Field of Glory II: Medieval - Sublime Porte

Field of Glory II: Medieval - Sublime Porte is a paid expansion for the base tactical turn-based wargame, zeroing in on a slice of history that most strategy games ignore entirely: the fragmentation of Anatolia following the collapse of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in the late thirteenth century, and the slow, grinding rise of the Ottoman beylik from one small principality among many to the dominant power in the region. If you have a pulse for late medieval Near Eastern history, this is the kind of content you have been waiting for. The core Field of Glory II: Medieval engine is a hex-and-counter system with serious depth underneath a clean interface. Units are grouped into cohesion-tracked formations, melee resolution accounts for flank exposure and rear support, and the game rewards players who think two moves ahead about line integrity rather than just throwing units forward. Sublime Porte adds new army lists covering Ottoman Turks, the Anatolian beyliks, Byzantine successor states, and regional neighbors, each with historically grounded unit rosters that shift how you approach formation design. Ottoman forces lean on light horse archers and disciplined infantry over time, while some beylik lists force you to work with more irregular cavalry-heavy compositions that punish rigid linear thinking. For someone new to the series, yes, there is a learning curve, but it is manageable if you treat the first several custom battles as a tutorial sandbox rather than aiming for victories. The UI is not hostile, the game explains cohesion and support mechanics in tooltips, and the pace is slow enough that you can actually read what is happening. What the game does not do is hold your hand through the army-builder, which is where real depth lives. Understanding point budgets, choosing between more numerous lower-quality units versus fewer elite ones, and picking terrain to favor your composition, that is the real game, and Sublime Porte's new lists give experienced players plenty of new variables to stress-test. The expansion is a content package rather than a systems overhaul, so if you bounced off the base game's AI or found the campaign structure thin, none of that changes here. The AI plays the tactical game competently enough to punish exposed flanks and pile onto wavering units, but it will not outplay a human who has internalized the support rules. The modding ecosystem around the wider Field of Glory II family is active, and Sublime Porte's army lists will eventually feed into community-made scenarios, which extends the value considerably beyond the packaged content. Seven Steam reviews is a tiny sample, but the 100% positive signal from what is clearly a hardcore audience is worth noting. Bottom line: this is a specialist purchase. You need the base game, a tolerance for deliberate hex-based combat, and genuine interest in Ottoman and Anatolian medieval history to get full value. If all three boxes are ticked, the new army lists and scenarios add meaningful hours of fresh tactical problems that the base game's existing lists do not cover. Diego, Scout Team