Test - Yield: Fall of Rome: Civilization for those in a hurry

What are we doing today, Brain? – The same as every evening, conquer the world! – But we don’t even have an hour! – Well, then an express world conquest!

The first moments in campaign and free play still look like a typical beginning in any terrestrial 4X game: an ancient map with a settler unit and capital, a research, construction and units menu vying for attention and resources. In addition, there is a hero unit that is already rushing through the game world. Round by round we expand our city, research everything from fishing to seafaring in the (clear) technology tree and send more settlement and combat units across the map on land and at sea. In this way we gradually fulfill the 4X of the genre: explore, expand (expand our cities and create new ones), exploit (obtain raw materials and arable land), exterminate (PLATTEN!).

With the X-tra portion of urge

Whereby “little by little” can be read here with some moderation. Even on the lowest level of difficulty, the AI ​​is a real whirlwind after the first tutorial missions. She diligently recruits units, sends them aggressively into battles and captures neutral resources and cities. The fact that the standard setting for the number of rounds in free play is 18 and numerous selectable victory conditions can shorten this underlines the hectic nature of the title.

Also configurable: The procedurally generated hexagon map does not have any classic edges, but the next step from the easternmost tile to the “left” leads all the way to the west. All of this is designed to avoid idleness and to bring about a lot of interaction with AI and also human teammates and opponents.

Eight factions from Huns to Franks can be selected in the campaign and free play, of course not the subtitled Romans, because the decline of the empire is the central premise of the game. Roman units - think Obelix's rubbing of hands here - only create further obstacles and our goal is to hear cries of “Give me back to my legions!” in Rome as often as possible.

X-tra well thought out mechanics

The system is rounded off by a number of well-known, but well thought-out and well-interconnected mechanics. As in Civilization VI or Terrascape, there are bonuses for certain commercial buildings placed next to each other - it also makes sense that the mill next to the grain field runs particularly smoothly.

When certain milestones are reached, we are given the choice of a policy to be continued - for example, the choice between monotheism and polytheism. These in turn have different but quickly noticeable influences on our buildings, our economy and our military.

The first look at the technology tree may be a bit disappointing, as it is much more compact than even in an Age of Empires, not to mention the “Do we still have a printer for continuous paper?” work in Civilizations. But for the short games in Yield, the rather simple progress menu - and of course not extending to moon landings - makes sense and creates noticeable pressure to make decisions.

Blow for blow: Turn X hit points into V

Even if the eight different factions, their historically based city names and their respective heroes fit atmospherically: The numerous fights of our units are a bit simple: place the unit next to - or in the case of ranged fighters within firing range - the target, wait for the fight icon to appear , watch the hitpoint indicators refresh. There are of course a number of bonus systems in combat, but for a mechanic that is so central to the game, they are a little too simple for us at this point.

If our hero dies due to a purely hypothetical overestimation of enemy units, special buildings allow him or her to be resurrected - and vice versa, defeating an enemy hero can also be a condition for victory.

A few short sentences with X

As clever as Yield is implemented, we still have to complain a little in a few places, like the Latin teacher did when checking the ablative rules (if you don't know what that is: congratulations!). On the one hand, the graphical staging appears to be atmospherically beautiful and colorful, but it also presents a mishmash of styles from low-poly figures typical of the Unity engine to cartoon-like effects or drawings that appear slightly over-filtered.

And some interface aspects can also be improved in Early Access. Figures whose path extends over a round have to be re-ordered to continue running, which is quite complicated. The battle button also didn't always appear reliable in our game.

Overall, however, Yield already presents a considered and opinionated interpretation of the genre that will particularly appeal to those who are easily impatient!