Relics of War is available today.

[shortylickens]

I think I'll get it.

 

[shortylickens]

Its good crap.

Unlike other hex games, you are allowed to do multiple things at once.
Provided you have the tiles you may: train infantry, train armor, contruct buildings, research, and capture zones, all at the same time.
Combat is straightforward. You can let multiple units dogpile the enemy in a single turn, you can move your full distance AND attack in the same turn. you can toss out control points a fair distance from your citadel and at a reasonable cost in resources.
You cannot garrison a unit INSIDE your fortress, but you can scatter them all around the city region and they gain small bonuses.

From what I can tell, there is no official campaign. Each game is a custom skirmish with either AI or online players.

 

[shortylickens]

All 4 factions are distinct and fun. Most of your combat is against the weak yet plentiful random monsters scattered on the map. They can actually steal your outposts (control points providing resources and vision) so you are always chasing them down, killing them, and retaking your outposts. Kind of tedious after a while.
You have a wide variety of options for the map when starting a new game, along with a trillion random seeds, but in reality most maps feel kinda similar after a while. The main variance is how much water you have on a map, which dictates how quickly you research and construct factories and start spitting out flying units.
Attacking neutral buildings is difficult, requiring you to move up the tech tree and build several artillery or heavy tank units. Attacking an enemy city requires massive firepower. Theres no such thing as an early game rush. Even without units an enemy faction can defend themselves quite well.
Like Civilization you cannot combine armies or let them stop on the same hex. Animation speed can go from 1 to 100 percent so as you get more comfortable with the game you may speed things up to ridiculous levels.

UNLIKE similar hex games there's no option to simplify the game world so as to quickly find certain things. The lushly detailed main map sometimes makes it difficult to find your units, neutral units, outposts, and resources. The minimap cannot be resized or customized in any way, and isnt very useful for finding things. The hexes are all numbered, but so far I have not found any kind of search feature for POI's you've already discovered, so you would need to keep a pad of paper by your computer and write down anything you may wanna remember and go back to later. Annoying.

When setting up a new game there's no option to change the skill of the AI. the only way to change difficulty is to set your loyalty bonus or penalty, and the enemies loyalty bonus or penalty. Loyalty affects how many units you may build before things start getting crazy and they lose morale and fighting effectiveness. In game you may also construct things which increase loyalty.

You can find random goodies around the map for your heroes to use. Your heroes may also buy goodies at trading spots around the map. You may have as many heroes as you wish to construct but I think they suck up loyalty faster than normal units. Also, heroes arent nearly as good at fighting as you would think, at least not relative to their cost. But they have excellent support abilities so taking them along with your main army is a good idea.

Music is excellent. Effects are good. It seems theres loads of multiplayer options but I havent tried those yet.