Age of Castles sets you as the ruler of a castle with one goal: grow until you conquer the realm. Each realm you conquer pushes you closer to your ultimate goal: a population of 1 billion people. To reach this goal, you must allocate your resources efficiently. It may seem simple enough, but there's always a level of trade-off and the chance you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. By properly managing your population, gold, castle, and army, you will win the realm. Neglect them, and you will find yourself in a bad way.
As the ruler, you represent one of five different characters: The Dwarf, The Prince, The Wizard, The Knight, and The Warrior. Each has a special ability that helps to conquer the realms. The Dwarf finds more gold; while Prince converts more people; the Wizard finds magic; and Knight strengthens your castle; finally, the Warrior "finds" more battles. All have potentially good uses. I found the Dwarf, Prince, and Wizard to be the best long term in the game.
Gold and people are your two biggest resource concerns: people win realms; gold support your people. Lose a significant amount of either and you will find yourself severely handicapped at best, out of the game at worst.
Magic is helpful in boosting your population, gold, castle, and army. This makes it a wild card. Too little and you find yourself losing ground. Castle strength is important, since it determines how much gold you can hold. Again, more is better, but I found myself not having a large enough castle for my plunder. And as for battles, too many can severely impact your population despite the rewards of gold and magic.
Resource allocation is your main worry in the game. You have Merchants (gold), Clerics (population), Builders (castle), Soldiers (offense & defense). Every turn you allocate a percentage of your workforce to these four roles in five percent increments. The allocation must equal 100%; there are no slackers.
As I played, a few things were quickly apparent in terms of allocation. Clerics and Merchants earned top priority, with Builders and Soldiers taking up the leftover allocation. Merchants affect your gold supply: the more merchants the less gold you lose every turn. And you will bleed gold as a hideous rate, so Merchants will usually end up with the lion's share of the workforce. Clerics convert people to your side and since the population allows you to "level", this quickly becomes another important allocation.
Soldiers are necessary evil, as they represent your offense. On the upside, I found you rarely need more than a 15% allocation and even then I was probably being generous. Between the two, I didn't allocate more than 30%. Builders develop your Castle which is important for both gold storage and defense rating. While the Castle rating goes up and down, it rarely factors heavily so at most should get half of the remaining allocation.
Gameplay proceeds in rounds which equal one day of time. You gain population, spend and earn gold, build your castle, and have events. Events can be simple informational messages, attacks by various nefarious creatures, good events, or bad events. Good events range from gaining gold, population, castle, or magic. Bad events are the exact opposite. Pretty simple, eh?
Attacks are battle with the various creatures of the realm. Each side has "hit points", an offensive rating, and a defensive rating. Your population is your hit points. The more damage you take, the less population you have - a rather brutal method of population control. More than likely, the enemy will have better ratings, but a lower hit point total, making it easier to outlast him. Battle messages show casualties and the recommendation to attack or retreat. The battle advice mostly consists of suggestions to retreat, until you get the enemy really low on hit points and then it suggests attack. It's a great armchair quarterback. I routinely attack, regardless of the enemy. You will outlast the baddies due to your superior population and then you can reset allocations to prioritize Clerics and increase the population.
That's the basics of Age of Castles in a rather large nutshell. There isn't much more beyond it, except for Magic. This rating grows very slowly and there's a magic shop you can access between turns. Everything offered for sale is useful, from raising your gold, population, castle, etc… There are even items to raise the amount of magic you get per round - very, very, very useful. Most have a population and magic cost, so items are gradually introduced. The scrolls do a permanent boost to some ratings, while potions are one time only. One trick I learned is that when raising the population above 10,000 people and paying a mere 100 magic for a potion, you generate 10,000 gold. Handy for when your coffers are looking a bit bare. This allows you move people from Merchants to Clerics.
This is a simple game. Experienced gamers might find it too simple. That being said, it is a good way to introduce kids to resource management games, eventually graduating them to bigger challenges in the future. Being fairly simple, it allows the younger player to focus on one of the basic principles and learn. The random events might frustrate them, but that can also be turned into a problem solving exercise. This is good game that a parent can play with his/her child to share a sense of learning and accomplishment, or perhaps just for the adult looking for a few minutes of easy fun.
