Hex Empire
April 1, 2010
Hex Empire is an odd little turn based strategy game, somewhat along the lines of Risk. In this game, you choose from one of four badly-named kingdoms, picking Redosia, Violetnam, Bluegaria, or Greenland – rather obvious ways of saying red, purple, blue, and green.
Hex Empire Game
Unlike the classic game of Risk, in Hex Empire no dice are rolled, and victory or defeat in battle is always determined by how many troops you have in a particular hex area of the game board. Whichever side of two warring armies has more men will always win the battle. In some way that is not explained, the three opposing teams always seem to develop their armies much faster than the player, making this game extremely difficult to enjoy, much less win.
There is a function of the game which allows you to sign a peace treaty with an opposing kingdom, but the game doesn’t let you know that you can’t have more than one treaty at a time, or that after signing a treaty with all three kingdoms, you never have an opportunity to do so again. Another function allows you to give a rousing speech to your troops, but doing so had no discernable benefit.
Filed under: Board Games,Strategy Games
3 Comments
1. Bob | April 19, 2010 at 2:04 am
I’d say you should give Hex Empire another chance. The computer players don’t build their armies any faster – the way to build armies faster is to quickly take cities, ports and land. If they do this better than you, you’ll lose.
To win you need to capture the capitals of your opponents. Selection of your capital is key: pick one with a high number of close-by cities and ports, preferably one in which a port is already held as this gives a slight edge on troop numbers. Other factors include how exposed the capital is – a body of water without a port on the opposite shore by your capital helps as it forms a defendable bottleneck. Choosing a capital on an island normally results in defeat as it takes too long to capture any cities, leaving you with pitiful numbers of armies and troops.
To pick off your nearest opponent you need to capture as many cities and ports as you can as quickly as you can, massing troops along the way. At this point, you can usually sign a treaty with your most distant opponent, avoiding them turning on you too soon. With a substantial army, dodge through to the capital and seize it. The rest of their armies explode: one down, two to go.
Giving a speech increases morale; along with strength of numbers, morale determines victory in battles. A numerically superior army can be defeated by a slightly smaller army with better morale. Give a speech as you’re about to launch a major, critical, attack or be attacked en masse, or if you’re desperate.
Keep your front lines tight and fully armed, and you should be able to smash your way through the remaining foes. Move the largest available armies on any given turn and avoid complete armies sitting in cities as that would prevent an increase in troop numbers. Keep an eye on large enemy armies getting too close to your capital – if they make a dash for it and you don’t have enough armies nearby you’re doomed.
Playing on normal setting is probably the most fun. I’ve not played easy – I imagine it’s a walkover – and playing hard is very tricky as the computer players gang up on you and mostly decline to fight each other, unless you get a treaty right or you’re lucky. On normal a quick win against one computer player normally seals your victory, but that is far from a guarantee of success on hard.
2. kyle | April 26, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I thought the stupid names were funny, actually.
Also, you can beat a batalion with less troops, each battle takes into acount number of troops and morale.
By giving a speech it boosts morals, which can take into effect durring the immdiate battles (but its effects are very short lived)
I’ve never felt a need to sign peace treaties in this game, and I actually think the CPUs are very easy.
3. Tod | April 30, 2010 at 8:37 pm
You little fucktard, you didn’t even play the game enough to knw how it works. The armies increace in size depending on how many cities you control, the more you control the less troops are created in your cities each turn. Combat is based not only on the size of your armies but on they’re moral as well. Giving a speech increases this moral to the maximum.