For the last week or so I have been playing a new RTS (real-time strategy) game that has been released recently called Ministry of War.
In an attempt to try to fool myself into thinking that I wasn't completely wasting all that time that I should have spent working I am now going to write a review of it.
In Ministry of War you can choose to take control of a city (or at least what you will build up into a city) from your choice out of 4 civilizations based on ancient empires - Egypt, Persia, Rome and China.
The gameplay is actually more varied than any that other free RTS war games that I have played before.
In addition to the strategy element of building up your city and your army there is some pretty decent quality fighting action, either player vs player or against the NPC's.
This is something that has been lacking in the free browser war games in the past.
You can fight in the arena to level up your hero, you can attack individual beasts or crusade against their lairs, you can attack or plunder other players cities, and the biggest innovation for Ministry of War is the 'contested Zones' where guilds and civilisations get together to fight over trade centers and such like.
And as well as the fighting there is also spirituality.
You need a powerful army to take on players from other civilizations in wars, but to increase your power within your own civilization what you need is a high spirituality which increases the territory that comes under your influence.
You get this by building temples and paying gold to worship in them, and by recruiting the best missionaries.
And the third element to the game is trade.
You can recruit merchants and send them out with gold to make a profit travelling between cities and civilizations buying and selling, and through actions like the contested zone wars you can take control of villages and trade centers that allow you to charge a tax on all transaction that take place.
Of course it is still a free game and still suffers from some of the drawbacks (or at least what I see as drawbacks) of all these games.
Although there isn't too much time waiting around for resources to come in, things to build, or troops to train, just because there are so many different things you can do while you are waiting, but obviously there is some of that because they want you to pay out money to buy the items from their shop which will speed these things up.
Also, because it is real-time, it can be quite addictive because you know that if you go away and don't play the game for too long your fledgling empire could well have taken a kicking by the time you get back.
But having said all that I think that this is the best free browser-based RTS game out there, so if you are into that kind of thing it is well worth giving Ministry of War a go.
In an attempt to try to fool myself into thinking that I wasn't completely wasting all that time that I should have spent working I am now going to write a review of it.
In Ministry of War you can choose to take control of a city (or at least what you will build up into a city) from your choice out of 4 civilizations based on ancient empires - Egypt, Persia, Rome and China.
The gameplay is actually more varied than any that other free RTS war games that I have played before.
In addition to the strategy element of building up your city and your army there is some pretty decent quality fighting action, either player vs player or against the NPC's.
This is something that has been lacking in the free browser war games in the past.
You can fight in the arena to level up your hero, you can attack individual beasts or crusade against their lairs, you can attack or plunder other players cities, and the biggest innovation for Ministry of War is the 'contested Zones' where guilds and civilisations get together to fight over trade centers and such like.
And as well as the fighting there is also spirituality.
You need a powerful army to take on players from other civilizations in wars, but to increase your power within your own civilization what you need is a high spirituality which increases the territory that comes under your influence.
You get this by building temples and paying gold to worship in them, and by recruiting the best missionaries.
And the third element to the game is trade.
You can recruit merchants and send them out with gold to make a profit travelling between cities and civilizations buying and selling, and through actions like the contested zone wars you can take control of villages and trade centers that allow you to charge a tax on all transaction that take place.
Of course it is still a free game and still suffers from some of the drawbacks (or at least what I see as drawbacks) of all these games.
Although there isn't too much time waiting around for resources to come in, things to build, or troops to train, just because there are so many different things you can do while you are waiting, but obviously there is some of that because they want you to pay out money to buy the items from their shop which will speed these things up.
Also, because it is real-time, it can be quite addictive because you know that if you go away and don't play the game for too long your fledgling empire could well have taken a kicking by the time you get back.
But having said all that I think that this is the best free browser-based RTS game out there, so if you are into that kind of thing it is well worth giving Ministry of War a go.