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 14
I ain't any professional reviewer but this is my only actual review at will be serious because the game is not well known and at the moment I want anyone who comes across this game and reads this review to be aware at this is a pretty good game and is worth the price.
The game has a classic style to it, and I generally love 8 bit games, the game has a good art style, there is a variety of animals, houses, etc.
The people have a variety to them as well, mainly in civilians, I love the change of equipment when you unlock a tech for a certain unit, you can just see the change and its quite nice.
The thing I would want added is a animal farm where you take in goats or pigs and overtime they reproduce where you can either slaughter them for meat or milk (From goats) just to give it a sense of realisim.
I only saw 2 bugs so far, civilians can get stuck around buildings sometimes and glitch out and on the end game menu where it tells how many units were made, resources gathered, and units killed, I saw the bug with the units killed as it said 70 units killed but 71 lost when it came to units lost and units killed boards.
Ultimately a good game, has rough edges but it is a early access, you can't be too harsh with it.
Steam User 7
Really good early access RTS. Just a few bugs here and there, but it is a solid experience. The obvious comparison is Age of Empires 1, but this game does a few refreshing new things. The food system is fun and prevents immediately booming into a large army. The resource collection system is good too, and the villagers do a nice job automating themselves to a degree.
The best thing about this early access version is the fertility system. It works really well and gives the game a nice theme.
Few things for the devs to take a look at:
1) Pathing can be weird, with units (especially battering ram) struggling to move through trees. Gates and walls pose some challenges to pathing right now as well;
2) Multiplayer server can occasionally freeze up if the game goes long enough;
3) Trees might need more hitpoints - or maybe more trees. Currently, you have to construct resource camps pretty frequently which can get tedious and unfun;
4) I assume adding ai to multiplayer games is in the pipeline, but just in case it isn't, that would be a great thing.
Steam User 4
honestly for a game in development it's one of the best I've tried 10/10. I would like to see more updates and content to make the game a little longer.
Steam User 5
I'm euphoric!
The past couple of days have been spent browsing the steam store for something to rekindle my lost love for video games. A weak laptop caps the visual fidelity and the 'recent updates' feed usually thwarts my interest.
After almost pulling the trigger on yet another 'last one to remain on my wishlist' title with a refund already in the back of my head, the suggested supplied me with this unassuming gem. Usually I'm more interested in space themed entertainment, but luckily that didn't deter me from giving this a chance.
The Fertile Crescent has the potential to claim the number one spot on my list of favorites games of all time. Currently on the podium are none other than StarCraft, Company of Heroes and BF:Heroes.
What I love most about TFC so far is actually what it's missing. Namely, active abilities, overwhelmingly many factions and other barriers for newcomers. Picking this up, you can immediately feel that the skill ceiling is high, but the steps to get there are transparent.
Polish and consistency are usually the last words that come to mind when considering an early access title, but when I was surprised by that voice-over for the tutorial, heard the phenomenal music and tested all the usual hotkeys, and they all worked - my face lit up like another game has not achieved in years.
And what an atmosphere. I'm excited to be joining this lovely community of RTS fans and enjoying what the developers have in store for us in the future. The Knights of Unity have definitely earned my respect!
Steam User 3
The Fertile Crescent is a very solid RTS so far. It does everything a RTS has to do in a good manner. Still, TFC isn´t just another AoE, W3, or SC2, it has it´s own style of gameplay, which is oldschool but with refreshing twists here and there. They don´t want to make something totally new with the genre and I like it!
When you like RTS, you will like this game!
Regarding Early Access:
All core features of a RTS are already in the game and they just released a, I think, good to stick to roadmap.
Steam User 3
I hope development continues. Content is currently quite limited but the mechanics of the game are solid and have that classic feel. I really enjoy horde mode. I don't think there is anything particularly novel about TFC but it has a solid foundation as fun retro RTS. TFC will be a great game once the content is expanded with additional factions and campaign.
Steam User 2
A simple yet constantly active base/army building game that works well both single- and multi-player.
Things I want to see in the future:
Cobblestone Roads
A Town Square: where idle civilians can move to automatically
Basic Military Formations
Autosave
Rotate Map/Bird's Eye View
Pause and slow time in single player
Hills
Rivers/bridges/irrigation