Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients

This game is a micromanagement hell. Combine that with relatively clunky controls, and you have a very, very tedious game. Imagine Total War, except the entire map is in real time instead and every city and resource is limited to one upgrade and/or one fortification each, so fairly simplified in comparison to Total War in that regard. On the surface, this sounds great, until you realize that: A: You have to micromanage multiple armies in real time on opposite ends of your empire. B: Managing formations on a map where armies walk like giants forces you to zoom all the way in and out in order to figure out what's actually happening on the ground. Combine A and B and you just have the most tedious time imaginable. Add in the realism factor for food wagons yet none of the automation another game like Europa Universalis 4 has, and that gets upped even further. Add in the fact that population centers don't upgrade automatically, and it gets even more tedious. Then there's upgrades to cities and resources. And workers. And then there's one enemy militia raiding you while you were busy on the other side of the map. And then there's winter, bringing your advances to a halt. What really brings it down is that none of the above challenges are hard or interesting on their own. This means what makes this game challenging *is the micromanagement*. Every single element of this game is completely trivial in terms of challenge, if you could give it any focus. The question is, for how long do you actually want to give it any of your focus? I don't anymore, hence this review.

Excellent game, no game like this in the world. I have been playing it for a long time, from the first Hegemony game. If they returned they would blow up the market, a game like this with a little polish and more diplomatic options is something people are hungry for.

The Hegemony series is a fantastic series of games. They offer a near pearfect combination/mix of RTS and Grand Strategy, inn a way that games such as Crusader kings and Total war series lack. Some other games such a Supreme commander or Planetary Annihilation that also inn a way offers large combat maps "suffers"(In some part because of my lack of actions per min.) from there just being too many units and buildings to keep track off. Hegemony hits the sweet spot of tactical troop combat, city development and a absolutly huge map that offer so much replayability with starting location and with it how difficult your surrounding are. Some more polish could have been done, but i am still enjoying the game a lot.

It's okay...? I guess... I feel like I only give it a positive review because of nostalgia. Not a bad game but not amazing either. It has it's occasionally bugs and crashes so make sure to save every so often. it suffers from the same issues found in Total War games where the beginning is the most challenging part and the rest of the game becomes tedious conquering the rest of the map. The AI is not really amazing. The price is way higher than what I would sell it at, maybe 10 to 15 bucks at most, and they never put this game on sale according to steamdb. Only buy it if you REALLY like Total War games, ancient Rome and want something different from TW games. The only interesting aspect of this game is that you don't have to load in and out of battles since you are always staring at the same map. It's entertaining for an almost 10 year old game, I guess it was better in 2015. 6/10... -1 if you never played this game.

Great game for anyone looking to scratch an ancient history logistics itch. The logistics focus makes the game a whole lot more interesting for people used to Total War/Paradox games/etc. At a certain point, I felt like I was beginning to snowball, the way I feel when a Total War campaign stops being a challenge. Then, winter hit and I ran out of food. The mid to late game involves more interesting problems than other games in this genre that I've played, though I was still just going through the motions at the very end.

Hegemony 4 please!

Playing it is almost like reading Polybius or Livy.

Love this game!

Great game. One of the undiscovered gems of the RTS and Grand strategy genre, combining deep tactical battles with an even deeper strategic layer. The mod tools, which really seem to allow for some incredibly ambitious mods, are just the cherry on top.

Its great.