Mike Kreuzer: 3/5

[Korrigan]

Once again I'm left comparing a game from Ageod to their first English language masterpiece, Birth of America, and once again I find the new game coming up short. So here I go again, praising with faint damns.

I don't know if Mike Kreuzer realised it but but its despite his announce I did not actually find much praisings in his paper... The review trashes the game from the start till the end (except: "despite its shortcomings, the game has its moments").

http://wroteontheground.blogspot.com/2007/11/napoleon-campaigns.html

What's new in Napoleon's Campaigns?

Napoleon's Campaigns is the true heir of Birth of America and the cousin of American Civil War. You'll get a new historical environment, with very detailed OOBs and campaigns. For many this is sufficient, but this is not all.

I - Rules of Engagments. ROE are 4 new buttons under the postures of your stack. You can now specify if you want an all-out attack with your stack (no retreat checks for several rounds, losses increased to both side, etc.), or a probe attack, or in defence if you want to fight to the death , retreat if threathened, retreat as soon a shot is fired, etc.

II - New "Napoleonics" themed concepts: Cavalry can now charge in battle (involving a morale check), if it does, will try to cut down weakened or disrupted elements. Opposing Infantries can try to form in square. The Guards units can now commit themselves, in masse, upon the order of some special leaders (Napoleon, Bessieres, Constantin, etc.) and if they do, all your side get a bonus and can litteraly rout the enemy in no time. Except that if they don't, beware the counter-effect you take.

III - 25 new abilities, like Boarding (Nelson), Genius (Wellington and Napoleon), this allow them to 'handle' 10 to 15 abilities, contrary to a max of 4 in AACW. Offensive or Defensive terrain specialist (alter how much troop you can deploy during battle) and more.

IV - Purely cosmetic, but cool anyway: An alternate display, called '3D sprites'.

V - New special terrains: Mountain Crest and passes, Alpine, major road (functions directionnally, a bit like the railway in ACW, ie you have to enter and follow them from one side of a region to another side). With associated new abilities (mountaineers for example, or even Colonial Leader).

VI - New concept of auto-Garrisoning. Now when you take an important location in NCP, depending of your replacement level, a small garrison will automatically appears, sparing you the burden of splitting one of your brigade for this purpose (less hassle too!). Garrisons eat on your replacements as you can guess, but the rule is optional, so you decide! Also they are themed to the region you have to garrison. Liberate Poland and you will get Polish garrisons eg.

VI - New concept of hardened attrition. Some people want to suffers, we heard them This rule, which is also optional, allow you to 'enjoy' a more realistic attrition rule, where even non moving units can lose soldiers. Also with such a rule, you will need to withdraw troops to depots to get replacements. That will be hard for the French when deep in Mother Russia I advise to use this rule in PBEM by the way.

VII - Historically themed options. A bit like the various options of AACW, but much more powerful and versatile. You can 'buy' replacements or even units, order new supply to be sent from home, postpone the end of the scenario even, get a bonus in forced march in a given area, augment your chance to have your leaders activated, etc. They vary between scenarios for a good part of them, and yes both side get feedbacks about the use of them. These options are in additions to custom made events for each scenario as you can guess.

VIII - TCP/IP utility, for whose who don't want to play by PBEM.

IX - Scorched Earth rule. Active in Russia and to a lower level in Spain. This is a rule benefiting a faction, against all enemy of her. The rule can triggers several things, like some supply burned when you take a region, or the structure destroyed (depot burned, village reduced in level). There is also a chance that the region become pillaged. It has a synergistic effect with the Hardened attrition rule, as it acts also as a magnifier to the losses from attrition.

X - New naval order to intercept adjacent fleet, for a better naval game. Improved Naval AI too.

[Syt]

To each their own, I guess.

Negative reviews do have to advantage of making you think about a few things you probably didn't notice yourself.

Also, kudos for posting the link - other game companies are a little more, shall we say: "selective" in the reviews they link and quote.

[Korrigan]

"Sans la liberté de blamer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur", Beaumarchais

I will always post all reviews I find about our games. When you select reviews, people don't trust what they read.

My comment does not mean I disagree with the shortcomings Mike pointed however I feel the review to be slighly unbalanced in the end.
Perhaps it's aimed to a hardcore public: People who have already played to Birth of America and thus perfecly know the engine. Hence Mike focuses on what he would have liked to find.
However, if you don't know the engine, you'll read only 6 lines in the whole review stating that he actually enjoyed playing it. Can be counter-productive.

To broaden the point of view:
People has asked us to use our engine to cover more periods. And that's what we are going to do. However, you can't expect us to produce a brand new game such as BoA, AACW or Vainglory each time. Sometimes we'll be using the engine with only few improvements. However, all of our games will be always good games with excellent gameplay, accurate historical datas and beautifull graphics. People will buy this type of games because they like the period, because they want to discover it, or because they like our games. And thanks these games, we'll earn enough to develop some great games such as Vainglory and others...

[Robert E. Lee]

Actually, i think the review is rather positive. He is talking about what he thinks should or could be better but he clearly says that this is a game that will remain on his harddrive...it would take this as constructive critisism.

Cheers

[Sol Invictus]

Yet again, I feel that the game takes a major hit for the lack of a huge campaign cover the entire Napoleonic Wars. I agree that the green might be a bit intense, but other than that, I think the look of the game is superb and much better than the previous titles.

[Korrigan]

Yet again, I feel that the game takes a major hit for the lack of a huge campaign cover the entire Napoleonic Wars.

Yet again, as a VGN Beta tester you know that that the Diplomatic module is not finished.

Napoleon's Campaigns is a game about the different campaigns of Napoleon (!!!). The Napoleonian period covers roughly 12 years and 6 wars. Neither the BoA engine, nor the ACW engine were able to deal with such long periods of peace with moving alliances. Only the VGN engine will do.
But the VGN engine needs one full year of development.
And we need some money meanwhile to our bills...

The Historical researches for Napoleon were finished, some people were asking for another game with the BoA "sheer simplicity". So we have used the data to provide the players with a comprehensive operational game, featuring new graphics and several new code modules.

The suggested alternative would have been:

No Diplomacy = No Grand Campaign

No Grand Campaign = No new Game released

No new Game released = No Money

No money = No wages and paid bills

No More AGEod

Simple enough.


That's why we are going to release operational games such as NCP, BoA 2, etc. Because they will provide fun to the players and money to us while the development of Vainglory.

I know it is difficult to figure out how a Dev studio works. I will soon post more info about the three versions of the engine in order for everybody to understand why some changes are not as simple as they could look (otherwise we would have implemented them)

[Sol Invictus]

Oh I am aware. I just think that reviewers who don't follow the developement plan of AGEOD simply expect a Grand Campaign and when there is none, the game takes a hit. A shame really.

[Spharv2]

What I like is that you choose your own forums to voice your displeasure with a comment or review. I start to wonder exactly what some devs are doing with their time when I see them apparently chasing around every newsgroup, site, or board in existence and posting 3 page manuscripts defending the game when someone so much as breathes a bad word about it. Then they usually insist that they don't do exactly that. I don't mind defending your game, just be a bit more moderated about it, IMHO.

[Korrigan]

when I see them apparently chasing around every newsgroup, site, or board in existence and posting 3 page manuscripts defending the game when someone so much as breathes a bad word about it.

I really don't see who you are talking about.

[rasnell]

Everyone at Ageod is amazingly tolerant of criticism. Their greatest response is that they usually tweak the game within days of forum comments.