Gaming Review: Forge of Empires

Article by Ice

Last month I wrote about Football Identity a game I came across on facebook, this month is another game I found through facebook but is played remotely. You can login with your facebook id though. That game is Forge of Empires. 

Forge of Empires is about developing your city and expanding throughout the ages, starting in the Stone Age moving through Bronze Age all the way up to the Contemporary Era (Tomorrow era due to release this month).

The game has so many routes of play it’s impressive, I find myself quite addicted to it and am currently playing on 3 servers, 1 in Contemporary Era & two in Iron Age.

You can play the game solo by yourself and just use the market to trade goods to unlock research, you can choose to stay in a particular era you like the style of or you can move up through to the end.

As with all empire games there is an element of combat, how much of a role that plays is up to you, there is a continent map that you expand through as you progress to unlock boosts, land expansions and other goodies. There is also the ability to attack other players and take their goods through plundering. There is a larger scale guild versus guild gameplay that see’s you work as part of a team to control larger areas of space per era.

Each era comes with new buildings, cultural and production and goods buildings for unlocking research. They each have 2 great buildings such as Castel de Monte, Deal Castle & the Innovation Tower, each of the great buildings provides different boosts such as increased military strength, daily goods or increasing happiness to your people. 

As you progress through the game you’ll get to tackle the management of population, happiness, goods production and raising an army, all aided through completing side quests to gain bonuses. The biggest challenge most players come across however is space, as you need to unlock expansions to increase the size of your city. Even at the latest era it’s difficult to fit in all the Great Buildings so you need to make a decision of how you will play the game and make the most of your space, some gamers go for military stretch others prefer to maximize goods production – some just want a pretty city.

The choice is yours, the game also has regular events to mark events such as the Easter Egg hunt, Christmas presents and last year we had a Soccer event to celebrate the world cup. Each giving you an opportunity to obtain premium items at no cost. 

Disclaimer: The game is free, but it offers in-game purchased that can provide you with an edge or speed up certain processes like obtain great buildings etc.