Now that swords are sheathed, let’s talk about the kingdom management aspect of Field of Glory: Kingdoms. For the most part, I enjoy what’s available, at least for now. The game has economic, social, political and religious systems to deal with, and they all work in tandem with one another and are relatively simple to interact with once you know your way around the user interface.

As for the economic and social aspects of the game, a lot of your decisions will be made on the city-management menu. The game has a cool system that allows the player to move around its citizens and allocate them to several lines of work: agriculture; infrastructure (or production), and trade. So, very similar to the way you allocate your population in something like the Civilization series of games. Of course, this is a very gamey system that in no way, shape or form is even remotely authentic or realistic. However, it allows for a lot of optimization every turn, and it allows players to quickly adapt their work allocation to face new challenges. As your population grows, new population units will appear and you’ll be able to allocate them as you wish. Pretty inorganic, but fun.

Clergymen and Noblemen also have their roles to play in this society, with the former being focused on making sure people in the said location are being educated and converted to their faith, and the latter spends his time training troops or increasing their authority. If need be, noblemen can also play a role as merchants, which is, in fact, very historically accurate.

In the Medieval world, religion played a central role in shaping society, and the individual’s place in it. Field of Glory: Kingdoms doesn’t forget that fact and it blends religion into its systems in a manner that one would expect: conquer cities and counties where your religion’s foothold is weak and things will get complicated, with heretics chipping away at your authority, revolts happening, and rebels rising. I know the game has a Holy War mechanic (Crusades and Jihad), but I haven’t been able to experience those.

You can count on the help of nobles in your court to give you a helping hand in managing your kingdom. Similarly to what happens with armies, you can assign governors to regions to ease the load of local government. Fortunately, for you, these noblemen can be quite capable of managing and picking the right ones for the right challenge, and you’re sure to have some of these problems solved in a couple of years or decades, which is rather fast in medieval times. This appointment system is also useful if you want to have certain regions focus on producing specific resources like money or food without having to optimize every turn, as you can order your governor to focus on what you want.

These noblemen might be loyal to you, at least up to a certain point. Displease them too much, or give them too much power, and they’ll turn the helping hand into a fist. The same thing happened to me with Guaspar de Castro, the mighty hero of the Reconquista. There are a couple of tools to deal with this, by either keeping their positions of power limited or keeping them happy by other means. Of course, if these things don’t work out, a knife in the dark might do the trick.

One of your main tools to govern your kingdoms is going to be your “regional decisions”. These “regional decisions” play almost like cards in other games. Once every couple of turns, you randomly get some “regional decisions” to play around with. These can range from assassination plots, raising armies, sneak attacks, helping religious conversion, and building siege equipment. It’s a random, but nice system. During my time with the game, I had enough decisions that I never found myself lacking any single one in particular, but if you find that some won’t be useful for a long time, you can trade them out for money. Yet another system that strays a bit too far from the authentic feeling I have while playing the military side of the game. And speaking of lack of authenticity: another system that might rub some people the wrong way is the building system. Similar to other games of the genre, you can build several types of buildings in towns. In Field of Glory: Kingdoms, the buildings you have available at a given moment aren’t because you have unlocked them through a research tree, or because it’s what makes sense for a particular region, instead the buildings that are presented to you are randomly assigned. If you want to build any other that’s not on the list, you have to spend authority to do so. While authority is a limited resource, it isn’t hard to come by, so this problem might not be all that relevant, still, if you find yourself lacking in authority and want to build a pig farm, but the pig farm isn’t available, your only chance to solve this problem is to wait until you’re able to make use of your authority to pick the building you want. This is presented as one way to ensure that every game plays differently, but I have to ask, is it really?

I think the dynasty system already offers enough replayability, even if it’s a rather basic system. When managing your kingdom you’ll have to account for your ruler’s strengths and weaknesses. These can be rather significant. My current ruler, Álvaro, is considered to be an excellent administrator, giving him the ability to pay 30% for court favours, and increasing his chances in positive decision-making. On the other hand, Álvaro is not a great military leader and reduces the army’s manpower by a significant 10%. I enjoy these consequential traits a lot more since they force you to take them into account when playing the game. I remember that in Crusader Kings 2, the traits were so inconsequential that I cannot remember a single one of those apart from the immortal one (yes, immortality is a thing in Crusader Kings 2).

While the management aspect of Field of Glory is very much streamlined, particularly when compared with its most direct competitor, it isn’t something that bothers me that much. In all honesty, for me, Field of Glory: Kingdoms found its very particular niche within a niche, and it sets itself apart from its competition because it allows me to basically play Crusader Kings without the hassle of having to memorize entire family lines and keeping track of every single one of my vassals, and focus instead on the battlefield aspect of the medieval age.

To round things up: the game has a solid tutorial that can be played in about 30 minutes. It goes over the basics of the game and teaches you how to manage your cities, your population, raise armies and the basics of fighting and army management. As for the user interface, I find it to be quite nice, it’s simple, and there are very few “menus within other menus”, and tooltips do a decent job of explaining things like traits, decisions, production levels, economic changes, and all else. As for the graphics, they are simple but functional; these won’t be turning heads, that’s for sure, but I don’t mind.

Final Score: 8/10

All things considered, I believe that Field of Glory: Kingdoms is a great game in its own right, with excellent and well-thought-out mechanics that do their best to bring the reality of medieval warfare to life. Mix that up with an interesting kingdom management layer that tackles economy, and social unrest, and it still manages to dabble a bit here and there in the whole court/intrigue thing, and you have a game that distances itself from the competition in both meaningful and better ways. Most importantly, Field of Glory: Kingdoms has the “just one more turn” feeling to it that kept me glued to it for an entire week of vacations.

However, I think that Field of Glory: Kingdoms needs to thicken up a bit more on content, and campaign types, as that is what’s going to provide players with a mix of interesting and engaging challenges. Hopefully, the development team will launch DLCs exploring the late and early medieval periods, and bring with them very specific period mechanics, for example: in the early medieval periods there could be a large focus on population management and the repopulation of certain areas of Europe. As for the late medieval period, the focus should be on warfare, and maybe allow for more flexibility in the way you equip your armies, introduce battle formations, and maybe start to tip some toes around the naval exploration of the Atlantic, and of North and Equatorial Africa. Of course, a 100-year way campaign would also be fantastic.

In the end, all of this is to say: that if you enjoy medieval history and strategy games, I don’t think you can go wrong with getting Field of Glory: Kingdoms, and since you’re already at it, don’t forget to pick up Field of Glory 2: Medieval, a complimentary game that’s well worth buying on its merits alone.

Pros:

1. A grand-strategy medieval game focusing on warfare;
2. Good kingdom management mechanics that are easy to understand and interact with;
3. Integration with Field of Glory 2: Medieval, one of the best medieval games of all time.

Cons:

1. Superfluous dynasty management mechanics;
2. Average graphics fail to impress;
3. Convoluted process of exporting battles and import results.

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