Ok, I’ve been playing COE3 for the last 3 days. Wanted to share some initial impressions with you guys.
My background info: I am a veteran Dominions 2/3 player. I’ve played and won my share of MP games here and on Illwinter forum. I love turn-based strategy games in general.
So here are some random thoughts about COE3 after few days of playing it:
For good or for worse, most of mm and manual scripting is gone, as Gendalf said. Is it a good thing or bad thing depends entirely on your gaming tastes and personal preferences. But this is what I’ve expected from this game, after reading comments in this thread and elsewhere, so it didn’t bother me much, although personally I would prefer a bit more control/complexity.
However “whack a mole” mechanic with random snakes/deers that are generated in the world is simply not fun. And that despite the fact that I’ve been playing as Baron mostly so far, which I think should have much easier time with garrisons and protection of important sites against wandering ideps, since Baron’s commanders can raise free levies in villages and helmets.
UI - rather bad. Perhaps a bit better then in Dom3. However it didn’t bother me much, I’ve came to expect it from Illwinter, and the content/gameplay of the game is much more important to me then UI, so I am ok with it.
Complexity of the game - much more simple then dominions but still quite complex. I like bunch of the new ideas they have been thrown into the game - like season changes, rareness of magic items, 40+ schools of magic, some very interesting new locations on the map, different ages for the game, et cetera.
However my largest problem with the game is AI. It’s weak. Really weak. >:( Especially for the game which, unlike Dom2/3, is supposed to focus on single player experience. >:((
So far I’ve played all my games as Baron, Large maps, Dark ages. From the very beginning, I’ve increased number of AIs to 5, and set them all to Count. (+100% bonus to AI). (I like challenges :) ) I didn’t read any spoilers/FAQ, since I wanted to explore the game on my own.
I’ve quickly lost a dozen or so of my early games, but all these loses were to wondering indep mobs, because in my COE3 games I’ve been all about rapid expansion (as I would do in Dom3 ;) ), and would hate to leave troops sitting in the home castle. Also I would go mostly for grabbing resources, failing to put enough focus on wiping out monster’s dens around my territory. Also I was often getting into the fights that I shouldn’t, and as a result either losing or getting pyrrhic victories.
So fair enough, I’ve adjusted my “Dom3-style” strategy to COE3. Once I did it, the game became quite easy. Enemy AI on “Count difficulty” is weak and often clueless. It often has much larger armies then I do (due to 100% income/production bonus), but it routinely fail to attack and crash my armies where it could easy do it. It takes very long time to get out on its strongholds and reclaim unprotected sites that I’ve snatched from it right under its nose.
It is very passive, it often lets me do whatever I want to in my part of the continent for dozens and dozens of turns, rather then intentionally going after my mostly unprotected sites - in a situation where it has very strong advantage in the size of the army. Often it splits its forces into smaller parts right under my nose (next to my large army), allowing me to crash his armies piece by piece (when I would never be able to win should they stick it together, or should they attack me).
Also I haven’t seen it’s using siege engines to attack my strongholds. Tactical AI is also not very good - enemy wizard often don’t cast their spells in the most efficient way. (although it maybe intentional, since otherwise strong wizards could wipe out huge armies quickly)
Basically the impression that I get so far is that strategic enemy AI is very weak or non-existent. To be fair to AI - tactically it does build large and diverse armies, but they are very passive. So the challenge for the player (or at least it seems to me so far) mostly comes from building troops and economy quickly enough to overproduce AI (despite bonuses to production that it gets on high difficulty settings), and then come and crash it once you have large enough armies.
It reminds me of “Heroes of Might and Magic IV” game, where AI was so horrible (it hardly moved at all, instead sitting in their castles), but where you pretty much had to outproduce AI using limited map resources. In COE3 AI is not as bad, but still it really feels as if I am fighting a game mechanic, rather than AI opponents. Definitely not the kind of challenge that I would expect from this type of game.
Bottom line: Overall the AI for the game is very weak and passive, mostly lacking strategic goals and direction, as well as not reacting nearly quickly enough to players actions. After reading positive comments about AI on this thread, Ive expected much better… ;(((
Overall it’s not a bad game, and it may have better AI then Dom3 (but then again who plays Dom3 AI outside of initially learning the ropes?!? :) ). I am going to keep playing COE3 for a bit, trying different classes, perhaps playing it on huge map to see if it feels any different, perhaps set some AIs as team. But so far I am very disappointed with AI. And since it’s been a long time since release, I think chances of AI being significantly improved in the later patches are very slim to non-existent, unfortunately… >:(
Ok, here is the end of my (rather long) rant. Thoughts/comments?
