get a lot of free stuff (including cash shop currency) as you progress through quests and achievements which is nice. Pretty fun game overall.
– Real player with 229.8 hrs in game
Nothing but Pay to win title. worked all of the modes and sadly the same still applies. The A.I. seems to be designed to make you constantly upgrade to advance and of course the levels CAN all be bought through or wait days while being raped in the modes. Find another game .
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Blood of Steel
This game was way better than I originally anticipated. A friend introduced this to me. At first, I wasn’t really pulled in by the visual design, but as I played it, I noticed I naturally got into it extremely fast. The game offers a wide variety of ways to get free skins and heroes through events they conduct. The game is updated and patched every week so there’s consistently new content being added either a new hero, event, and/or more.
Unranked matches can be quick to get into and are often fast so you can constantly get in and out of action. There are various game modes that have been added that are fun as well and can be rewarding to get free cosmetics, but some of them have time restraints that I would like to see removed to allow people to play them more often. Ranked matches can be difficult to get into depending on your rank, but can also be almost instant to get a match at times.
– Real player with 933.4 hrs in game
So after a while of playing im gonna have to change my review.
Games still a pretty good game. BUT…..
Theres a lot of bots.
and i mean ALOT of bots.
the Que time to get into a ranked match, is over an HOUR.
The combat system is pretty garbage to learn and doesnt work for everyone
Sometimes you cant even use abilities or even left click attack.
All the events are based around a specific time frame.
Too much time-based responsibilities.
The community managers will ignore your messages.
Even if its in the serious benefit for them.
– Real player with 603.6 hrs in game
Call of War: World War 2
Call of War had a lot of potential and can really be a lot of fun at first. It is very competitive ad interesting for the most part in early games where momst people playing are beginners. Then as you advance you find out just how crazy people can become with games that allow you to “pay to win”, players pump in a lot of money to buy a win and think nothing of how it ruins the game. To be fair, it does not always happen, but there is no way of determining if a “map” or game instance will have one or a few of these types of players. In these maps the games become a drain n either ones wallet or ones senses, I for one keep thinking, “why would anynone spend that kind of moeny to win a game”, yet people do over and over. I do not deny the developer and publisher their fair profit as they do deserve a return on their creation, but there needs to be a better method, like a cost throttle, the more you spend the more things cost, or some upper limit on what you can spend on an instance. I don’t know the fix, but almost every online game has the same issue, play for free, pay to win. Bytro and its games are in this arena, I say avoid them or proceed with caution unless you are mega wealthy and want to show people jsut how much money you can spend to win a game. I will continue to play, at least as long as Bytro will allow as they threaten to ban me for calling heavy spenders out, which is apparently against their rules. I say if it aint true then ban me, if it is fix the game! For the record, I have participated in 35 games to date, won 18, 3 are still undecided and almost all fo the other games were one by someone that spent a lot of money, so expect someone to be a big spender in 40% to 50% of the games. Due to this issue, I cannot recommend the game. There are also some fundamental issues with the game that were not fully thought out by the developer, some do not make sense, like allowing CAP to go out beyond the max range of a air strike, there are no differences in nationality for troops - which for a game based on WWII it makes little sense, which means there are no nationalistic capabilities or differences in troops, no quantity over quality, and upgrades that jsut happen, even when aircraft in in flight or a ship at sea. Most of these can be overlooked, but I cannot allow a game to call it a strategy game and allow people to win with paying an accessive amount of money.
– Real player with 2636.8 hrs in game
In a nutshell: Do not waste your time here.
EDIT: https://gyazo.com/c84c1dc3e1be2e5c33b08d55870637b8
EDIT 2:
I have just played a game where after so many weeks of painstaking planning in a discord server, I sent an invasion force across the water and the gold user knew the exact positions of my invasion force, bought an army using $$$, and sunk my entire army. This is not a strategy game… It’s a moneymaking scam.
Horrifyingly pay to win.
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Pay to speed up production.
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Pay to speed up research.
– Real player with 862.5 hrs in game
Tribal Wars
I have been playing this game since 2007. Most of the gameplay is still the same from back then. But now with a lot of QoL improvements. The game is well balanced overall, but sometimes a little too much luck based. I have a lot of great memories from this game and made a lot of friends aswell. The game is easy to start with but hard to master.
However the developers do not know what to do with this game and destroyed this beautifull game the last couple of years. The game has become too much pay to win in my eyes and it’s not doing any good. I don’t mind to pay for extra premium functions, but buying resources, cheaper buildings, instantly finishing buildings, with your own money to get an advantage over other players is just plain wrong in my eyes. Also the addition of flags is only benefitting the older players and not the newer ones.
– Real player with 803.9 hrs in game
This was mostly a trip down memory lane for me. I played on World 18 and 19 about 12 years ago. And, by the way, the game on their international server is currently on World 117. This is on the Tribal Wars US server. But, the game is more or less the same.
This game requires a lot of baby sitting. Everything runs in real time. And, it is highly recommended that you get in a good tribe early–or that you join one that is very good diplomatically to become aligned with the winning tribe. If you start later than a few days after world launch, you are already in trouble and could end up continually getting conquered and restarted.
– Real player with 368.4 hrs in game