I am not a review writing type of guy, but I'm making this exception for Sovereignty. I really enjoy this game. First, the art and atmosphere is excellent. I'm a strategy hound and I've had hundreds of hours of gaming fulfillment with games that have horrible graphics like the Dominions series or Stars! I don't require graphics, but Sovereignty turns my head. I feel like it is a beautifully detailed board game. The music is agreeable.
What makes this game stand out is the combat system. A tremendous amount of thought and creativity has gone into the tactical combat system and I respect and applaud the designers. This isn't the worn out rock, paper, scissors of archers beat spears beats cavalry beats archers. Instead, infantry is usually weak with lower attack and defense values, but contains the potential to become a tank in numbers and with positioning. Infantry has an attribute called Shield Wall which gives it (and it's neighboring Infantry) a defensive bonus against archers and cavalry. If you have two fellow infantry touching you, you get the maximum bonus. This is pure genius! It is similar to fighting with one ally having your back or being in a line of infantry, one on each side of you. Once a Shield Wall gets set up, it can be a tough nut to crack! This makes it interesting that one or two infantry can just be bypassed, but a line of them literally wall off an area. Archers have the standard offensive, defensive, and counter-fire functions, but place a row of say 3 archers behind a line of maybe 4 infantry and you have an incredibly effective army. Siege weapons like catapults can shock the infantry in a wall, archers can soften them up, then you can charge with your cavalry to try to puncture through or flank around. It's a lovely system and it's the core of why I like this game.
Another solid implementation in this game is terrain. The various races have terrain they prefer economically, but also give them advantages in combat. The foresters prefer the woods and mountaineers the mountains. Forests decrease the effectiveness of arrows. When you defend in the woods or mountains, you get a +2 defensive bonus. Hills give +1 for attack and +1 for defense. As a cavalry specialized nation, Berany, I dominated with Uhlans in the plains. Then when I took those horses into the mountains, my speed was gone and my combat effectiveness plummeted. I really liked that visceral feeling the terrain gave me in the gaming experience. I was crushing opponents with my charges and felt the game was getting too easy until I hit the mountains or ran into the Boruvian Empire's Royal Pikes. The pleasure I got raining arrows down on the opposing infantry as they waded through the river was satisfying.
The spell system is still in development and needs work. You are limited to six spells. Some people don't like that limitation, but I do. I like tough but interesting choices. The problem right now is there are too few spells to choose from. Basically, there's really no choice of the 8 or 9 spells. Everyone will pick the same best 6 for their nation. I'd like to see more spells and more variety, but still limit our choices. The magic research system is brilliant. You get five points of magic research per turn for every 1% of your economy you devote to research. This is revolutionary. In other games, to research a certain spell or breakthrough, there is a fixed cost because gold or income essentially is equivalent to research. Therefore, typically it is better to scale up your economy first, then do research. This means large civilizations, space empires, or what have you, will always have more technology than smaller ones. Not so in Sovereignty! Even if I have only one province, like Sirucil, I can be #1 in Magic Research if I commit a higher percentage of my economy to research. Kudos to the designers on this! Other games in the genre should adopt this method of determining the cost of research. On the flip side, military powers can capture Landmarks on the global map to speed research, which works well. As your domain expands, you will have larger military upkeep costs and may need to cut back on your magic research, but Landmarks enable you to somewhat keep up in the arms race.
Units come in standard, mercenary, elite, and unique unit types. Mercenary units typically have short build times, but high upkeep. Elite units are limited to four total you can have at a time, and uniques are one unit only. I really like having few unit types because it forces to me try to use different units in different combinations. Each nation has an incredibly different play style and experience due to this restriction. As Sonneneve, I had one superb unique healer, my Unicorn, for my entire nation. That made my army with that healing unit much more effective than any of my other armies. With Bereska, my only healers were my elite War Priests. I researched Herbalism to increase the healing power of those four units and they were able to fully heal one unit per combat round. As Berany, my Uhlans are classified as mercenaries so I utilized a Mercenary Captain hero to get a double turn with them once per battle. I used the same technique with Marna's Gendarmes as Myrmont.
Units are either single individuals or groups. Groups lose combat effectiveness as they take damage whereas individuals do not. So as my archers take damage they become ineffective, but my Bone Demon still does as much damage at 50% health as he did at 100%. On the other hand, it becomes harder to damage groups with arrows as they become fewer in number, but individuals are fully vulnerable to arrows. Clever system! You can soften groups up with volleys of arrows, but you still need infantry or cavalry to follow on.
Although the tactical battles shine, the strategic portion of the game is rudimentary. The map overall is promising with interesting variations of terrain, special landmarks, and particular provinces with special abilities like allowing you to dramatically improve your diplomatic communication times. However, provinces can only be developed through a simple mechanic of leveling a province economically. Capital provinces can be leveled to a max of 9, ports to 7 and all other provinces to level 5. To capture a province, you must lower that development level down to zero, one turn at a time. After you capture the province, you can then build it back up, one turn at a time. There is no infrastructure currently as far as building additional fortifications or buildings. Frustratingly, you can't even build roads to speed up the travel times of units through your territory. You don't unlock more possible units to construct by building something like an archery range to allow construction of archers from that province. Instead, you can build any unit right from the start of the game in any province you own as long as you have the resources. You can obtain resources via trade, or by purchasing them on the market. Sometimes you won't see the particular resource you need for 20 turns, then it will show up for one turn with 15 for sale, then the next turn it's gone.
Diplomacy is basic as well. Besides trading resources, you can establish non-aggression pacts and alliances. Interestingly, if you are in an alliance, you can build one additional unit type from your ally. If you go to war with that ally though, the units disband.
The game is in early access. It is currently very buggy and I've had countless CTD's. Sometimes I have to restart my computer to get the game to load. The AI needs serious work. There are balance issues. Some unit functions (like cavalry's Roll Up) are not currently functioning. On the plus side, the developers are quite responsive. I am still playing this game and I really hope they succeed. This is a special game and the designers are to be commended for some revolutionary concepts.
