Developing your empire means economic investments into businesses and the specialization into a wide variety of goods. You can also hire merchants, set up trade routes to different settlements across the map, and eventually establishing a military force.  Your overall progression in the game’s story is based around the meeting of deadlines associated with these and other tasks and the accomplishments of specific objectives relating to your empire, which are set by an NPC.

The implementation of a functional economy through trade, the construction and maintenance of new settlements, and forging agreements and alliances are some of the primary focuses of the game, rather than conquest through military means.  This can be seen in the over simplified combat system, and that fact that most of the emphasis is placed on the balance of your overall production and consumption of goods, the ultimate goal here is to turn a hefty profit. Thankfully the system is actually satisfying to manage, for micromanaging fans.

The game features 20 different resources to develop, so experimentation with various assets is key, as well as researching new technologies which can improve the rate and yield of your means of production.

The world map consists of Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, albeit in a condensed format.  At the start of a new game, only European cities will be accessible, with more distant lands obscured by a fog of war.  The fog can be cleared, of course, by sending scouts and settlers out into the world in an effort to discover new areas.  Sadly, all the towns and settlements that you encounter throughout the game are pretty similar in appearance, and have little individuality between them aside from the ethnicity of their leader and the goods they can produce.

"Sadly, all the towns and settlements that you encounter throughout the game are pretty similar in appearance, and have little individuality between them aside from the ethnicity of their leader and the goods they can produce."

The ability to explore caves on the world map and discover commodities adds an interesting diversion to your empire building, allowing you to pick up additional goods and add a few extra coins to your coffers.

Adding to the single player mode is a multiplayer component, allowing you the opportunity of playing with up to eight players.  Multiplayer sessions give you the chance to attack your friends or aid in the development of their towns.

The single player campaign is designed to be as user friendly as possible, yet it doesn’t really succeed in this regard.  The campaign itself is basically one huge tutorial with the sole purpose of showing new players all the ins and outs of playing the game. This is admirable, however, the tutorial itself is a bit too unstructured for its own good, making it possible to dig yourself into a deep pit, financially, that isn’t easy to climb out of. Adding to this is a busy screen that features the managerial options of several towns at once, and you have a recipe for confusion.

Historically, massive scale strategy games haven’t been terribly beginner friendly, and one could argue that its less about this particular game and more about the genre itself, which tends to have so many options available that its easy for newcomers to feel overwhelmed and its nice that the developer tried to make it more accessible even if it didn’t work out entirely as planned.

The marketplace mechanics that drive the game are at least fairly interesting.  The establishment of various trade routes and distribution of goods works well, and makes for a functional and somewhat robust economic system that rewards players for the production of a variety of different types of goods in many different towns.

"This makes conquering your neighbors more of a challenging endeavor than it should be, and many players may find themselves opting for acquisition through non combative business deals and complete financial takeovers."

Combat itself is pretty subpar, most of the frustration comes with not having enough control over the action.  While this is by design, it doesn’t make for a fun or compelling gameplay experience.  This makes conquering your neighbors more of a challenging endeavor than it should be, and many players may find themselves opting for acquisition through non combative business deals and complete financial takeovers.

Its interesting that the game almost recognizes that its own combat systems and mechanics are lackluster and so it gives you alternate ways of increasing your influence and spreading your empire.  It would be nice if the combat systems were better but at least they aren’t a key component of the game, allowing you to focus your attentions elsewhere.

Once players complete the lengthy tutorial that serves as an extended introduction to the game, they’ll be able to jump into the core of the game. This involves playing open games, or customizable games featuring 1 to 8 players and starting in any city in the game. You can elect to play a shorter game and just conquer a smaller portion of the world, rather than complete world domination. Longer games are quite a time sink, and will have you playing for days, rather than hours.

Once you get used to the gameplay mechanics, the core game is solid, however, the lack of a variety of scenarios, either historically or geographically based would have gone a long way towards adding much needed content.

"While the appeal is definitely aimed at a niche audience that enjoys the micromanagement of economic and trading systems, more casual players might find an interesting, if flawed diversion."

While the appeal is definitely aimed at a niche audience that enjoys the micromanagement of economic and trading systems, more casual players might find an interesting, if flawed diversion. While the combat doesn’t come close to franchises such as Total War, and the city management is nowhere near the level of franchises such as Civilization, yet as a solid effort, it still manages to carve out its own section of the strategy genre.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

GamingBolt spoke to creative director Daniel Dumont who talked about the various aspects of Grand Ages: Medieval, bringing the game to PS4 and the various hurdles encountered in development.

"There are more than 20 different units, among them swordsmen, pikemen, long-range fighters, horsemen and ships. Some troops can only be recruited in certain regions."

Rashid K. Sayed: Strategy games aren’t necessarily my strong suit but hearing about Grand Ages: Medieval has certainly piqued my interest. What can you tell new players about the franchise and how it differentiates itself from other historical strategy games?

Daniel Dumont: At first, GAM is a unique real time-strategy-mix of conquer and economy. One the one hand, the user has to focus on founding new town, exploration, expansion and conquering. On the other hand, the user has also to deal with the economy situation “behind the lines”: increase population by building productions sites, link towns with roads and establish trade-routes. This mix leads to some mechanics like supporting troops with produced resources, which are new in this genre.

Rashid K. Sayed: Players in Grand Ages: Medieval will be able to use different tactics to further their empire. How diverse are these tactics? Can players effectively win the game without ever going to war?

Daniel Dumont: For example, you can build many small town or only a few large towns to have the same amount of citizens. Expansion versus economy. Or you can develop your military faster than your production diversity. And you can capture towns with military means or just with economical methods. So yes, you can win the game without declaring war. However, there are still aggressive opponents, bandits and wild animals who you to have a steady army ready.

Rashid K. Sayed: For the more bloodthirsty players, what are the different units that players can take into battle? And what kind of armies will they encounter in their quest?

Daniel Dumont: There are more than 20 different units, among them swordsmen, pikemen, long-range fighters, horsemen and ships. Some troops can only be recruited in certain regions. Troops follow the rock, paper, and scissors-principle and there are also bonuses for environment, experience and morale.

Rashid K. Sayed: The scope of the game sounds massive. How did you go about creating such a large world? Did it make balancing work on the more nuanced aspects difficult?

Daniel Dumont: We created the world with real map data for the coastlines and the rivers. Then we defined areas for mountains and forests and used a generical process for modeling these objects. Most important was balancing the resources, as the regions should be comparable, just think of multiplayer. However, some rare resources are linked to the “real” environment, like fish, coal, iron, salt and wine. We needed lots of iterations before it worked.

"Thanks to the starting and victory options, games from 30 minutes to 30 hours can be set up."

Rashid K. Sayed: What kind of improvements can players look forward to in Grand Ages: Medieval compared to the game’s predecessor?

Daniel Dumont: “Grand Ages: Medieval” has not much to do with “Grand Ages: Rome”. Both are global strategy games but the mechanics are completely different as GAM was always meant to have a strong economy part as well. So the decision to use “Grand Ages” is more because of marketing reasons.

Rashid K. Sayed: The eight player multiplayer support is interesting. Will there be different modes players can take part in like team play and free for all?

Daniel Dumont: The starting and victory conditions can be chosen with a diversity of options; however teams don’t have to be defined in the beginning. Instead, users can change their relation using the diplomacy system within the game.

Rashid K. Sayed: We read about different “protocols” that can be set for multiplayer when you feel like taking a break. Can you tell us more about these?

Daniel Dumont: Thanks to the starting and victory options, games from 30 minutes to 30 hours can be set up. You can always save a MP-game and continue it later with the same users and each user will get his slot back. The server can also remove a user or the AI from a slot and replace it with the AI or another user.

Rashid K. Sayed: Grand Ages: Medieval is the first game in the series to come to PS4. How hard was it to transition from a keyboard and mouse set-up to a controller, especially in terms of interface design?

Daniel Dumont: As we are also console players, most aspects were clear for us from the beginning. It was a lot of work, as we wanted to create an interface which feels PS4-original. To be honest, there are some areas which we would have designed different if we would have to create a PS4-version only. However, we made a lot of playtests and are now very satisfied with the results.

"The PS4 version has all features of the PC-version including the unlimited viewing distance. As this was our first title for PS4, it wasn’t a piece of cake to get there."

Rashid K. Sayed: The PS4 version of the game will be running at 1080p in each mode. Where you able to translate all the graphical features from the PC version to the PS4 or did you encounter any problems along the way?

Daniel Dumont: The PS4 version has all features of the PC-version including the unlimited viewing distance. As this was our first title for PS4, it wasn’t a piece of cake to get there. However, we are using our own in-house-engine which we fully understand. This made it possible for us to translate and optimize every feature. And we had not stopped before as we knew that the PS4 offers a powerful hardware. However, we ran into problems with the CPU as we have some very deep simulations running in the background which really pushed the CPU to the limit, especially when using the fast-forward feature. So we had to tweak and optimize here as well until everything ran smoothly.

Rashid K. Sayed: What are your thoughts on bringing future titles to consoles in the future? Do you believe there is a strong market for console strategy titles?

Daniel Dumont: Of course we have to see how GAM performs on the PS4. But I would definitely answer with “yes” and “yes”…

Rashid K. Sayed: What are your thoughts on DirectX 12 and how do you think it will impact games performance?

Daniel Dumont: We will support DirectX12 in our next game and we think it will offer us a lot of possibilities to improve our in-house-engine as we are already seeing that we are losing some performance in the graphic drivers. However, it will take some time before developers can forget about 11 or earlier as these versions will be supported for many years from now.

Rashid K. Sayed: What are your thoughts on the PS4 API? Do different do you find it to the ones you are using on the PC? Has Sony improved its performance since the launch of the PS4?

Daniel Dumont: The API was straightforward to use and comes with a great toolchain, which allows in-depth analysis of CPU and GPU captures. Also, we got great support from the Sony developer support.

Rashid K. Sayed: What kind of advantages has the GDDR5 memory delivered to you in terms of performance of the PS4 versions?

Daniel Dumont: When we started working with the PS4 we had no concrete idea about the power of the GPU and if we would have to reduce details and visual quality. However, after some weeks, we were very positive impressed and we decided to go for full visual quality – and this turned out the best way. We are sure, that the GDD5 memory plays its part in it.

The amount of memory and computation speeds are two of the most important factors in deciding where games technology will be going next. However the amount of innovation and growth for CPU processing speeds is far less than what we have seen for modern GPUs. Current gen consoles feature a mid-level GPU and decent amount of memory but their CPUs are pretty under powered compared to a mid-level PC hardware out there.

Developers may run out of memory on consoles given that a few modern PC games already require a recommended 16GB memory. But according to NeocoreGames’ Producer Zoltán Pozsonyi, the limitation of GPU-CPU speed is a tougher problem compared to memory ultimately running out on consoles.

“There was a time when even 512Mbyte of RAM made us the happiest people on the planet – actually before that even less seemed to be more than enough. Programs tend to eat up as much RAM as the given hardware has – 5-6 years from now we’ll see hardware requirements which will far exceed the 8GB limit of the current generation of consoles, simply because the high-end PCs will have a lot more than that,” Zoltán explained to GamingBolt.

“At the end of this cycle the 8GB [memory] might seem tight, but it won’t have to make such a huge difference between the PC and console versions of a game. The limitation of the GPU-CPU computing speed seems a lot scarier at the moment.”

Given that we are still in the second year of the PS4 and Xbox One’s life cycle, it’s too early to judge the kind of limitations developers will face in the next few years. With new graphic APIs and the advantage of being an open platform, PC gaming is an at all time high but the consoles are not too far in terms of user experience and features, most notably Microsoft who has already improved the Xbox One’s processing power using the cloud. Regardless, we will see how it all pans out.

On paper, it seems the PS4 has a decent hardware with a mid-level GPU and GDDR5 memory. However its CPU clock speed is on the lower side compared to the Xbox One. Apparently this is giving developers who are new to PS4 development some troubles.

Speaking with GamingBolt, Daniel Dumont, Creative Director at Gaming Minds Studio, the team behind Grand Ages: Medieval revealed that they ran problems into CPU problems despite the console featuring a powerful hardware as a whole. When asked whether they were able to translate all the graphical features from the PC version to the PS4, Daniel stated that, “The PS4-version has all features of the PC-version including the unlimited viewing distance. As this was our first title for PS4, it wasn’t a piece of cake to get there. However, we are using our own inhouse-engine which we fully understand.”

“This made it possible for us to translate and optimize every feature. And we had not stopped before as we knew that the PS4 offers a powerful hardware. However, we ran into problems with the CPU as we have some very deep simulations running in the background which really pushed the CPU to the limit, especially when using the fast-forward feature. So we had to tweak and optimize here as well until everything ran smoothly.”

On a related note the PS4 version of  Grand Ages: Medieval will be running at 1080p. The game launches later this month so stay tuned for our full review soon.

Grand Ages: Medieval is an upcoming strategy title for the PlayStation 4 and PC. Under development at Gaming Minds Studio, the game is scheduled to launch next month. GamingBolt recently caught up with  Daniel Dumont who is the Creative Director at Gaming Minds Studio to talk about the game. During the interview, Dumont shared his opinion on the development of the PS4 version.

Dumont shared his thoughts on the PS4 API and different it’s compared to the ones used on the PC and whether Sony helped them in anyway. “The API was straightforward to use and comes with a great toolchain, which allows indepth analysis of CPU and GPU captures. Also, we got great support from the Sony developer support,” Dumont said to GamingBolt.

He also revealed that they had no idea about the PS4’s potential when they started working on the game. “When we started working with the PS4 we had no concrete idea about the power of the GPU and if we would have to reduce details and visual quality. However, after some weeks, we were very positive impressed and we decided to go for full visual quality – and this turned out the best way. We are sure, that the GDD5 memory plays its part in it.”

Stay tuned for our full interview with Dumont in the coming days. In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Today at Gamescom, Kalypso Media announced Grand Ages: Medieval, a real time strategy game that is currently being worked on that is set in the High Middle Ages while Europe is in a period of huge change and rapid population growth. Playing on a map that offers a staggering 30 million square kilometers, players are challenged to lead their small, rural society through the ages, and become a world conquering empire. Yes, guys, it sounds like Age of Empires. And that is friggin awesome.

Grand Ages: Medieval will be more nuanced than just those classic strategy games, though, as it will also challenge players to prioritize economic and cultural development, while also having the player face the devastating effects of  natural disasters like storms, fires, volcanoes, droughts, earthquakes… or even the Black Death.

The game is due out on the PC some time in 2015. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage on it, as well as all the latest and greatest from Gamescom.