by Peter Robbins, 8 May 2026
The latest DLC in the Field of Glory: Kingdoms franchise has landed.
What’s In The Box?!
I’m going to steal from the STEAM description and quote:
Discover the new Advanced Economy, where the rise of the Burgher class, the growth of guilds, and the burden of inflation redefine how wealth and power interact. Then face the Age of Gunpowder, as bombards, handgunners, and cannon-armed galleys forever change the art of war and the fate of empires.
In addition to this succinct description, I’ve gone ahead and pasted together the new feature descriptions that are found in-game as you start the Late Campaign. That pic is below.
click images to enlarge
Hopefully the above in-game information gives you a better idea of when these features start to show up and how they generally affect gameplay.
Along with the above new features you end up with about 30 new decision points, triggered by varying dates and for varying nations. I’ve experienced only one or two in the 10 hours+ I’ve put into it now. I think I have at least one screen shot of one of the newer decisions, shown below.
There are new units and building improvements included in the DLC that take advantage of the addition of gunpowder, those consist of:
- Handgunners: Ranged infantry that weakens enemy lines.
- Culverins: Versatile field artillery effective in both siege attack/defense and field battles.
- Bombards: High-cost, high-damage artillery designed for shattering fortifications.
- Artillery Ships / Cannon-Armed Galleys: New naval units.
- Improvements To Fortresses: To withstand the new gunpowder enemy units.
I’ve not run into them yet in the campaign, but mentioned on the STEAM description are newer buildings: “windmills, blast furnaces, and salpeter works”. I think there are about 12 newer buildings in total, and several new upgrades to fortifications to defend against gunpowder based weaponry.
New Scenarios
As the STEAM site description hints at, there are two major additions as far as “scenarios” go. There is a Late Campaign, spanning the years 1223 to 1470. Then there is a Mega Campaign, which incorporates an even longer period of time 1054 to 1490. The Mega Campaign also expands out to a larger area of the world (if you have Rajas & Tribes also installed) compared to the Late Campaign.
I felt like including this cut scene image as you go into the faction selection screen, just in that it’s really pretty. Love the art work throughout Kingdoms.
The below shows you the extended map that is available in the Mega Campaign. And the listing of factions to choose from is much larger than the Late Campaign, where many of the factions no longer exist or were warped beyond original recognition by that Late start date.
Late Campaign Action
I’m going to walk through a turn or more for one of the Major nations included with the DLC: the Nicaean Empire.The Nicene goal as a fractious empire in FoG:K core game terms, was to restore the Byzantine Empire by re-capturing Constantinople. As a result of this rather difficult but focused strategic goal; the Nicene could not be bothered with provoking the Mongols. They did everything they could to avoid that guaranteed fight. We’ll also just generally show off the game as we traipse through the first couple turns a bit in the Late Campaign.
We’ll approach this playthru with a simple Turn Checklist as shown here:
- Check Authority
- Check Demesne Limit
- Check Region Loyalty
- Check Food
- Check Population
- Check Buildings
- Check Military Status
- Decide: Expand Or Consolidate
- Check Diplomacy
- Check Risks
If you really want to dive deep as you follow along, re-read the User Manual which can be found here (PDF)
The meat and bones of the core game are the Ten Key Concepts, found in Chapter 3 of the User Manual. If you read nothing else, read that chapter for a quick idea of the factors you are attempting to influence throughout a game turn and the overall campaign.
Two Useful Generated Guides
- FIELD OF GLORY_ KINGDOMS – Ten Key Concepts Guide.pdf
- FIELD OF GLORY_ KINGDOMS – Turn Checklist For Players.pdf
The Nicaean Kingdom
The Nicaean Empire and The Mongol Empire are both considered “Major” factions for the Late Campaign. For this section of the review we’ll start up a campaign for the Nicaean Empire, selections shown below.
As the scenario loads up, we are provided some introductory context to start us up with an appropriate level of background history.
Then we are provided a “How To Play As The Byzantines” guide for starting play of the scenario. I was able to piece that text together as a single image for ease of reading below.
A clean view of the starting disposition for the Nicaean Empire is above. One larger standing army near the capital, and that’s it unit wise. Otherwise though things look good. We’ll go now through the checklist I’d provided further above.
Authority is checked as rising 50 (+5). Demesne limit is checked to be well within limits (44 of 100). Checking each Region, I see no Loyalty alerts. I also check with the Loyalty map filter and no yellow or red areas pop out.
Let’s check through every region’s Food, Population and Buildings within the Empire. I group these up as you can eyeball them all at once in the regional dashboard. For food we want to check that each region is producing roughly 5 or more of Food. Below is me checking the province of Rhodes in Nicaea.
You just look for “Food” and then look at what + or – number is there. As seen in the above pic, Rhodes region is producing a positive (+7) of Food. This is above average and will suffice for now for this checklist. While we are here, we check that Manpower specific to Rhodes region is supplying (+2) to the overall total of (+68) visible for the Nationality in the Ledger shown further below.
Manpower growth showing +68. One of the better functional modals of the core game is the Ledger. It is accessed with the book looking icon on the top bar of the game’s interface.
Below we finally run into the Burgher class of population, as well as Building Upkeep as newer functionality. Yay, we see some portions of the DLC now in play.
Near the bottom left of the above pic, I’ve hovered over the “Eastern Greek Orthodox Christian Burgher”; that’s a mouthful. This is the population unit that is assigned to the Mesopotamites’ Pronoia infrastructure item (referred to generally throughout the help files as a “Building”).
We now move on to rotating between all of the Regions to re-check the Buildings we have in queue. The player’s guide we generated and linked above mentions “What you want:
Every region builds something useful.” Now I should warn you, this takes resources. If you have enough, then every region should be actively building towards growth and generation of other needfuls in a balanced fashion, balancing out what the generated guide calls out in this priority order: “Food (if needed), Infrastructure, Economy, Military (frontiers)”. For now, I’m going to queue a building per Province max, just to avoid over taxing our coffers. If I feel like I can afford to do more, I’ll slowly add more in queue elsewhere. Done. Edited a few to add buildings.
Sample of Picking A Building
It’s normally best to go with the flow, meaning building what the population wants the most. These are automatically shown when you attempt to build in a given region. Nice mechanic. Not many games handle this subtle player choice as well as Kingdoms does.
Sample Of Choosing What To Build
If you want to pick something that is not suggested by the local population, you will lose overall authority, which is not the best choice to make; unless you are in a bind and really really really want that new-fangled building you’ve wanted in that overall province or specific region. Make this choice wisely, As Authority allows for stability of the populace, and avoids rioting and other negative impactful events.
We round the player’s turn to completion by rechecking the Military, Diplomacy and Risks. Not much to do here at the first turn for the Nicene, so we’ll move on with rounding out the First Impressions below. Our Military is currently large enough to withstand any major incursions. Our Diplomacy, we’ll want to start giving platitudes and gifts to the Mongols when the opportunity arises, to placate them as much as possible. As to Risks, what you do is rotate again through all of the Regions and check for any riot callouts and the like. The warnings will be rather obvious as exclamation marks in red and the like.
The Mongols
Just for quick contrast sake, below are the startup screens for The Mongols for the Late Campaign. I won’t go beyond this, as it’ll feel like a repeat of what I’d gone through checklist wise for the Nicenes.
Above is one of the unique regional units for the Mongols, just for quick example sake. Most of the newer factions have unique regional units to choose from.
Below I’m just showing you the immediate expanse of the Mongol Empire as a faction at the start of its Late Campaign scenario offering.
Gunpowder
I unfortunately do not have enough time in writing this First Impressions article to show off gunpowder use, as it’s primarily a Tier III or IV building development. Right now, I only have access to I or II at best in my newly started Late Campaign scenarios. It’ll take a good amount of play time to get to that level of development for the Nicaean or Mongol Empire factions.
Final Thoughts & First Impressions
I think you will enjoy this DLC expansion for Field Of Glory Kingdoms. If you are still actively playing the core game, then it’s absolutely worth plunking down for this additional content and functionality. I may sound like a broken record here impressions wise.That tends to be the case because I steer towards reviewing games that I feel overall provide some level of:
- A Good Amount Of Content
- Appealing Visuals & Sounds
- Practical & Innovative Mechanics & Interface
- Detailed & Streamlined Gameplay
- Attempted Historical Accuracy
- Accidentally or Purposefully Educational
- Palpable Player Agency
- Reasonable Chaos
- A Level Of Luck
- Appropriate Command & Control
- A Lever For Risk & Reward
- Support for Military Decision-Making
- Realistic or Believable Results
All at varying levels of course. Not all games always suit everyone’s taste, but most have “worth”. At that point it’s then a matter of whether your wallet is loose enough to warrant the purchase. I hope I’ve given you a good look at this DLC for FoG Kingdoms. Our goal here at Armchair Dragoons is to empower you to make an informed decision.
TL;DRThe Burghers And Bombards DLC offers a palpable expansion to the Content and Functionality of the core game, leading to heightened Player Agency into the late medieval period of gameplay. The new Late Campaign and Mega Campaign allow the user to flow seamlessly into the newer functionality and content without skipping a beat, meaning it melds well and doesn’t feel like it was just “tacked on” to make a quick buck.They thought this one through and have produced a worthwhile and enjoyable product. |
The Details
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You can chat about this game in the Pre-Gunpowder section of our discussion forums
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