AGEOD Forums

zooter wrote:Great game, if it only worked. I'm sure many of you, like I grabbed this game with great expatiations only to be sorely disappointed. Playing year one, with crashes and no events working proved very discouraging. Yes we were/are the beta testers playing on our own dime. Credit must be give to AGEOD for their series of patches which made the game somewhat more playable.
In my game its 1808, I look at the map, I have occupied most of Europe, because treaties don't work. I use Easy Supply, (which is a joke), because normal supply does not work. I have corps sitting in Bavaria and Italy which haven't moved for a year so now maybe I'll occupy North Africa and Egypt. Maybe England is next, a couple of big battles and its occupied. I look at Russia and think, 'what's the point?' Vast expanse of land with no hope of getting more war supplies, why bother with it. I have money oozing out of my pockets and almost no war supplies so I can't build much. My army is to big, I need more ships, but I bought all the income ships I could produce. I'm only left with navy ships, which in this game I don't need. I look at the game in its third year and say I own all of Europe one way or another, so what's the point of playing further? Maybe Viceburg's mod will make things interesting again.

Sure a good diplomatic engine would be great, but I think we shouldn't lose focus of the key for the game's success : succeed in making the operational wargame aspect of the game fun and credible, as in it gives you the proper feeling of the napleonic wars. This to me is the key. This was the key difference between AACW and NCP, and explained more than anything their differing success. When you played AACW, it played great, suddenly you had this wargame that wasn't a tactical game (aka Robert Lee General and stuff) or a "arcade Civil War game" like many others. It was fun yet felt historical in many ways, in terms of army size, type of operations, losses, leaders, strengths and weaknesses of both sides, etc... Sure like in all computer games, once clever players start optimizing the system to its limits, it loses some of its charm. But it worked great. I only played against the AI and despite its flaws I had many fun campaigns where I felt like I was a southern or northern general.

in NCP, the wargame was flawed because the engine couldn't cope with the ill adapted province size / turn length for a european theater of operations with good roads, couldn't cope with the domino effect of the splendid french leadership and troop quality meaning Napoleon was virtually unbeatable, and therefore lacked historical variation in how the campaigns unfolded.

To me a good enough diplomatic engine (you already have it between EAW and other games) is enough, the key is the operational wargame. Give me the proper feel for a 1809 campagin, an 1805 campaign, etc.

lycortas2 wrote:Or maybe you could play, you know, multiplayer which is how all strategic wargames are meant to be played. Because I will clue you in on a secret; the AI at paradox and 2by3 is no better, only challenge is a human opponent.

sorta wrote:I like ageod games but (...) I am disappointed that the new part of the game (diplomacy and related conquests/annexations) has so little usable information in the manual.