AGEOD Forums

Can someone tell me whether PoN is the best ageod game to start with, or whether some other game might be better? I'd like to buy an ageod game but I'm just not sure where to begin.

Depends on what you're looking for

Although I enjoy this game, I would recommend one of the older titles as much better for a newbie.

AACW is my favorite but the other similar titles are all great, depending on which time period is your favorite.

I like Bismarck very much so RoP is compelling, but I very much like the fact that PoN has a Franco-Prussian War scenario (which was essentially Bismarck's war). That said, I would be willing to sacrifice buying the one that deals with my favorite historical period if there happened to be one that made it easier to get a handle on the gameplay mechanics.

The best one to start with is Wars in America. By far.

Rise of Prussia is okish to start with, though. AACW and RUS are more complex. PoN is very, very difficult.

Those two threads are also "guide" on starting and thus might help you :

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?545321-Wars-in-America-A-how-to-AAR

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?513080-Learning-from-Prussia-a-Rise-of-Prussia-AAR-against-a-real-player-for-beginners

i agree the best one to start is WIA- BOA2........the easiest one is BOA

Thanks for the great info guys. I'll read up and make a choice.

I think most here replied with what they think is the 'best' game. Whereas your question was which is the best first game. I haven't played many AGEOD games but It'd say the best first game is whichever one you're already most familiar with the actual history it's built around. Save the suggestions for 'best' game for your 2nd.

On the other hand, with how long some games are, best to just start with PoN grand campaign, by the time you're finished the first full grand campaign game, sometime in 2018 or later, they'll have a new one out

I'd have to agree with most here that the Wars in America is probably the best.

The reason I would discourage RoP for a beginner, even though I think it is an awesome game and like it a lot, is that there are no real true smaller scenarios. It's one really easy tiny scenario and then scenarios that are just built on timelines.

Wars in America gives you a wide variety of smaller scenarios so that you can gradually build up to a large campaign.

To a lesser extent AACW has smaller scenarios to learn the game without having to play a monster scenario.

Pride of Nations(now with patch M for Mike) is truly a great game, but has a steep learning curve. Just read the manual and the strategy guide and take your time. The music is wonderful and the game play challenging, to say the least.

In my humble judgment, AACW is by far the best game AGEod has produced, for beginners and everyone else. It sets a very high bar for anyone else who tries to create a better American Civil War strategic game, and there have been many, many other efforts. It received massive support from Pocus and the other developers after its release, to the point where it's almost perfect for what it attempts to portray.

WIA (BOA2) is easier, but a distant second in my opinion.

The Wars in America supply system is the simple version - simple, but brutal - supplies are not going to come chasing after you if you run short. The games with depot forwarding are more logistically forgiving. WIA and PON have a simpler command system - others can involve formal creation of Divisions and Corps, which is a hurdle at first and later on is I think a nice feature or inconvenience depending on the circumstance.

Caccio wrote:In my humble judgment, AACW is by far the best game AGEod has produced, for beginners and everyone else. It sets a very high bar for anyone else who tries to create a better American Civil War strategic game, and there have been many, many other efforts. It received massive support from Pocus and the other developers after its release, to the point where it's almost perfect for what it attempts to portray.
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Agree completely !

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Same

for me AACW is one of the best...

and certainly a revolution in Pc wargame


PS : revolution unde siege is not totally a Ageod game
but it's really good ...

agree AACW is the best ...but the second is WIA and the best to start with...

AACW can be quite overwhelming for a newbie.
WIA is a good choice to get the basics of how to move units, organizing forces, overall planning...

Caccio wrote:In my humble judgment, AACW is by far the best game AGEod has produced, for beginners and everyone else. It sets a very high bar for anyone else who tries to create a better American Civil War strategic game, and there have been many, many other efforts. It received massive support from Pocus and the other developers after its release, to the point where it's almost perfect for what it attempts to portray.

Franciscus wrote:Agree completely !

Pocus wasn't responsible for the AACW "massive support". He only released buggy game engine executable (i.e. the AACW.exe file) patches that had to be debugged time and time again and still remain buggy to this day.

When AACW was released (v1.00), it was like a crappy piece of coal that only had "potential" if the RR map graphics and other database items under went "massive" rework. The "massive support" for AACW was in the 4000+ man-hours of database and RR rework, 95+ % of which was done by me using ideas posted on the forum and various "official" records of the Civil War, NOT Pocus. Now as of v1.15, (the latest v1.16 beta is again buggy crap due to game engine alterations once more!), you can compare AACW to a rough diamond instead of the initial piece of coal, but it will never achieve full "Hope Diamond" status because the the game engine will never be fully debugged and more importantly LEFT ALONE afterwards.

None of the other games will ever again achieve that amount of dedicated support including the just released buggy VGN. I'm willing to bet that 3 years hence, there'll still be bugs in the AGE game engine for VGN and all the older AGE game engine based games.

Great..RoP and PoN are both on sale on Steam right now. Too many decisions for a newbie to handle.

Castruccio wrote:Great..RoP and PoN are both on sale on Steam right now. Too many decisions for a newbie to handle.

Buy both and enjoy them at your leisure.

If those are your choices, by all means play Rise of Prussia first. It is relatively simple, like WIA and Napoleon's Campaigns, and it has the gorgeous terrain graphics that all AGEod games shared before PON. Also, it is focused on a relatively short span of history, so the game itself is more coherent than PON. PON is just out, so we AGEod grognards are still trying to get our hands around it, trying to decide whether it's the truly great game that AGEod is capable of. It is very challenging, at any rate, and not to be attempted with any hope of satisfaction until you have cut your teeth on some of their more finished products.

Does Rise of Prussia start with an overwhelming number of units on each side in the grand campaign, like WIA 2 does? I know the number of units in WIA 2 probably isn't overwhelming to most of you here, but it is to me. I'm not talking about the number of different types of units, just the quantity of units you need to manage. I don't find the game mechanics terribly difficult to understand.

It is hard for me to look at a big map that starts off with a lot of units and get my head around it. I like starting small and growing big.

RobC04 wrote:Does Rise of Prussia start with an overwhelming number of units on each side in the grand campaign, like WIA 2 does? I know the number of units in WIA 2 probably isn't overwhelming to most of you here, but it is to me. I'm not talking about the number of different types of units, just the quantity of units you need to manage. I don't find the game mechanics terribly difficult to understand.

It is hard for me to look at a big map that starts off with a lot of units and get my head around it. I like starting small and growing big.

It has a decent amount of units to start. Not sure if it is as much as WIA, though.

WIA is the least complex of the games. It does not use division, corps and army level distinctions. The number of units is scenario dependent. In WIA this varies from 15 units to hundreds. Mostly, except for garrisons, WIA has three to six active fronts. All other games have hundreds of units and equal or more fronts.
Supply, reinforcement and unit building, too, are simplified in WIA.

RobC04 wrote:Does Rise of Prussia start with an overwhelming number of units on each side in the grand campaign, like WIA 2 does? I know the number of units in WIA 2 probably isn't overwhelming to most of you here, but it is to me. I'm not talking about the number of different types of units, just the quantity of units you need to manage. I don't find the game mechanics terribly difficult to understand.

It is hard for me to look at a big map that starts off with a lot of units and get my head around it. I like starting small and growing big.

Well, in most WIA2 scenarios, this huge number of unit is mainly composed of fixed indians & militias or militias that won't leave their cities unless you need them elsewhere. Thus, the true number of units that you have to manage is way less numerous.

WIA supply is simple, but it also makes it more challenging to arrange supply because it needs to be generated or stored close by, or brought in by the player via supply wagon (supply wagons are critical!). You don't have the automatic collection and forwarding of the more modern logistics networks of the more modern games. The simple systems does, however, very much give the right feel and vividly brings to life the meaning of the term "campaign season". Get an adequate grasp of supply and when to use winter quarters and you'll have a good time.

The updated manual is online. However, I suggest reading the magnificent French and Indian War AAR by Narwhal vs. Loki on Paradox's AAR forum which provides graphically detailed examples and tutorials in WIA which are incidentally also valuable for any other AGEOD game.