Hegemony Series

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The Hegemony Series is a series of Real Time Strategy games made by Longbow Games. The games are:

Tropes used in Hegemony Series include:
  • The Alliance: Gold made this possible. Forming an alliance with a country turns all their units, cities, resources and income into yours, so long as you keep paying them the fees. You can declare the alliance null and keep their lands like you conquered them, i.e. for free, just don't expect other nations to be so trusting of you.
  • Apathetic Citizens: Averted. If you want to hold onto the lands of your enemies, you'll need to leave a standing army and food in the cities or you'll face an uprising. The more the country hates you, the stronger the occupation must be.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Handled differently in Philip than in Gold. In Philip, each city you get would count towards a global limit (and there were separate counts for native Macedonian units and foreigners), but Gold changed it over so that each city has its own limit instead, and units recruit from pools in that city.
  • Break Meter: All units have a morale stat, and if it hits zero from starvation or battle, whatever's left of the unit is on its way home.
  • Easy Logistics: Averted hard. Your army needs food if you want it to fight, and to make sure it ends up on their plates you'll need to have supply lines running to any cities in range. Helped by armies' ability to carry considerable amounts of food with them out of the city, and you can always have slaves or workers carry more nearby. Or have sheep be more nearby.
  • Enemy Exchange Program: Every city can only churn out units of its culture. Not your culture? You have to pay a little bit extra, but can fill out any holes in your native roster thanks to this trope.
  • Evil Pays Better: Slaves don't need to be paid. Workers do.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The games are called Philip of Macedon, Wars of Ancient Greece, and Rome. They are about Philip of Macedon, wars in Ancient Greece, and Rome.
  • Gunboat Diplomacy: Starting in Gold, if you have a big enough army, the enemy will be a lot more willing to make peace. If you have an especially big one, they'll pay you for it.
  • Hegemonic Empire: Less possible in Philip's campaign, where you can't absorb nations peaceably, but if diplomacy's an option, enough alliances will lead you to this.
  • Made a Slave: Enemy's hit their Break Meter? If you can catch them, you can keep them.
  • Praetorian Guard: The Companion Cavalry in the first two. You start with them, can't build them anywhere, and the first thing you do in Philip's campaign is send him to join them.
  • Real Time with Pause
  • RPG Elements: All units gain experience through fighting, and if you have enough, you can level up one of four stats.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: All units lose morale when losing a fight or starving. Out of morale? They run back to their hometown.
  • Separate but Identical: Individual factions are divided into groups that share rosters, but there are still multiple groups. Athens and Corinth share unit lists, but Athens and Persia do not.
  • Shown Their Work: They have historical notes explaining almost everything in the encyclopedia and manual, not to mention this page
  • Weather of War: The seasons determine farm output, sheep spawning, and whether or not the sea can be sailed.
  • Worker Unit: An odd case, every unit (except sheep) can build buildings. There are dedicated worker and slave units that are the only ones who can run the mines. They also don't consume food but can carry a lot of it, making them handy for supplies.
  • You Call That a Wound?: The player's generals will go down for a while when "killed", but after a long enough time they'll have recovered in their home city. The enemy generals, on the other hand, stay down.