That is … some manual.
Not surprising, this is AgeOD we’re talking about, after all. I love those guys), but I’m hoping it’s not going to be as impenetrable as some of their titles have been.
The new engine has gone a long way to making it more accessible. There is still a lot going on, but you’re not fighting the UI to make it give up information like you had to in the old games.
What a great manual.
I very much liked Dominions, an independent game now on its
fifth iteration. It has a lot of custom content, and I’m doing the custom
content for Empires in exactly the same spirit as Illwinter is doing
his for Dominions. I don’t mind that nations are not equal, on the
contrary, I revel in them not being equal!
More of a discussion than a playthrough. On the whole, he likes it but also has come criticisms.
Is it me, or does it seem like the Roman Republic is the new WWII?
Already owning Aggressors and Imperator, I’m hard pressed to see a reason to get this as well, especially with the Cicero patch just a couple of months away.
Am I wrong?
I don’t own Imperator, so this is a pretty easy call for me, I’ll be picking this one up.
But I could see how you might consider at least waiting till a sale given you’ve already got a fair amount of Rome going on, haha.
And yes, does seem like we’ve been getting a fair bit of it lately, odd how games do sometimes pick a theme and come in a wave.
I’m not sure because I haven’t played the game yet. But as I see it, reading about the game and watching videos, this appears to be an entirely different game, despite covering the same historical period.
I’m really looking forward to a game where painting a large segment of the map your color does not mean you are invincible. In fact, it may be a liability. It’s a game about making your empire great, not a game about land grabbing.
Of course, I don’t know how this will strike me after I’ve played for a week. But I really feel that they have the right idea for rescuing this genre.
But I am also prepared for a lot of negative reviews. Players who just spend their time looking for conquests are going to be frustrated, unless maybe they are playing Macedon.
I really like that manual too!
Sure, if we get about 10 more Roman games over the next few years. Not sure if 3 games that were all being made at the same time count.
Anyway, why does it matter? If they make a good strategy game, who cares (besides you) if it covers the same period as other recent games?
In the scheme of things none of this matters, so that point could be made about pretty much everything said at Qt3.
But then I thought that was the whole point of this place.
I think they are clearly doing different enough things to be interesting.
- I:R is a sandbox simulation. Like all PDX games, it has lots of subsystems whirring away that you can tinker with. There’s no win condition other than what you set yourself.
- A:AR is a 4X game. You do the traditional 4 things, but basically you just try to conquer the world.
- FOG:E is a boardgame. You need to undertake certain tasks to gain tokens and win victory points.
Anyone jumping in on this right away? I just started looking over the manual and since Paradox can’t be bothered creating manuals anymore this is a nice change! I almost feel like buying it just for that reason, but I can’t be quite so loose with money. I am curious to see what you guys think about the game though.
Our review, if anyone is interested:
Bill doesn’t really do comparisons though - he’s more interested in evaluating it on its own merits and looking at the integration with FOG2, which he also reviewed for us, so we can’t help anyone who’s looking for a contrast.
From what I’ve experienced with it, it reminds me of what Rome: Total War was like in terms of what they’ve chosen to focus on in terms of abstractions and mechanics. Being an AGEOD game it’s also more geared towards military operations than not, although Bill claims you can win just via points even if you lose all your territory, which Is a weird proposition.
I’ve always questioned Slitherine’s positioning of Aggressors as a ‘4X’. It’s a historical sandbox so while there’s FoW, there’s no ‘exploration’ because the map is known, no? Kind of makes the ‘Exploration’ part irrelevant and I’ve never really seen it as a true 4X.
If you set up a random campaign there’s exploration because everyone starts in a random location.
So, are we ignoring the ‘Customized World’ option when starting a game of Aggressors: Ancient Rome that makes it play EXACTLY like a 4x with randomized map and FOG? The historical map is just the first and most obvious option, not the only one offered.
Eh, I never took that as the main mode. Yeah fair enough that mode makes it exactly like a 4X, but the main offering was always the historical sandbox in my eyes, which isn’t like a 4X at all.
What do you call a game that follows 4X principles only some of the time?
Some games I guess don’t fit a clean category.
This does make me wonder, does FOGE do a random map option?
looks boring as hell
Not as far as we’ve seen, no - it doesn’t really fit with the style of game AGEOD specifically tend to design, historically.
Never say never, but I know a bit about how A:AR was developed and that lean’t itself more towards having that option (there were other scenarios made that got canned, for instance). I would be highly surprised if AGEOD/Slitherine suddenly threw in a randomised map option here.
Would be interesting to know if the game could handle it, from a technical/balance standpoint, mind.