Age of MedievalAge of Medieval

Age of Medieval is a single-player medieval strategy game where you found a village with four families and a wagon, build it house by house, open the roads that carry your trade, and raise the army that defends it all. When your lord dies, his heir inherits the village, the routes, the wars and the grudges.

Nobody waits for you. The other Houses build, trade, march, marry and put down revolts while your back is turned, and the map you come back to is not the map you left.

You start on a road with a hero, four families and one wagon of timber, stone, food and tools. No land, no king, no orders. Walk the map, pick the ground you like, and found your village there. The land you choose decides the game: forest for timber, a river, stone in reach, a road to a neighbour.

• Three peoples: the Valan build in timber, the Corvus in dark stone, the Murth in adobe. Each builds, dresses and fights its own way.
  

• Five origins, from noble's son to merchant, hunter and wanderer, each with its own skills, gold and first followers.
  

• Three difficulties change the wagon and the families you start with.
  

Every building stands where you put it. Lay streets, rotate a barn so the door faces the road, drag a palisade line around the square and put the woodcutter, the field and the well where the land allows. Your people eat, keep warm and dress in what the village makes, and the first winter makes you pay for whatever is missing.

• One building palette with eight categories: houses, streets, food, workshops, trade, services, defences and decoration.
  

• Decide who works at what in the town hall, or let the steward place people where they are needed. The village grows through seven ranks, from hamlet to walled town with a market.
  

• A starving village loses people and loyalty until it revolts. A starving army deserts, and some of the deserters come back as bandits.
  

No road, no trade. Build one to the neighbour, stretch by stretch, then open a route with up to five stops. The merchant buys low and sells high along the way, on his own, and the price follows real demand in each place: a village with no salt pays ten times what the town does.

• Eleven goods (grain, cattle, salt, firewood, cloth, tools, arms and more), consumed by the people of every settlement.
  

• Circuit routes with 2 to 5 stops. The caravan walks the road network, pays the toll at the fort, and comes home with a ledger.
  

• Rob a caravan on the road, or pay an escort so nobody robs yours. A market that receives more kinds of goods grows more prosperous.
  

A trade deal cuts the tariff from 7% to 2%. An embargo closes every stall and route between two Houses without a war. The other Houses sign and tear up these deals for their own reasons, so the map of who trades with whom is always changing.

• Tariffs depend on relations: ally, neutral or hostile. The toll at a road fort follows the same rule.
  

• Trade gold, fiefs, prisoners and peace itself. What a lord accepts depends on what he already thinks of you.
  

• Put war, peace or a law to a vote at court. Every House votes in its own interest.
  

Spearmen in line. Bows behind them. Cavalry on the wing. Then the order. Most regiments break before they die: a line buckles, turns and runs, and you choose whether to chase it down or keep the men still standing in formation.

• Warriors, spearmen, archers, horse archers and knights, switched between line, wedge and circle as the battle changes.
  

• Attacks from the side (the flank) deal more damage, and from behind even more. Spearmen who stand and brace their spears deal far more damage to charging cavalry. A circle formation holds cavalry off.
  

• Your lord fights in person, and the army feels it if he falls. The fallen leave what they wore, and the loot is yours to equip, sell or refine.
  

Take iron and charcoal to a town smithy and build a weapon part by part: blade, guard, grip and pommel; head and shaft; limbs and string. Name it. Your smithing skill decides its quality, and a forged blade is worth more than any you could buy.

• Thirty parts in ten types, from iron to fine steel, each adding damage, reach, speed or block.
  

• Four qualities, poor to master. Refine a looted piece one step up, or forge your own from the start.
  

• Equip the hero and his companions from the arsenal: six slots, every item compared side by side.
  

Camp outside a settlement and begin the siege. The assault is fought inside the real town: the ram leans on the gate its lord placed, the engines open a breach in the wall he raised, and the garrison answers from the towers he built. Your own walls will be tested the same way.

• Ram, mantlet, trebuchet, siege tower and stakes. Each one opens a way in that you still have to fight through, street by street.
  

• Or do not storm it at all: a siege uses up supplies, and a settlement cut off for long enough opens its gate on its own.
  

• Every people raises its own wall, and the breach you open stays there until someone rebuilds it.
  

Marry into a neighbouring House you want on your side. Swear fealty to a king, or claim a throne once you have the renown for it and watch the kingdom split into a civil war fought on this same map. Then die. The eldest adult child takes the House, then the spouse, then a younger relative. Run out of heirs and the House ends there.

• Companions with skills, wounds and gear of their own march beside the lord.
  

• Save and load the campaign at any point on the map; the game keeps a save from just before each battle.
  

Age of Medieval is made by one person, with development in the open, and it is still in production. Everything on this page was captured in the game as it is: no mock-ups, no concept art. The menu, the map and the battle each have their own music.

If you want a strategy game where the village you built is the one you defend, add Age of Medieval to your wishlist and Steam will tell you the day it releases.