If you don’t know a thing about me and just arrived at Strategy and Wargaming, first of all: Welcome here, it’s nice to have you. Second: I love medieval games, and this may be because I have a bachelor’s in History, and one of my topics of study was Medieval warfare. Now, I’m not one of those historical YouTubers that obsesses over what makes a sword, a sword, or if having a hilt more curved than what a manual shows means that it’s no longer a sword, but a fork only used during the battle of Sluys by a subset of longbowmen from York. Instead, I am someone who studied high-level strategy and battlefield tactics. Field of Glory: Kingdoms should be the perfect game for me. Right?

• Genre: Grand-Strategy/ Turn-Based Tactics/ Medieval Warfare
• Developer: AGEOD
• Publisher: Slitherine
• Release Date: 4th June, 2024
• Price: $39.99/ 38,99€/ £33.50
• Buy at: Steam
• Reviewed On: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.70 GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 2080

Nuno: Before you read this review, know that it took me a while and a lot of effort to put this one together, so I split it into two pages to get the maximum amount of ad revenue possible for this effort. If you would be so kind as to not be mad and click the second page, I would highly appreciate it.

First of all, it’s probably best to describe Field of Glory: Kingdoms, how it plays, and what’s trying to do. Field of Glory: Kingdoms is a medieval grand-strategy game, played in turns, and these happen simultaneously, unlike something like Total War, whose turns happen one at a time for every existing faction. It starts in the year 1054, after the Great Schism, and it lasts for two centuries, the game taking place during a convoluted but important, formational period for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. As rulers, players must secure the perpetuity of their dynasty and domains, and increase their influence on the political stage by way of the diplomat or the sword.

If you’re thinking “That sounds really close to something like Crusader Kings”, you would be partly correct. However, I would argue that Crusader Kings 3 is leaning ever more so into role-playing territory and it just happens to be in the format of a grand-strategy game. In Crusader Kings 3 your focus is, above all else, on the progression of your dynasty, and then your domain. Field of Glory: Kingdoms strays too far from a character-focused game into more of a nation builder, with some very light dynasty management elements in between. In essence, while these titles might look similar, they play very differently, and Field of Glory: Kingdoms focus is also a lot more militaristic than Crusader Kings ever attempted to be. That’s in part because Field of Glory: Kingdoms does something fantastic, albeit with one major caveat.

Field of Glory: Kingdoms plays like a grand-strategy title, but if you own Field of Glory 2: Medieval (and given that it’s the best military medieval game ever created, you really should), there’s the possibility of exporting the battles from Field of Glory: Kingdoms and play them out using the Field of Glory 2: Medieval turn-based battle system. I won’t go into depth on Field of Glory 2: Medieval, and if you want to know more about that game, you can read my review where I explain, at length, why I think the battle system does a great job of successfully emulating real-world medieval battles. The caveat is, of course, that since Field of Glory 2: Medieval is a different game than Field of Glory: Kingdoms, you must own both to take advantage of this feature. Medieval usually goes for very cheap during Steam Sales, and with those happening constantly, you can probably pick it up for a fiver. The other main issue is that to play the battles you must export the file from Kingdoms, launch Medieval, duke it out, and export the results back to Kingdoms. Not the smoothest experience, but far from the worst, because, in all fairness, you’ll probably be better off just playing the important battles, instead of worrying yourself with small-scale skirmishes with a couple hundred units. In all honesty, while I really like the feature, I never used it in the Grand Campaign.

Now, with that out of the way, how does Field of Glory: Kingdoms hold on its own? How does it compare to Crusader Kings? And should you play one over another? Well, that’s going to depend on mainly one thing: do you play Crusader Kings 3 for the politics? If so, then Field of Glory: Kingdoms systems won’t be enough to satisfy you. If you wish that Crusader Kings were more streamlined in terms of nation management and find yourself longing for the thrill of sword slashes, lance trusts and cavalry charges, Field of Glory: Kingdoms might prove itself more worthy of your time and money.

Field of Glory: Kingdoms plays very much like your typical empire builder. You control a portion of the map (which ranges from small kingdoms to large empires) and in broad strokes make the necessary decisions to keep everything running smoothly: raise armies, build up your counties, and allocate your populace to get the most out of them. Field of Glory: Kingdoms is also set apart from other games of the genre due to its turn-based system. Unlike Crusader Kings, which takes place in real-time, or games Total War are “I go, you go” turn-based, Field of Glory: Kingdoms operates on a “We go” system, meaning that every action and move is executed simultaneously on the world map.

This “We go” system might sound weird to some of you at first, but in all actuality, it works great for the setting. Those of you who are more familiar with medieval military history will know that medieval armies rarely knew where their enemy was, which left a lot of locations open to be raided, exploited and looted even before the news had reached the local Lord or some regional power. The we-go system, by having everyone move all the armies at once doesn’t allow for “on-the-fly” adjustments to your actions, which is actually kind of realistic, given how slowly news and communications were. Once you plot movements for your troops and press the next turn button, things will happen, and it is out of your control: you might encounter a poorly defended province, or you might find the largest army the kingdom could muster, that in the last turn might have been close, but not close enough. This is, of course, still a very game-ish mechanic, but it does provide Field of Glory: Kingdoms with a sense of authenticity and makes the players ask questions that a real commander would: can you allow for some regions to be undefended? Where to strike to maximize damages and minimize losses? Can I sustain a prolonged siege with my massive army while my northern regions are facing societal unrest? Lots of questions, with lots of answers. That’s lovely.

On the same note as the paragraph above, don’t go around thinking that just because a unit is two regions away it can’t move to intercept you. Because the game’s terrain matters- and it matters in a big way. Each terrain type allows armies to march more or less distance, depending on how hard traversing it is. What also matters is your army composition, with a light army moving swiftly, while a more numerous and onerous one might find itself in trouble in both reaching its destination, as well as sustaining its own existence. Armies fight on their stomach, the old adage goes, and in Field of Glory: Kingdoms things aren’t any different. Armies must sustain their efforts, and they’ll do that by consuming the food they find as they go along with their campaign. March a big enough army along a location with little to no supplies and things will get hairy very fast.

As for armies, the game plays around with a couple different typologies: you can recruit regular army units, levy units, and mercenaries. All have their strong and weak points. The first ones gain experience but cost a bit more to maintain than levies. Levies are cheap but mostly composed of peasants hastily armed with whatever there’s available. Then there are the professionally equipped and experienced mercenaries, however these will tear open massive holes in your kingdom’s treasury. Every army needs a man leading, and Field of Glory: Kingdom highly incentivizes you to pick a character to lead the men into battle. Each of these commanders has their own traits, personalities, and strong and weak points. Sometimes they only have either strong or weak points. Their military acumen comes into play during their battles, actively boosting the troop’s performances. Their traits, however, are a bit more interesting, and if you pick the right one things can be rather chaotic in a funny way.

In my campaign starting as Portugal (I won’t get into the historical accuracy of this, but let’s just say that Portugal, in Kingdoms, exists in 1054, which it didn’t until, at least, 1139 or 1143, depending on which History book you read it from), I had a small coffer and even a small army. Early on I was surrounded by powerful Muslim armies of Badajoz and Andaluz, when war broke out between them and my Castilian liege, I was dragged into the fray. Realizing the need to strike fast, seize the initiative and be aggressive, at the helm of my small army I placed a noble lord called Guaspar de Castro (who isn’t a real person as far as I know). This noble boasted a 2-point offensive rating, giving his men a massive advantage against the enemy, and it accumulated a “psychopath” trait, so that with every battle won he accumulated 25% more victory points and would have a 35% chance of letting his men pillaging the region. Using him as the tip of my small kingdom’s spear, and his relentless and ferocious demeanour, battle after battle the enemy was defeated, and the enemy regions found themselves ever more depleted of resources. Fast forward two decades after Castile and Badajoz started their war and Badajoz fell after a 3 year long siege commanded by Guaspar and his captains.

In the abstract, this sounds great, but how do battles play out? If you have Field of Glory 2: Medieval and want to play every battle yourself, please do. You’re able to do it, except for siege and naval scuffles. I, however, have decided to auto-play my battles, mainly because the process of having to jump between games isn’t something I’m particularly a fan of, and because I play Field of Glory: Kingdoms to live out the fantasy of creating and ruling over a kingdom. In the end, let’s just say that it’s nice to have this feature, and I know a lot of people will love this, mainly because it turns Field of Glory: Kingdoms into a more “hardcore” and authentic version of Total War: Medieval, but instead of having real-time strategy battles, they take place in turns. Field of Glory 2: Medieval is a great game in its own right and as a strategy title, no other game can match its authenticity when it comes to medieval battles, so there’s that, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Battles in Field of Glory Kingdoms are quick affairs, that play somewhat similar to a tabletop game, armies have a go at each other, dice are rolled and the losses are applied. This all happens automatically, with no input from the player. Armies will use ranged weapons, engage in melee, perform cavalry charges, retreat, pursuit, and all that good stuff. A lot is out of your control if you decide to let the AI, and the results are pretty much cookie-cutter. As soon as you see both battles on the field, more often than not you’ll spot the victorious one right way. You have a surprise here and there, and win an unexpected victory, or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but not that often. Terrain also has a massive impact in the battles since the size of the battlefield troops will be fighting on will determine the size of the amount of available space for armies to deploy. So, if you have a small army, favour locations where you can use choke points to deny that advantage to the enemy. There’s a whole lot to explore here, and I feel that I have barely scrapped the surface with the military systems, and so far I am enjoying it quite a lot. Now, let’s jump to the next page and talk about everything else that doesn’t involve spears and swords, at least for the most part.

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