TFC: The Fertile Crescent
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About the Game
TFC is a classic base-building RTS inspired by the struggles of growth, advancement, and conquest in the cradle of civilization. Establish your village near fertile lands, and balance your food surplus against the size of your civilian and military might, as you build your village.
Food is responsible for more than just feeding your troops. It determines the rate your population grows, and how quickly you can gain Knowledge Points. Keeping your village fed will ensure your prosperous expansion, but allowing your farms to be compromised can bring even the strongest economies to their knees.
Inspired by the real history of the Near East Bronze Age era, TFC utilizes classic RTS elements while offering a unique perspective for the genre. Taking technological limitations and advancements into account, players will need to carefully consider how to spend their precious Knowledge Points, as they explore the Village Improvements that are designed to enable players to quickly counter an opponent’s strategy.
Strategic Options From The Beginning
Heavily inspired by the giants of the genre, TFC looks to expand on the mechanics of its contemporaries in interesting ways, giving players multiple strategic actions to explore from the very beginning of a match. There are multiple paths to victory, and players can quickly adapt their strategy to respond to enemy actions. How well players leverage this freedom will determine whether they experience glorious victory, or crushing defeat.Consequential Fertility Mechanic
Food is the foundation of every successful village. Locate fertile ground and build your village around it to ensure that there is enough to sustain your growing population. Balancing your food surplus against your villagers and growing military is important, and protecting your farms is critical if you want to keep your village alive. Likewise there’s no better way to demoralize your opponents’ populations than by destroying their farms, and decimating their economy.Advance Your Village
Increase the strength of your village as you explore Village Improvements. TFC features a collection of powerful improvements that allow commanders to spend points to quickly react to their enemy’s advancements, or perhaps create a window of opportunity to strike. With various ways to boost your economy and military, your strategic options are always clear to understand, and easy to implement.Play Online With Up To 4 Players
An AI can be quite the challenge, but nothing can replace a real player. Available at launch, battle it out with up to three other commanders in order to prove who is the best at managing their village, army and food supplies. Challenge your friends or complete strangers, and visit our Discord to find new rivals. May the most prosperous village win, or perhaps the smarter commander? Everything is in your hands!
Game Discussion
Steam User 9
I've been playing this with my partner and have clearly dedicated hourrssss to this game.
If you like RTS games like AOE this game is definitely for you - the starvation mechanic is a innovative spin on the food resource and adds another layer of strategy and challenge to the gameplay.
The overall design is just so well thought out: the pixel art, sound design, it's hard to believe that such a small team created this game with such high quality.
Would love to see more map types, ability to play against 4+ players, environmental challenges (e.g. floods etc.) but I'm pretty sure there's only 2 people who created the game(?).
Overall, it's highly addictive and love that it's available on Macs!
Steam User 6
It's a good but not a great game. I'd say that you get at best 5 hours out of the campaign that's partially a tutorial. The combat is a little clunky in a similar way to the first Age of Empires game. Given that wa a major inspiration that's not a huge shock but still enough of a letdown to inhibit the desire to do to many combat related scenarios.
The vibe is immaculate but the combat drags it down. Get it on a discount for a few hours of Mesopotamian fun. This is a perfect first game, begging for a bigger and improved sequel. This is the kind of game that makes me look forward to where they could take it.
Steam User 8
quite different approach for an RTS game, food as primary resource is an interesting concept
Steam User 10
It's been compared to a sort of Age of Empires 1 rip-off but it isn't. The time period may be the same but the gameplay is different, kind of original. I respect them for it, not to play on .our nostalgia. All in all, it's a cool game.
Steam User 5
Nice concept, beautiful. I support.
Please improve:
- selecting units. I click 2 pixels away and it selects the grass. Come on! The units are already quite small. Make them more magnetic. One rarely wants to select the grass.
- let the AI divide its attention rather than focusing on the player.
- the AI of our own units should be improved. My units gets so easily out of control, starting to follow a single villager up to their base. My units are in defensive stance, they should not go too far from the last location I moved them to. If the target moves > threshold, stop following. Unless that unit was specifically targeted, but with attack move or auto-provoked attacks, they shall not follow long. When a villager gets attacked, let them stop farming and move towards the base. If the base is too close, then fight back. Simple but life saving micro-behaviours, letting the player focus the juicy parts.
- optimize, it started to stall in the wonder mission, I had to quit.
TY & GL & HF
Steam User 6
A shorter game with less advanced graphics that adds up to being more enjoyable than most games on the market
Steam User 8
As an Age of Empires fan, this is a great game for those who like that style of gameplay. I love the pixel art, and I hope the devs keep working on this.