Altaris wrote:Sorry to hear you've stopped playing it Conrad. The AGE engine does have its quirks, and it's been around quite a long time now (about 10 years) so it doesn't have all the nice bells and whistles. It was also largely coded by Pocus on his own, which is no small feat.
But what AGE has going for it, IMO, is a very stable platform that's worked well in a wide range of games from the 17th to early 20th centuries. I like Paradox games too, and while the interfaces are very sleek and nice, I always find myself wishing they had deeper combat mechanics such as AGE, rather than super stack 1 beats super stack 2 nearly all the time due to a simple which stack is bigger model. AGE makes you think and plan, especially against a human opponent.
Hopefully you'll pick it back up one day.
I will not leave don't worry as i really appreciate all the effort that you guys have put into your games - that is certanly labour of love! And I admire that you have covered many conflicts that no one dare to cover.
To tell you the truth you are right - I have played to death all Paradox games (or almost all, my PC is not good enough for Hoi4) but I've played them all EU 1-4, HoI 1-3, CK 2, Victoria 1 and 2 etc... and you are right they left a bitter taste esp. reg combat (and ridiculous retreat of armies after combat etc...) so AGEod is needed by allmeans because I think that you will make it one day and score big. Dont worry you will have my support and if I can have this liberty some advice from time to time

One other game system that is not so bad is from BattleGoat Studios, Supreme Ruler 2010 and 2020 etc... Well, I played SR2010 quite a lot and yes, if you give that game time, it really has something - there is some flaws because game simulates a big numbers of units so there could be some problems but game is really fun once you get it in the right way and have some cool design choices.
Why I have mentioning TOTAL WAR series by Creative Assembly, but Heroes have that as well (HOMM) and some others - that is that easy to learn and hard to master feeling, game interface is simple intuitive and doesn't get into way of play. But I have played to death Total War series but obviously they know how to cater to players needs as they are basically recycling same thing since 2001. I think, Shogun 1. You have startegy part of managing your "kingdom" and you have really interesting, adrenaline fueled, intense RTS battles on separate tactical level.
Or you have KOEI approach (Infogrames France distributed them early in 90s I think) they had very interesting Napoleon game with turn based tactical combat that was really fun (L'Empereur in France). It was DOS era, They had some other games in that series and also Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga etc.
AGEod is fresh, and I know that eventually you will make some cool game (I don't say that games that you made in the past were bad -, no quite contrary) - I mean cool in the terms of some really cool, fresh idea - AGEod engine as engine is good basis, everything else is imaginatin of game developers
