TFC: The Fertile Crescent

Great game, can be very addictive in a Civilization 'one more turn' sort of way. Some aspects about unit selection/AI could be improved, but it's still really fun and the art-style and setting are both very cool

Is The Fertile Crescent worth it? = yes. It is not flawless and there is definitely more that could have been done with it but this is a charming little RTS being sold at a very reasonable price IMO. I think it would be an excellent first RTS for someone new to the genre. It is also an easy recommendation for experienced RTS players who like the setting of the original Age of Empires but want something slightly smaller and more relaxing. The pixel-art style is pretty good, the music fits the setting and the whole game has a lovely atmosphere. It also runs well on a low-spec machine. In the beggining the gameplay is quite similar to Age of Empires. You establish a settlement, gather resources, construct buildings and gradually put together an army. One fairly unique feature is that your town centre generates workers automatically, which I really liked. Food is also the REAL heart of the economy. Your population constantly consumes it, so you begin by gathering red berries and hunting until your farming infrastructure is strong enough to support a growing population of workers and warriors. The larger your settlement and army become, the more people you need gathering and producing food simply to keep everyone alive. This makes food more than just another resource used to purchase units. It places a genuine limit on how quickly you can expand and how large an army you can maintain. It also allows for strategies based on attrition. Blocking access to resources, disrupting trade or surrounding a settlement can do real damage without requiring you to destroy every building directly. There are some clever environmental decisions too. Fertile ground can be used for farming or dug up for clay, forcing you to choose between producing food and gathering building materials. Wood and metal are also finite, so expansion eventually becomes necessary. You can play defensively, but you cannot really turtle sit inside one tiny settlement forever and expect the economy to sustain itself. Unlike Age of Empires, there are only two stages. You begin as a nameless pre-civilisation culture before falling into the sphere of influence of one of three major Bronze Age powers: Assyria, Babylon or Egypt. Each civilisation has its own flavour, and even though of the unit line up is shared it feels less monotonous than vanilla Age of Empires does. The campaign is good and acts as a solid introduction to the mechanics. It was entertaining and took me about six hours to complete on the hardest difficulty. The campaign alone was worth the price, while the additional skirmish, PvP and Hordes modes make it an even stronger recommendation. The problem is that those additional modes do not have quite enough depth to keep the game interesting indefinitely. Skirmishes can become repetitive once you understand the economic loop and the differences between the three civilisations. Hordes is a particularly good idea that feels slightly underdeveloped. You must survive up to 15 waves on the hardest setting, but the mode is largely about managing your population and somehow keeping enough people alive. You never really get the opportunity to construct a proper fortified settlement and discover how long it can survive. An endless version with more time to establish a base, build defences and withstand increasingly difficult waves would add a huge amount of replayability. The foundations are already there; the game simply needed a little more development around its alternative modes. I would also have liked to see animal husbandry and a larger selection of civilisations and units. The Hittites are the obviously missingciv but the same basic formula could eventually support the Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians and plenty of others. The Fertile Crescent is both a good game and a demonstration of a much larger idea. There is some wasted potential here IMO but the game is affordable enough that I do not feel particularly bleak about it. For the price, it is an easy recommendation. With more factions, a broader unit roster and deeper alternative modes this could have been a much bigger RTS. Hopefully the developers take the formula further in the sequel... which I bought and installed while writing this review.